Week in Review for Violent Extremism and Terrorism Analysis: 2023-04-17
Happy Tuesday everyone, here is a recap from the field of violent extremism and terrorism analysis.
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1) Occult Beliefs and the Far Right: The Case of the Order of Nine Angles
This article investigates the esoteric beliefs of the Order of Nine Angles (ONA) as one way of making sense of its politics. By analyzing the ONA’s primary texts and archival data from the Information Network Focus on Religious Movements (Inform) we propose that, based on some recurring themes in the way the ONA is presented, it can be analyzed usefully as a new religious movement (NRM) with millenarian tendencies. At the same time, the aura of elitism, cool and danger-seeking that characterizes the larger Far Right milieu influences the selective appropriation of the ONA’s symbols and publications amongst violent neo-Nazis.
2) 30 years later, Waco siege fascinates, infuriates new generations
“Waco is significant because it is used as the alibi for domestic terrorism: because the federal government killed Branch Davidians at Waco, the story goes, violence against the federal government (and collateral damage against civilians) can be justified,” Kathleen Belew, a Northwestern University professor who studies white-power movements, tweeted last month in a thread about the siege.
Extremists still hold up Waco as Exhibit A of a “tyrannical government” that seeks to disarm citizens in violation of the Second Amendment, an idea that has moved from the fringes to the mainstream in the hard-right shift of conservatism in recent years. Many political analysts view it as no coincidence that Donald Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, chose Waco last month as the first stop for his 2024 campaign.
3) Neo-Nazis Hacked Porn Star Riley Reid and Tried to Recruit From Her Millions of Followers
A neo-Nazi group that considers themselves an “extremist alternative to the 12-step program” hacked the account of one of the world’s most popular porn stars and used it to spread violent racism, try to recruit from her millions of followers, and demand the release of a member who plotted to shoot up a Walmart.
In early April, the 2.3 million people who follow Riley Reid on Twitter were greeted with an image of a syringe on a dark flag and violently racist posts instead of the adult images they may have been expecting. The account had been fully taken over by a neo-Nazi representing Injekt Division, a small and bizarre neo-Nazi group.
For three days the neo-Nazis ran the account and used it to attempt to recruit from Reid’s fan base and spread their hate and the spread antisemitic conspiracies that pornography is a Jewish plot.
4) Far-right sympathiser was buying explosives for terror attack in Ireland, gardaí believe
Gardaí believe Mark Wolf, a far-right sympathiser and paedophile living in Dublin, was planning to purchase explosives in Ireland for a terrorist attack.
Wolf, a UK national, was jailed for ten years by Judge Martin Nolan last month after he was caught in possession of firearms parts and guides for 3D printing weapons in July 2021.
Over the course of their investigation, members of the Special Detective Unit (SDU) found evidence that Wolf intended to try to acquire explosives from a commercial dealer in Ireland, The Irish Times has learned.
This included contact details found on the 37-year-old’s phones for a company which supplies explosives to the civilian market for use in excavation.
Gardaí also found a brand-new 3D printer, capable of creating further firearms components. Detectives believe Wolf was planning to print individual firearm parts to create an arsenal of completed weapons for use in the planned terrorist attack.
Wolf was also found in possession of a video recording of a live stream of the mass shooting on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in March 2019, along with other far-right and Nazi material, leading authorities to suspect he planned a similar attack in Ireland or the UK.
5) Male Supremacy is at the Core of the Hard Rights Agenda
Hard-right movements are based on exclusion and the construction of hierarchies.
Christianity, many members of the American hard right contend, should hold a preeminent place in our society and even form the basis for our laws. White people, they (often implicitly) suggest, deserve to hold a dominant position in society because of their supposed innate superiority.
The hard right, in other words, wants to revive an older social order, before the Civil Rights Movement, women’s and gay liberation movements, and other social and political transformations upset what was a thoroughly white-dominated, patriarchal society. Gender, then – how it is understood, practiced and described in our laws – is clearly of central concern to the hard right. Their goal is to uphold male supremacy, a movement that scholar of right-wing movements Chelsea Ebin describes as “a complex system that serves to assert, support, and promote the supposed superiority of men,” and subjugate women, trans, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people.
6) Incel And The Incelosphere: An Overview Of Current Research And Understanding
This full report provides an overview of the incel ideology and the wider manosphere, as well as a discussion as to whether this ideology crosses the threshold to be considered an extremist ideology and of the threat posed by incels. In doing so, it is shown that the incel ideology has all the characteristics of an extremist ideology. It is shown that there is a need to evaluate the incel threshold for violence in relation to both individual-level and wider contextual factors, with incel harm and violence taking three different forms; individual-level (i.e., self-harm and suicide), interpersonal (i.e., cyber-stalking) and societal-level (acts of mass-violence), with perpetrators of societal-level violence likely to have a psychological profile that is akin to that seen in school shooters.
