What Is ‘Nihilistic Violent Extremism’ That’s Driving Mass Shootings In The US? | World News
Washington: A problematic pattern has caught the attention of federal prosecutors and law enforcement: “nihilistic violent extremism.” Experts warn that the term is new, but the phenomenon behind it is not. The hashtag was featured in a March warrant for a Wisconsin teenager who was active on a Telegram network called Terrorgram.
Nikita Casap, now 18, is accused of killing her mother and stepfather as part of a broader plot to assassinate President Donald Trump, spark a political revolution and save the “white race” from “Jewish-controlled” politicians, according to investigators, who cited documents allegedly found on Casap’s phone.
“Nihilistic violent extremists are motivated primarily by their hatred of society in general and their desire to bring about the collapse of society by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability,” a federal law enforcement official wrote in a court filing.
Add Zee News as Preferred Source
Such individuals often take ideas from online communities and turn them into real-world violence. They do not always fit neatly into the categories of Left or Right, white supremacist or anti-government extremism. Their focus is allegedly on destruction, chaos and the glorification of violence.
The University of Nebraska’s National Center for Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education (NCITE) has identified more than two dozen federal cases in which suspects fit this emerging classification, including the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis.
How Is ‘Nihilism’ Related to Violence and Terrorism?
The philosophical term “nihilism” associated with Friedrich Nietzsche refers to the belief that all values are groundless.
Violent extremists often seek to change certain government policies. Nihilist extremists, by contrast, do not necessarily have a clear and stated goal. They gamify real-life violence.
The term’s rise in federal cases occurred in April and May. “We have 1,700 domestic terrorism investigations in this country, the vast majority of whom are nihilistic violent extremists (NVE) who engage in violent acts motivated by a deep-seated hatred of society, regardless of justification,” FBI Director Kash Patel told a Senate committee in September.
Since March, federal prosecutors have referred to “nihilistic, violent extremism” in multiple press releases. The Justice Department called online pornography network 764 a “nihilistic, violent extremist network” in April when it announced the arrest of two men accused of targeting children.
“The accelerating goals of the 764 network include social unrest and the collapse of the current world order, including the U.S. Government,” the Justice Department said.
Weeks later, the FBI used the term for a 14-year-old Oregon boy accused of planning explosives and carrying out a mass shooting at a mall in Kelso, Washington. The agency alleged that the teenager “shared nihilistic, violent extremist ideology and plans in online chats.”
KPTV Fox 12 reported that police said the teen shared the plans in an online chat affiliated with the 764 network, which he joined after being bullied.
Experts Emphasize the Complexity of Extremism
Former FBI Director Christopher Wray said in 2020 that some violent extremists have “a salad bar of ideologies,” “a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and their real concern is violence.”
He cited a Minneapolis case from 2022 in which two men affiliated with Boogaloo Bois were accused of providing material support to Hamas.
In the United Kingdom, law enforcement uses the phrase “compound violent extremism” to describe extremists with multiple, mixed or unclear ideologies.
Experts say the NVE label is valuable, but caution against overuse.
Oren Segal, an extremism expert at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), told Al Jazeera that the term covers incidents where suspects are motivated by a desire to create chaos: “They are described as quite nihilistic.”
The ADL highlighted that the shooters in Evergreen (Colorado), Antioch (Tennessee), and Madison (Wisconsinwere) were active in online communities glorifying mass shootings.
“NVE represents a convergence threat that is part sadistic subculture, part extremist acceleration, and part organized cyberstalking; its strength comes from its agility and absence of limiting ideology,” Marc-Andre Argentino, an independent extremism researcher, wrote in April.
He added that nihilistic violent extremists were sharing “bite-sized” methods of attack on knives, vehicles or online crimes.
“The guiding principle is to flood the system with low-cost, high-chaos events, school shootings, viral clips of animal cruelty, attack campaigns, so that authorities spend resources faster than extremists can make the effort,” he added.
Warnings from Experts
Experts warned that overuse of the term NVE could obscure where threats come from: “If everything is lumped together as nihilistic violent extremism, this (a) harms those who try to understand where threats come from.”
The label can be misapplied as a generic term, obscuring or excusing other ideological influences, including white supremacy.
An example of this is the July 4, 2022 mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. FBI affidavits revealed that the attacker wanted to “wake people up” and was interested in online violence.
