As a result of his alleged multi-year crime spree, Martin is charged with, among others, five counts of producing CSAM, 11 counts of distributing CSAM, and three counts of coercing minors to engage in sexual activity. Indeed, the debased acts identified by authorities against his victims are beyond horrific and likely force Martin to stare down the possibility of a life sentence for the CSAM charges alone.

Even so, one charge stands out most among the litany of federal offenses: a single count of 18 U.S.C. § 2339A — that is, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. It is the first time that a member of 764 or its many splinter groups has been charged with violating the statute. More specifically, the government alleges that Martin knowingly provided support for the act of killing, kidnapping, maiming, or injuring persons in a foreign country. This underlying criminal act violates one of several laws within 18 U.S.C. § 2339A. Choosing to charge Martin with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists is a significant development in not only how the DOJ prosecutes 764 but it also signals a shift in how the U.S. government classifies NVE groups – namely, as terrorist organizations.

Background on 764 and The “Com”

Born in the dark, small-town Texas bedroom of then-15-year-old Bradley Cadenhead in early 2021, 764 has emerged as one of the FBI’s top domestic terrorism threats. Named after the first three digits of Cadenhead’s hometown ZIP code, 764 primarily operates as an online child exploitation enterprise. The FBI categorizes it within the newly minted extremist typology known as NVEs.

First appearing in court documents in early 2025, NVEs are individuals who commit crimes, either in the United States or overseas, driven by political, social, or religious motives rooted in a deep hostility toward society as a whole, and who seek to destabilize or destroy it through widespread, indiscriminate chaos, violence, and disorder. NVEs often traffic in depravity as ideology, weaponizing acts of sexual extortion, animal abuse, and self-harm to express their rejection of moral and social norms.

However, 764 is not the first digital community to engage in such behaviors. Its predecessor, a network known as CVLT, emerged between 2017 and 2019 as an online group primarily on the Kik messaging app, but later spread to Instagram, Discord, and Telegram, where it engaged in grooming minors and producing CSAM. As Canadian researcher Marc-André Argentino has noted, CVLT “was one of the earliest known groups to systematically combine child sexual exploitation, coercion, and accelerationist ideology within a digital ecosystem.” Yet both CVLT and 764 are only parts of a much larger and amorphous phenomenon referred to as “The Com,” or “The Community.” Cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs has described The Com as a “kind of distributed cybercriminal social network that facilitates instant collaboration” and consists of multiple, overlapping pillars that feature cybercrime, sextortion, and offline criminal activity. Although The Com has existed for nearly a decade, law enforcement has only recently begun to grapple with the extent of its real-world harms.

In February 2021, Kaleb Christopher Merritt, one of the leaders within CVLT, was arrested in Virginia for the abduction and sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl he met and groomed on Instagram. One of Merritt’s compatriots and fellow CVLT leaders, Rohan Sandeep Rane, was arrested in France in 2022 for similar crimes, effectively splintering its leadership. By late 2023, these networks were receiving increased scrutiny from law enforcement, resulting in more arrests.

As prosecutions began to mount, CVLT’s remaining members who had not yet been swept up in legal prosecutions migrated to 764, which grew in parallel, thanks to the long hours Cadenhead spent unsupervised on the internet after dropping out of high school. It was around this time that, according to court documents, Martin began interacting with 764 and its members, going so far as to crown himself the “king of extortions,” and even authoring a guide instructing readers on how to identify young girls for grooming.

Martin’s Alleged Crimes and the Legal Mechanisms of Material Support

Domestic Terrorism

18 U.S.C. § 2331(5) defines domestic terrorism as acts that occur “primarily” within the United States that are “dangerous to human life,” violate other federal or state criminal laws, and are intended “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.”

Martin’s alleged conduct, and that of many of NVEs, fits squarely within this definition. Their intent, as stated in Martin’s indictment, is to engage in criminal conduct, in furtherance of a political, social, or religious goal derived primarily from a hatred of society, with a desire to bring about society’s collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability. NVEs aim to achieve their goals by grooming minors and other vulnerable individuals to become desensitized to violence by coercing them into committing acts of violence, either against themselves or others. Those acts include, for instance, forcing children to engage in sexual acts that are filmed and circulated online by NVE group members, and threatening to kidnap and kill the children and their family members. Unlike online sexual predators or child pornographers whose endgame is viewing the sexual acts of minors for their own sick pleasure, NVEs use those tactics as a means to their ends. They weaponize child pornography and violence to achieve their goal of intimidating and coercing the civilian population to bring chaos and tear down the government — the very definition of domestic terrorism.

Although there is a statutory definition of domestic terrorism in the federal criminal code, there is no criminal statute specifically making domestic terrorism a federal offense. Instead, the DOJ has turned to a statute traditionally used for violations of international terrorism and has applied it to Martin’s case.

Providing Support to an Act of Terrorism

18 U.S.C. § 2339A prohibits the provision of support to specific acts/crimes of terrorism, which are listed in 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(B). The statute focuses on a terrorist act rather than on the provision of material support to a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). 18 U.S.C. § 2339A has traditionally been charged in cases of international terrorism that occur overseas. By charging Martin with conspiracy to provide support to terrorists, thereby expanding the use of 2339A, the DOJ is correctly describing the actions of NVEs as terrorism.

For the government to convict Martin of this offense, the prosecutors must prove that Martin conspired to provide material support or resources and that he knew (or intended) the material support or resources were be used to carry out a violation of an underlying crime of terrorism.

Let’s break the charge down. First, he was charged with conspiracy. In essence, a conspiracy is two or more people agreeing to violate the law. The agreement does not have to be in writing. It does not even have to be spoken, as long as the criminal goal is understood among the conspirators. The proof of the agreement, unspoken or otherwise, is often born out of conspirators acting in concert.

Nor does the government have to prove that any conspirator took any steps to advance the conspiracy. In the general conspiracy charge, 18 U.S.C. § 371, the government must prove that one of the conspirators took a step — an overt act — to further the conspiracy. For example, if two people agree to rob a bank, and one buys a ski mask to wear during the robbery, then they have violated the general conspiracy statute. Once that overt act occurs, the crime has been completed, and the bank robbery’s success is irrelevant. Because § 2339A contains a conspiracy provision within itself, an overt act is not required. Once the agreement is reached, the crime is committed. Although unnecessary, the government’s case is stronger if it can show that acts were taken to further the agreement. In the Martin indictment, the DOJ alleges that nine conspiratorial acts were taken in furtherance of the conspiracy.

Second, as stipulated in 18 U.S.C. § 2339A(b), material support or resources can be anything except religious or medical material, to include oneself (personnel), services, money, or other tangible items. Martin has been charged with providing himself (personnel), services, and expert advice. Some of Martin’s charged conduct falls within all three categories. For example, he allegedly helped to author and circulate a manual, called the “Grooming/Manipulation Egirls Guide,” which was allegedly used to train other 764 members on how to target vulnerable individuals. The creation and circulation of the guide could be considered both a service to 764 members and expert advice.

Third, the government must prove that the material support was intended to further a violation of a separate crime of terrorism. The Martin indictment identifies the underlying terrorism offense to be a conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim, or injure persons in a foreign country, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 956(a). Specifically, the indictment alleges that Martin and others conspired to coerce Victim 7, who was located overseas, to kill and maim themself. Although the government must prove two separate conspiracies — in other words, two separate agreements — prosecutors will likely rely on the same evidence to prove both the § 956(a) conspiracy and the § 2339A conspiracy.

Conclusion

The addition of a § 2339A charge is not about stacking penalties. Rather, Martin faces multiple counts for his numerous other crimes that carry decades — or even life — in prison. Nor is the inclusion of the charge a procedural maneuver to bring new evidence in front of a potential jury; the facts needed to prove the terrorism charge substantially overlap with those supporting the child-exploitation charges. On paper, the 15-year maximum for material support barely changes Marin’s potential sentence.

Still, the charge provides a valuable clarification. By deploying a statute traditionally reserved for international terrorism, or more recently, other types of domestic terrorists, the DOJ has signaled that NVE networks like 764 are terrorist enterprises. They are engaged in organized campaigns of violence and coercion designed to terrorize, destabilize, and degrade society to the point of total collapse. By charging Martin with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, the shift represents a long-overdue recognition that such conduct is not just depraved — it is terrorism.

The post How the DOJ is Prosecuting Nihilistic Violent Extremism as Domestic Terrorism appeared first on Just Security.

The Trump administration has been hyping the threat posed by Antifa for months. “Antifa is an existential threat to our nation,” Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has argued that the “network of Antifa is just as sophisticated as” ISIS and Hezbollah, two international terrorist organizations that have murdered tens of thousands of civilians and combatants in attacks and guerilla warfare around the globe.

The new designations do not support the administration’s case that Antifa presents an “existential” threat to Americans. Indeed, the move appears to do little, or nothing, to protect Americans either at home or abroad. If anything, the State Department’s announcement shows that the administration is unsuccessfully laboring to portray “Antifa” – an amorphous “anti-fascist” movement with no clear leadership or hierarchy – as a significant terrorist threat. And it could be used to undermine the civil liberties of U.S. citizens. 

A Far Cry from the Threat Posed by Al-Qaeda on 9/11

 The U.S. government created the SDGT listing process as part of Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, which was signed by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Nearly 3,000 people perished during al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. Thousands more have succumbed to, or still suffer from, related illnesses. Around that same time, the United Nations Security Council, NATO, and Organization of American States mobilized to respond to the al-Qaeda threat.   

From that moment forward, the SDGT list created a powerful tool, overseen by the U.S. Treasury Department, to cut off the international finances of terrorists capable of such large-scale attacks. Prior to the second Trump administration, the overwhelming majority of entities on the list were associated with al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iranian proxies or other global terrorist networks that had killed or threatened Americans.

The threat posed by the four newly designated entities, which have been responsible for small-scale attacks resulting in minimal casualties outside of the United States, falls far short of al-Qaeda or the other global terror networks previously designated. The State Department does not allege that any of the newly designated entities are capable of 9/11-style attacks. The Department does not claim that any Americans have been killed in their operations. Nor has the Department demonstrated that they endanger Americans or U.S. interests either at home or abroad, even though such threats are a prerequisite for inclusion on both the SDGT and FTO lists, which are authorities statutorily provided through congressional legislation. Indeed, the relevant statute giving the Secretary of State authority to designate an FTO requires “the terrorist activity of the organization threatens the security of United States nationals or the national security of the United States.”

Under E.O. 13224, the Secretary of State is authorized to “designate foreign individuals or entities that he determines have committed, or pose a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the U.S.” The criteria for inclusion on State’s FTO list, under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), contains similar language. 

Nothing in the State Department’s fact sheet satisfies this criterion – even if one were to read it in the broadest possible manner. Antifa Ost’s followers have engaged in street fights with suspected “fascists” in Germany and Hungary (more on that below). The FAI/FRI “primarily operates in Italy,” has affiliates elsewhere, and has threatened “political and economic institutions” in other countries, but the State Department does not claim it has plotted against the U.S. government or Americans. The remaining two entities – Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense – are based in Greece and have targeted the Greek government and police. The latter group, Revolutionary Class Self-Defense, has claimed responsibility for two minor attacks in Greece that resulted in little damage and no injuries. As Reuters reports, such attacks are hardly new, as “[s]mall-scale attacks on businesses, police, politicians and embassies are frequent in Greece, which has a long history of political violence by leftist and anarchist groups.”

If the Trump administration has intelligence indicating that these groups pose a real threat to Americans, the U.S. government or its interests, then it should present it. The publicly available evidence does not support such a conclusion. Instead, the evidence shows that the targeted networks are responsible for a low-level of violence in European countries.

