Ep 181: Far-Right Terrorism in America with Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware - US Election Series

With the US election next week, we sit down with two of the world's foremost experts on terrorism: Bruce Hoffman, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Georgetown University professor, and Jacob Ware, Research Fellow at CFR and specialist in far-right extremism. Together, they discuss their groundbreaking new book, God, Guns, and Sedition, which examines the evolving landscape of far-right terrorism in America.

Our guests explore how traditional extremist movements have transformed in the digital age, becoming more sophisticated and internationally influential. Drawing on Hoffman's half-century of expertise and Ware's deep understanding of contemporary extremist tactics, the conversation delves into crucial topics including:

• The fusion of anti-government sentiment, religious extremism, and militant advocacy
• How social media platforms have revolutionised extremist recruitment
• The global impact of U.S.-based extremist movements
• The emergence of "accelerationism" as a tactical framework
• Lessons learned from the January 6th Capitol riot
• Protecting democratic institutions while maintaining their accessibility

This essential discussion provides security professionals, risk analysts, and concerned citisens with vital insights into one of the most pressing challenges facing democratic institutions today.

The International Risk Podcast is a weekly podcast for senior executives, board members, and risk advisors. In these podcasts, we speak with experts in a variety of fields to explore international relations. Our host is Dominic Bowen, Head of Strategic Advisory at one of Europe's leading risk consulting firms. Dominic is a regular public and corporate event speaker, and visiting lecturer at several universities. Having spent the last 20 years successfully establishing large and complex operations in the world's highest-risk areas and conflict zones, Dominic now joins you to speak with exciting guests around the world to discuss international risk.

The International Risk Podcast - Reducing risk by increasing knowledge.

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Transcript

00:02.04
irp2019
Hi, I'm Dominic, host of the International Wiz Podcast. And today, we're diving deep into the evolving landscape of far-right terrorism with our fantastic guests, Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, two of the world's leading experts on political violence and extremism.

00:18.30
irp2019
Their book, God, Guns and Sedition, offers a comprehensive analysis of how traditional extremist movements have transformed in the digital age, becoming increasingly sophisticated and internationally influential. As we approach the critical election in the US, understanding these threats and their implications for democratic institutions has never been more important.

00:40.85
irp2019
Our discussion today will explore how social media has revolutionized the extremist recruitment, will consider the complex challenges facing security and risk management professionals, and how countries are trying to protect the democratic processes. Bruce and Jacob, welcome to the International West Podcast.

00:59.61
Bruce Hoffman
Thank you very much Dom for having us.

01:01.44
Jacob Ware
Well, thank you.

01:03.42
irp2019
Bruce, I read your really well-known book, Inside Terrorism, when I was living in Iraq back in 2008. That was in an extremely violent period in Iraq. And we actually, you and actually, are you you wouldn't remember this, but you and I actually had a very short email exchange about the challenges of understanding terrorism. And for me, it was quite interesting, literally working on the, on the front lines at the time, and it left a lasting impression with me.

01:26.26
irp2019
And, but terrorism has evolved. It's evolved over the years, and the term itself is difficult to define. Now, I think most people, most of the time, would largely agree on the broad concepts of terrorism being the use or threat of violence for political goals and trying to create that fear beyond the immediate victims. But whilst ah an agreed definition perhaps remains elusive,

01:49.62
irp2019
primarily, in my opinion, because it might implicate some state actors or some state-sponsored actions as as potentially terrorism. I think we can all agree that the use of nationalistic, religious and political ideologies continues to provide motivation for some terrorist groups. It provides moral justification and a recruitment base for terrorism groups around the world. so And this network structure, which will unpack, contributes to, I guess, the resilience of terrorist organizations. And, of course, we'll also unpack today how the media is a magnificent amplification tool for terrorists. But what I'd be keen to hear from you, and I think our listeners would be really keen to hear from you at the very start, is what are the most significant terrorist trends that you've noticed since you first released your book back in 1998?

02:39.52
Bruce Hoffman
that's actually a great question to begin with dom um It's one that surfaces in the book as well that Jacob and I just wrote, God, Guns and Sedition, and I would say it's the influence and the salience of social media and the way that has been weaponized by both political extremist groups and terrorist groups themselves as a platform, firstly, for radicalization. Secondly, for the communication of outlandish conspiracy theories, mis and disinformation designed to

03:12.79
Bruce Hoffman
make the terrorists look more favorable to drive people into their ranks and then ultimately for recruitment. So that is the biggest difference is that, you know, terrorists once had to rely on traditional media to communicate what was a heavily edited, a heavily redacted and a heavily shaped message. They now have platforms that enable them to communicate in real time throughout the world at a very, very negligible cost.

03:42.96
irp2019
I am very thankful that perhaps when I was in Iraq and certainly when I was even younger than that, that we didn't have social media to amplify all the mistakes and silly decisions I made. But certainly we see it is ah it is a magnificent tool for for, I guess, quite a few of the groups that we might speak to today. And perhaps, Jacob, if I can ask you the book that you wrote, the book that you and Bruce wrote, God, Guns and Sedition.

04:04.27
irp2019
It identifies some core elements of modern far-right extremism. Firstly, I'd be keen to hear why you focused on far-right extremism, because it's not the only sort of extremism we see today. And also, could you explain and start to unpack some of these core elements of far-right extremism, how they've evolved, how they've come to be today to create that threat landscape that we're dealing with?

