But <\/b>terrorism carried out by right-wing actors eclipsed that of leftist movements in the 1990s, and then, the country\u2019s focus shifted to foreign terrorist organizations for more than a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks<\/a>. Now, government agencies and scholars across the political spectrum agree that far-right movements have caused most of the political violence in the U.S. over the past few years \u2013 and present the most dangerous threat today. Data shows that the involvement of veterans and service members in some of these groups is helping to further the violence<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt used to be far-left terrorism, then for a while the biggest threats were Islamist and international forms of terrorism,\u201d said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, who runs the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University<\/a>. \u201cNow, the official government assessment, universally, is that anti-government and supremacist forms of extremism are the biggest threat and the most lethal and pressing threat to the homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea that far-right extremism poses a threat to the country has been contested by political pundits<\/a> and some Republican lawmakers, who have attempted to minimize <\/i>far-right violence<\/a> and argued that far-left ideologies should receive more focus from law enforcement<\/a>. But to even compare far-right and far-left movements in the U.S. today is a false equivalency because of the rate at which far-right violence outpaces the far left, said Miller-Idriss \u2013 analysis seconded by Liz Yates, a researcher at the immigration advocacy organization Human Rights First<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thomas Spoehr, a scholar with the conservative Heritage Foundation<\/a> who\u2019s argued against \u201cwokeness\u201d in the military, agreed that right-wing extremism is more prevalent than other ideologies, though he believes the issue of extremism overall is taking up too many government resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since 1990, 26 people with military backgrounds committed crimes in the name of their far-left beliefs, while 333 were driven by their far-right ideologies to do the same.<\/p>\n\nUniversity of Maryland National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The numbers are hard to argue with. Right-wing ideologies were behind a majority of the nearly 600 domestic terror attacks that occurred from 2010 through 2021, according to data shared with Military Times by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. During that period, right-wing extremists were charged with 353 plots or attacks that caused 147 deaths, the data show. In the same time frame, far-left extremists carried out 126 plots or attacks, killing 23 people. The rest of the political violence during those years was committed by jihadist groups and ethnonationalists, which included antisemitic and Jewish extremists and Cuban exiles, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The think tank\u2019s data supports findings from the Department of Homeland Security, which also determined that white supremacy was behind more domestic terrorist attacks and plots than any other ideology from 2010 through 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While DHS acknowledged white supremacy was behind much of the violence of the last several years, the agency \u2013 and the rest of the executive branch \u2013 is attempting to stay out of the feud about whether extremism is a far-left or far-right issue. Rather than label instances of domestic terrorism as motivated by the \u201cright\u201d or \u201cleft,\u201d the FBI and DHS created <\/b>four categories for extremism: racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism, anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism, animal rights or environmental violent extremism and abortion-related violent extremism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A senior official in President Joe Biden\u2019s administration, speaking on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the White House, said the categories showed that the government is focusing its efforts where there\u2019s violence, rather than targeting one ideology over another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo much has become politicized that it was really important to us to make clear that this work is public safety, it\u2019s democracy protection and it does not have political angles to it,\u201d the official said. \u201cWhat\u2019s fundamentally unacceptable is taking your grievance or your view on the political or ideological spectrum and turning violent with it. That is the thing that\u2019s unacceptable, whatever the underlying view might be, whether it\u2019s left, right or center.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism is the \u201csingle greatest terrorism-related concern we have in the homeland right now,\u201d said a senior DHS official, also <\/b>speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to describe the sensitive policy. <\/b>Within that population, the people of most concern are those driven by their beliefs about the superiority of the white race, the official said. According to a DHS assessment of terrorism released in June<\/a>, white supremacists pose the \u201cmost consistent threat\u201d of violence against religious, cultural and government targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s fundamentally unacceptable is taking your grievance or your view… and turning violent with it. That is the thing that\u2019s unacceptable, whatever the underlying view might be, whether it\u2019s left, right or center.