The ISIS-inspired attack in New Orleans highlights how online extremism and domestic political divisions have created a “perfect storm” for radicalization in the United States, and law enforcement It is struggling to keep track of an increasingly fragmented threat, experts say.
Experts say it’s easier than ever to find and access extremist communities online, the threat is greater than ever, and the ideology of those carrying out attacks is more divided than ever.
“The FBI and law enforcement are currently dealing with a diverse and complex threat landscape,” said Seamus Hughes, senior fellow and policy director at the university’s National Center for Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education. said. Originally from Omaha, Nebraska. “So that makes things a little bit more difficult for law enforcement.”
“There’s a certain level of polarization in the United States, and that’s an important factor,” he said. “There are algorithms in the online environment that are set to make you angry, and all of that contributes to a perfect storm of factors that lead to increased radicalization.”
According to the federal government, the primary terrorist threat to the United States today is from lone actors inspired by extremist ideologies. Their ideologies are wide-ranging. As in the 2022 Buffalo supermarket shooting, most of the attackers are far-right. However, in some cases, as in the case of the New Orleans attacks, the underlying ideology is radical Islamism. Sometimes far-left, anti-Trump, or ideological influences are involved, as in the 2017 attack on Republican lawmakers and staff at a baseball practice field outside Washington, and the apparent assassination attempt on Trump in Florida last year. In some cases, it is something that FBI Director Christopher Wray called this “salad bar extremism.”
However, the vast majority of people who become radicalized never commit acts of terrorism.
“Radicalization is not the problem. … The problem is mobilization to violence,” said psychologist John Hogan, director of the Violent Extremism Research Group at Georgia State University. “There are some commonalities, but we haven’t made much progress in terms of predicting who will become involved in terrorism.”
Experts in the psychology of terrorism say espoused ideals are often secondary to people who become radicalized into violence.
“More and more people seem to be choosing their ideology to fit their grievances,” Hogan said. “They try to find reasons to understand what they have already decided they want to do.”
What we’ve seen so far about New Orleans attacker Shamsud-Din Jabbar seems to fit that profile. Mr. Jabar seems to have been observing Muslims for many years, but he was not a radical Muslim. And authorities say that before the attack, he had posted a video online professing support for the Islamic State terrorist group, initially intending to harm his family and friends, but subsequent news headlines drew attention to it. He said he was worried that it would disappear. Concerned about a “war between believers and unbelievers,” he decided to kill the stranger instead.
Authorities have not yet confirmed a motive for the car bomb detonated in a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas that same day, but experts say its political symbolism and its connection to the New Orleans attack, carried out by a veteran actor, have not yet been determined. He pointed out the similarities. Use the rented car alone as a weapon.
“There’s symbolism in both attacks,” said Christopher O’Leary, a former FBI counterterrorism official now with the Soufan Group, a global intelligence consultancy. “One had an ISIS flag, and the other was a Tesla truck parked, perhaps intentionally, in front of the Trump Hotel. As with most terrorist attacks, there was no violence or damage. It was limited.”
The real motivation for nearly all such attacks is “a desire for importance and importance,” said psychologist Arie Kruglanski, co-director of the National Terrorism Research Center at the University of Maryland. “That desire is thought to be satisfied by committing acts of violence for some cause. . . . The ideological content or the narrative content is not important.”
Why do people become radicalized?
Experts agree that there is no single characteristic of extremist attackers, and that terrorism today is more diverse than ever before. However, the process and risk factors for radicalization are well understood.
“Radicalization is the process by which a person adopts an increasingly negative view of an enemy group and endorses increasingly harmful actions against the enemy group. People tend to become radicalized when faced with certainty or chaos, but this is not always the case,” said JM Berger, extremism researcher at the Terrorism Center. Counter-Extremism and Terrorism at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies said in an email.
