Right and Left Wing Terror Groups in America: Extremism
This paper examines the growth of domestic extremist groups in the United States, focusing on both left-wing organizations such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter and right-wing groups such as the Proud Boys and white nationalist movements. It analyzes how social media and digital communication technology have accelerated radicalization, recruitment, and the retention of members in these groups. The paper also explores how political polarization, economic inequality, religious justification, and a widespread sense of government disenfranchisement have combined to fuel extremist ideologies across the political spectrum. Future trends suggest that tribalism, online radicalization, and unchecked social media platforms will continue to drive domestic terrorism unless meaningful countermeasures are implemented.
- Introduction: Polarization and the Rise of Extremism: Social media and polarization fuel domestic extremist growth
- Political and Social Roots of Extremist Groups: Government distrust and political division drive extremism
- The Radicalization Process and Lone Wolf Terrorism: Online contact radicalizes isolated individuals into violence
- Religion as a Justification for Violence: Divine command theory rationalizes extremist violence
- Social Media, Recruitment, and Retention: Platforms recruit and trap members in extremist groups
- Literature Review: Extremism in Historical and Digital Context: Scholarship links history, technology, and radicalization trends
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What makes this paper effective
- Draws on a range of academic sources spanning media studies, criminology, and political science to support its claims about radicalization and extremism.
- Balances analysis of both left-wing and right-wing extremist groups, avoiding a one-sided political framing and showing that disenfranchisement drives extremism across the ideological spectrum.
- Uses concrete examples — the Fort Hood shooting, the Unabomber, the Black Panthers, and Proud Boys — to ground abstract arguments about radicalization in real-world cases.
- Connects macro-level trends (political polarization, economic inequality) to micro-level processes (individual radicalization, group retention) effectively.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively employs causal analysis, tracing how structural conditions (political polarization, economic inequality, government distrust) combine with enabling technologies (social media, digital communication) to produce radicalization. By linking individual case studies to broader sociological trends, the paper demonstrates how to scaffold an argument from the specific to the systemic.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a broad survey of polarization and extremism trends, then narrows to political and social causes before examining the individual radicalization process. It dedicates a focused section to religious justification for violence, followed by a detailed analysis of social media's role in recruitment and retention. The paper closes with a literature review that synthesizes prior scholarship and contextualizes the argument historically.
Introduction: Polarization and the Rise of Extremism
Extremism in the U.S. is on the rise, driven by growing polarization throughout the country as the Left and the Right become more and more opposed to one another ideologically, politically, socially, and emotionally. There is a deep rift between the two sides and little sense of common ground. Much of this rise has come on the heels of the explosion in social media use, which allows individuals to promote their views to the rest of the world in a way that was literally unheard of prior to the digital revolution (Freberg, Graham, McGaughey & Freberg, 2011). As social media use has risen exponentially since its inception in the 2000s, the level of ideologically driven influencers in that space both reflects and facilitates the level of extremism in the United States.
As both the popularity of groups like Antifa on the Left and the Proud Boys on the Right demonstrate, young people are those most likely to be drawn into extremist groups. They are the most likely to be using social media, networking with others, and falling prey to terror predators seeking to lure impressionable young minds into their cells (Chatfield, Reddick & Brajawidagda, 2015; Costello & Hawdon, 2018; Mouras, 2015). The politicization of views has only intensified with the clash of two cultures since 2016 — a blue-collar, mostly religious, anti-establishment culture on the Right versus a liberal, inclusive, mostly progressive, politically correct culture on the Left. Since 2016, there has been no meaningful movement to close the cultural gap, and as a result, a rise in violence has been observed on both the Right and the Left.
The future trends and threats related to domestic extremist groups point toward an increasing wave of polarization that will lead to mounting tribalism, where groups splinter and fracture off from larger communities. Tribalism can produce pockets of extremist behavior and thinking similar to terror cells. The Branch Davidians in Waco, TX, could be regarded as a foreshadowing of what is to come in the 21st century. However, with the power of social media, the extent to which tribal groups can grow and develop is far greater than it was in the early 1990s. As Hamm and Spaaj (2015) point out, the relaxation of gun laws in the 1990s and the increase in mass shootings since that decade all indicate a breakdown in social order and an inflammation of extremist mentalities, extremist groupthink, and extremist tendencies. Since the ability to create havoc on a large scale using small-arms weapons is readily available, there is little reason to assume that weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) should be the primary focus of counter-terrorist activity. Rather, individual extremists or lone wolves are fully capable of inflicting extreme violence on a local population. They may be stopped shortly afterwards, but because so many are being radicalized by social media and invited to join radical groups, they are emerging everywhere.
Preventing the swarm mentality is going to be the main challenge going forward, and it will not be easy, as the primary tool of indoctrination — social media — is difficult to police, and the wider Internet, with its various platforms where extremists can meet and gather online, is even more difficult to monitor and control. Digital technology has allowed for unprecedented growth in communications, and the more connected people become, the easier it is for extremist groupthink to proliferate. For this reason, the trends of violence, domestic terror, and extremism are likely to continue to rise unless significant structural measures are put in place with respect to the Internet and to small-arms weapons acquisition.
References
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Beinart, P. (2017). The rise of the violent left. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-rise-of-the-violent-left/534192/
Chatfield, A. T., Reddick, C. G., & Brajawidagda, U. (2015, May). Tweeting propaganda, radicalization and recruitment: Islamic state supporters multi-sided Twitter networks. In Proceedings of the 16th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (pp. 239–249).
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Hamm, M., & Spaaj, R. (2015). Lone wolf terrorism in America: Using knowledge of radicalization pathways to forge prevention strategies. U.S. Department of Justice. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/248691.pdf
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Mouras, T. A. (2015). Lone wolves: Are they really alone in the radicalization process? In Public Safety. Retrieved from http://inpublicsafety.com/2015/02/lone-wolves-are-they-really-alone-in-the-radicalization-process/
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