\u201d<\/p>Senior official in President Joe Biden’s administration<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Others who fall into the category of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism include those motivated by perceptions of racial injustice in America, such as groups advocating for a separate Black homeland \u2013 a motivation that doesn\u2019t fit neatly into the left or right political paradigm. And while Black separatist groups make threats of violence against the government, they carried out \u201cminimal observed acts of violence\u201d last year, the DHS assessment states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Left or right labels simply don\u2019t apply to violent actors like incels<\/a>, and they\u2019re not helpful in describing the Boogaloo movement<\/a>, which draws anti-government extremists of all political stripes, a senior DHS official said. And no matter what the violent ideology or lack thereof, the government\u2019s prevention efforts<\/a> are the same, the official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur desire is to treat it in an agnostic way is not just because of the politics \u2013 because the politics are very difficult in this space \u2013 but also because most of the preventative work that you want to do looks the same regardless of what ideology or motivating factors are driving an individual to carry out these attacks,\u201d the DHS official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Data shows the most violent groups are those on the right, especially those with members who\u2019ve had military training.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Veterans\u2019 and service members\u2019 participation in right-wing violence is made clear in data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism<\/a>, known as START. DHS officials told Military Times that <\/b>START has compiled the \u201cbest open-source data in the country\u201d regarding the involvement of military personnel in domestic terrorism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the data, 26 veterans and service members since 1990 were driven by their far-left beliefs to commit both violent and nonviolent crimes, while 333 veterans and service members were driven by their far-right beliefs to do the same. Among the violent crimes, 71% were committed by people aligned with far-right movements, while 6% were aligned with the far-left. The rest didn\u2019t fall squarely into either ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among veterans and service members, far-right actors have been responsible for more than 12 times the number of violent crimes than far-left actors since 1990.<\/p>\n\nUniversity of Maryland National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Those cases don\u2019t include veterans and service members charged with crimes tied to their participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when myths about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election drove supporters of former President Donald Trump to try to stop Congress from certifying the results. According to George Washington University\u2019s Program on Extremism<\/a>, 131 people charged in the riot that day had served in the military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese are small, small numbers compared to the size of our military, but there is an increase at the moment, which is concerning,\u201d a senior DHS official said of veterans and service members involved in ideological extremism. \u201cRacially- and ethnically- motivated violent extremism is the most frequent bias in this community, followed by anti-government extremism. That\u2019s a really dangerous cocktail for active-duty military, veterans and reservists. It\u2019s horrible for good order and discipline and horrible for combat effectiveness, given how diverse our military actually is \u2013 and scary if anti-government extremism is among the top of those categories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Extremism experts and government officials agree that only a small number of service members and veterans participate in extremist activities. However, data shows that when they do get involved, it\u2019s often as part of far-right movements \u2013 and they tend to wield outsized influence. Veterans and service members were responsible for 25% of all extremist-driven mass fatality plots and attacks from 1990 through 2022<\/a>, a START analysis found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Prosecution Project<\/a>, a research organization that\u2019s fiscally sponsored by the Peace and Justice Studies Association at Georgetown University<\/a>, issued similar findings to START\u2019s. In data shared with Military Times, the organization found 300 cases of extremist-driven crimes committed by veterans and service members since 1990. Of those, 66% were committed by far-right actors, while 2% were carried out in the name of far-left ideologies. Many of the crimes driven by right-wing actors were designed to injure, kill or intimidate a particular group of people, said Michael Loadenthal, the founder and executive director of the Prosecution Project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGenerally speaking, and as informed by the analysis of the Prosecution Project\u2019s data covering thousands of cases, leftist violence is exceedingly rare in the past several decades and very rarely involves veterans or active duty military,\u201d Loadenthal said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One reason for the discrepancy is the far right\u2019s efforts to recruit veterans and service members to their cause, said Josh Lipowsky, a researcher with the Counter Extremism Project who authored a report last year about far-left extremism<\/a>. Lipowsky determined that today\u2019s far-left groups lack the organizational structure used by the far right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Patriot Front, a white nationalist and neo-fascist hate group, takes applications from prospective members, many of whom claim to have ties to the military<\/a>. Far-left movements tend to <\/b>comprise more broad ideological positions rather than forming into specific groups with such bureaucratic entrance procedures, Lipowsky said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere isn\u2019t much overt recruitment of military personnel, whereas on the far right, we see several of these violent groups specifically going after military personnel for their experience and weapons know-how,\u201d Lipowsky said. \u201cThere are individual Antifa groups, but they\u2019re not openly plastering or flyering like we see from the Patriot Front and other groups.