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Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Vast majority of terror attacks and plots were made by the far-right

The Escalating Terrorism Problem in the United States
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

Unite the Right rally - WikipediaDownload the complete summary HERE
Download the complete report HERE

On June 3, 2020, federal authorities arrested three individuals allegedly associated with the “boogaloo” movement, a loosely-organized group of extremists preparing for a civil war, for conspiring to cause violence in Las Vegas and possessing an improvised incendiary device.

Less than a week later, law enforcement officials near Richmond, VA, arrested Harry H. Rogers, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, for driving a vehicle into peaceful protesters.

Around the same time, members of a Brooklyn anarchist group urged its supporters to conduct “rebellion” against the government.

Extremists from all sides flooded social media with disinformation, conspiracy theories, and incitements to violence in response to the protests following the death of George Floyd, swamping Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms.

This CSIS brief examines the state of terrorism in the United States.

It asks two sets of questions. First, what are the most significant types of terrorism in the United States, and how has the terrorism threat in the U.S. homeland evolved over time?

Second, what are the implications for terrorism over the next year? To answer these questions, this analysis compiles and analyzes an original data set of 893 terrorist plots and attacks in the United States between January 1994 and May 2020.

This analysis makes several arguments. First, far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators, including from far-left networks and individuals inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years.

Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between January 1 and May 8, 2020.


Second, terrorism in the United States will likely increase over the next year in response to several factors.

One of the most concerning is the 2020 U.S. presidential election, before and after which extremists may resort to violence, depending on the outcome of the election. Far-right and far-left networks have used violence against each other at protests, raising the possibility of escalating violence during the election period.

The rest of this brief is divided into the following sections. The first defines terrorism and its main types. 

The second section analyzes terrorism trends in the United States since 1994. 

The third examines far-right, far-left, and religious networks. 

The fourth section highlights the terrorism threat over the next year.

Download the complete report HERE