https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0043-965X
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ABSTRACT
Deriving a definition of terrorism has long been a focus of both academics and policymakers, but there have been few attempts to establish a clear definition of right-wing terrorism and its relationship to other variants of political violence. This brief forum article surveys the extant literature to better understand how right-wing terrorism is conceptualised and highlights the necessity of establishing a coherent definition in order to more effectively inform counterterrorism policymaking.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Cameron adds that right-wing terrorism is ‘mainly perpetrated by those who have lost political power or fear that they are in imminent danger of doing so’ (99).
2 The neo-reactionary movement is also sometimes referred to as the ‘dark enlightenment.’
3 The Sovereign Citizen movement can be considered a subset of anti-government extremism as it objects to perceived illegitimate laws at both the federal and local level.
4 The FBI and DHS also use the term ‘domestic violent extremism’ (DVE) which they acknowledge is used interchangeably with ‘domestic terrorism’ (FBI, Citation2020).
5 The Southern Poverty Law Center has also identified data collection and reporting as a critical step in addressing domestic hate crimes. To be fair, the Department of Homeland Security has recognized such drawbacks and pledged to rectify existing limitations (DHS, Citation2019). The Senate proposal (116th Congress, S.3142) for an information sharing commission with the DNI also needs to be approved.
6 Additional micro-level research has found that President Trump’s political rallies corresponded to a 226% increase in local hate crimes (Feinberg, Branton, & Martinez-Ebers, Citation2019).