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While small numbers of veterans and service members are involved in domestic terrorism, DHS is encouraging others in the military community to be part of the solution. DHS\u2019 prevention plan includes enlisting veterans to intervene with their peers to turn away from violence. Veterans have \u201can incredible reservoir of all the right stuff we can be using… to help the country address these issues,\u201d a senior DHS official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cVeterans contribute to civil society at a higher rate than most Americans. They run for office, they participate in local school boards,\u201d the official said. \u201cWe need to build on those strengths in order to crowd out vulnerabilities to these kinds of threats on the margin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the far right causing much of the political violence over the past several years, experts aren\u2019t disregarding the left \u2013 and they shouldn\u2019t be, Yates said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Prosecution Project, which tracks felony-level criminal cases of domestic terrorism, maintains a database of crimes that occurred during police brutality protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in the summer of 2020. Among the overall population, more than 300 people were charged with federal crimes<\/a> as a result of the protests. Thirty-five people were charged with assaulting police officers, and the majority of charges were related to arson, civil disorder and destruction of property \u2013 a theme that Loadenthal, Lipowsky and Miller-Idriss said differentiates far-left extremism from the radical right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leftist movements have focused in recent years on symbolic property damage to get their messages across, Loadenthal said. Lipowsky and Miller-Idriss agreed, contending that far-right groups more often target people, rather than property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are seeing spikes in far-left violence, but not to the magnitude that we\u2019re seeing on the far right, and not anywhere near the lethality that we\u2019re seeing on the far right,\u201d Miller-Idriss said. \u201cIt\u2019s mostly property damage. I think it\u2019s important to acknowledge that arson and property damage matters, but it\u2019s not the same thing as a terrorist attack on a synagogue or on a Black community in terms of the fear and death caused.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While not as lethal, Miller-Idriss warned against ignoring far-left movements. The government didn\u2019t pay enough attention to the threat of far-right terrorism before 2017, resulting in far-right groups carrying out some of their violent plots successfully, she contended. Miller-Idriss is predicting a rise in violence among environmental activists. While environmental groups aren\u2019t targeting people with violence at this point in time, violent fringe groups are likely to develop as the effects of climate change become more volatile, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are seeing spikes in far-left violence, but not to the magnitude that we\u2019re seeing on the far right, and not anywhere near the lethality that we\u2019re seeing on the far right …. It\u2019s mostly property damage.\u201d<\/p>Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, American University<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n There are a host of other political issues that could inspire far-left actors to commit violence, said Tom O\u2019Connor, a retired FBI special agent who investigated domestic and international extremism for more than 20 years. One group O\u2019Connor is watching is Jane\u2019s Revenge, a militant pro-abortion rights group that emerged in 2022<\/a> following the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the constitutional right to abortion. The group was linked to multiple instances of vandalism at crisis pregnancy centers, which are <\/b>established by anti-abortion groups to discourage pregnant women from having abortions. Jane\u2019s Revenge claimed credit last year for setting fire to one such center in Madison, Wisc. The building was empty at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since retiring from the FBI in 2019, O\u2019Connor has continued to track instances of political violence across the country. The source of domestic terrorism in the U.S. has shifted from one ideology to the next over the past 50 years, and it\u2019s likely to change again, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m always looking for left-wing violent actions that are legitimately acts of violence for political means. It hasn\u2019t really been happening,\u201d O\u2019Connor said. \u201cI think there\u2019s a reason for that. It does not mean the groups that caused violence in 2020 have gone away. I honestly think they\u2019re just letting the right do their work for them. That\u2019s generally the yin and yang of how things have worked over the past several decades.