Inflating the Threat Posed by “Antifa”

The Trump administration has not clearly defined what it means by “Antifa.” Experts have long recognized that Antifa is an amorphous movement with no clear national, let alone international, leadership or hierarchy. According to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) assessment published in 2020, the “U.S. antifa movement appears to be decentralized, consisting of independent, radical, like-minded groups and individuals” and “lacks a unifying organizational structure or detailed ideology.” The first Trump administration’s national security leaders agreed with this assessment.

As mentioned above, in contrast, DHS Secretary Noem has compared Antifa’s “network” to ISIS and Hezbollah. She also compared Antifa to international criminal gangs such as MS-13 and Tren de Arugua, as well as Hamas. But Antifa lacks the organizational structure and hierarchy of each of these five organizations. Indeed, Noem’s comparison inadvertently reveals the weakness of the Trump administration’s case, as it has failed to demonstrate how Antifa is a cohesive group or “network” comparable to the world’s leading terrorist organizations.  

Without specific criteria for defining “Antifa,” the U.S. government has no firm basis for concluding which groups or individuals belong to it, beyond those who somehow self-identify as its adherents. This opens the door for the Trump administration to abuse the term as a catch-all for leftwing groups and individuals who are broadly opposed to “fascism,” but may otherwise have no ties to one another.

This talk of “Antifa” untethered to facts is evident in the State Department’s treatment of the four foreign entities. 

Only one of the four entities designated by the State Department, the German-based Antifa Ost, openly brands itself as part of the Antifa movement. But the administration has not alleged that Antifa Ost is connected to any American Antifa adherents. It is not clear what ties, if any, there are between Antifa Ost and the other three entities, which are based in Italy and Greece. Nor is it clear if the other three have any ties to Antifa at all, either in other countries or inside the United States. It appears that the administration is simply conflating other far-left extremists and anarchists with Antifa, as if they are all part of the same network.

For instance, the first known American Antifa group was established in Portland, Oregon in 2007. As the State Department itself notes, the anarchist FAI/FRI began operating approximately four years earlier, in 2003, meaning that it predates the birth of the American Antifa movement. The Trump administration has not explained why it considers FAI/FRI, which has a long track record of violence on its own, to now be a part of Antifa in any meaningful sense.

The Trump administration has not designated neo-Nazi groups banned by democratic allies

The first entity listed by the State Department is Antifa Ost, also known as Antifa East and the “Hammer Gang,” a name its adherents earned by wielding hammers in their street attacks. Although Antifa Ost is based in Germany, the Trump administration reportedly did not coordinate its designation process with the German government. It is easy to see why. After the designation was announced, a spokesperson for the German Interior Ministry explained that Antifa Ost’s capacity for violence has “decreased significantly” after a series of arrests – an assessment that directly undermines the Trump administration’s desire to portray Antifa as a global menace. Indeed, the State Department does not attribute any attacks to Antifa Ost’s adherents since February 2023 — that is, more than two and half years ago.

The State Department notes that Antifa Ost is “accused of having conducted a series of attacks in Budapest in mid-February 2023.” But the Department’s announcement omits a key detail – namely, these “attacks” occurred during the “Day of Honor” event – an annual neo-Nazi rally held in the Hungarian capital.  

 The “Day of Honor” rally commemorates a battle in which Nazi soldiers and Hungarian troops joined forces to break the Soviet Union’s siege of Budapest in 1945. Even though the joint Nazi-Hungarian campaign was unsuccessful, modern neo-Nazis see it as an inspiration. Hundreds of far-right extremists from around the world attend the “Day of Honor” event in Budapest each year, including in February 2023, when Antifa Ost’s adherents showed up as counterprotesters.

The “Day of Honor” rally is organized by Légió Hungária, a neo-Nazi organization. According to Bellingcat, Légió Hungária maintains close relationships with other international neo-Nazi and skinhead groups that participate in the “Day of Honor” rally. These include Blood & Honour (B&H), which originated in the United Kingdom and has maintained presence inside the United States since the 1990s, and Hammerskins. America’s allies have long recognized the international threat posed by both groups.     

In 2000, Germany banned B&H after it was linked to a series of racially motivated murders. In 2010, a Spanish court ordered the dissolution of a B&H chapter after 18 of its members were “found guilty of illicit possession of arms and inciting hate for racist and anti-Semitic reasons.” In 2019, the French government dissolved a B&H affiliate inside the country. The Canadian government banned B&H and Combat 18 that same year, explaining that the group had carried out “murders and bombings” across several countries, including the murders of two homeless men in Tampa Bay, Florida in the late 1990s. In 2020, Germany then added Combat 18 to its list of prohibited groups. Finally, in January of this year, the U.K. government froze B&H’s financial assets, finding that there were “reasonable grounds to suspect [it] of being involved in terrorist activities through promoting and encouraging terrorism, seeking to recruit people for that purpose and making funds available for the purposes of its terrorist activities.”

 In 2023, the German government banned Hammerskins (also known as Hammerskin Nation), which was founded in Dallas, Texas in the late 1980s. The German interior ministry explained that “Hammerskins affiliates exist in a number of countries” and its “members call each other ‘brothers’ and see themselves as part of an elite ‘brotherhood,’” with approximately 130 members in Germany alone. Authorities “seized cash and large quantities of weapons,” as well as Nazi paraphernalia, in raids across the country. The interior ministry specifically thanked the American government for its cooperation, saying it “worked closely with its U.S. partner agencies to bring about this ban on a right-wing extremist and racist organization.” Such bilateral cooperation stands in direct contrast to the U.S. government’s unilateral designation of Antifa Ost.

Thus far, the administration has failed to employ the U.S. government’s powerful designation authorities against the neo-Nazi organizations that participate in the “Day of Honor” rally, or any other like-minded groups, even though several allied democratic nations have already done so. Instead, Trump’s State Department has followed the course set by Viktor Orban’s autocratic regime, focusing the power of the state mainly on the leftwing counterprotesters who clashed with neo-Nazis in Budapest in February 2023. The administration has done so even though the far-right was also culpable for the violence. 

For example, a previous report by the State Department clarified that violence broke out during the 2023 event when “extreme-right and neo-Nazi groups clashed with antifascist counterprotesters.” Although local police attempted to ban the rally beforehand, “several hundred extreme-right and neo-Nazi sympathizers gathered” and “antifascist demonstrators … assaulted several individuals they assumed to be affiliated with the extreme right.” The violence was not one-sided, however, as “extreme right sympathizers reportedly attacked groups they took to be antifascist demonstrators.”  

Concern that the Trump Administration Will Abuse the Designation Process to Target Domestic Opposition

 Since the murder of Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, senior administration officials have repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that a leftwing terrorist network, supported by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), threatens the security of Americans. Antifa is the main foe they cite. 

On Sept. 22, President Donald Trump issued an E.O. deeming Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization.” The E.O. lacked legal teeth, as the label does not create any new legal authorities to target groups operating inside the United States. Still, the E.O. signaled that the administration was probing for ways to conduct a broader crackdown on leftwing groups.

On Sept. 25, Trump followed up with a national security presidential memorandum (NSPM-7) claiming that the “anti-fascist” “lie” is used by “domestic terrorists” to threaten America’s “democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties.” The memorandum directs agencies of the U.S. government to take various actions against these supposed “networks.” Civil liberties and pro-democracy groups immediately saw NSPM-7 as a threat to free speech and civil society, as the memorandum imagines a broad conspiracy requiring a whole of government effort to combat. The memorandum seemingly invites branches of the U.S. government, including Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) around the country, to surveil and investigate groups and individuals based on “indicia” (beliefs) such as “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked those three types of beliefs when announcing the designations of the four “Antifa” groups, vowing to “continue using all available tools to protect our nation from these anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-Christian terrorist groups.” Indeed, the State Department’s SDGT and FTO designations are the latest step in the administration’s campaign to portray Antifa as a top-tier threat.

FTO designations are powerful by design, as Thomas Brzozowski, the former counsel for Domestic Terrorism in the Counterterrorism Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, has written in these pages. Once a group is designated as an FTO, the U.S. government can invoke legal authorities that allow it to surveil and harass any party connected to it – including organizations inside the United States. It is for that reason that the State Department’s designations of four alleged “Antifa” groups is potentially worrisome. Although the administration has not yet branded “Antifa” in its entirety as an FTO, it is apparently seeking ways to invoke those intrusive authorities against an enemy that is conjured without evidence and conceptually undefined. 

None of this is to suggest that the threat of leftwing political violence should be dismissed. It is real, but the U.S. government already has the tools needed to combat it. And as the review above is intended to show, the new designations are unnecessary. They are surely not based on a bottom-up assessment of the threat that these entities pose, but instead a top-down desire to create a bogeyman.

When Trump first announced his intent to designate “Antifa” as a foreign terrorist organization in mid-September, Hungary’s Orban quickly cheered. Orban’s enthusiasm was telling, as he has used the power of the state to hollow out opposition to his autocratic regime, which he has described as an “illiberal democracy.” Some hard-right politicians in different parts of Europe followed Trump’s statement by announcing their own interest in designating “Antifa” a terrorist organization. On Sept. 26, Hungary declared Antifa Ost a terrorist organization and then “added the group to its national anti-terrorism list.” It was conspicuous that Orban did not take a similar action against any of the neo-Nazi groups that march in Budapest every February. After all, they do not protest his rule. Meanwhile, the policy actions taken by the Trump administration to address domestic terrorism thus far, including NSPM-7, fail to address the threat posed by far-right extremists in the United States.     

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Our findings are grounded in open-source intelligence collected from March to September 2025, a period marked by deadly attacks in Utah, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C. While scholars and policymakers have long debated whether online rhetoric “causes” real-world violence, this report looks primarily at the middle of that cycle: how violent incidents are transformed into digital fuel that normalizes aggression and prepares the ground for future attacks.

Cross-Ideological Threat Landscape

We found that extremist networks are increasingly converging around similar tactics and, sometimes, targets. Far-right channels used the stabbing of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf, the killing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk to advance narratives of white victimhood and calls for revenge. Far-left networks, dominated during the monitoring period by militant pro-Palestine activism, used similar methods: doxxing, dehumanizing rhetoric, and glorification of attacks such as the shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.

The analysis also captures the growing threat from NVEs, individuals motivated not by ideology but by misanthropy and the pursuit of viral infamy. These actors blur the line between political violence and performance, celebrating mass shootings regardless of motive and borrowing aesthetic cues from previous attackers. Their actions highlight a new, troubling frontier: violence as content.

Violent Islamist groups, by contrast, maintained a lower but persistent online presence, forced into smaller, decentralized networks on applications such as Rocket.Chat after waves of moderation crackdowns. This disparity reveals an enforcement asymmetry. Foreign Islamist groups face aggressive monitoring, while domestic extremists using similar, if not more explicit, rhetoric often operate with relative impunity.

Cross-Platform Strategy and Adaptation

Across the ideological spectrum, one consistent finding stands out: violent actors use multi-platform strategies to balance reach and security. Telegram has become a central coordination hub, while X serves as the principal amplifier for mainstream visibility. Encrypted or decentralized platforms like Rocket.Chat and SimpleX provide operational cover, while video-sharing platforms such as YouTube or TikTok are exploited for viral reach.

The report documents the practice of “out-linking” — posts that embed links directing users to posts on another platform — to evade moderation and preserve content. This cross-platform strategy ensures that when one account or channel is taken down, the network’s connective tissue remains intact. As long as platforms offer complementary features — some maximizing virality, others privacy or monetization — extremist networks will adapt.