04:28.27
Jacob Ware
Sure, well thank you again so much for for having us. Let me briefly tell you my story of of how I got involved in this work, why it's been so interesting to me. um When I was 16 years old, um spending my summers in Sweden where my mother's from, a terrorist attack struck our neighbouring country.

04:51.85
Jacob Ware
It was 2011 and eleven and um targeted children, people my age, people with similar ideas about the world as me. 77 people were killed in twin attacks in July 2011 in Oslo, vast majority of whom were children, vast majority of whom were executed. So as I embarked on my educational journey through university and then professional journey through through counterterrorism I always felt I had a very personal stake in the battle against white supremacy and neo-nazi extremism. I had seen from a young age the kind of damage that can do to a community, um to to a country. um When I arrived into the professional world, which was actually 2019,

05:38.74
Jacob Ware
ready to study counterterrorism. I got this great job working with um the leading scholar of ah basically the founder of terrorism studies, Bruce Hoffman at the Council on Foreign Relations. um That year, 2019, was the year that far-right terrorism really emerged as a major national security issue. If you remember the Christchurch shootings from that march in New Zealand where 51 people were killed in two mosques,

06:05.86
Jacob Ware
In that city ah here in the US, we had the El Paso shooting just before I started working at CFR, which was the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in the US since um Oklahoma City. Twenty three people were killed at a Walmart. And so I emerged into the professional world. I emerged into my work with Bruce with far right terrorism, all of a sudden, both being a big personal interest to me and also a major issue for for our field, for our for our country.

06:34.14
Jacob Ware
Bruce and I embarked on our book project shortly thereafter. The data at the time, and this is still the case, supports the argument that far right terrorism is the deadliest terrorism threat to the US since 9-11. And so as we embark on our work, we we felt at the time that there was a need for a book that could really contextualize this issue, contextualize the current movement, the current violence that we were seeing as part of a longer trajectory.

07:02.78
Jacob Ware
And about four years later, we came out with that book in January. We define far-right terrorism or far-right violent extremism as violence, of course, that ah that is conducted on behalf of ah certain real or perceived hierarchies in society. By hierarchies, we mean hierarchies of race, gender, nationality, and religion and so forth.

07:33.81
Jacob Ware
People who are on the far right and we're really talking mostly about white supremacists and neo-nazis as well as anti-government extremists are usually trying to protect their perceived status on top of at the summit of some kind of racial pyramid. They believe that they are protecting their hierarchy and so they launch acts of violence against people who who they perceive to be threatening that that hierarchy and that trajectory that we trace in our book just to give your listeners a

08:10.26
Jacob Ware
context of the past 15 years, that trajectory has taken us through Oslo, through Charleston, South Carolina, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Christchurch, New Zealand, Poway, California, El Paso, Texas, Halle in Germany, Hanau in Germany, Buffalo, New York, Jacksonville, Florida, and of course the US Capitol on January 6th.

08:36.88
irp2019
Yeah, that's ah certainly a huge amount of issues. And I think a lot of listeners would perhaps just instinctively think of far-right extremists as as January 6, but really fail to draw the link back to some just horrendous attacks like the the Oslo attacks against all those children, which was which was certainly terrible.

08:55.56
irp2019
You started by talking about white supremacy and I think xenophobia, anti-government sentiments, which you touched on, and conspiracy theories. They really seem to be increasingly common in many countries, countries that you wouldn't expect, perhaps, you know, countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Italy, and of course the US and many other democracies.

09:17.81
irp2019
Why are these groups getting louder? Why is their message? And we we touched on social media, but is it as simple as that? Is it just that it's so much easier to to tweet and to to post a story on Instagram? Or is there more to that?

09:32.56
Bruce Hoffman
Go on, Jacob.

09:34.97
Jacob Ware
I would point to a conspiracy theory that has fully entrenched in a lot of, let's say, Western societies um today that has inspired a lot of this violence. That conspiracy theory is called great replacement theory. um Replacement theory argues that there is a deliberate replacement ongoing of white people in Europe, in in North America, in in Australia, and New Zealand.

10:03.34
Jacob Ware
Operation lies through immigration, of course, minority political rights, LGBTQ rights, but crucially also deliberately orchestrated, planned by Jews, by Marxists, by feminists, by various by various communities. So there's two things there. One is this is a big tent conspiracy theory. Actually, if this is your worldview, you can point to targets that are all around you.

10:31.52
Jacob Ware
um The second element of this is um conspiracy theorists who have this world view have received, in their mind, real world evidence of that. I'm not necessarily talking about immigration into into into Western countries, which of course is ah is a reality, but things like the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, which gives a huge um a huge kind of spike in and in radicalization and mobilization to the violent far right in this country. Things like the election of the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, which was a big source of inspiration for Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch gunman. So we are living in this in this world where the realities are, our our societies are getting more diverse.

11:20.87
Jacob Ware
They are getting more um more racially, religiously, um and and gender diverse in terms of you know both the the the look of our societies and also political power. And if you have the worldview that your place as a white person is being,

11:38.63
Jacob Ware
is being eroded, um you're getting some of that evidence that you're looking for. I think that's been a combination that has led to some of these some of these acts of violence. I think there's also been a mainstreaming, which is which is important. um So this ideology now has a place within mainstream political parties. You can look at some of the recent rhetoric issued by a prominent member of the American media, Elon Musk,

12:07.62
Jacob Ware
where he has repeatedly tweeted over the last few months that Democrats are deliberately importing voters into the US, legalizing them to to allow them to vote and create a one-party state. right these are These are clear tenets of great replacement theory. They are normalizing these very, very dangerous conspiracy theories, mainstreaming them. And and we shouldn't be surprised at that that that contributes to violence at the end of the day.

