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1. CTC Sentinel: June 2023 Issue

Author:
Pierre Boussel, Kristina Hummel, Teddy Macdonald, Ashley A. Mattheis, Amarnath Amarasingam, Graham Macklin, and Marc-Andre Argentino
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
CTC Sentinel
Institution:
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
Abstract:
In this month’s feature article, Pierre Boussel provides a deep examination of the Quds Force in Syria. He writes: “The key mission of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) is to defend the Iranian Islamic Revolution and create armed militias in the countries of its ‘Axis of Resistance.’ Its organization is opaque and complex, coordinating combat operations with soft-power actions aimed at, among other initiatives, establishing a Pax Irania in the Middle East, a ‘peace’ of which it is the initiator and guarantor. Although the Quds Force’s apparatus in Syria has been under pressure from Israeli airstrikes, Tehran is sticking to its mission set: infiltrating Syrian civil society and sending fighters to the north, where the civil war will one day end, and to the south, on the edge of the Golan Heights, to establish a base against Israel if necessary.” Our interview is with Brian Nelson, the Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. He describes how his office “marshals the Department’s intelligence and enforcement functions with the dual aims of safeguarding our financial system against illicit use and also combating corrupt regimes, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats.” On May 6, 2023, Mauricio Garcia, a man with longstanding neo-Nazi views, murdered eight people in a mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets mall in Allen, Texas. Ashley Mattheis, Amarnath Amarasingam, Graham Macklin, and Marc-André Argentino look at what led to the attack. They write that the deceased perpetrator “had an ideologically fuzzy tapestry of extreme thoughts tied to rampant violence. He appeared to view neo-Nazis and other members of the extreme far-right as living the ‘real’ masculine ideal in its fullest form by their commitment to generating dominance through violent, radical, racial, and cultural action. This interaction between race and gender is an increasingly present aspect of far-right violence and needs to be better understood.”
Topic:
Counter-terrorism, Financial Crimes, Far Right, Mass Shootings, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), Political Extremism, Quds Force, Domestic Terrorism, and Axis of Resistance
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Syria, North America, United States of America, and Golan Heights

2. July 2022 Issue

Author:
Amarnath Amarasingam, Marc-Andre Argentino, Graham Macklin, Stevie Weinberg, Rodger Shanahan, and Matteo Pugliese
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
CTC Sentinel
Institution:
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
Abstract:
In this month’s feature article, Amarnath Amarasingam, Marc-André Argentino, and Graham Macklin examine the May 2022 extreme far-right live-streamed terrorist attack at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, in which 10 Black Americans were murdered “in one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent American history.” Their article examines the perpetrator, his pathway to violence, how he plotted the attack, and his writings. They argue that “the Buffalo massacre was not an isolated phenomenon. Indeed, one can only fully comprehend it when considered within a continuum of self-referential extreme-right terrorism inspired by the March 2019 terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand,” that had “a catalytic effect upon extreme-right actors, sparking a chain reaction of mass shootings.” Our interview is with Nitzan Nuriel, the former director of the Counter-Terrorism Bureau in the Prime Minister’s Office of Israel. It is the second in a series of articles and interviews examining the terrorist threat landscape in Israel and the lessons other countries can learn from Israel’s counterterrorism efforts. The series is a joint effort between the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (CTC) and the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at Reichman University in Israel. Rodger Shanahan “uses data from Australian terrorism trials in the Islamic State era to examine the degree to which mental health issues exist among terrorism offenders and whether there is any causal link.” His findings “support the view that Islamist terrorists’ mental health is largely the same as the general population and finds that there is little evidence to support any causal link between mental health and terrorism.” Matteo Pugliese profiles convicted Islamic State terror planner Muaz al-Fizani, whose jihadi career “spanned two decades and three continents” taking the hardline Tunisian extremist from Italy to Bosnia and Afghanistan and from Tunisia to Libya, from where he helped plan a wave of terror in Tunisia in 2015 that resulted in the deaths of many Western tourists.
Topic:
Counter-terrorism, Far Right, Mass Shootings, and Racism
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, North Africa, North America, Tunisia, and United States of America

