Domestic terrorism poses a significant threat to public safety. Domestic terrorism attacks generally outnumber international ones 7 to 1 in the United States, and there are various emerging threats of concern. For example, the domestic far right has been linked to numerous political crimes such as attacks against the federal government and international targets, anti-abortion strikes, and hate crimes. Several attacks have been committed by environmental and animal right extremists targeting property, with evidence of an increase in far-left groups turning to violence. Islamist extremists have also been responsible for various mass casualty attacks in the United States. Importantly, all of these extremist movements have attempted to increase their capacity for recruitment and attacks via the Internet in general and via cybercrimes in particular.
In this symposium, Drs. Chermak and Scrivens will discuss the current state of knowledge on domestic terrorism generally and highlight specific gaps in our understanding of these threats. Here they will discuss the empirical research on the number and types of crimes by far right, far left, and Islamist extremists, as well as the lethality of lone-actor terrorism attacks versus group level terrorism attacks, and the investigatory strategies used in successful and unsuccessful terrorism plots. Also discussed will be the role of the Internet and associated technologies in facilitating terrorism and violent extremism, cyberattack strategies by far right, far left, and Islamist extremists, and extremist posting behaviors and patterns that may inform future risk factor frameworks used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies to identify credible threats online.