12:32.53
Bruce Hoffman
I would just add that um a salient factor is the growing mistrust or distrust in government and lack of confidence in elected leadership and frustration with schla sclerotic legislatures that can enact laws that all of this leads to simplistic solutions and beliefs that government can't really be this inept that there has to be some broader conspiratorial force.

13:01.53
Bruce Hoffman
directing or manipulating economies and and politics. And that has become, I think, very much a theme in recent years in Western Europe as well as the United States.

13:16.39
irp2019
Yeah, it's it's a really interesting point that you've both raised. And I think that's ah at the end of nearly all podcasts, I ask guests, and we have a variety of guests talking about a huge variety of different topics on the podcast. But when I ask what is the biggest risk that concerns you, it's amazing how often that topic is actually raised by a variety of people about that. That's concern about that mistrust, that growing mistrust in perceived slow and ineffective governments and a decline in and trust in in the democratic process.

13:45.73
irp2019
You mentioned conspiracy theories. You talked about the Great Replacement Theory. Of course, we've all heard of QAnon and and beliefs around many of of the beliefs that have come out of that. And these have fueled lots of far-right extremist actions and I think provided a unifying narrative for what might otherwise be quite disparate groups across many countries.

14:06.28
irp2019
You discussed why conspiracy theories are so popular. And I think confirmation virus, which is something that we've discussed a lot on the International West Podcast, is perhaps part of the reason because it's easy to find examples that justify our beliefs, whatever the topic is, whether it's about diet exercise, ah how we invest our money. There's always examples of someone on the extreme that we can use as well. Look, it does work. Or look, it doesn't work.

14:29.33
irp2019
But I wonder if you can help us understand what is the role that these conspiracy theories are playing in shaping the broader far-right movement and and maybe even electoral trends, especially when you know the world's richest man and successful business leaders and you know successful politicians in the US and the UK are sprouting many of these things that many mainstream academics, think tanks and and other politicians would say are clearly lies or not fact.

14:57.54
irp2019
yeah What is the role of these conspiracy theories today?

15:02.40
Bruce Hoffman
justify and legitimize violence in essence because if the system is so rotted and so corrupt then there can be no other solution than to pull it down. And this is why in the book we talk about the theory of accelerationism, which is actually a Marxist theory from the the mid 19th century, therefore left wing, but it's now been adopted not just by the extreme left in the West generally speaking, but also by the extreme right. And it's this fervent belief that politics has become so

15:35.37
Bruce Hoffman
corrupted, so paralyzed, and society so riven by these external conspiratorial influences, that the only solution is revolution. And the only solution is to pull down the system. And all revolutionaries are fundamentally utopianists. They they promise us a better world at the at the end of this violence that rarely materializes. But in the current circumstance,

16:01.35
Bruce Hoffman
of paralysis, of ineffectuality, of ineptitude. it It's like a siren call. It has just tremendous appeal. It's a simplistic message, and now you can be empowered to actually make the change you believe in, in essence.

16:18.81
Jacob Ware
Just to add to that too, I think one of the one of the quotes that I think really captures this moment perhaps better than anything else is a quote that was delivered by a ah former counselor to or former advisor to US President Trump when early in his administration, he was in a spat with the media about the size of his inauguration crowd. And she said on the she said on TV,

16:48.57
Jacob Ware
Well, you have your facts. We have alternative facts. And that we all laughed at that at the time. and We all kind of know giggle at that experience. But that truly is the reality of American politics today. um People live in alternate ah realities, alternate information environments. You saw that very clearly with the 2020 election and you know, whether it was legitimate or not. It's roughly pretty close to 50-50 in our country of people who believe the election, something as fundamental as the election was legitimate or not. It is very hard to construct, I think, lasting counterterrorism measures, of course, but also just lasting

17:31.68
Jacob Ware
um lasting efforts to to build better resilience, build more unity in our country when we actually live in and two different worlds of alternative facts. It captures the zeitgeist perfectly.

17:49.19
irp2019
Yeah, it really does. And we actually had a ah great conversation with Professor Roger Burrows about alt-rights and how they're influencing the upcoming US election on Episode 177 of the podcast. And we we briefly explored the concept of accelerationism, which, as you said, it's an advocating for the collapse of society to bring about that revolutionary change. And this is a concept which we're increasingly seeing linked and associated with far-right terrorism.

18:19.58
irp2019
I made the mistake, I was speaking to a ah board recently and we were talking about the US s elections and the implications that we were seeing on trade flows, on currency exchanges and the impact on European businesses. And I talked about some of the risk factors and some of the things that we were monitoring and the words ah ah civil unrest and and the words revolution. and i And I wasn't saying that I was predicting revolution or I wasn't predicting civil war, but those words did come about by math in ah and a collection of other sentences. and Those were the only words that were heard by one of the board members. And he said, you're not surely advocating that revolution or civil war is going to work here. And I said, no, no, I'm not. I'm not. And I clarified exactly what I what i did mean. But it was interesting to hear you you mention those words yourself, Bruce. could Can you both, and I'd be interested to hear both of your opinions about the role of accelerationism in shaping far right tactics and and terrorism and you know this possible desire for revolution. you know where is this Where is this potentially going?