Kruglanski said social trends over the past few decades, from the effects of the 2008 financial crisis to the pandemic, have exacerbated feelings of dislocation and instability for many people. “When people feel powerless, whether it’s immigration or economic inequality or job loss due to the pandemic, they get motivated.” That’s when someone becomes motivated because of an extremist ideology. You may be forced to take violent action.
Recent research has begun to focus on how veterans in particular, like the perpetrators of both New Year’s Day attacks, are more susceptible to transitioning from radicalization to violent extremist behavior, with military experience making them more likely to attempt terrorism. and is known to be a potential risk factor for actual terrorism.
“Veterans are effective. It’s because they’re skilled. It’s because they care about people other than themselves,” she said in testimony before Congress about the risks for veterans in 2022. Hogan explained. These qualities make them not only more susceptible but also more employable. “These are the qualities that make them attractive to terrorist groups. We warned Congress about this two years ago and it fell on deaf ears.”
Experts say the details revealed so far about Jabbar follow a known pattern of military veterans becoming radicalized into violence.
In the years leading up to the New Orleans attack, he had gone through a third divorce, racked up large debts, and lost his corporate job. According to divorce court records from January 2022, he detailed business losses, tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt and more than $27,000 in past-due mortgage payments. By August of that year, only $2,012 remained in his bank account, according to divorce filings.
It is still unclear exactly when and how Jabbar became radicalized to the ISIS ideology he espoused in videos en route to the attack, but experts say his methods follow the pattern of ISIS attacks. It is said that there is. The New Orleans attack was the second in a row on U.S. soil to be linked in some way to a foreign terrorist organization, following the 2016 nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, where the attacker had pledged allegiance to ISIS. This was the second deadliest incident since November 2011.
“You can’t always prevent all attacks.”
After years of declining activity, the United States is expected to see more Islamist terrorist attacks in 2024, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, which tracks extremist attacks and confirmed plots across the United States. and plot thwarting increased.
Oren Segal, the center’s deputy director, said he had been concerned about this change even before the New Orleans attack. “It was alarming to us that after years of lull, there were signs that people who subscribed to this ideology were willing to participate in this movement.”
“Some of this may be a response to the regrouping of overseas groups, and some of this may be a response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he said. “There were many signs that this type of activity was increasing.”
Segal’s center publishes data on terrorist attacks and conspiracies in the United States, including related ideologies. Current counts show that Islamic extremist incidents account for a much smaller proportion of incidents than those related to far-right ideology.
Federal law enforcement agencies have highlighted similar trends for years. According to a 2024 Department of Justice report, the threat of Islamist terrorism is not going away in the United States, but far-right attacks continue to outnumber all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.
Over the past five years, the FBI has increased its efforts to combat domestic terrorism based on these growing threats. The agency has consistently conducted approximately 1,000 active investigations per year against Islamic extremists for a decade, but from 2020 to 2022 it more than doubled its investigations into threats from fringe political extremists, primarily from the far right. , and the number of active investigations per year jumped from 1,000 to 2,700. According to data published in 2023.
Berger, the Middlebury extremist researcher, said law enforcement has been successful in thwarting Islamic extremist attacks in the United States in recent years, and the reason there have been so few successes is because the FBI This was partly due to the complete breach of communication channels. But this success makes New Orleans’ offense even more outstanding.
“What we will find out in the coming days and weeks is whether we missed a huge opportunity to prevent this attack, or is it just the law of averages?” Berger said. “Sadly, you can’t always prevent all attacks.”
The re-election of Donald Trump and the inauguration of a new administration has also increased the likelihood of attacks related to left-wing and anti-Trump ideology and sentiment. Ryan Routh, who was indicted in Florida this fall on suspicion of attempting to assassinate President Trump, was said to have been furious with the president over his policies toward Iran and Ukraine.
“With President Trump back in office, terrorism experts and experts expect we will see a more radical left emerge, albeit with a slower burn,” said Soufan Group’s O’Leary. ” he said. If he had won, I think there would have been immediate political violence.