Threats, Incitement, and the Legal Line 

A central aim of Digital Aftershocks is to bring precision to an often-muddled debate about the legality of online speech. U.S. constitutional doctrine distinguishes between true threats, which are statements expressing a genuine intent to commit violence against a specific target, and incitement, which is speech likely to produce imminent lawless action. Both categories fall outside First Amendment protection. But much of the rhetoric circulating online, while dangerous, remains lawful.

To navigate this complexity, the report draws on international human rights frameworks like the Rabat Plan of Action, and the Dangerous Speech Project, which offers analytical tools for assessing when speech meaningfully increases the risk of violence. The goal is not to criminalize offensive expression but to help policymakers and platforms act consistently and proportionately without crossing into censorship.

Key Recommendations

Digital Aftershocks outlines practical, rights-respecting measures for platforms and policy-makers. Among them:

• Adopt precise definitions of threats and incitement to ensure consistent platform enforcement.
• Implement privacy-preserving reporting tools to let users flag illegal content and ensure timely review of those reports.
• Use metadata responsibly, collecting only what is necessary for safety purposes and deleting it after defined retention periods.
• Mandate transparency and procedural standards requiring platforms to publish detailed moderation and abuse-detection reports.
• Evaluate extremist and terrorist designation frameworks so enforcement applies consistently across ideologies.
• Recognize the limits of legal remedies, distinguishing harmful but protected speech from illegal threats or incitement, and clarify protocols for platform-law enforcement cooperation.
• Support counter-speech and civic resilience, investing in partnerships that promote credible voices and reduce polarization.

A Bipartisan Imperative

The surge of political violence in the United States shows no sign of abating. Each new incident is followed by a wave of digital celebration, intimidation, and imitation. Yet responses remain polarized and often superficial.

The patterns we document cut across ideology and party lines. Violent intimidation online threatens everyone’s safety, regardless of political identity. Our hope is that Digital Aftershocks helps policymakers, platforms, and civil society move beyond reflexive partisanship and toward sensible, bipartisan solutions that safeguard both public safety and freedom of expression.

The post The Feedback Loop Between Online Extremism and Acts of Violence appeared first on Just Security.

During the roundtable, Trump was asked directly whether he would designate Antifa as an FTO. The president’s response was unambiguous: “I think it’s the kind of thing I’d like to do. If you agree, I agree. Let’s get it done.” This was not casual political rhetoric. It was a directive from the Commander-in-Chief to his national security apparatus, witnessed by millions of Americans. It is also something the first Trump administration took steps toward enacting near the end of the president’s first term in office. (For example, see section 2 of the  Executive Order issued on Jan. 5, 2021.) The implications could extend far beyond anti-fascist activists to the entire architecture of American civil society and constitutional governance.

The FTO Framework: Powerful by Design

To understand why an Antifa FTO designation would be so consequential, one must first grasp the extraordinary scope of authorities that such designations unleash. The FTO system was deliberately constructed to maximize governmental power against international terrorist threats. Created by the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the framework provides the executive branch with extraordinary authorities that are designed to dismantle terrorist networks quickly and comprehensively.

Once an organization is designated as an FTO, providing “material support” to it becomes a federal crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison, or life if the support results in death. The statutory definition of “material support” is intentionally expansive and includes providing: “currency or monetary instruments, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, personnel, and transportation.” Only medicine and religious materials are explicitly exempted.

The breadth of this definition reflects Congress’s determination to eliminate all forms of assistance to designated organizations. The statute applies to U.S. persons regardless of where the prohibited conduct occurs, creating global reach for American terrorism prosecutions. The Supreme Court’s decision in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project clarified that even speech intended to promote peaceful conflict resolution may constitute material support if provided to a designated organization.

Financial consequences activate automatically upon designation. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) requires all U.S. financial institutions to freeze assets within ten business days and report the frozen funds to the government. This financial disruption is designed to immediately sever designated organizations from the global financial system, preventing them from accessing resources needed for operations.

The Holy Land Foundation case demonstrates the scope of these authorities when applied to charitable organizations. Five charity officials received sentences ranging from 15 to 65 years for providing aid to Palestinian communities that prosecutors argued were under the influence of Hamas, a designated FTO. While the defendants maintained they were providing legitimate humanitarian assistance, the court found that the statutory framework criminalized their support regardless of the charitable intent.

Immigration Consequences and the Specter of Denaturalization

Beyond criminal prosecution and financial sanctions, FTO designation triggers severe immigration consequences that could create an underclass of vulnerable individuals subject to expulsion. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, any non-citizen who is a member or representative of a designated FTO is automatically inadmissible to the United States and subject to removal proceedings. The State Department may immediately revoke visas of any foreign nationals deemed to be members, representatives, or supporters of the designated organization. This authority extends to individuals who have “endorsed or espoused terrorist activity” or provided any form of material support, creating an exceptionally broad basis for visa revocation and deportation. (That said, similar provisions for removal of foreign nationals lawfully in the United States are currently being challenged in court on First Amendment grounds.)

The consequences reach even further for naturalized American citizens. Federal law permits denaturalization of individuals who were members of or affiliated with a “terrorist organization” within five years immediately following naturalization. Once Antifa receives FTO designation, any naturalized citizen who attended a counter-protest, donated to a legal defense fund, or expressed support for anti-fascist principles during their first five years as a citizen could face citizenship revocation proceedings.

The recent expansion of denaturalization enforcement, with the Department of Justice announcing in June 2025 that denaturalization cases would become one of its top five enforcement priorities, creates a particularly acute vulnerability for many of the estimated 25 million naturalized Americans. Consider a German immigrant who became a U.S. citizen in 2023 and maintained connections with anti-fascist groups in her home country, or a French national who was naturalized in 2024 after years of participating in counter-demonstrations against far-right movements in Europe. Both could face potential citizenship revocation and deportation based on activities that were entirely legal when undertaken.

The denaturalization standard requires only “clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence” in civil proceedings — a lower threshold than criminal conviction — and carries no statute of limitations. This creates a permanent cloud of legal jeopardy hanging over millions of naturalized Americans whose past political associations could be reinterpreted as terrorism support under an expansive FTO designation.​

Civil Liability Under the Anti-Terrorism Act

The designation of Antifa as an FTO could also potentially expose individuals and organizations to devastating civil liability under the Anti-Terrorism Act (18 U.S.C. § 2333). The ATA authorizes any U.S. national injured “by reason of an act of international terrorism” committed by a designated FTO to sue for treble damages, plus attorneys’ fees and costs. The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), enacted in 2016, expanded this authority to include aiding-and-abetting liability against “any person who aids and abets, by knowingly providing substantial assistance, or who conspires with” those who commit acts of international terrorism. This creates possible exposure not just for alleged Antifa subjects themselves, but for anyone deemed to have provided material support — including nonprofits, donors, and service providers.

Unlike criminal cases requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt, ATA civil cases proceed under the lower “preponderance of the evidence” standard, making them easier to win. Even frivolous ATA lawsuits could impose crippling litigation costs — defense firms specializing in terrorism cases charge hundreds of dollars per hour, and cases routinely take years to resolve. The threat of ATA liability could force organizations to obtain expensive specialized insurance (if available at all), conduct exhaustive vetting of all partners and donors, and potentially abandon any activities that could be remotely connected to anti-fascist activism. This civil liability mechanism could thus accomplish through private litigation what criminal prosecution alone might not achieve: the significant curtailment of civil society organizations engaged in political opposition to “anti-fascism,” not through direct government action but through the specter of catastrophic financial liability.

The FISA Surveillance Integration

An FTO designation would also seamlessly integrate Antifa into America’s most sophisticated surveillance infrastructure. Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the government may conduct electronic surveillance of “agents of foreign powers,” including “groups engaged in international terrorism.” Once Antifa is designated as an FTO, anyone deemed an “agent” of this “foreign power” becomes eligible for FISA surveillance — including American citizens (though with some stricter standards).

This surveillance integration represents a qualitative escalation beyond traditional criminal investigation. FISA surveillance operates under different standards than domestic criminal investigations. Federal agents need only demonstrate probable cause that “the target of the surveillance is a foreign power or [an] agent of a foreign power” and that “a significant purpose” is obtaining “foreign intelligence information.” The standard does not require demonstration that criminal activity is planned or imminent.

The National Security Agency’s (NSA) authorities under FISA are extensive and largely classified, but publicly available documentation confirms the agency “relies on Title I of FISA to conduct electronic surveillance of foreign powers or their agents, to include members of international terrorist organizations.” These capabilities extend beyond simple wiretapping to include comprehensive electronic monitoring, physical searches, and business records collection.

For American citizens associated with anti-fascist activities, FISA designation could mean potential subjection to the full spectrum of intelligence community surveillance capabilities, all conducted in secret with limited judicial oversight. Unlike criminal investigations, FISA surveillance does not require notification of targets, potentially allowing years of monitoring without the subject’s knowledge.

Social Media Transformation: From Resistance to Compliance

The surveillance implications extend beyond government agencies to encompass the private sector platforms where much contemporary political organization occurs. The impact on digital platforms would be immediate and comprehensive. Major social media companies — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram — maintain terms of service prohibiting content from designated terrorist organizations. Currently, these platforms often resist government information requests about political activists based on First Amendment principles. An FTO designation could eliminate the legal foundation for such resistance.

Facebook’s Community Standards explicitly state that “organizations that are engaged in terrorist activity are not allowed on the platform.” Once Antifa is designated as an FTO, any content expressing support for anti-fascist principles, sharing protest logistics, or providing resources for activists could become prohibited terrorist content subject to immediate removal. Users posting such content could also face permanent account suspension.

The technological infrastructure already exists for comprehensive content monitoring. Social media companies have developed sophisticated algorithmic systems to identify terrorist content, with Twitter reporting suspension of over 1.5 million accounts for terrorism-related violations between 2015 and 2020, 90 percent identified through automated systems rather than user reports.

The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) – comprised of YouTube, Twitter/X, Facebook, and Microsoft, and other platforms – maintains shared databases of “digital fingerprints” from known terrorist content. Anti-fascist organizing materials, protest footage, and political commentary could be added to these databases, creating automated, cross-platform content removal and user identification systems.

These changes could extend beyond direct content removal to comprehensive user profiling. The same machine learning systems currently used for content recommendation could begin identifying users based on engagement with anti-fascist content, creating detailed profiles for potential government intelligence gathering. This transformation would convert social media platforms from potential sources of opposition to government overreach into comprehensive surveillance and enforcement networks.

Organizational Vulnerabilities: A Hypothetical Case Study

The abstract legal framework above becomes more concrete when applied to real-world organizational structures. Consider how an FTO designation could impact the “Alliance for Democratic Resistance” (ADR), a fictional but realistic progressive non-governmental organization (NGO), as well as other civil society organizations. ADR operates from a headquarters in Washington, D.C., with regional offices in Portland, Chicago, Atlanta, and Austin. The organization maintains partnerships with civil rights groups in Germany, the U.K., and France, and receives grants from European foundations supporting anti-fascist education programs.

ADR’s activities include organizing counter-protests against white supremacist demonstrations, providing know-your-rights training for protesters, maintaining a legal defense fund for arrested activists, publishing research on far-right movements, and hosting international conferences on combating extremism. These activities, while entirely legal under current law, could become potentially criminal once Antifa is designated as an FTO.

The organization’s international partnerships could be recharacterized as coordination with foreign terrorist entities. Its legal defense fund might constitute material support for domestic terrorists. Research publications could be classified as terrorist propaganda. Training programs might be deemed terrorist instruction.