19:17.67
Bruce Hoffman
I often think that you know the cinema, for example, is a reflection of of what's going on in society now. And if you pause and think for a moment, almost 30 years ago, there was a hit film, Independence Day, where aliens destroy the White House and come from outer space. And we all laughed at that and at the impossibility of something like that occurring. And yet this year, a film was released actually by an English director.

19:45.91
Bruce Hoffman
um titled Civil War, which was about a civil war in the United States. And one of the key scenes in the film, I don't think I'm giving anything away, is the White House under assault. And after the events of January 6, 2021, when the Capitol was under assault, it was entirely plausible. So that reflected, I think, the power of accelerationism. It's this belief that the time is particularly opportune, that you have a leader, for example, who may have been deprived of his well-earned elected position by this global conspiracy, and therefore we have no choice but not only to rise up to, but in fact it becomes incumbent upon one to accelerate the collapse of this corrupt, inequitable system that is no longer functioning properly.

20:39.98
Bruce Hoffman
And in that film, Civil War, there's a haunting ah haunting question that's asked. I don't think I'm also giving away a key scene, but we're one of the protagonists asks, what kind of an American are you? um That becomes the big question. I mean, everybody nowadays styles themselves as a patriot and is upholding the true ultimate values that the founding fathers endowed to the American people But that, of course, is interpreted in a variety of ways and sometimes in two diametrically opposed ways. But that's become almost the ultimate question right now.

21:16.16
Jacob Ware
it was the question that we asked in the introduction of our book um which of course is written at the end when we come to the we kind of try to synthesize everything together everything we've learned throughout the course of our writing and we come to this question are we heading to civil war it's not a frivolous question Bruce and I argue no the big reason being um geographic right we don't have in our country right now, a hard division like north-south or east-west like we had in the 1860s that would support a secessionist movement that would allow for civil war. Our divides are more urban-rural and so you're more likely to have

21:57.07
Jacob Ware
sustained insurgency dynamics, maybe something like you saw in Northern Ireland. Of course, that can be very damaging, right? It's not like that's that civil unrest you were talking about with your with your board, right? That can still be very upsetting for for kind of harmony and and stability.

22:15.44
Jacob Ware
but But civil war revolution, that is absolutely the end goal for the accelerationists themselves. You see it in the language that they that they use. They talk constantly about how this act of violence is and intended to inspire a follow-on attack about how this is intended to accelerate a race war in which we will emerge victorious in the aftermath. We will emerge like a phoenix from the ashes.

22:42.53
Jacob Ware
So that is the end goal. The problem they have is that our societies, those those ideas are very unpopular. People don't want civil war and race war and our societies are resilient against it. So I don't know the level of violence, the level of accelerationist attacks that we would need to see for that to become a real scenario. um Presumably, you know we would already be at a catastrophic level of terrorism in our country for for race war or civil war to even be something that would come across the radar.

23:15.63
Bruce Hoffman
If I could add, you know as as we write in the book, pun punditry and predictions are hardly prophecy. And there may be all of these currents and there may be films that even depict it, but it doesn't mean that's going to be The result, but the one thing we do talk about in the book is if the motive and the intention is there, the means are certainly present in the sense that the United States is unique in the world as having the most the most numerous armed private citizenry. In fact, um in the United States, there are more firearms in private hands than the next 25 countries of the world combined.

23:58.01
Bruce Hoffman
roughly there's you know one firearm for every 123 Americans. And the next number two country on the list with 53 is Yemen. And that's, we could agree, is an enormously violent country to begin with. So that fact that weaponry is so available here, and also the fact that mass shootings have unfortunately and tragically become commonplace in the United States, whether they're completely apolitical, for instance,

24:26.23
Bruce Hoffman
and very unfortunately in schools, or whether they're politically motivated as well, such as we saw at Charleston in 2014, in Pittsburgh at the Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, in El Paso also in 2018.

24:44.62
Bruce Hoffman
So in other words, the means and methods of engaging in this violence are literally within the grasp of most Americans, and it's why we have to take this threat seriously, but also bear in mind, there is indeed this salience of mass shootings, but until the September 11th, 2001 attacks, the terrorist incident that caused the greatest lethality in the United States was the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City.

25:12.75
Bruce Hoffman
And that was a massive a truck bomb explosion that was perpetrated basically by two individuals.

25:21.75
irp2019
Thanks very much for unpacking that. I'd like to change text just a little bit. but We'll come back to some of these points, because I think they're really important. But I think it'd be keen to understand, we spoke a little bit at the start about some of the concepts in your book that you've explored. And we know that terrorist organizations have really gone to go on a significant process of transformation, and they're now much more fluid and much more network-based. And I think this, the globalization and this, you know, what would be considered a, you know, an excellent form of learning and and shared learnings around the globe, that globalization of ideologies,

25:57.19
irp2019
I think is one of the reasons why extremist movements in one country are managing to inspire actions in others and also to learn lessons from from other far-right groups. And I think we've seen this cross-pollination of ideas and tactics between far-right groups in the US, Europe, Latin America. So I'd be keen to hear from you how this networking evolution has affected our ability, if I can call us the good guys, the the more centrist and the security forces our ability to monitor and encounter these extremists and terrorist threats today.

