Mike Jensen

Correctly Assessing U.S. Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence A recent published report suffers from fatal analytic flaws and risks feeding false narratives about political violence and polarization.

With @amycooter.bsky.social, some thoughts on political violence and the weaponization of a misleading CSIS report on the threat from the far-left. www.justsecurity.org/122278/corre...

In normal times, the CSIS study would produce a healthy nerd fight and that would be the extent of it. These are not normal times. Words (especially eye popping headlines) carry extra weight these days. We need to be very confident in the accuracy of our data before we make sweeping claims.

The 5 to 1 gap in far-left vs. far-right terrorist attacks/plots this year that Byman and McCabe rely to make their point disappears real quick if you consider these events to be far-right terrorism. /END

Similarly, at least 8 school-based plots and attacks this year have included ideological elements. These events have been branded NVE. While ideology was likely a secondary or tertiary motive in these cases, it was still present and it was far-right, not far-left. 7/

Casap killed his mother and stepfather to gain the independence he believed was necessary to assassinate President Trump. He was enamored with the Order of Nine Angles (O9A)—a Satantic, neo-Nazi accelerationist movement. In my view, this was a far-right terrorist plot. 6/

From this perspective, I don’t how see how the Nikita Casap case from earlier this year could be considered anything other than far-right terrorism. 5/

Similarly, neo-Fascist accelerationists (also far-right) hardly care which party is in power—they want to take down liberal democratic political systems, not own the libs or make anything great again. 4/

Indeed, prior to 2017, researchers near universally considered attacks by anti-government militias and paramilitary groups as far-right, even though they occurred during Republican and Democratic administrations. 3/

There was a time when we made judgements about these matters based on the content of someone’s beliefs and their motives, rather than which party is in office or who they voted for. 2/

Left-Wing Terrorism Is on the Rise For the first time in more than 30 years, attacks by the far left outnumber those by the far right.

I will reserve my judgment of this article until I get a chance to view the full study and data. Byman is a seasoned scholar and has produced exceptional work over the years. With that said, in my view, the insistence that “far-right” always equals “pro-Trump” is a mistake. 1/

Trump administration cuts national database tracking domestic terrorism The database, run out of the University of Maryland, was funded by a $3 million DHS cooperative agreement, went dark on Tuesday after the Trump administration made sweeping cuts to violence prevention...

Trump cuts programs to combat domestic terrorism, alarming experts
www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

Trump administration cuts national database tracking domestic terrorism The database, run out of the University of Maryland, was funded by a $3 million DHS cooperative agreement, went dark on Tuesday after the Trump administration made sweeping cuts to violence prevention...

More on the disastrous decision by DHS to stop funding terrorism and targeted violence research.
www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

As someone who has spent years collecting the data on these plots/attacks, I can confirm that all of this is true.

Killing Grants That Have Saved Lives: Trump’s Cuts Signal End to Government Work on Terrorism Prevention Tens of millions of dollars slated for violence prevention have been cut or are frozen as DOGE steamrolls the national security sector. “This is the government getting out of the terrorism business,” ...

“Current and former DHS officials say they don’t expect the prevention mission to continue in any meaningful way” www.propublica.org/article/trum...

DHS, a department that literally exists because a terrorist attack occurred on US soil, has decided, without Congressional input or approval, that it no longer has an obligation to stop terrorist attacks from occurring on US soil.

NIJ, Minerva, and now DHS.

Terrorism research portfolios gone. Just wiped out.

Years of progress, years of partnerships, years of producing actionable knowledge to make communities safer just down the toilet.

Happy to announce that our Terrorism and Targeted Violence (T2V) in the United States data portal is now live at www.start.umd.edu/t2v. We believe this is the first attempt to comprehensively track T2V events, including foiled plots and successful attacks, occurring in US cities.

As QAnon's influence on US politics appears poised to grow, a reminder that the movement's beliefs are not only bizarre, they are deadly: www.start.umd.edu/qanon-crime-...

The latest insights from CTEC’s leadership team are here. Dive in to our ongoing research and analysis into impacts of the 2024 elections on the landscape for terrorism and extremism and explore more of our recent work on our website.

🔗 www.middlebury.edu/institute/te...

For those of you interested in or studying neo-fascist accelerationism, my team partnered with @arcglobal.bsky.social to create a data dashboard of criminal activity linked to the movement. You can explore and download the data at dashboard.accresearch.org

Thanks, John. Glad to be here.