Within ten business days of designation, OFAC would require ADR’s banks to freeze all accounts and report holdings to the Treasury Department. Staff members would face FBI investigation for potential material support violations. Donors — from major foundations to individual contributors — could become targets for financial crimes prosecution. International partners would be barred from entering the United States.

Beyond criminal charges and asset freezes, ADR could conceivably face civil suits from anyone injured during a protest or counterdemonstration where Antifa was present. A business owner whose property was damaged, a counter-protester who was injured, or even a police officer hurt during a demonstration could sue ADR for treble damages under the ATA, arguing the organization aided and abetted Antifa’s activities by providing meeting space, legal support, or protest coordination. The treble damages provision means a $100,000 injury claim could result in a $300,000 judgment, plus potentially millions in legal fees.

The organization would face immediate operational collapse regardless of whether criminal charges are ultimately filed. Legal defense costs alone could reach millions of dollars. Donors would flee to avoid association with designated “terrorists.” Foundation grants would be suspended pending investigation. Staff would resign to protect themselves from legal jeopardy. Office leases would be terminated, insurance policies cancelled, and nonprofit tax status revoked.

This scenario reflects how FTO designations can destroy organizations through the process itself, independent of successful criminal prosecutions. The mere initiation of terrorism-related investigations creates financial and reputational damage from which most organizations cannot recover.

Cascading Effects Across Civil Society

The destruction of directly targeted organizations represents only the beginning of a possible broader social transformation. The impact could cascade far beyond directly targeted entities, creating a comprehensive chilling effect across the entire progressive political ecosystem. Every progressive nonprofit, civil rights group, and political organization would face immediate compliance assessments. Legal counsel would advise clients to avoid any activities potentially construed as supporting anti-fascist principles. Foundation boards could vote to suspend grants to organizations with possible connections to counter-protest activities.

Academic institutions would face particularly complex challenges. Universities might cancel conferences on combating fascism, restrict faculty research on anti-fascist movements, and suspend student organizations engaged in counter-protest activities. The chilling effect on academic freedom would be profound, as scholars avoid research topics that might create legal jeopardy.

Media organizations may similarly self-censor. Publishers might refuse books on anti-fascist history or strategy. Journalists could avoid reporting on anti-fascist activities to prevent potential material support liability. Documentary filmmakers might cancel projects examining anti-fascist movements.

Religious and community organizations engaged in social justice work would face difficult choices about continuing programs that could be interpreted as supporting a designated terrorist organization’s ideology. Labor unions might prohibit solidarity activities with anti-fascist activists. Nonprofit legal organizations could suspend representation of activists facing charges.

This phenomenon, known to scholars as “anticipatory conformity,” demonstrates how the mere existence of broad criminal penalties can achieve censorship objectives without formal enforcement. Organizations and individuals modify behavior to avoid potential prosecution, effectively accomplishing the government’s regulatory goals through self-censorship. The cumulative effect would be the systematic elimination of civil society infrastructure supporting resistance to far-right political movements.

International Coordination and Enforcement

These domestic effects would be amplified by international coordination that extends the reach of American FTO authorities globally. The European response to Trump’s domestic Antifa designation in September reveals the international dimension of this campaign. Far-right parties across Europe have demanded similar designations in their own countries. The Dutch parliament passed a resolution calling for a terrorist designation. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced parallel measures. A draft resolution reportedly backed by 79 Members of the European Parliament from 20 countries calls for EU-wide designation.

This international far-right strategic coordination – simultaneously targeting “Antifa,” an amorphous movement with no clear organizational hierarchy, across multiple democracies – serves a common purpose: eliminating organized resistance to far-right governance by recharacterizing political opposition as terrorism.

An American FTO designation could provide legal foundation for far-right European prosecutions of American activists traveling abroad. Under existing mutual legal assistance treaties, European authorities could request extradition of Americans for “terrorism-related” activities that constitute protected political speech in the United States. International asset freezing orders could create global enforcement networks targeting democratic opposition.

The Hungarian approach illustrates these possibilities. The government of Viktor Orbán has used its Antifa classification to pursue terrorism charges against Italian MEP Ilaria Salis for allegedly participating in counter-demonstrations against far-right groups. This demonstrates how terrorist designations can transform routine political disagreement into criminal conspiracy, creating a template that could be applied to American activists abroad.

The integration of domestic and international enforcement could create a comprehensive global system for monitoring and prosecuting political opposition, transcending national boundaries and constitutional protections that have traditionally limited government surveillance authority.

The Self-Defeating Logic of Counterterrorism Overreach

The profound irony of designating Antifa as an FTO is that weaponizing counterterrorism authorities against domestic political movements will inevitably undermine those very tools when deployed against genuine international terrorist threats. The FTO framework and material support statutes have proven remarkably effective in disrupting al-Qaeda and ISIS networks precisely because courts have afforded them substantial deference based on their narrow application to FTOs that pose legitimate national security threats.

Once these authorities are stretched to encompass domestic political opposition — applied to Americans engaged in constitutionally protected speech and association — that judicial deference should evaporate. Federal courts confronting cases where naturalized citizens face denaturalization for attending protests, or where nonprofits are prosecuted for providing legal defense funds, will likely be compelled to impose constitutional limitations that have been unnecessary when the targets were genuinely foreign terrorist networks. The inevitable wave of successful constitutional challenges will probably force courts to narrow material support definitions, impose heightened intent requirements, and establish First Amendment protections, as well as other safeguards, that will then apply equally to prosecutions of actual terrorism support.

Congressional appetite for FISA reauthorization — already strained by documented FBI abuses in querying Section 702 data on protesters, political donors, and even members of Congress — will surely further erode when those authorities are systematically deployed against political opposition rather than foreign intelligence targets. The House Judiciary Committee has already advanced legislation to substantially curtail FISA authorities in response to civil liberties concerns, and adding domestic political targeting to this record could make reauthorization politically untenable.

The result of pursuing the chimera of “Antifa terrorism” could lead to the systematic dismantling of the legal infrastructure that has successfully prevented another September 11th-scale attack, opening genuine vulnerabilities to al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other international terrorist organizations that pose real threats to American security. By misappropriating tools designed to protect Americans from foreign terrorism to instead target Americans for their political beliefs, the administration risks achieving the ultimate counterterrorism failure: strengthening the nation’s real enemies while weakening the legal framework designed to combat them.

Strategic Response Options for Civil Society

Despite these formidable challenges, civil society organizations and democratic institutions retain several avenues for strategically responding. Understanding these options becomes crucial as the threat of FTO expansion moves from theoretical to imminent. Congressional oversight represents a potential avenue for institutional resistance, though one unlikely to bear immediate fruit given current political alignments. While the House and Senate Judiciary Committees technically possess authority over terrorism designations and could demand detailed justifications for applying FTO frameworks to domestic political movements, prominent members of Congress have become some of the loudest advocates for FTO designation.

Congressional appropriators theoretically could restrict funding for enforcement activities targeting constitutionally protected political speech, but such efforts would face steep political headwinds. The more realistic congressional strategy focuses on building a factual record through minority oversight efforts — hearings, letters, and reports documenting constitutional concerns — that could support future legal challenges and lay the groundwork for legislative reform should political conditions change after subsequent election cycles. In the immediate term, however, civil society must look beyond Congress to other institutional mechanisms for resistance.

State and local governments also retain significant authority to resist federal overreach. State attorneys general possess independent prosecutorial discretion and could refuse cooperation with federal investigations targeting protected political activity. Several states are considering legislation limiting cooperation with federal political surveillance operations, similar to existing immigration sanctuary policies.

Legal challenges could focus on multiple constitutional vulnerabilities. First Amendment protections for political association create barriers to criminalizing ideological movements. Due Process violations in the secretive designation process could provide grounds for challenge. Equal Protection concerns about selective targeting of left-wing movements while ignoring comparable right-wing threats might support discrimination claims or claims of arbitrary and capricious government conduct.

Out of an abundance of caution at least, organizations should establish robust compliance monitoring and due diligence frameworks to navigate the evolving regulatory landscape. This includes implementing comprehensive legal review processes for activities, partnerships, and funding sources that could face heightened scrutiny under expanded terrorism authorities. Legal counsel should regularly assess organizational exposure under material support statutes and maintain current knowledge of designation criteria and enforcement trends. Organizations should establish systematic tracking of relevant legislative and regulatory developments, including congressional hearings, agency guidance, and judicial decisions that could affect operational parameters. Financial compliance protocols should include enhanced due diligence on funding sources, grant recipients, and international partnerships to ensure alignment with applicable sanctions regulations. Regular legal audits of programs, communications, and institutional relationships can help identify potential vulnerabilities before they become predicates or excuses for enforcement issues. Organizations should also establish clear documentation protocols for activities, decision-making processes, and compliance efforts to demonstrate good faith efforts to operate within legal boundaries.

Professional associations — bar organizations, academic societies, and press freedom groups — must take public stands against FTO expansion into the domestic political space. The American Bar Association, representing over 400,000 lawyers, could provide crucial legitimacy to constitutional and other legal challenges while offering resources for targeted individuals and organizations.

Strategic communications efforts must educate the public about the implications of applying foreign terrorism authorities to domestic political movements, though public opinion on constitutional rights presents a complicated picture. Recent polling shows 53 percent of Americans believe the First Amendment “goes too far in the rights it guarantees,” while 47 percent support “a strong leader that breaks the rules.” These attitudes create favorable conditions for executive overreach, making strategic communications critical to connect abstract FTO designation to concrete consequences such as: targeting nonprofit donors, criminalizing protest participation, censoring social media, and enabling deportation of naturalized citizens for political activities. These tangible consequences may resonate more powerfully than appeals to constitutional principles, particularly when framed around personal vulnerabilities that terrorism authorities would create for millions of Americans across the political spectrum.

Constitutional Crisis and Democratic Resilience

These response strategies operate within a broader context of a constitutional crisis that transcends any single policy or legal framework. The potential designation of Antifa as an FTO represents a fundamental test of American constitutional democracy’s resilience. To be clear: The U.S. government already has the legal tools necessary to investigate domestic criminal activity by Antifa adherents. The FTO framework was designed to combat genuine foreign terrorist threats to American security. Applying these powerful authorities to domestic political movements would represent an unprecedented expansion that threatens core constitutional principles.

The implications extend well beyond anti-fascist activists to any domestic political movement maintaining international connections. Environmental groups coordinating with European counterparts, labor unions participating in international solidarity campaigns, and human rights organizations working with foreign partners could all theoretically face similar targeting under expanded FTO authorities.

As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has articulated, the administration views opposition to its policies through a conspiratorial lens. He has characterized the Democratic Party as “a domestic extremist organization” and claimed the existence of “a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country.” This stated worldview creates conditions where routine political opposition could be reframed as terrorism worthy of the full spectrum of counterterrorism responses.

The systematic weakening of oversight mechanisms — from inspector general dismissals to civil rights office closures — has created ideal conditions for expanding terrorism authorities into the domestic political space. Without effective institutional constraints, the powerful authorities designed to combat foreign terrorism could be redirected against American citizens engaging in constitutionally protected political activity.

The designation would mark a dark turn in American democratic development. Once the precedent is established that domestic political movements can be criminalized through foreign terrorism designations, constraining these authorities becomes exponentially more difficult. The secrecy surrounding counterterrorism operations, the broad scope of material support statutes, and the deference courts typically show to national security claims create conditions where such authorities tend to expand rather than contract.

The current moment requires extraordinary vigilance from American civil society. The FTO system represents one of the most powerful tools in the federal government’s legal arsenal, deliberately designed to dismantle targeted organizations quickly and comprehensively. While these authorities have served important national security purposes when applied to genuine foreign terrorist threats, their application to domestic political movements would fundamentally alter the balance between security and liberty that defines American constitutional democracy.