26:33.22
Jacob Ware
In 1988, the US s government brought 14 white supremacists to trial at a place called Fort Smith, Arkansas, on charges of seditious conspiracy. So the government tried to prove that the white supremacist movement intended to overthrow the government. They were acquitted, which itself was ah kind of an important message to the movement. But one individual, a former member of the KKK and of a neo-Nazi group called the Aryan Nations, realized that the movement had almost been completely decapitated. So he moved underground. He created a magazine, a journal called The Seditionist. And in 1992, he published a treatise called Leaderless Resistance.

27:19.95
Jacob Ware
Leaderless resistance is a strategy of terrorism, of insurgency, guerrilla warfare that basically argues if we operate as organized groups with hierarchy, with bureaucracy, with finances, with in-person meetings, we leave ourselves vulnerable to infiltration. So instead of doing that, instead of operating as groups and and possibly having another trial where they can decapitate our movement,

27:49.63
Jacob Ware
Let's operate leaderless in a leaderless fashion as small cells, as individuals in a network underground and let those cells and individuals lie dormant until the time comes to to strike and accelerate that that race war we mentioned. Leaderless resistance is often colloquially referred to as lone act of terrorism.

28:12.44
Jacob Ware
And in tandem with social media, it has proven completely revolutionary for the violent far right. I would also argue for Salafi jihadist actors as well, who have who have often opted for the lone actor model. um So now we have these much more decentralized networks. They they thrive online in both public and and darker spaces. They exchange ideas.

28:39.45
Jacob Ware
and um you know re reinvent or recalibrate ideologies for their own domestic local contexts and ultimately they inspire individuals who break off break off those online spaces into various offline ah places, locations, real world targets and conduct acts of terrorism without ever revealing their footprint until until it's too late. um It is an incredibly powerful tool of of ah of terrorism. it is

29:13.59
Jacob Ware
probably the biggest challenge that we face, I would argue the social media challenge is still the million dollar question in our field. um And we have never, I think, we've never gotten ahead of this nexus of lone actors radicalizing radicalizing online in and disorganized networks.

29:35.17
Jacob Ware
um So i Bruce and I attempt to make recommendations about social media, about ways to ah to infiltrate these groups, but it remains an overwhelming challenge. It remains the defining challenge for our for our field.

29:54.34
irp2019
And additionally now, we're seeing globally that there's several US allies, so allies of the US that have now designated American-based extremist groups as terrorist organizations. What does this tell us about the global reach and and perhaps what does this tell us about the domestic situation in the US when it comes to extremism and terrorism?

30:14.32
Bruce Hoffman
This was always the dream of white supremacists in the United States. And in fact, in the early 1980s, they were being arrested for sending hate mail um internationally, which was actually a federal crime in the US. They were sending it to like-minded hate mongers in Canada and West Germany in particular. And this led to, you know, Jacob was talking about the phenomena of leaderless resistance, which Lewis Beam um at least harnessed and articulated for the for the white supremacist movement. He was also the one that began to use what was very primitive digital media to radicalize and recruit um using

30:56.00
Bruce Hoffman
ah computers that had about forty eight k memory which is basically a single letter on a powerpoint slide nowadays um and something called modems um that we plugged a computer into a phone jack a landline phone jack i should say and this was designed to propagate the u.s.

31:15.09
Bruce Hoffman
version of white supremacism around the world. Well obviously social media has facilitated that to a greater extent now and I've been studying terrorism for almost five decades at this moment since I first went to graduate school in 1976 and one of the things I could never in my career have ever imagined was that the closest allies of the United States would be designating American entities and individuals as terrorist organizations. I mean if you think that the the longest, most open borders in the history of mankind have been those between the United States and Canada.

31:51.75
Bruce Hoffman
And Canada has designated five terrorist groups and one individual as terrorists um that are based in the United States. The United Kingdom has designated two. Australia has designated two. New Zealand one. So think about that for a second. Not only are those countries all very close allies of one another sharing the same form of governance, liberal democratic state, same common language, English,

32:17.19
Bruce Hoffman
They're all members of an historically unprecedented intelligence sharing arrangement, the Five Eyes. And here you have a situation where the four other Five Eyes have both singled out entities or individuals in the United States and cited them.

32:34.27
Bruce Hoffman
as terrorists because of the impact that they're having on their own countries. And this is enormously dangerous, ah corrosive, and poisonous. And it basically puts the United States in a similar position ah that we put other countries in right after the September 11, 2001 attacks. I mean, the United States and many other Western countries singled out Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, for instance, for at least tacitly allowing poisonous ideologies to emanate beyond their borders. Well, the United States is now in that exact same position.

33:11.39
Jacob Ware
Bruce and I wrote an article in September 2023 for Foreign Affairs Magazine, which is our in-house publication at the Council on Foreign Relations, called American Hatred Goes Global. And the argument was America has emerged as an exporter of far-right extremism and far-right terrorism. um the The big case study in in that article is the the election riots on January 8th, 2023 in Brazil, clearly inspired by what happened on January 6th.

33:40.35
Jacob Ware
Brazil is a BRICS country, so it is a major battleground in this new era of strategic strategic competition. um However, at that time, I think we were mainly looking at the US as an exporter of ideas, the US as ah as kind of um ah or the the osmosis of ideas out of the US into into other countries. We weren't necessarily seeing direct tactical connections.

