Racially motivated extremists represent the most lethal threats of domestic terrorism to the United States, according to a non-confidential intelligence report that warned that the threats could increase this year.
The blunt assessment, in a report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, echoes warnings made by US officials, including FBI director Christopher Wray, who testified earlier this month that the threat of domestic violent extremism was “metastasizing” all over the country.
Merrick Garland, the attorney general, also described this as a top priority, as his justice department works to prosecute hundreds of people who participated in the Mafia’s attack on the United States Congress in January.
The riot exposed the threat posed by domestic extremists and prompted Joe Biden to assign his intelligence officers the task of studying the extent of the problems. A brief, unclassified summary of this threat assessment was made public on Wednesday; a complete confidential report was submitted to the White House and Congress.
“Today’s report highlights how we face the greatest threat from racially or ethnicly motivated violent extremists, especially white supremacists and violent extremist militias,” said Democratic Representative Adam Schiff of California, chairman of the House’s intelligence committee.
Intelligence officials said in their assessment that extremists viewed as risks of violence are motivated by a number of ideologies.
Events such as anger over restrictions imposed during the coronavirus pandemic and belief in the unmasked narrative that the November presidential election was fraudulent “will almost certainly” cause additional violence in 2021, the report said. Several courts and Donald Trump’s own justice department maintained the integrity of the election.
The report states that the most lethal threat is posed by racially motivated violent extremists, who the authorities say are the most likely to carry out mass attacks against American civilians, and militia groups, who are seen as targets of police and government officials. government. The threat from militias increased in 2020 and is expected to increase again this year, according to the report’s summary.
The report says white supremacists exhibit what the authorities say are “the most persistent and worrying transnational connections”.
Other domestic extremist categories that concern government investigators include animal rights and environmental activists, anti-abortion protesters, anarchists and people who call themselves sovereign citizens who “believe they are immune to government authority and laws”.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said that the distribution of white supremacist propaganda almost doubled in America in 2020, with 5,125 reported incidents of racist, anti-Semitic and other hateful messages.
ADL said that 2020 had the “highest level” of cases of this advertisement since it started monitoring the phenomenon – an average of about 14 cases daily.
The reports were released hours after a sniper killed eight people in various massage parlors in the Atlanta area – six of the dead victims were of Asian descent and seven were women – raising fears that the wave of motivation was racial. The shootings occurred amid an increase in anti-Asian prejudice in the United States, which included harassment and physical attacks.