The only reliable safeguard against such expansion is sustained lawful opposition from informed citizens, civil society organizations, and constitutional institutions committed to preserving the framework that makes democratic opposition possible. The stakes have never been higher, and the time for preventive action is rapidly diminishing.

The post How Designating Antifa as a Foreign Terrorist Organization Could Threaten Civil Liberties appeared first on Just Security.

But the CSIS study suffers from fatal analytic flaws. For starters, like shark attacks, the number of events attributed to left-wing terrorism this year is so low in absolute terms that it simply does not justify inducing panic with eye-popping headlines.

Indeed, these five events are doing a lot of heavy lifting in Byman and McCabe’s analysis. They are given an unwarranted level of causal and predictive power. For instance, while the report clearly specifies the authors are analyzing attacks “so far” in 2025, elements of the data presentation leave the piece open to interpretation, implying these events are a forecast of what is to come. The opening paragraphs alert readers that “2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber those from the far right.” The authors compare the number of left-wing events to both right-wing and jihadist attacks and plots, arguing that the latter two types of threats have declined. This pronouncement is, at best, premature, given that a quarter of the year remains.

It is also misleading. Consider that according to the authors’ own data, 13 victims died as a result of left-wing attacks from 2016 through the first six-plus months of 2025. During that same time period, 82 victims perished in jihadist attacks, while 112 people were killed in right-wing attacks. In fact, 14 people were killed in an ISIS-inspired car ramming attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year’s Day 2025 alone – more than all those who perished in left-wing attacks inside the United States in the last nine-plus years. 

In addition, in the week following the report’s release there were at least two incidents that, while still under investigation, may meet the authors’ definition of right-wing political violence. The first was an anti-LGBTQ plot to attack a Texas pride parade. The second was an attack on a Michigan Mormon congregation by a man who, by all appearances, was a conservative who supported President Donald Trump, though his motives were not immediately clear. The second attack left four people dead and eight injured, a casualty count that is greater than all five of the events from this year that are attributed to left-wing terrorism in the CSIS report. Additional examples of attacks and plots this year that could be attributed to far-right actors are cited below. When just a few events could virtually eliminate a supposedly strong statistical finding, readers should be skeptical of any predictive claims made from the data. 

What Longer Term Trends Tell Us 

There are good reasons to be worried about a possible increase in far-left violence, especially as the Trump administration’s actions risk provoking further backlash. However, forecasts must be informed by recent and historical data.

Indeed, according to the authors’ own data, far-right extremism accounted for an average of approximately 20 plots and attacks per year over the last decade, while far-left extremists were responsible for just four incidents per year during the same period. Even if attacks were to continue at their current pace, far-left extremism in 2025 will not come remotely close to the scale of violence that Americans have become accustomed to experiencing from the far right.

Small differences in incident rates can be quickly wiped out by a single mobilizing issue for a group, movement, or ideology. Even a short-term spike in far-right extremism would eliminate the small gap between far-left and far-right attacks that exists in the authors’ data. More importantly, even if far-left incidents outpace far-right ones this year, the low overall, absolute numbers alongside the far right’s history of violence indicate that it would be foolish to reallocate resources to focus exclusively on far-left threats. While the authors do not advocate for resource allocation exclusively to potential threats from the far left, it is a conclusion that must be more strongly guarded against in a political environment in which the entire American left is being cast as a clear and present danger.

Are Far-Right Attacks Really Declining?

Another fundamental problem with the report is the authors’ failure to clearly explain why some incidents were included and others excluded from their analysis. While the report and its accompanying codebook provide definitions of far-right and far-left terrorism, the authors do not detail how they applied their definitions to real-world violence to make inclusion decisions. 

For example, the authors include an allegedly far-left terrorist plot from January in which a woman armed with a knife and two Molotov cocktails told U.S. Capitol police of her desire to attack several administration officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and House Speaker Mike Johnson. While this was not a particularly sophisticated terrorist scheme, a defensible argument can be made for counting it as a disrupted far-left plot.

But why were seemingly similar events perpetrated by allegedly far-right actors excluded from the authors’ analysis? For instance, Byman and McCabe claim “there was only one right-wing terrorist incident in the United States—the killing of Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband in June.” They apparently exclude from their report a case from March in which a 17-year-old was arrested for allegedly killing his mother and stepfather as part of a larger plot to assassinate President Donald Trump. Although his ultimate target was a Republican president, the teenager was not motivated by far-left ideology. Rather, he was active in neo-Nazi accelerationist communities online that fit squarely into most researchers’ understanding of far-right terrorism.

There were numerous other plots in the first six months of the year that could plausibly be attributed to right-wing actors, but the authors apparently determined did not meet their operational definitions of far-right terrorism. These incidents include: a man allegedly stalking the mayor of Salt Lake City in response to her LGBTQ+ pride flag policies, as well as plots to attack an Islamic center in Arizona, a shopping mall in Washington, and synagogues in Massachusetts. There were also half a dozen school-based attacks and plots that were motivated, at least in part, by neo-Nazi ideology or past far-right attacks that did not find their way into the authors’ data. (The authors “generally” exclude school shootings because they claim the “[a]ttackers…are typically motivated by a mix of personal grievances.” While personal grievances often do play a role in attacks at schools, so do ideological motivations, as evidenced by the far-right beliefs reportedly held by some of the school shooters this year.)  

The point here is not to argue that far-right extremists have plotted more attacks this year than those on the far left, although that could be true. Rather, without clearly articulated inclusion rules, the data are untrustworthy. Problematic data are a concern at any time, but particularly when Americans sense that they are witnessing a rapid growth in political violence and are desperate for evidence to help them understand what they are experiencing.

A False Equivalence Between Far-right and Far-left Violence

 The potential threat that far-left extremists pose is also artificially inflated in the report by how much substantive significance the authors attributed to the five events from this year. The authors note that historically left actors have been “disorganized” with “limited skill,” as well as limited “effectiveness,” and that their attacks are of “limit[ed] scale and sophistication.” They also correctly note that “the typical target selection, scope and weapon selection of left-wing attackers reflect an intent to signal opposition or cause disruption rather than inflict mass casualties.”

However, paradoxically, the authors then go on to suggest that far-left extremism is a significant threat to public safety because the “recent increase [in plots and attacks] is likely to translate into realized violence.” If left-wing extremists typically do not inflict significant harm, why would recent events portend a future of highly lethal far-left violence? The five incidents detailed in the report do not provide compelling evidence that the far left is becoming increasingly organized and dangerous. Indeed, with the possible exception of a July 4 attack on an ICE detention facility in Texas, the incidents were low in tactical sophistication, were not carried out by organized groups, and were non-lethal. The report nonetheless uses these incidents to draw a moral and strategic equivalence between left-wing and right-wing violence, essentially framing the left as a rising concern equivalent to right-wing extremism that has persistently dominated the threat landscape.

The Complexity and Responsibility of Analyzing Political Violence

It is possible that politically motivated plots and attacks by far-left extremists are on the rise. But objective, robust data are needed to make that determination. Fortunately, there are other data that researchers can analyze to understand the current threat environment, and those sources suggest that it would be a mistake to pin recent increases in plots and attacks on a single group, movement, or ideology.

The Terrorism and Targeted Violence (T2V) in the United States dataset, for example, identified 154 terrorist plots and attacks that occurred in the first six months of 2025.* These incidents represent an 85 percent increase in terrorism when compared to the same period in 2024. The data also show a corresponding 343 percent increase in deaths and a 789 percent increase in injuries from the terrorist attacks that took place during that timeframe.

However, the T2V data, which are made available online for researchers to use and validate, reveal tremendous diversity in the motivations, targets, and ideological leanings of those who committed acts of terrorism this year. For example, there were at least 20 plots or attacks that targeted federal immigration enforcement officers or facilities in the first six months of the year. An argument can be made that these instances should be treated as far-left terrorism, though a closer assessment of each assailant’s motivation is needed to make that determination.

Other incidents in the T2V data were more likely animated by far-right motivations. There were 13 premeditated plots and attacks that targeted peaceful demonstrators who were protesting against these immigration enforcement actions and the broader expansion of executive power — acts that could arguably be categorized as driven by far-right extremism. A closer look at the attackers’ motivations, including any ideological beliefs, is necessary to make a determination.

There were also more than 30 plots and attacks with links to antisemitism, which can be driven by beliefs across the left-right ideological spectrum. Some of these were perpetrated by individuals who were upset over Israel’s actions in Gaza, which Byman and McCabe refer to as ethnonationalist terrorism but other commentators attribute to the far-left. Other antisemitic plots were perpetrated by adherents of far-right neo-Nazism. There were plots and attacks targeting both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. There was also violence perpetrated against LGBTQ+ and Muslim communities and a plethora of property crimes targeting Tesla owners.

Rather than pointing to one ideology as the cause of what feels like an increasingly dangerous environment, T2V’s data point to something worse: growing civil unrest from across the political spectrum that is the result of a vitriolic and mobilizing information environment, the increasingly zero-sum nature of U.S. politics, and the rapid abandonment of targeted violence research and violence prevention programs by the Trump administration.

Researchers have a profound responsibility to not only conduct research ethically but to also share it responsibly. This means considering word choices, avoiding logical fallacies, and clearly spelling out the implications of their work, especially in a highly polarized environment.

It is unsurprising that the CSIS report’s findings were quickly weaponized. For instance, the White House Deputy Press Secretary tweeted an image from an Axios summary of the report with a corresponding caption that blamed Democrats for a “30-year high” in leftwing terrorism.

The post received mocking comments from commentators noting that it ignored how right-wing activity still dominated the last three decades of political violence. (The grey bars in the chart above show attacks attributed to right-wing actors, while the yellow bar shows those attributed to left-wing actors.) Still, many Americans could easily be misled by the headlines generated by the report, especially if they do not evaluate its methodology and findings. The way the CSIS report was used highlights an essential responsibility for researchers in the current politicized era: maintaining methodological rigor and accurate interpretation of data to prevent the weaponization of findings for ideological and political ends.

*One of the authors of this piece, Michael Jensen, was formerly part of the team that produces the T2V dataset.

The post Correctly Assessing Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in the United States appeared first on Just Security.

As of Sept. 15, 2025, over 40 universities have been targeted with callers falsely alleging the presence of an active shooter on campus, causing emergency protocols to be enacted until the threat was determined to be fake. Swatting attacks are sometimes dismissed as pranks, particularly in comparison to physical attacks. However, according to data from TDR Technology Solutions, as cited in Campus Safety Magazine, the recent string of university attacks has impacted about 1.1 million students and cost campuses upwards of $62 million.

A review of publicly available information and federal court records associated with Purgatory reveals details about how a network of online groups operates, their adherents’ motivations, and the difficulties encountered by law enforcement when identifying and charging perpetrators. Further, this evidence underscores the scope of the problem caused by the increasing number of swatting attacks.

Nihilistic Violent Extremism

Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE), a term adopted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in early 2025, describes an increase in violence from “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.”

NVE has received particular attention from law enforcement and the media due to the predominantly young perpetrators, most of whom, including leaders within the network, are under the age of 25, with many under the age of 18. Indeed, FBI reporting on the online NVE community known as “The Com” suggests that the majority of members are between the ages of 11 and 25.

The Com

The Com is a recently formed digital network where nihilistic violent extremists convene and share information and instructions about violent activity. The Com mainly operates in online spaces like Discord and Telegram, allowing global reach to further the NVE network, with the goal of spreading violence. Members of The Com do not necessarily need to subscribe to a specific group. Many recent attacks within the United States, such as the Aug. 27 shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, were carried out by perpetrators who appear to be motivated by the NVE ideology and tactics, though some experts have cautioned against applying the label of NVE to attacks that don’t explicitly fall within the ideology. NVE ideology differs from other types of violent extremism because their primary drivers tend to be status within the community and inflicting harm.