34:07.67
Jacob Ware
um In September 2024, this year, two individuals were arrested, two US nationals were arrested here for leading something called the Terrogram Collective, which was a neo-Nazi network on Telegram. um And within those um within those charging documents, the US government accused these two individuals of inciting, and that's the word they used, inciting acts of terrorism in Slovakia and in Turkey.

34:38.17
Jacob Ware
Now, these are NATO countries where the us US persons are actively inciting soliciting acts of violence. That is catastrophic for US foreign policy for US soft power, again, at a critical moment in foreign policy in strategic competition. We really need to be thinking about um the ideas that we are we are exporting abroad because The US, I believe, has typically been viewed as the exemplar of democracy elections. um If that's still the case, we're we're providing a pretty pretty devastating model for for other countries.

35:19.59
irp2019
For sure. And you mentioned the Brazil riots. Now, given the lessons from the 6th of January 2021 in the USA and the extremely similar events after the Brazil presidential election on the 8th of January 2023,

35:35.48
irp2019
How do you think these events have further influenced far-right extremism and and what should security agencies and business leaders be monitoring ahead of the 2024 US elections? Because I know many people had hoped that, you know, perhaps the far right would have seen that Trump left them high and dry. Many of them were prosecuted. and Perhaps these these movements would would die away. But that doesn't seem to be the case. So what are the lessons that we should be learning and we should be monitoring in the coming days and weeks?

36:06.89
Bruce Hoffman
All right, I'll start. I think we're in an unprecedented period. As Jacob and I have long argued um in a variety of publications we've been writing for the past year and a half is that regardless of who actually wins, I think we could anticipate some ah level of violence in the United States. We've already seen, for example, two attempted assassinations on a presidential candidate in the months leading up to the election, which has never happened before in the history of of the US. We've seen serious threats to both candidates.

36:44.17
Bruce Hoffman
um that have necessitated the intervention of of of law enforcement. And at the risk of stating the blatantly obvious, I mean, this is going to be yet another contested election. Firstly,

36:57.94
Bruce Hoffman
ah Every newspaper or every poll, I should say, has been reporting in recent days that both candidates are running basically even. There's a number of key swing states. We don't know the outcome of the election, but one candidate is already claiming that the outcome is preordained and is going to be rigged. And all those things, and going back to something I said earlier about just the proliferation or accessibility of firearms in the United States,

37:26.25
Bruce Hoffman
creates an enormously ah volatile ah situation. In fact, there was one recent poll, which I think if I'm correct, 44% of of of Firearm owners ah believe that there may be a need to resort to violence, depending on the outcome of the election. I mean, that jumps to the over 50 percentile, when it involves people have recently purchased weapons. 44% is owners of assault weapons.

38:00.72
Bruce Hoffman
believe that. It jumps to over 50% of those who have recently purchased um firearms, and I think it's at about 56% of those who have concealed weapons permits in the United States as well. So right there, I'm not saying that these people are necessarily going to use their firearms to commit violence, but when you have more than half or nearly half of people who own firearms expressing views like that, um it's a very, uncertain environment that clearly, as I said earlier, the means for engaging in violence are not theoretical, but are in fact so quite practical and quite immediate.

38:47.50
Jacob Ware
January 6th, the January 6th investigation is the largest investigation in FBI history. We have well over a thousand arrests. um I believe those arrests, the prosecutions, they're fundamentally about two things. It's about punishment and about deterrence. And I think the punishment side was was relatively effective. Obviously, we have those seditious conspiracy charges I mentioned earlier that failed in 1988, proving successful this time against leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. The caveat to all this is that the vast majority of the over 1000 people have already been released. right They committed relatively minor crimes.

39:28.66
Jacob Ware
It's the deterrent side that I think your question really focuses on and where I think we we have much less um success. The reason for that being, in the early days after January 6th, there was a bipartisan condemnation of the events that occurred. There was ah regret. There was shock that things had gotten so far out of hand.

39:50.95
Jacob Ware
But that narrative has been steadily eroded over the past four years by repeated insistence that the event was peaceful and by repeated lionizing of the people who perpetrated those crimes. Terms like political prisoners, martyrs, hostages. Most recently, the term I saw used by the former president was warriors, right? A term that actually glorifies, celebrates violence. I think that has contributed to the undermining of the deterrence against committing acts of violence on behalf of of political

40:32.44
Jacob Ware
political parties. And so I do think we are going to see election violence in the 2024 cycle. As Bruce pointed out, we already have. um And as we proceed here, we're recording two weeks before the election. As we proceed, I do think we're in a very elevated threat environment and remains to be seen how how our democracy stands up to to what's to what's coming.

41:00.90
irp2019
I mean, recent polling and and some of the data you you talked about, Bruce, but some of the recent polling indicates that a significant portion of Americans do believe that violence against the government might be justified under various circumstances. And we've looked into this on behalf of several clients and because the numbers just sound staggering. You hear them thrown down on different podcasts and you're like, that can't be right. You do a little bit of fact checking and you're like, oh my gosh, that is a legitimate journal or a publication that's that's done this, that's collected this data. And Two thirds of Americans believe that the federal government is a legitimate legitimate target published in one academic medical journal research by the United States Democracy Center showed that 20% of respondents said that violence could be at least a little bit justified if the election was fair and free and this number not surprisingly doubled when respondents believed that the election losses were unfair.

