TERRORISM‘Nihilistic Violent Extremism’ Isn’t a Thing, and I’m Tired of Pretending It Is
“Nihilistic violent extremism” (NVE) is a term used to bring together an array of hateful actors who, working online, try to convince people to kill themselves, produce child sexual abuse material, and other hateful actions. But the term confuses more than it helps—NVE is too vague a concept and encompasses too wide a range of behavior, leading to misunderstanding, poor analysis, and potential response mistakes.
It is past time to retire the concept of “nihilistic violent extremism” (NVE). The term was introduced in a U.S. Department of Justice court filing in 2025 and has since been adopted by the international counterterrorism community. But from its inception, it has been analytically suspect, based on a faulty definition, a contradiction in terms, a category error, and several fallacies about the nature of the modern threat actor networks to which “NVE” was intended to pertain. Defining and categorizing violent extremist threat actors is an arduous task—particularly in an era of ideologically fluid threat actors—but the concept of NVE is not doing the counterterrorism community any favors in its efforts to analyze and address ongoing threats.
In the spring of 2025, U.S. federal law enforcement filed court documents that introduced “NVE” into the lexicon of violent extremism-related terminology. The definition presented by the FBI was:
individuals who engage in criminal conduct within the United States and abroad, in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability.
NVEs are considered a subset of “domestic violent extremists” (DVEs), defined by the U.S. intelligence community as:
[individuals] based and operating primarily within the United States or its territories without direction or inspiration from a foreign terrorist group or other foreign power who seeks to further political or social goals, wholly or in part, through unlawful acts of force or violence dangerous to human life.
Since the introduction of the term “NVE,” federal authorities have used this definition to refer to a panoply of threat actors, including neo-Nazi accelerationists influenced by Satanist occultism, extortionists, hackers, swatting and doxing artists, child sexual abuse material (CSAM) producers and consumers, and mass shooters. These activities are varied but grouped together because they are conducted by participants in a variety of online threat actor networks that the FBI has classified as NVEs, including 764 (and similar movements), No Lives Matter, Maniacs Murder Cult, and the True Crime Community.
