• How Far-Right Extremists Are Exploiting Pandemic

    Far-right extremists have been linked to bombing plots tied to the coronavirus pandemic, spotted holding anti-Semitic signs at protests outside state capitols, and seen trafficking on fringe platforms in all manner of conspiracy theories about the virus. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage millions of lives and paralyze much of the economy, these extremists in the United States are seizing every opportunity to reach out to thousands of potential followers and expand their ranks.

  • Coronavirus and Its Social Effects Fueling Extremist Violence, Says Government Report

    The coronavirus pandemic and its social repercussions are fueling violence by both frustrated individuals and domestic terrorists, according to a new intelligence report by the Department of Homeland Security. Social distancing has meant the cancelation of mass gathering events that are historically appealing targets for both international and domestic terrorists, the report adds, but “the pandemic has created a new source of anger and frustration for some individuals. As a result, violent extremist plots will likely involve individuals seeking targets symbolic to their personal grievances.”

  • Islamists Killed Dozens in Mozambique as Insurgency Intensifies

    More than fifty young people were shot dead or beheaded in northern Mozambique as an Islamist insurgency gains strength. Local and national security forces, as well as foreign mercenaries hired by the government – including the notorious Wagner Force from Russia — have been unable to keep the militants in check. The insurgents began their operations in 2017, and were initially claiming to represent the region’s resident in their disputes with the central government, but earlier this month the group’s leadership announced that the group’s aim was to turn Mozambique into a Muslim “caliphate.”

  • Coronavirus Crisis is Reviving “Blood Libels” against Jews

    The leaders of the European Jewish Congress (EJC) said that already in the first few months since the global breakout of the Coronavirus, there has been a rise in antisemitic manifestations relating to the spread of the disease and the economic recession triggered by the pandemic. “Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in accusations that Jews, as individuals and as a collective, are behind the spread of the virus or are directly profiting from it,” Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the EJC, said.

  • Twenty-Five Years Later, Oklahoma City Bombing Inspires a New Generation of Extremists

    On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast destroyed the building, killing 168 men, women and children and injuring hundreds more. Twenty-five years later, the Oklahoma City bombing remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American history.  McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nichols, were not part of any large, well-funded terrorist organization; they were American extremists acting on their own. Today, their deadly legacy is one of the inspirations for a new and violent segment of the white supremacist movement.

  • The Next Pandemic Might Not Be Natural

    Germs have killed more people than all the wars in history, and people have been trying to make use of them throughout all those wars. In the U.S., we have seen small-scale bioterrorist attacks – the Rajneeshee poisoning of restaurants in 1986 and the Amerithrax letters that were mailed in 2001. Still, the years running up to this current coronavirus pandemic not only saw the gutting of U.S. national health institutions but also a cultural groundswell of science denial in the anti-vaccination movement. Today the United States in particular is paying for that denial in livelihoods and lives. The warnings were clear. If 9/11 was a “failure of imagination,” then history will no doubt judge the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19 as a failure of courage, compassion, and, most of all, competence.

  • Germany Arrests 4 IS Members Plotting Attacks on U.S. Bases, Killing Critics of Islam

    German police have arrested four members of the Islamic State militant group for planning attacks on U.S. military bases in Germany. The suspects, all migrants from Tajikistan, were also keeping critics of Islam under surveillance, with the goal of assassinating them later.

  • Partners in Crime? A Historical Perspective on Cumulative Extremism in Denmark

    Can one form of extremism feed off and magnify other forms of extremism? Is there a positive extremist feedback loop, and, if so, can a cumulative perspective on extremism help us understand the ebb and flow of political violence, radicalization, and mobilization? The left- and right-wing extremism in Europe in the last four decades does exhibit an interdependency between mutually hostile movements, and the study of mutually reinforcing forms of extremism in Denmark offers a microcosm of a broader phenomenon.

  • The Rise of Far-Right Terrorism

    Two weeks ago, the U.S. State Department has added a Russian far-right, white-supremacist group to the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organization. It is the first white supremacist group on the list (there are 80 other groups on it). Analysts say that it is high time for world governments to recognize the rapidly growing threat of far-right terrorism.

  • Terrorism in the U.K.: Number of Suspects Tops 40,000 after MI5 Rechecks Its List

    MI5 is aware of more than 43,000 people who pose a potential terrorist threat to the U.K., according to a government report — almost twice the number of terror suspects previously disclosed. David Gadher writes that after the 2017 attacks at London Bridge and Manchester Arena, it was revealed that MI5 had about 23,000 current and historic suspects on its radar, divided into 3,000 subjects of interest (SOIs), and 20,000 closed” subjects of interest (CSOIs). The Home Office has been quietly recategorizing its lists, and now says that there are 40,000 CSOIs, “where MI5 judges there to be some risk of re-engaging in terrorist activity.”

  • Islamists in Northern Mozambique Announce Plans for a Caliphate

    In the past two weeks, the jihadists who have been spreading terror in the far north of Mozambique have carried out a series of spectacular attacks – but also, finally, made public their objective: to establish a caliphate in northeast Mozambique, and impose strict Islamic law within it.

  • Rethinking Biosecurity Governance

    Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from the current coronavirus pandemic is how to learn future lessons without having to experience a pandemic, whether natural in origin or made by humans. We must rethink and test assumptions about relationships between biological research, security, and society to plan for biosecurity threats.

  • U.S. Designates Russia-Based White Supremacist Group, Leaders as Terrorists

    The United States has designated the ultranationalist Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) along with three of its leaders as terrorists, marking the first time the classification has been applied to a white supremacist group. The decision comes after Trump signed an executive order in September 2019 that expanded sanctions for combating terrorism by allowing the terrorist designation to be applied to groups that provide training to terrorists.

  • New Report Outlines Tactics of Modern White-Supremacist Terrorism

    On Monday, as the U.S. Department of State, for the first time ever, designate a white supremacist group as a terrorist organization, a new report on white supremacist terrorism was released, analyzing the evolution of the threat presented by violent white supremacists. The report notes that, until Monday’s announcement of the Department of State’s decision, none of the 69 organizations designated by the U.S. Department of State as Foreign Terrorist Organizations is a white supremacist organization, despite the dramatic uptick in that threat.

  • Right-Wing Extremism: The Russian Connection

    Over the past eight years, one of Russia’s more effective strategies to weaken the West, subvert liberal democratic societies, sabotage the U.S.-created post-WWII world order, and facilitate the expansion of Russian influence has been to provide active support – at times overt, often covert — to various far-right, ethnonationalist, and populist political parties and movements. Russia has been providing support not only to political parties and movements. As part of its effort to undermine the West and weaken democracies, the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence, has been supporting an assortment of violent, white supremacist groups in many European countries: fight clubs, neo-Nazi soccer hooligans, motorcycle gangs, skin heads, and neo-fascist rock groups. These groups are serving as conduits for the Kremlin’s influence operations in Western countries.