41:51.17
irp2019
So I wonder, how how is this shift in public sentiment? And I have to assume and hope that it's a shift. Now, yes, America did have a ah civil war in the 1800s, but since then, yeah as you said before, Jacob, it it has been the the beacon of democracy and you know that was one of the Rumsfeld and Cheney doctrines, wasn't it you know spreading democracy around the world and and and the piece that that would bring to to our our global community. But how is this shift in public sentiment in the US complicating efforts to counter extremism and and to really be advocating globally that democracy is the right form of government?

42:29.37
Bruce Hoffman
It's enormously alarming that basically this is a bipartisan issue. I mean the fact that first first of all in a liberal democracy that it's not nil is troubling in its own right because of course we change governments through the electoral process which until the last time had always been completely peaceful. um But the fact that it's usually, you're right, it's in the the third percentile, which is significantly alarming, it tends to be higher amongst those who identify as Republicans.

43:01.10
Bruce Hoffman
But the fact that it can be upwards into the 20th percentile of people who identify as Democrats, I think, speaks to the frustration, ah the polarization and the sense of disenfranchisement that Americans feel from their system.

43:16.42
Bruce Hoffman
of, of, of governance and, um you know, how we fix that and how we write that I think is one of the bigger questions but certainly the existence of the electoral college has become enormously problematical because regardless of who might win the popular vote.

43:33.15
Bruce Hoffman
What matters is which states went to one candidate or the other in is in in consuming electoral um votes and electoral college votes. And you know prior to January 6, 2021, no one really paid much attention to the electoral college, but everybody's paying a lot of attention to it now.

43:51.33
Bruce Hoffman
Certainly the phenomena of gerrymandering, where in response to the censuses that are regularly held in the United States, state legislatures determine congressional boundaries, has led to a situation that everybody admits is broken, where in other words, it favors the incumbents, but even more so,

44:12.08
Bruce Hoffman
favors the extreme wings of either party, whereas centrists who might appeal on a nonpartisan basis to independence are basically squeezed out and that the number of centrists in Congress has consistently shrunk over the past two decades is also an enormous problem because that means the desire to work across the aisle to come up with with bipartisan or nonpartisan solutions to the most pressing policy issues affecting the American public becomes almost impossible. And we see it with the current Congress. i You know, Jacob and I made the rounds of of Capitol Hill after our book was published and I remember um

44:51.48
Bruce Hoffman
ah I can't remember if it was a congressional staffer, though, or a member of Congress said, look, on ah on an average basis, the U.S. Congress ah passes about 125 acts of legislation ah per session. This year, it's fewer than 25, which, of course, feeds the sense that government is paralyzed and sclerotic and that there can be no change unless the quote unquote people rise up and impose that change. And I think that's why we're seeing those kinds of ah responses to various surveys.

45:29.45
irp2019
Bruce, you you earlier talked about the means and motives and opportunities and and you know some of the things that criminal groups and terrorist organizations, and some of the ingredients that we need to see. There's been a growing concern about the infiltration of far-right extremist ideologies into military and law enforcement ranks around the world. We've seen entire units in Germany disbanded. We know there's problems in in countries like Austria and Italy with ah ah infiltration from far-right groups.

45:56.13
irp2019
Extremists often view these institutions as crucial targets for recruitment and influence. So if we look at the targeting of of veterans and existing military and police personnel, how significant is the issue of far-right infiltration into our military and law enforcement communities? And what makes these demographics particularly vulnerable to recruitment from these far-right extremist groups?

46:20.59
Jacob Ware
I'm glad you mentioned veterans because... In our story, in our work, we do find that that is is the core of the issue. If you divide um this this question into three categories, right you have you have people who are radicalized before their service, who seek to enter the military. um You have radicalization that happens inside the service, and then you have people who radicalize as veterans.

46:51.54
Jacob Ware
This is an enormously radioactive question in the US. It's been extremely controversial when we've tried to discuss it. And the reason for that is people think you're talking really about that middle category. People think you're saying that the military is overrun with neo-Nazis, and you're saying that you know it's causing a major threat to to the homeland. We find overwhelmingly we're looking at the first and the third category. So yes, we do have people who seek to infiltrate the military.

47:19.63
Jacob Ware
and um get the training, get the logistics and communications expertise, get the credibility that they can then bring back to the movement, bring back to their groups. That absolutely is a trend. And then we see radicalization in the veteran community sometimes sometimes decades after service um due to you know due to an inability to...

47:44.87
Jacob Ware
assimilate into civilian life or due to mental health issues like post-traumatic stress disorder or to a search for for brotherhood or community. um ah favorite One of my favorite quotes from our book is ah is a quote from one of the from an army investigator who who responds to the the allegation or the question that you know we're fundamentally talking about a very small number of people by saying,

48:11.15
Jacob Ware
We are talking about a very small number of people, but they're like cyanide in your drink. They can do a lot of damage. I think that's the best way to think about it. The military, talking from the US perspective here, the military is not overrun with extremists, but the extremists who are inside the military can do a tremendous amount of damage. And we saw that recently, um if you recall the the National Guardsmen here in the US s in Massachusetts,

48:38.07
Jacob Ware
who leaked massive amounts of classified information about Russia and Ukraine, about Israel, I think, um on social media to his kind of buddies in a right wing, far right edgelord discord chat. um That can't happen. It can't happen. So we have to find some way of of ensuring that either the vetting is better or we are we're better kind of managing people's social media platforms when they're in the service.

