• Gun Violence Rises in TV Dramas over Two Decades, Paralleling U.S. Gun Homicide Tends

    Gun violence in popular prime-time broadcast television dramas has increased steadily over almost two decades, a trend that parallels the rise in U.S. homicide deaths attributable to firearms, according to new research. Overall gun violence on popular prime-time dramas doubled from 2000 through 2018. More important, gun violence as a proportion of the violence depicted in the shows rose significantly as well.

  • Are Telegram and Signal Havens for Right-Wing Extremists?

    Since the violent storming of Capitol Hill and subsequent ban of former U.S. President Donald Trump from Facebook and Twitter, the removal of Parler from Amazon’s servers, and the de-platforming of incendiary right-wing content, messaging services Telegram and Signal have seen a deluge of new users. Steven Feldstein and Sarah Gordon write that the two services rely on encryption to protect the privacy of user communication, which has made them popular with protesters seeking to conceal their identities against repressive governments in places like Belarus, Hong Kong, and Iran. “But the same encryption technology has also made them a favored communication tool for criminals and terrorist groups, including al Qaeda and the Islamic State.” Telegram has purged Islamic State from the platform, and it could the same with far-right violent extremists.

  • Fighting Domestic Extremism: Lessons from Germany

    As the U.S. Capitol insurrection, the prevalence of the QAnon conspiracy, and widely believed claims of election fraud indicate, potentially tens of millions of Americans are outside the consensus on the most fundamental U.S. democratic values: faith in official election results and the peaceful transfer of power. Daniel Koehler writes that, as a German, he is “frightfully reminded” of the Weimar Republic, which resulted in the end of Germany’s first democracy and the rise of domestic extremism from within. “Modern Germany is built on the legacy of the failure of its first democratic experiment and the unspeakable global suffering and destruction that followed,” he writes. The success of German democracy today “offers lessons for the United States as well as other countries seeking to counter extreme ideologies.”

  • Germany’s Spy Chiefs Urge Court to Agree on Monitoring of Far-Right AfD

    Germany’s domestic intelligence agency says there’s sufficient evidence to warrant labeling the country’s main opposition party, the populist far-right Alternative for Germany, AfD, as “anti-constitutional” and an organization hostile to democracy.

  • The Questions FBI Director Christopher Wray Wasn’t Asked

    It was the most catastrophic intelligence failure since Sept. 11, 2001. One of the three branches of American government faced violent invasion. The invaders threatened the lives of the speaker of the House, the vice president of the United States, and all members of Congress. People died. Many more were injured. Moreover, Tia Sewell, Benjamin Wittes write, the intruders successfully interrupted the basic functioning of American democracy: its peaceful transfer of power and its ability to honor the results of an election in which those in power lost. “Yet on March 2, the man who heads the intelligence component chiefly responsible for domestic intelligence matters, for terrorism investigations, and for combatting violent extremism appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and had a pleasant exchange with senators. The committee members seemed positively uninterested in his agency’s obvious institutional failure in the run-up to Jan. 6.”

  • U.S. Capitol Police Tighten Security as Thursday Threat Looms

    The U.S. Capitol Police Department says it is taking seriously intelligence about a possible plot by a militia group to breach the Capitol on Thursday. A far-right conspiracy theory has been circulating on social media platforms, contending that Donald Trump, who is continuing to spread lies about a fictitious mass voter fraud which cost him the election, would return to power on 4 March. This date was inauguration day for U.S. presidents until 1933, when it was moved to 20 January.

  • Germany’s AfD Party Placed under Surveillance as “Extremism Suspect”

    Germany’s interior intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) has classified the entire Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party as an “extremism suspected case.” The two largest parties in Germany, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party are members of the governing coalition, making the populist, far-right AfD the leader of the opposition in the Bundestag. The designation allows the BfV to use additional surveillance powers given to it by the Bundestag last year, including monitoring email communications and recruiting party members as informants.

  • FBI: No Evidence of Leftist Extremists Involved in 6 January Attack on Capitol

    DBI director Christopher Wray told lawmakers today (Tuesday) that there wasn’t any evidence to suggest that left-wing extremists or “fake Trump supporters” were involved in the 6 January attack on the Capitol. The claims about fake Trump supporters, and similar conspiracy theories about how it was violent leftist extremists rather than Trump supporters who were behind the violence on 6 January, have been promoted by pro-Trump media outlets.

  • Hate Crimes Targeting Asian Americans Spiked by 150% in Major U.S. Cities

    Hate-fueled attacks on Asian Americans spiked across major U.S. cities last year — in some cases by triple-digit percentages — even as overall hate crimes declined, newly analyzed police department statistics show. Moreover, the alarming trend has continued into this year, experts say.

  • How the Federal Government Investigates and Prosecutes Domestic Terrorism

    In the aftermath of the 6 January riot at the U.S. Capitol, many politicians, including President Biden, and public commentators called for renewed efforts by the federal government to combat domestic terrorism. Eric Halliday and Rachael Hanna write that that reaction followed a pattern over recent years in which mass shootings and other violent attacks have spurred demands for an increased federal focus on domestic terrorism. “[I]t is important to understand exactly what powers the federal government can and cannot use when pursuing domestic terrorists. This is particularly relevant because domestic terrorism occupies a gray area in federal criminal law between international terrorism and nonterrorism criminal offenses,” they write.

  • Adolescent Involvement with Firearms Linked to Gun Violence in Adulthood

    Firearms deaths are a significant public health problem in the U.S., accounting for nearly 200,000 homicides between 2003 and 2018. Despite an overall decrease in homicides over the past three years, the proportion involving firearms peaked in 2018 accounting for 72 percent of homicides. A new study finds involvement with firearms by high-risk youth is associated with firearm violence during adulthood.

  • Less Gun Violence among Children in States with More Gun Laws

    Gun violence among children is lower in states with more gun laws, according to a new study. The study examined youth gun and weapon carrying data from 2005 and 2017 across several states.

  • Biden Administration ‘Going after Violence’ in Crackdown on Domestic Terrorism

    White House and Pentagon officials are defending decisions to conduct in-depth reviews of the dangers posed by domestic extremists in the United States, pushing back against criticism that the measures will result in a so-called political litmus test. Nascent anger over the new efforts to look at domestic extremism in the wake of the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol building has been growing in recent days, touched off by a decision by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to order a military-wide stand-down to determine the scope of the problem.

  • U.S. Police, Security Forces Brace for Trump Impeachment Trial

    Security and police forces in and around Washington will be operating at what they describe as “a high-level of readiness” as the impeachment trial for former President Donald Trump gets underway next week, worried the event could serve as a flashpoint for American extremists still angry over the outcome of the presidential election. Officials have been hesitant to share specifics about the intelligence, some of which has been described as disturbing chatter on social media platforms.

  • Extremist-Related Shootouts with Police Soar in 2020

    During the 6 January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, violent Trump supporters—reinforced by a broad coalition of right-wing extremists—attacked police, who appeared to be caught unprepared for a violent encounter with a crowd which has been loudly and consistently supportive of law enforcement. In 2020, there were 16 incidents in which police and extremists exchanged gunfire, an increase from the 11-year average of nine per year.