It is also discussed how the increase in incel online content, frequency of violent behaviours by those who have engaged with it, and the growing awareness of this phenomenon is occurring at a time when higher proportions of younger people are appearing in the UK’s terrorism statistics. At the same time, there is an emerging body of evidence demonstrating that increases in online misogynistic and anti-woman sentiments are related to broader offline behaviours, with strong support of these views also being related to an increased likelihood of support for extremist violence.
Finally, using a data-driven approach, it is also shown that that majority of UK-based online engagement with incel content occurs on the main incel forum of Incels.is, and that the vast majority of UK-based users actually contribute relatively few posts to the discussions on incel online spaces.
7) Two Men Sentenced for Conspiring to Provide Material Support to Plot to Attack Power Grids in the United States
Two men were sentenced in federal court today to crimes related to a scheme to attack power grids in the United States in furtherance white supremacy.
Christopher Brenner Cook, 20, of Columbus, Ohio, and Jonathan Allen Frost, 24, of Katy, Texas, and West Lafayette, Indiana, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Cook was sentenced was sentenced to 92 months in prison and Frost was sentenced to 60 months in prison. Jackson Matthew Sawall, 22, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was also charged and pleaded guilty in February 2022 in connection with the scheme and will be sentenced at a later date.
“These defendants plotted armed attacks against energy facilities to stoke division in furtherance of white supremacist ideology and now they are being held accountable,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “The Justice Department will not tolerate the use of violence to advance any extremist ideology and we remain determined to protect our communities from such hateful acts of terror.”
8) Hamburg Shooter’s Manifesto Reveals the Complexity of the Influence of Far-Right Ideologies
Many of his claims are also in accordance with a number of broader right-wing Christian beliefs: he condemns abortion as murder, rails against sex work and is explicitly anti-LGBTQ. At times the shooter’s beliefs contain other distant echoes of the theology of Jehovah’s Witnesses—in the rejection of the Trinity or End Times beliefs—but other times his theology diverges sharply from Jehovah’s Witnesses, such as his belief that Hitler got the idea of a “1000-year Reich” from Jesus, and that, therefore, the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany was in accordance with divine will. (Jehovah’s Witnesses were in fact persecuted and sent to concentration camps in Nazi Germany.)
While a lot of his manifesto reads like the unique ramblings of a distressed mind, there is another trait the Hamburg shooter shares with other far-right mass shooters: antisemitism. In his manifesto he spreads the classic Christian antisemitic myth that Jews were guilty of the murder of God—also known as deicide. He then moves on to claim that this was intentional on the part of Jesus as his brutal execution was necessary to save humanity. Another deeply antisemitic conspiracy myth he spreads (which I will not reproduce in detail here) portrays Russia as an instrument of God and Ukraine as the subject of God’s punishment.
The interpretation of wars as a sign of approaching End Times is common in Christian fundamentalist circles, which are often conspiracy-believing, and is also found in far-right online spaces. But the Hamburg shooter believed that humanity was already living in the “1000-year Reich,” at whose end he saw not an apocalypse, but the perfection of humankind. Ben Lorber, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates* explains how this ties together various right-wing themes, like antisemitism, glorification of violence, hyper-nationalism and apocalypticism
9) Jewish student with autism had swastika carved onto his back, mother says
The FBI said it is in contact with authorities in Las Vegas after a woman said her Jewish son, who has autism, had a swastika carved onto his back. The woman told COLlive.com that her son, a student at Clark High School, came home on March 9 with the hate symbol etched into his skin. The woman, who told the outlet that she wanted to remain anonymous, said the 17-year-old is nonverbal, uses a service dog and has someone to assist him at all times.
10) Extremist group exits: what autobiographies by male right-wing formers reveal about identity transformation
Despite being recognised as the foundational process of an extremist group exit, identity transformation is surprisingly under-investigated. This paper therefore explores how identity is represented in the exit process by examining ten autobiographies written by right-wing formers. The data were analysed using thematic analysis, and three themes were developed and named: ‘is this who I am?’, fatherhood, and reinventing the self. Drawing on social identity theory. An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin, & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–37). Brooks/Cole], the article proposes that emotionally laden cognitive openers can alter intergroup evaluation and social identity satisfaction. Certain cognitive openers, such as fatherhood, were seen to strongly influence the former’s self-categorisation and personal identity. The analysis also found that rebuilding an alternative identity after leaving the group took significant time and effort. The paper highlights the complexities of identity transformation during and after an extremist group exit and suggests that the process can involve changes to both personal and social identity structures.
10) The Politics of Race and the Future of British Political History
This article addresses the field of British political history's blind spot when it comes to race. Where modern British political historians are comfortable approaching politics in ‘high’ and ‘popular’ forms as well as in terms of ideas, institutions and policy, they often struggle even to see a politics of race in operation. Using examples drawn from research on the post-1945 history of the white supremacist movement in Britain, this article maintains that the means to render race visible in the political history of modern Britain lies in the incorporation of previously overlooked perspectives. In search of these perspectives, it looks to black British history and critical studies of race. In particular, it highlights analyses and critiques of British racism by black political activists, from those who organised in response to the 1959 murder of Kelso Cochrane, to the Black Power groups of the 1970s.