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lawmakers don\u2019t agree about the magnitude of domestic terrorism threats in the United States. Shortly after a white supremacist killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket<\/a> in 2022, Senate Republicans voted down a bill<\/a> that would\u2019ve ordered DHS, the FBI and the Department of Justice to set up offices inside their agencies focused specifically on the issue. The offices would\u2019ve been tasked with issuing a report every six months about threats by white supremacists and neo-Nazis, including any instances of these ideologies infiltrating law enforcement agencies and the military. Republicans argued that the measure unfairly maligned police and service members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The issue of extremism in the military has been fiercely fought on Capitol Hill and is shaping up to be a point of contention during the 2024 presidential race<\/a>. In July, the House passed the annual defense authorization bill<\/a>, which contained measures authored by Republicans that took a hard-right tack on numerous hot-button, culture-war issues, including one to eliminate a working group established to counter extremism in the ranks. Both chambers approved their versions of the defense policy bill this summer, and a conference committee is expected to convene to reconcile the differences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some Republicans have voiced outrage that focusing on extremism in the armed forces serves only to tarnish the military\u2019s reputation \u2013 a belief shared by Spoehr, who leads the Heritage Foundation\u2019s Center for National Defense and is a retired Army lieutenant general. Spoehr pointed to a recent survey by Rand Corporation<\/a> that found no evidence that veterans harbor more extreme beliefs than the rest of the American public. Though the survey\u2019s authors have acknowledged its constraints<\/a> \u2013 including that results were limited by how many people were willing to be honest in answering the questionnaire about their extremist stances \u2013 the findings have been upheld by Republicans as justification to end the Pentagon\u2019s extremism prevention efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spoehr also noted a Pentagon finding that only <\/b>about 100 service members had participated in prohibited extremist activity in 2021<\/a>, a small fraction of the overall force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think there has been too much concern, too many resources and too much time spent on this given what we have found out about the incidents of extremism in the military,\u201d Spoehr said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spoehr also contends that when extremism prevention training does happen, the Pentagon should place some emphasis on far-left ideologies, such as the anti-fascist movement Antifa. In anti-extremism training materials made public by the Defense Department in 2021<\/a>, the agency highlights white supremacist, neo-Nazi and anti-government sentiments as examples of extremist ideologies but doesn\u2019t cite any radical left ideologies by name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n O\u2019Connor argued that the government doesn\u2019t go after one ideology over another, but rather focuses its attention on the sources of violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe FBI doesn\u2019t look at ideologies. It\u2019s not, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s look at Antifa, or let\u2019s look at the Proud Boys,\u2019 because it\u2019s not illegal to be a follower of any of those groups,\u201d O\u2019Connor said. \u201cIt\u2019s the violence \u2013 the violence dictates where the investigation goes. If there\u2019s no violence or no criminal activity, there\u2019s no investigation. And it doesn\u2019t take a rocket scientist to see that the violence over the last four years has been the most serious from the right-wing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s one factor the far right has now that the far left lacks \u2013 a lot of people with large followings who are \u201cfueling the fires\u201d for potential violence, O\u2019Connor said. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican and Navy veteran, has used violent imagery so far in his 2024 presidential campaign<\/a>. DeSantis said earlier this month that if elected, he\u2019d \u201cstart slitting throats\u201d<\/a> of federal workers who he deemed part of the \u201cdeep state,\u201d which he alleges is a group of government workers trying to prevent the implementation of right-wing initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yates, who joined Human Rights First last year after researching extremism in the military at START, agreed that far-right ideologies are being espoused by public figures more often than far-left ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe far right is more integrated into political institutions,\u201d Yates said. \u201cThere was an attempted coup on our democracy, and there have been various anti-democratic appeals and continuing disinformation campaigns coming from the far right. If we aren\u2019t acknowledging that and challenging it, then we\u2019re putting our democracy at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This story was produced in partnership with <\/i>Military Veterans in Journalism<\/i><\/a>. Please send tips to <\/i>MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Security officials and scholars across the political spectrum agree that far-right movements vice left have caused most recent domestic political violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":107651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":9,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[39,11,31,9],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3379],"class_list":["post-30910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-doj-fbi","category-fedlife","category-home","category-federal-oversight"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"WQ3EF3EBQVETTDUML3CFELJDDA","arc_canonical_url":"\/flashpoints\/extremism-disinformation\/2023\/08\/24\/a-lethal-threat-why-the-far-right-sees-more-scrutiny-than-the-left\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n\n\n
Neither left nor right, just violent<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Military-veteran nexus<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Violence on the left<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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GOP pushback<\/h2>\n\n\n\n