Recently, the FBI has released more information about how they are classifying subgroups operating within The Com, particularly as it relates to their tactics.

Hacker Com refers to a subset of The Com comprised of sophisticated cyber criminals who are linked to ransomware-as-a service (RaaS) groups.

In Real Life (IRL) Com refers to subgroups within The Com who provide violence as a service (VaaS), as well as perpetrating their own user-directed attacks. IRL Com includes groups that engage in physical violence (e.g., stabbing, bricking) as well as those who engage in online or remote violence (e.g., swatting, doxxing), such as Purgatory.

Still another group, Extortion Com has received the most public attention, in part due to a large-scale effort to arrest and prosecute members of a group called 764. Tactics within Extortion Com include grooming, blackmailing, and extorting victims into producing and sharing content that depicts self-harm, animal abuse, sexually explicit acts, and suicide. 764 specifically targets minor victims and other vulnerable populations.

The ideological roots of The Com can be traced to occultic violent extremist organizations such as the Order of Nine Angles (O9A), as well as accelerationist groups like the Atomwaffen Division and the National Socialist Order (NSO). While some groups within The Com demonstrate clear ideological motivation, the primary goal of many within the network is to use violence to cause fear and the destruction of society, often with their specific ideology being secondary.

More traditional ideologies such as antisemitism or racially motivated extremism are present within The Com, though Purgatory does not show evidence of a driving, unified belief. Within Purgatory, ideology is more apparent at the individual actor level and may influence the targets and tactics chosen by that actor.

Purgatory

Purgatory displays several markers consistent with influence from the violent occultic organization, Order of Nine Angles (O9A). The founder of O9A emphasized that violence and harm don’t further ideological goals if the activity isn’t publicized. Within Purgatory and other groups within The Com network, the driving philosophy is to seek credit, notoriety, and public attention for violent activity in furtherance of a cause. Adherents may manifest this philosophy by seeking media attention, promoting violent activity on social media, or livestreaming attacks (as was the case with the recent Purgatory swatting attacks).

Recently, Purgatory’s followers has celebrated the media attention their swatting attacks have garnered on their Telegram channel and livestreamed some of their attacks to other members, which is consistent with influence from O9A on NVE and groups operating within The Com.

Though Purgatory is currently within the IRL Com subgroup, the group was originally a splinter group of 764 founded by former leader Evan Strauss, who was arrested on charges of sextortion of minor victims in 2024. Purgatory’s members utilize a variety of tactics in furtherance of their ideology including swatting attacks and occasionally sextortion, though they primarily operate using tactics consistent with IRL Com (these include swatting, doxxing, bricking, and similar tactics).

Purgatory has taken credit for a string of swatting attacks happening across universities at the start of the 2025 school year, including Villanova University and University of Tennessee, though the FBI has not publicly confirmed their responsibility. After the arrests of three leaders and key members in 2024, Purgatory shifted to its current iteration which primarily engages in criminal activity, including activity for hire – or what the FBI refers to as violence as a service (Vaas).

Purgatory provides new members with instructions on engaging Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to engage in swatting calls online while masking the location and identity of the caller from law enforcement. In addition, its members often provide others with details on specific targets. More recently, Purgatory’s followers promoted themselves as “services-for-hire,” saying they will accept payment to engage in online attacks such as swatting or doxxing, as well as offline attacks such as bricking for a fee, though they also engage in member-driven attacks. Fees tend to range from $20 for a swatting attack to $100 for offline attacks such as bricking, which carry a higher immediate risk of intervention. Purgatory claims to have raised over $100,000 in fees from recent attacks.

Purgatory tends to focus on soft targets that have a large public presence, such as universities, hospitals, airports, and businesses. These targets are attractive because they have larger impact than a similar attack on a private business or residence and are, therefore, more likely to garner media attention. The recent swatting attacks on universities were claimed by an individual who uses the name “Gores” online, and identifies themselves as one of the co-leaders of Purgatory. These attacks involved a false claim of an active shooter on campus, triggering campus emergency response plans, including lockdowns for up to an hour or longer until law enforcement was able to determine the alleged threat was false.

On the day of the Villanova and Tennessee swatting attacks, Gores posted a live stream online in a Purgatory-linked Discord channel with four other Purgatory members where viewers could listen in as additional false reports of active shooters were called in live. To make their swatting attacks seem more realistic, Purgatory members sometimes add the sound of guns in the background of their calls — as was the case during the attacks on Villanova and Tennessee.

Federal Cases Linked to Purgatory

To date, three individuals (including Strauss) publicly linked to Purgatory have been federally charged—all three in the District of Maryland. Strauss received additional charges related to sextortion of a minor victim in the Western District of Virgina.

Federal court records offer insight into the operation of Purgatory. Strauss’s sextortion charges are similar to other high profile federal cases linked to the sextortion group 764, and include filming the victim without her knowledge while engaging in sexual activity, as well as coercing the victim to engaging in self-harm under threat of swatting her family home or the home of her boyfriend. Strauss was found guilty and received a sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment related to these charges.

In addition to these convictions, Strauss, aged 26, was convicted along with two other defendants (both aged 18 at the time of their arrests) on conspiracy charges relating to a string of swatting and doxxing attacks in early 2024. The charges include cyberstalking, threats to damage or destroy property with fire or explosives, and communicating interstate threats. The charges also indicated that there were three minor co-conspirators who were not named. Strauss’s role in the conspiracy included finding targets and victims, doxxing, and conducting swatting calls. In one of Strauss’s swatting attacks, a false claim of an active shooter at a Delaware high school was called in to the local police department.

The second defendant, one of Strauss’s co-conspirators, was credited in court records with cofounding Purgatory and helping to create the group’s public and private Telegram channels, which have been used to recruit new members, publicize attacks, and share information, including best practices for engaging in attacks. Among other activity, the defendant was credited with a swatting attack that occurred on the Albany International Airport, which he later shared on the Purgatory Telegram channel. The third defendant was also credited as a cofounder of Purgatory and charged for his participation in the swatting attacks. In addition, the defendant was found to have provided scripts to engage in swatting attacks to other members and direction on targets. All three pleaded guilty.

Swatting Attacks Cause Great Harm

Swatting attacks are sometimes dismissed as pranks or hoaxes, particularly in comparison to physical attacks. However, the real-world impact of swatting attacks goes beyond the time spent determining the threat was false. Swatting financially impact its targets and the greater population. In addition to the estimated $62 million in damages caused to universities from swatting attacks claimed by Purgatory, a report from TDR Technology Solutions suggests swatting attacks cost Florida taxpayers $65 million in losses in 2023.

Setting aside the financial implications, swatting attacks cause significant public safety challenges. These attacks engage law enforcement resources that may be unable to respond to legitimate emergencies immediately due to the false threats. This is particularly harmful to smaller communities, like some recently impacted American college towns, which may have limited emergency response personnel available. Further, swatting attacks on universities cause psychological harm to those impacted. Even after the threat is determined to be false, the fear of a mass casualty event can linger in the victims’ daily lives. Media coverage can also heighten public fear and safety concerns following these attacks.

There is also a risk that the frequency of swatting attacks may desensitize the public to real threats over time. In the wake of recent attacks, some universities have sought to verify the report prior to enacting campus safety protocols. Even minor delays in the response could cause greater harm in instances where the threat is legitimate.

Though rare, swatting attacks have also been linked with physical harm to victims. The FBI has cautioned that the fear experienced by victims during the attacks has led to heart attacks in some cases, including at least one case that resulted in death. In 2019, a 19 year-old man was convicted on federal charges after a swatting attack led police to shoot and kill an innocent bystander, believing him to be armed as the caller alleged. In another case, the victim of a swatting attack fired at law enforcement upon their arrival, before the threat was determined to be false. An officer was saved by a bullet proof vest.

Despite the gravity of swatting attacks, law enforcement and prosecutors face a number of challenges investigating them. The technologies used, such as VoIP, mask the identity of the caller and can spoof a local number when the perpetrator may live in a different state. This may mean that the investigating officers will not have jurisdiction to charge the perpetrator.

Though some perpetrators of swatting attacks (including the three members of Purgatory who were convicted) face federal charges related to their activity, there is currently no legal statute that allows an individual to be charged for swatting. Aside from the charges used in the Purgatory cases (cyberstalking, bomb threats), a common charge used in these cases is 18 U.S.C. §§ 875, which relates to communicating interstate threats. The use of this charge has become more frequent in recent years, though sentencing can be inconsistent depending on the ideology of the perpetrator. Still, in the absence of a direct legal statute, law enforcement and prosecutors face an uphill battle to piece together sufficient charges to get a conviction and implement appropriate sentencing. This legal hurdle further complicates efforts to counter violent extremism inside the United States, as swatting attacks become more frequent and perpetrators can be more difficult to identify.

The post Swatting Attacks and Nihilistic Violent Extremism: A Primer appeared first on Just Security.

Now charged with conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack, the teens’ plot is just one example of how fast, and how deeply, children and young people can be radicalized to violent extremism.

Security and intelligence agencies across the Five Eyes nations – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States – are observing a concerning rise in the involvement of children and young people in violent extremism related activities. But why?

We argue that the answer can be found in the distinctive vulnerabilities of youth – a transitional period in life that, together with current structural drivers, provides opportunities for new forms of violent extremism to emerge. This creates an enabling environment where rising numbers of children and young people are radicalizing to violent extremism and mobilizing to commit acts of terrorism. Children and young people are confronted with an unprecedented threat environment, one that is compounded by the rise of fluid and hybrid extremes, beliefs and behaviors that blur the boundaries between ideological forms of extremism, conspiratorial narratives, personal and public grievances, violent misogyny, child sexual abuse, extreme gore and violent subcultures, and even organized crime.

As such, we argue that applying an ideology-centric lens to understand why children and young people engage in violent extremism is ill-suited to countering the current trend. Instead, to effectively respond to the evolving threat landscape, prevention efforts must shift toward a model that addresses the systemic drivers and underlying causes of youth vulnerability to violent extremism.

The Vulnerabilities of Youth

Children and young people can be vulnerable to violent extremism in ways that differ from adults. The transition from childhood to adulthood is an important developmental stage characterized by identity formation, emotional volatility, moral development, and growing independence – a constellation of push and pull factors that have the potential to drive engagement with violent extremism. When young people face uncertainty or lack stable support systems, they may gravitate toward influences that offer clear rules, identity, and meaning. Extremist narratives, particularly those based on rigid us vs. them thinking, can appeal to youth who feel their group identity is threatened or who lack pro-social alternatives. These narratives often provide simplistic explanations for complex problems and promise a sense of purpose and significance.

Social dynamics can further increase vulnerability. Peer influence is especially strong during adolescence, as youth seek external validation and approval. Those with low self-esteem or weak peer connections may turn to extremist communities online, where interaction can become immersive and addictive. These communities offer recognition, status, and group identity – powerful incentives for engagement. The development of gender identity can also play a role. Boys and young men who feel they fall short of societal gender ideals may experience shame and resentment, sometimes channeled into hypermasculine or misogynistic beliefs. Extremist groups often strategically exploit these attitudes, reinforcing harmful gender norms and glorifying male dominance, aggression, and entitlement. These dynamics are evident in the growth of incel communities, where boys and young men channel feelings of rejection into misogynistic worldviews that glorify violence against women and girls. Incel and misogynistic beliefs have already inspired attacks around the world.