3. July/August 2021 Issue

Author:
Graham Macklin, Don Rassler, Paul Cruickshank, Matthew Kriner, Jon Lewis, Yassin Musharbash, Milo Comerford, Jakob Guhl, and Elise Thomas
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
CTC Sentinel
Institution:
Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, St. Andrews University, Scotland
Abstract:
Six months have now elapsed since the events of January 6. This issue of CTC Sentinel focuses in large part on the evolving threat of extreme far-right violence around the world. In the feature article, Graham Macklin examines in detail the thwarted October 2020 conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. He writes that the plot “highlights how anti-government ‘militias’ have continued to adapt and evolve, exploiting conspiracy theories and deliberate disinformation surrounding the pandemic, to remold traditional grievances about the ‘tyranny’ of the U.S. government.” In a wide-ranging interview, Deputy to the Under-Secretary-General Raffi Gregorian, the director of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT), says the United Nations needs to counter extreme far-right violence around the world. “It’s worth reflecting about the origins of the United Nations as a group of allies fighting Nazis,” he states. “We ought to be doing this. We have a legal basis to do it. It would be nice to have a clear political signal to do it. I think we’ll get it. And I think we’ll get it because the countries that are most afflicted with it right now are ones that are also very interested in doing something about it.” The reporting of Yassin Musharbash and a team of his colleagues at Die Zeit has shed significant light on the globalization of the violent far-right. In an article that outlines and elaborates on this reporting, Musharbash writes that “right-wing extremists today, in many cases, no longer subscribe to the narrow concept of nationalism but instead imagine themselves as participants in a global struggle against a global enemy.” Matthew Kriner and Jon Lewis examine the Proud Boys, a violent far-right group alleged to have played a significant role in the U.S. Capitol siege. They write that the group has “continued to mobilize, sometimes armed and violently, in response to the continued disinformation narratives related to the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, vaccines, and more, appearing at more than 20 events in 13 cities since January 6.” Milo Comerford, Jakob Guhl, and Elise Thomas profile Action Zealandia, outlining how the extreme far-right group fits into a “small but persistent far-right extremist ecosystem” in New Zealand and its “growing links with violent extreme far-right movements internationally.” This September, to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the Combating Terrorism Center will be publishing a special issue of CTC Sentinel on the evolution of the global jihadi threat.
Topic:
Counter-terrorism, Violence, Far Right, and Proud Boys
Political Geography:
Europe, New Zealand, and United States of America

4. December 2019 Issue

Author:
Graham Macklin, Don Rassler, Daniel Koehler, and Tore Hamming
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
CTC Sentinel
Institution:
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
Abstract:
The final two years of this decade witnessed a wave of far-right terror attacks around the world, including the October 2018 synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the March 2019 gun attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand; the April 2019 Poway, California, synagogue shooting; the August 2019 attack targeting the Hispanic community at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; and the October 2019 Halle, Germany, shootings, in which a synagogue was targeted. In our feature article, Graham Macklin examines the El Paso attack, which he assesses was “part of a chain reaction fomented within the violent sub-cultural online milieus of right-wing extremism.” He writes: “This digital ecosystem is fueling a cumulative momentum, which serves to lower ‘thresholds’ to violence for those engaged in this space, both in the United States and elsewhere, as one attack encourages and inspires another.” The Halle shootings appear to have also been part of this chain reaction. In a case study, Daniel Koehler writes that the far-right extremist who carried out the shootings in the eastern German town “appears to be mainly a copycat attacker inspired by previous incidents” such as the shootings in Christchurch, Poway, and El Paso. Koehler writes: “The Halle attack reflects and evidences several trends, including the internationalization of right-wing terrorism and lone-actor terrorists fashioning their own weapons. The attack stood out because it was the first time a terrorist appears to have used homemade firearms.” Our interview is with Lieutenant General John “Jack” Shanahan, the director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center at the U.S. Department of Defense. In that role, he is responsible for accelerating the delivery of artificial intelligence-enabled capabilities, scaling the department-wide impact of AI and synchronizing AI activities to expand joint force advantages. Tore Hamming draws on court documents from a recently completed trial to examine the 2016 Copenhagen ‘Matchstick’ terror plot. The failed conspiracy saw an Islamic State ‘virtual planner’ based in Syria connect and direct two Syrian refugees living in Sweden and Germany. The case provides insights on the evolving jihadi terror threat in the West and its transnational dimension. Hamming writes: “The plot presented obvious challenges for Western security institutions. Central to its planning and execution were the virtual planner and the availability of instructions on how to construct explosives.”
Topic:
Defense Policy, Terrorism, Violent Extremism, Counter-terrorism, Far Right, and Artificial Intelligence
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, North America, and United States of America