49:12.88
Jacob Ware
That's a big question. And then, of course, the veteran point, of the veteran side of this. We have seen acts of violence in the US perpetrated by by veterans. The deadliest domestic terrorist attack in our history was perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh, a very decorated US Army veteran. January 6th, there were over 100 veterans who were involved in that incident. And so it is a question that we're trying to approach and trying to to discuss from ah from a standpoint of um of protection of these individuals from from forces who are seeking them out and seeking their their expertise their skills for their own groups military veterans who have who have served

49:54.05
Jacob Ware
served our country, often served in combat. right They come home as as heroes and it's important that we find ways to ensure that they are being well looked after, that they can assimilate effectively into civilian life and that they are not vulnerable to these to these forces that are seeking them out.

50:13.22
irp2019
Thanks for clarifying that, Jacob. And I really appreciate the the way you broke that down into pre-service members, existing members and the and the the veterans and the fact that it is a small portion. But as you said, they do bring skills and experience that does make it particularly potent. So thanks for exploring that.

50:29.69
irp2019
And so there is so many more topics I'd love to explore, and I'm sure the listeners would love me to ask you, but we do have to draw a line somewhere. But I would love to hear from you both. The the question I alluded to earlier, when you do look around the world, you both travel and speak very broadly, and you you speak in a variety of forums. When you're traveling around the world and you you get back home, what are the risks that you see that concern you the most? Maybe Bruce, do you want to kick off?

50:56.33
Bruce Hoffman
Well, I think actually, Dom, you summarized the risks very much in talking about that those surveys that show that sizable numbers of Americans have lost faith in their democratic system and that that's not, I think, unique or exclusive to the United States. I mean, we see this phenomena, the rise of populist parties elsewhere, um citizenry, ah embracing authoritarian solutions and conspiracy theories to ah much more, you know, to to far more complex issues that are easily explained by the theories, but in fact have a much more complicated pedigree. I mean, that's my biggest concern and my biggest worry. i mean

51:41.20
Bruce Hoffman
I couldn't have imagined that January 6, 2021 could have occurred, that we'd see that kind of violence in the United States. And that means that we have to like sort of you know suspend belief over what could be next at this very highly contested 2024 presidential election. So what worries me most is really the future of democracy. And we know for a fact, too, that there are many enemies of democracy, authoritarian states throughout the world that are taking advantage of the advent of social media.

52:12.92
Bruce Hoffman
of the ubiquity of of conspiracy theories and of misinterpretation information to undermine our societies and undermine our systems of of of governance. So I think, you know, just as we ended the final chapter of our book with the policy recommendations, we quoted um Ronald Reagan and his inaugural speech as governor of California um in the late 1960s, when he said that, you know, freedom is something that is only a generation generation away ah from extinction and we have to preserve and protect it ah zealously because people who have lost that freedom have almost never in history regained it.

52:56.96
Jacob Ware
Let me reflect briefly on what I think is the major challenge that we're facing in counter-terrorism today. um It relates to both the leaderless resistance and the social media elements. Terrorists are getting younger. And when when Bruce and I started first looking at this question, we were noticing terrorists in their early 20s, in their late teens.

53:21.11
Jacob Ware
Now we're seeing a lot of people in their early teens, 13, 14 years old being arrested. And in fact, when Bruce and I went on book tour, we met with a lot of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, national security agencies here in the US and abroad. And when we raised this issue,

53:43.17
Jacob Ware
This was the problem that overwhelmingly people agreed with. They said, yes, we are seeing that as an issue in our cases. This is, I think, the five-alarm fire in counterterrorism right now is we are dealing now with children.

53:58.55
Jacob Ware
They cannot and should not be approached. ah These cases should not be approached from a law enforcement and intelligence and national security standpoint. They are public health issues and we really have ah very little response. So as we proceed now over the next few years, I expect us to start to see more attacks perpetrated by ah children who are radicalized into these networks um and and for us to really kind of have to have a ah national reckoning um about what's happening with our kids and how we how we push back against that.

54:33.46
irp2019
Yeah, that's extremely concerning, but thanks very much for for for raising that one. I think you know we're we're very aware that the disillusionment

54:39.33
Bruce Hoffman
Thank you.

54:43.40
irp2019
that many people are having towards democracy and and recognizing that much of the unrest is being strategically fueled by foreign powers and capitalizing on you know anger and upset that that citizens are already having.

54:54.49
irp2019
but you know, the inclusion of terrorists getting younger. I think, you know, we do think of 18, 19-year-old ah youths that ah that are struggling, but the the inclusion of 13 and 14-year-olds getting arrested is is certainly that something needs to be looked at and addressed very, very urgently. But Jacob, Bruce, thank you very much for coming on the International West Podcast today.

55:17.33
Bruce Hoffman
You're very welcome. Thank you very much for having us.

55:20.23
Jacob Ware
Anytime, thank you so much.

55:22.23
irp2019
Well, that was a fantastic conversation with Jacob Ware and Bruce Hoffman, two of the world's leading experts on political violence and extremism and co-authors of the book, God, Guns and Sedition. And we'll link to the book in the show notes below. Today's podcast was coordinated and produced by Daisy Austin-Horn. I'm Dominic Bowen, host of the International Wiz Podcast. Thanks very much for listening. We'll speak again next week.