Adolescence is further marked by significant neurocognitive developments, including the ongoing maturation of self-regulation. During this time, self-regulation is not fully developed, rendering youth more prone to thrill-seeking, risk-taking, and impulsive behaviors. This can make violent extremist content particularly appealing. For neurodiverse youth, particularly those with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC), traits like focused interests and social communication differences can increase exposure to and engagement with extreme content, especially in unregulated online spaces. More generally, mental health struggles, combined with complex needs such as trauma, bullying, or family dysfunction, can further exacerbate vulnerability. These challenges can impact on emotional regulation and resilience, increasing the appeal of extremist groups that promise meaning, belonging, and power in their otherwise unstable lives.

There is no single “cause” of violent extremism. Instead, a complex mix of push and pull factors, which occur in certain settings and at certain times, creates the conditions conducive to youth vulnerability to violent extremism. In other words, it is the constellation of multiple compounding factors in space (online and offline) and time, that creates vulnerabilities for children and young people. To that end, the vulnerabilities we describe here do not exist in a vacuum, but instead are further compounded and influenced by the unique social context children and young people exist in.

Structural Drivers

Combined with the unique vulnerabilities of youth, the structural and social conditions facing today’s children and young people contribute to environments conducive to violent extremism. Failures in governance – such as political exclusion, corruption, and unresponsive institutions – can erode trust and leave young people feeling alienated and powerless. In environments where young people see limited pathways to participate meaningfully in society, extremist groups can fill the void, offering identity and the illusion of agency. When institutions are seen as unjust, violence can be framed as a legitimate means of change.

Economic hardship, including high youth unemployment and limited educational or career opportunities, can create chronic frustration, especially among marginalized or migrant youth who also face cultural exclusion and discrimination. The intersection of poverty and denied identity can deepen existential crises. Extremist narratives exploit these conditions by offering simple, black-and-white answers to complex problems.

International conflicts and global injustices are often personalized through online spaces, framing distant violence as local grievance. Youth exposed to polarizing debates may feel increasingly pushed out of society, fueling an us vs. them mentality. At the same time, the breakdown of community ties and family stability weakens protective social anchors, leaving youth more vulnerable to extremist influences.

Compounded by the increasing digitalization of children and young people’s lives, the current conditions are unique to the present generation. Online platforms now play a central role in young people’s lives, where we know extremist content spreads quickly through algorithm driven echo chambers and AI tools. Children and young people are increasingly exposed to unregulated online spaces that glorify violence and normalize extremist ideologies. The accessibility of such content lowers the barrier for recruitment and indoctrination.

Together, these systemic drivers foster a landscape in which children and young people are increasingly vulnerable to engagement in extremist violence.

The Emerging Violent Extremist Threat Landscape

Traditionally, the violent extremist threat facing the West centered around discrete and (somewhat) coherent ideologies, like jihadism or far-right extremism. However, today, we are confronted with a more fragmented and fluid landscape. Among children and young people, this is especially visible.

Many extremists no longer adhere to traditional ideologies but instead adopt hybrid or ambiguous narratives that combine elements from different belief systems. These narratives can be linked through shared grievances, symbols, and online communities, and cultivated to target youth specifically, creating a cross-pollination of extremist ideas. This is particularly visible across decentralized online networks such as Terrorgram[1], or the Com[2], where online subcultures such as 764[3] exist. The loosely networked communities borrow aesthetics from accelerationist and cultish groups, such as Order of Nine Angles[4], strategy from organized crime Com groups (such as swotting, doxxing, and sextortion), and bridge the terror-crime nexus through child sexual abuse and inciting offline violence.

While targeting children and young people is not new, the scale and speed enabled by technology has transformed extremist recruitment and dissemination strategies. Digital ecosystems now play a central role in youth engagement in violent extremism. Online, extremist content is purposefully aestheticized and gamified, making violence appear exciting or heroic. Tactics such as live-streamed attacks and gaming-style framing (e.g., first-person shooter views), glamorize mass violence and appeal to young users. The Christchurch shooter, for example, used video game aesthetics to engage a young audience. Extremist messages are also masked as humor through memes or edgy content, making them more acceptable and even appealing to young people. The intentional use of irony and satire desensitizes youth to violence by normalizing extremist views and fostering a sense of belonging within online communities. Over time, this content erodes moral boundaries and can lead to deeper involvement in harmful online communities and the acceptance of violent extremist narratives.

Extremist material online easily crosses physical borders and is shared and adopted by youth on a global scale, contributing to the rise of transnational extremist subcultures. These digital communities promote a shared language and aesthetics, helping young people find identity and validation in extremist spaces. The result is a more complex and borderless threat environment, where local grievances are amplified by global narratives, and youth are increasingly exposed to violent extremism through interconnected online ecosystems.

Conclusion

Taken together, we argue that individual vulnerabilities combined with the unique social context facing today’s young people have created the necessary conditions for increasing youth violent extremism. However, the increasing proportion of young people involved in violence is not just a symptom of the problem, but also a cause, as youth people are actively driving the emergence of new and more violent forms of extremism. In other words, young people’s involvement in today’s threat landscape is not only a danger to themselves, but at scale, it is reshaping the extremist ecosystem, accelerating the emergence of new extremes and lowering the barriers for others to enter radicalizing environments.

To tackle this threat, responses need to move beyond an ideology-centric lens. Rather than simply treating radical beliefs, a more effective and sustainable solution is needed. Such an approach would treat the root causes of youth vulnerability and target the environments that allow extremism to flourish, thereby tackling the multiple causes of the problem. Without such a shift in preventing and countering violent extremism, society runs the risk of children and young people continuing to be drawn into the cycles of harm that deepen and accelerate the terrorism threat.

[1] Terrorgram is a transnational terrorist group that primarily operates on the social media and digital messaging platform Telegram.

[2] The Com is a primarily English speaking, international, online ecosystem comprised of multiple interconnected networks whose members, many of whom are minors, engage in a variety of criminal violations.

[3] 764 is a network of nihilistic violent extremists who engage in criminal conduct in the United States and abroad, seeking to destroy civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, which often include minors.

[4] The Order of Nine Angles (O9A) is a decentralized, satanic, neo-Nazi organization.

The post Children, Young People and the Emerging Terrorism Threat Landscape appeared first on Just Security.

Show Notes: 

• Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism (Princeton University Press) by Cynthia Miller-Idriss 
• “How Misogyny Fuels Violent Extremism,” an exclusive excerpt from her book published in Just Security. 
• Just Security’s Domestic Violent Extremism archive 

The post The Just Security Podcast: Misogyny’s Role in Violent Extremism appeared first on Just Security.

A series of attacks that killed over two dozen people and injured dozens more — including the Florida yoga studio attack, as well as mass shootings targeting women at a California sorority and at Atlanta massage spas, a Toronto vehicle-ramming attack, and an attack at a New Jersey judge’s home – have thrust violent misogyny and misogynist incel (involuntary celibate) extremism into the public eye.

Yet even as the problem garners more attention, misogynistic and male supremacist violence is still often relegated to a category of “other” threats, or dismissed as the personality problems of challenged individuals, rather than addressed as an ideological belief system of its own. The misogynistic and gendered dimensions of extremist movements are often ignored or brushed aside in media reports, policy analyses, or during prosecution. Defense attorneys for the Michigan militia members charged with plotting the kidnapping of the state’s governor dismissed the alleged extremists’ language – in which they repeatedly referred to Governor Gretchen Whitmer as a bitch or a “tyrant bitch” while plotting her kidnapping and execution – as just “big talk” and “blowing off steam.” After a man killed eight people in Atlanta spas in 2021, the police chief initially explained the shooter’s actions as rooted in his feeling of being “fed up” and “having a really bad day.” It’s not just legal authorities who have helped minimize violence and misogyny. Ordinary people also normalize online hate as part of the cost of engaging. After a gunman attacked an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, his extreme misogyny and violent threats against teen girls online came to light. Teenagers who had observed his digital rage said they didn’t report it because it’s just “what online is.”

It is impossible to understand the rise of modern extremism, especially on the far-right, without recognizing how it is fundamentally gendered – and especially the role that misogyny plays in radicalizing and mobilizing many men to violence. Misogynist, anti-women, and antifeminist rhetoric is nearly always present in accounts of terrorist radicalization or motivation. Violent misogyny, stalking, harassment, and abuse of women or the LGBTQ+ community are constantly present in the details of mass shootings or terrorist attacks, although these behaviors are infrequently acknowledged and even more rarely analyzed. In case after case, misogynistic rage against women and the LGBTQ+ community, or prior reports of intimate partner violence, are a documented part of violent perpetrators’ histories, even when their official motives lie elsewhere (or are unidentified).

The white supremacist terrorist who killed seventy-seven individuals, mostly children, in Norway in 2011 wrote that feminists were waging a “war against boys” and should be blamed for low white birth rates. The 2019 terrorist attacker in Hanau, Germany peppered his manifesto with incel references, while another attacker that same year in Halle, Germany included a livestreamed playlist that began with a neo-Nazi rapper whose lyrics are also deeply misogynist. The neo-Nazi who murdered eight people in an Allen, Texas shopping mall in May 2023 left behind extensive writings detailing violent fantasies rooted in an expansive belief system about “real” manhood, violence, and the defense of nation and race, which included a “fixation with sex, pornography, and punishing women by violently raping them.” The attackers who killed dozens at a Virginia university, a Florida LGBTQ+ nightclub, a Parkland high school, and a Maryland newsroom all had prior reports of stalking, domestic violence, or harassment of women.

Some male perpetrators direct their violent rage toward the abstract enemy of “feminism” itself or the idea that women’s gains come at the direct expense of men and white civilization more broadly, especially because white women are, in their view, not having enough white babies. This type of misogyny often intersects with antisemitism or the scapegoating of Jews or racial and ethnic minorities for the so-called great replacement of white civilization. In dozens of incidents – at a Black historic church in Charleston, a California synagogue, a Buffalo grocery store, and others – attackers blamed feminism, falling white birth rates, frustration with women who did not meet their sexual needs, or blamed minorities for “raping” white women as motivation for their attacks.

In a growing number of other instances, misogynist and male supremacist perpetrators act out their rage in violent mass attacks that specifically target groups of women. Many of these attacks are committed at the hands of men in the violent, misogynist incel movement, who lash out at women in anger at their inability to establish romantic or sexual relationships. Dozens of people have been killed over the past decade in misogynist incel attacks targeting women at a California sorority, the Florida yoga studio, an Oregon community college, and a New Mexico high school – in addition to similar attacks elsewhere across the U.S., in England and Canada.

Evidence is clear that support for online misogyny makes violent attacks by terrorist and extremist groups more likely. People who hold hostile sexist views are substantially more likely to express support for political violence and violent extremism. The relationship is robust and reported across a wide range of national and ideological contexts, with the evidence showing that hostile sexist and misogynist attitudes are often a more significant predictor of support for violent extremism than any other factor – including, in some countries, religiosity, age, gender, level of education, and employment.

The targets of these episodes of violent rage are not always women, however, a fact demonstrating the complicated ways that different forms of supremacism and hate overlap and mutually reinforce each other. Toxic online subcultures that are misogynistic can easily introduce or strengthen exclusionary ideas about national purity, degradation, and degeneracy that are racist and dehumanizing. It is therefore critical to understand the key role of misogyny as an ideological glue across various forms of extremism.

How a Crisis of Boys and Men Connects to Rising Online Misogyny and Mass Violence

It is worth noting that boys and men are not only the predominant perpetrators of violence in a culture that valorizes and rewards dominance and aggression as hallmarks of masculinity,  they are also often victims of that same violence, including as childhood victims of domestic abuse, bullying, and street fighting. Boys and men are struggling in a bevy of ways that have only recently gained mainstream attention, including the labor loss of traditional male jobs in a post-industrialized economy, the declining percentage of men relative to women who earn higher education degrees, and the fact that men account for the significant majority of “deaths of despair” (overdose, suicide, alcohol abuse) amid surging reports of male loneliness, depression, anxiety, and isolation.

There has been periodic, public acknowledgment of how these outcomes are a part of a “masculinity crisis.” There has been far less open discussion, however, about how that masculinity crisis is evolving into a misogyny crisis – even though that emergency is strikingly clear online through the repeated scapegoating and harassment of women and the LGBTQ+ community, as well as growing evidence that American adults are experiencing increased online harassment, often due to gender.

Scholars have tracked significant increases in online misogyny starting in 2011, with misogyny and hostile sexism now regularly described as a “routine” part of women’s daily lives, an emerging “established norm” of digital spaces, and an “epidemic.” Graphic rape and death threats are now a “standard discursive move” for expressing disagreement or disapproval of women online, as some men communicate in ways that not only challenge ideas, but also aim to scare and silence women’s voices.

While the misogynistic ideas being expressed online are not new, online spaces and places offer novel ways to communicate those ideas. Direct messaging on social media platforms, live in-game voice chats, and other communication features of online spaces have made the use of gendered slurs, rape and death threats, and other forms of gendered discrimination a ubiquitous part of online engagement. New forms of digital media and the ever-present ease of smartphones enable the effortless sharing of sexually explicit photos and videos, including AI-generated images or videos and revenge porn, alongside cyberstalking, doxing, harassment, sextortion, verbal abuse, and hacking. Social media platforms amplify and increase exposure to harmful and hateful content and spread misogynistic attitudes contagiously – in part because the structure of social media incentivizes angry and salacious posts, which garner more attention and are more likely to go viral.

Misogyny is “Historically” Absent from Security Discussions

Violence itself tends to emanate from the fringes, but the problems are much bigger than “extremists” per se. Extremist violence is underpinned by and mobilized through conservative mobilization, mainstream normalization, and liberal silencing of misogyny and gender-based bigotry. This includes the fact that the problem of misogyny – and of women’s security concerns more broadly – has “been historically absent” from traditional security discussions. The oversight is strikingly evident across a wide variety of government and nonprofit reports on terrorism and mass shootings. The silence in official reporting is as shocking as it is deafening.

Even more tellingly, the U.S. government does not include gender or sexual orientation as categories within our national threat assessment classification of domestic violent extremism, where attacks motivated by gender or sexual orientation are folded into a catch-all category of “other.” Even animal rights extremists – who pose a risk to property damage at wildlife facilities and laboratories but are considered a “low threat to the United States in relation to other extremist movements” – get a category. Not so for gender or sexuality. This oversight helps explain why existing approaches have done little to eradicate the problem. Gendered violence, at least in the U.S. government’s assessment, is merely an “other.”

Misogyny: A Path to Violent Extremism That Must Be Addressed

Misogyny is an inextricable root of, and an underacknowledged pathway to, violent extremism. In the present context, in which hostile sexism and misogyny are frequently mainstreamed and incubated on social media, taking a closer look at where those beliefs come from and how ubiquitous they are can help shed light on the pathways to violence, including when and how society might best be able to interrupt them. The collective failure to connect everyday misogynist encounters, as well as the normalization of sexist experiences, with rising mass violence against a wide range of groups has left a gaping hole in efforts to prevent it.

The post How Misogyny Fuels Violent Extremism appeared first on Just Security.

The Kyiv assassination marks a dangerous escalation, with an extremist group engaging in international political violence. This is not an isolated act but a continuation of The Base’s ideology of “accelerationism,” which calls for collapsing governments through terror and chaos.

By striking a foreign intelligence target during wartime, the group has demonstrated both the intent and operational capability to influence a global conflict by acting on behalf of a foreign adversary – characteristics that are similar to those of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) already designated by the State Department, including Hamas and Hezbollah. Failure to designate The Base as an FTO has the potential to undermine national security on multiple fronts, including by stifling law enforcement’s ability to investigate its members and recruiting practices, restricting intelligence-sharing with allies, and signaling to extremists that the U.S. government is unwilling to take meaningful action against transnational white supremacist terrorism.

More importantly, in an era when domestic and international violent extremism increasingly overlap, and the Department of Justice’s interest in curbing far-right extremism continues to wane, a failure to address the threats posed by The Base could prove fatal.

American Roots

The Base was founded by a U.S.-born former Pentagon intelligence contractor and now Russian citizen, Rinaldo Nazzaro, who claimed to have served alongside special operations forces (SOF) in overseas combat zones. Drawing on his experience in private security and the intelligence gold rush of the post-9/11 years, Nazzaro sought to build a network of like-minded militants that could outlast law enforcement crackdowns by embracing a decentralized structure.

Nazzaro cultivated a significant online following of fellow white supremacists under the aliases “Roman Wolf” and “Norman Spear.” In June 2018, he officially launched The Base on the podcast of a decades-long white supremacist, Billy Roper – an intentional move to appeal to hardcore white supremacists already steeped in accelerationist thinking. At the time, though, Nazzaro’s true identity remained unknown.

From its inception, The Base positioned itself as more than just an online movement confined to encrypted chat rooms. It promoted the strategy of leaderless resistance, an organizational model pioneered by far-right extremist Louis Beam, who encouraged autonomous cells and lone actors to wage violence without direct orders from central leadership. This structure makes attribution difficult and allows the organization to persist even if key figures are arrested.

Importantly, though, The Base was never purely domestic. From the outset, it sought global reach, recruiting in North America, Europe, and Australia. Nazzaro’s relocation to Russia in 2018 further underscores the group’s foreign nexus and potential facilitation by hostile state actors. Today, its transnational orientation is undeniable, manifested in operations that extend beyond digital spaces into kinetic action abroad.

A Pattern of Escalation 

Before its most recent attack in Kyiv, The Base was already on a troubling trajectory. In 2018, Nazzaro bought several acres of land in rural Washington State to secure “off-grid” training sites for his followers to prepare for an impending race war. After local antifascists exposed Nazzaro’s plans, other members organized paramilitary camps across the country in Georgia and Michigan, training with firearms and explosives. A slew of arrests followed, the first of which came in November 2019, when then-18-year-old Richard Tobin was charged with federal hate crimes for vandalizing multiple synagogues.

In August 2019, Ryan Thorpe, a junior reporter from The Winnipeg Free Press, made headlines when he successfully infiltrated The Base on one of his first assignments, eventually exposing Canadian Armed Forces reservist Jordan Patrik Mathews as a member. Less than six months later, in January 2020, retired FBI agent Scott Payne’s seven-month undercover stint in The Base led to the arrest of three of its members for plotting to murder an antifascist couple in Georgia. Simultaneously, the crackdown in Georgia helped authorities disrupt a plot by several members of a Maryland-based cell just before they could carry out a mass shooting at a Virginia gun rights rally in hopes of sparking an armed civil conflict – a plot that included Mathews, who fled Canada just days after his exposure. Barely a week later, Nazzaro’s true identity was revealed by Jason Wilson in an article for The Guardian. Notably, rumors of Nazzaro’s alleged relationship with the Kremlin began to swirl among members of The Base around this time, citing his fluent Russian language skills and frequent travel between the United States, Russia, and other nations.

Despite the turmoil inflicted by the arrests and investigative journalism, The Base deepened its ties with the global white supremacist ecosystem, forging relationships with other violent accelerationist groups like the Atomwaffen Division (AWD) and the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM). Members also sought combat experience abroad, with some even venturing to Ukraine to gain training from the Azov Battalion – a pattern all too reminiscent of jihadists flocking to war zones across the Middle East.

Despite Nazzaro’s public denial of any involvement, the Kyiv incident is just the latest development in The Base’s arc. By assassinating a foreign intelligence officer in wartime, The Base has adopted the tactics of other internationally recognized terrorist organizations – namely, carrying out targeted killings to influence geopolitical outcomes. This escalatory act proves intent and capability on a scale that reaches far beyond the borders of the United States, significantly weakening any argument against an FTO designation.

The Base Meets the FTO Criteria 

Under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the U.S. Secretary of State may designate an entity as an FTO if it meets three conditions:

1. “It must be a foreign organization”;
2. The organization “must engage in terrorist activity,” or “retain the capability and intent to engage in terrorist activity or terrorism”; and
3. The “organization’s terrorist activity or terrorism must threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security (national defense, foreign relations, or the economic interests) of the United States.”

The Base meets all three of these criteria.

First, although The Base emerged in the United States, its de facto leader, Rinaldo Nazzaro, lives in Russia and is a Russian citizen. Moreover, Nazzaro operates the organization from there, directing key propaganda and recruitment activities using Russian digital platforms such as VK and a Mail.ru email address to recruit and distribute propaganda. Precedent also exists for this standard, as the U.S. government previously designated the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) and its leadership – who have trained foreign militants – as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) in 2020.

Second, the assassination in Kyiv qualifies as terrorist activity – premeditated violence intended to influence political events. Even if one were to argue that Voronych was not a civilian, and therefore his assassination was not strictly an act of terrorism, The Base has already conspired to attack critical civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and carry out mass shootings inside the United States. Therefore, The Base has clearly demonstrated both the willingness and capacity to carry out acts of terror.

Finally, The Base is a serious threat to U.S. nationals and security, recently attempting to resurrect its previous activities within the United States. Its ideology explicitly advocates for the destruction of the U.S. government. Furthermore, it operates in foreign conflict zones in which U.S. personnel are also involved, creating a risk that it will strengthen hostile actors, although the scope of that assistance is not yet clear.

By these metrics, The Base meets the threshold for designation. Failure to apply the same standards to white supremacist groups as are regularly applied to jihadist organizations or other ideologically motivated threat actors creates a dangerous double standard that extremists will continue to exploit.

Designating The Base is not just a symbolic matter, but rather a force multiplier that could enhance the range of other punitive measures available to the U.S. government. With an FTO designation, the U.S. Treasury Department has the power to freeze and seize financial assets belonging to the group, as well as enforce existing legal statutes against any individuals providing it with material support, such as fundraising and logistical assistance. Lastly, a designation would help foster greater intelligence cooperation and sharing among allies – an invaluable tool for disrupting the group’s operations at a time when militant far-right networks are increasingly transnational in nature.

White Supremacist Terrorism is Global and Evolving

The assassination in Kyiv is more than a shocking headline or an outlier – it is a harbinger of attacks to come. Global white supremacist terrorism is evolving, and U.S. policy must adapt with it. Designating The Base would signal to the rest of the world that the U.S. government is prepared to treat racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist (REMVE) groups with the same urgency as jihadist threats. A designation would affirm that white supremacist terrorism receives the same legal treatment as ISIS or al-Qaeda. That consistency is vital at a time when REMVE is a quickly growing category of terrorism worldwide.

Moreover, a designation could undermine adversary narratives. Russia has repeatedly leveraged extremist movements as instruments of destabilization. Allowing a U.S.-founded group with Russian ties to operate unchecked erodes American credibility and emboldens future proxy activity.

The statutory criteria are clear and the precedent is established. What remains to be seen is if there is the political will necessary to acknowledge that white supremacist terrorism is not just an American problem – it is a growing transnational threat. If Washington cannot muster the resolve to designate The Base after an overseas assassination, then when? The choice is stark: lead the fight against this threat now, or watch it metastasize beyond our ability to contain in the future.

The post It’s Time to Designate The Base as an FTO appeared first on Just Security.