Western Far-Right Terrorism in 2025 and Beyond
Domestic terrorism, especially white supremacist and anti-government extremism, poses a considerable threat to the United States (US), Europe and other Western nations. As the second Donald Trump administration redefines US national security priorities, the threat from far-right terrorism will likely persist, joined by an increasingly violent far-left movement. This report will first assess the far-right terrorism threat in the US, while also assessing what the September 2025 assassination of political activist Charlie Kirk suggests about a rising threat from the far left. It will then analyse how these threats are manifesting in Europe and beyond, concluding with an assessment of how counter terrorism developments under the second Trump administration may shape extremism and terrorism further afield.
Trends
In announcing his choice for director of the National Counterterrorism Center in his second administration, President Donald Trump arguably was most revealing in what he did not say.
His nominee, former Army Green Beret Joe Kent, would “help us keep America safe by eradicating all terrorism, from the jihadists around the World, to the cartels in our backyard.”[1] However, going unmentioned were the far-right extremists who have taken the most American lives since 9/11 – let alone other manifestations of domestic terrorism that continue to challenge United States (US) national security.
Trump’s apparent oversight comes despite far-right terrorism providing a consistent storyline to the first Trump administration. In August 2017, a network of overt and outspoken neo-Nazis and white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, protesting the removal of a Confederate statue as part of a rally dubbed “Unite the Right”. A terrorist attack occurred as part of the event, with one woman, Heather Heyer, killed.
About a year later, in October 2018, a neo-Nazi gunman opened fire at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in US history. In March 2019, a white supremacist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, which killed 51 people, inspired deadly shootings in Poway, California, and El Paso, Texas, later that same year.
Each of these incidents was accompanied by online statements and manifestos explicitly outlining extremist ideologies. The Texas shooter, for example, echoed Trumpian language, describing his attack as a “response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas”. Trump’s first term ended with the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, when a large mob sought to overturn the presidential election results that had seen former Vice President Joe Biden elected president. The ensuing investigation was the largest in Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) history.
By contrast, the first months of the second Trump administration since early 2025 have seen a troubling rise in far-left terrorism. Although much of this activity has involved low-level violent harassment of Tesla infrastructure (a reflection of the political left’s hatred of Elon Musk) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, the threat reached a grim level with the assassination of conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk in September. Although the gunman’s ideology was not clearly stated – much like the murderer of Melissa Hortman, the Democratic former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives – it nevertheless stunned the nation, leading to widespread calls for civil war and President Trump issuing a legally and strategically dubious designation of “Antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organisation”. Murders of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., as well as a pro-Israel protester in Boulder, Colorado, also offered reminders of the dangers of jihadist or Islamist extremism.[2]
Elsewhere, European and other Western nations continued to face uneven struggles against domestic terrorist threats in the past year, with the far right proving particularly persistent.
Threat Assessment: The Far-Right Terrorist Threat to the US
Although the US government lacks a centralised terrorism database, data compiled by various watchdog organisations have traditionally pointed to far-right terrorism as the predominant domestic terrorism threat.
For instance, in the 2025 edition of its essential Murder and Extremism in the United States report, the Anti-Defamation League found that “All the extremist-related murders in 2024 were committed by right-wing extremists of various kinds, with eight of the 13 killings involving white supremacists and the remaining five having connections to far-right anti-government extremists. This is the third year in a row that right-wing extremists have been connected to all identified extremist-related killings.” This continues a recent historical trend, with “right-wing extremists” responsible for 76 percent of extremist killings between 2015 and 2024.[3]
Meanwhile, the Global Terrorism Index, compiled by the Institute for Economics & Peace, has found that “Since 2007, there have been 60 politically motivated attacks compared to 14 religiously motivated attacks. This change is especially marked since 2017, with five of the seven attacks in 2023 linked to individuals with far-right sympathies or connections. There were no religiously motivated attacks in 2023.”[4]
In December 2023, then FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that “The number of FBI domestic terrorism investigations has more than doubled since the spring of 2020” and that “The top domestic terrorism threat we face continues to be from [Domestic Violent Extremists] we categorise as Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (RMVEs) and Anti-Government or Anti-Authority Violent Extremists (AGAAVEs).”[5] This author’s book, God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America, chronicles the rise of this movement as a leading national security threat to the US.[6]
Data released in September 2025 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) offered the first convincing counterargument to the prevailing historical numbers. Although earlier CSIS reporting had agreed with other watchdogs, this latest edition found that 2025 saw far-left terrorism in the US outnumbering far-right violence for the first time in 30 years.[7] (The report highlighted that “In the past decade, despite the increase in the number of left-wing incidents, left-wing attacks have killed 13 victims, compared with 112 and 82 victims for right-wing and jihadist attacks, respectively.”) The report set off a firestorm in the American terrorism studies academy, with many claiming the numbers would be weaponised to justify the Trump administration’s promised crackdown on nebulous “left-wing” groups. One prominent counterargument, offered by terrorism scholar Jessica Davis, insisted “2025 might well be a turning point in the data, but it’s too soon to say”.[8]
Trump has thrust himself into the hotly debated politics around domestic terrorism. He has regularly flirted with (if not outright condoned) elements of the violent far right throughout his time on the American political scene. He told the press that the neo-Nazis rallying at Charlottesville in 2017 had been “very fine people” and encouraged the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during a presidential debate. He was excoriated by conservative Republicans for inspiring the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, though impeachment proceedings against him failed.[9] In perhaps the most revealing example of his affinity with violent activists who fight on his behalf, Trump issued sweeping pardons and clemencies for the January 6 perpetrators, including those convicted of seditious conspiracy, one of the most serious criminal charges in the US.
The pardons are likely to offer significant boosts to many of America’s most prominent far-right groups, from the “Western chauvinist” Proud Boys to the more typical militia groups such as the Oath Keepers. Both groups were effectively decimated by the January 6 prosecutions but will now welcome back battle-hardened leaders while earning a considerable stamp of legitimacy, which will likely drive recruitment. As a Proud Boys leader told Reuters, “A lot of people stayed away from us after there were arrests. Now they are going to feel like they are bulletproof.”[10] (The Proud Boys’ leader, Enrique Tarrio, meanwhile, offered perhaps the most convincing explanation of the drop in far-right terrorism: “We won. We’ve got what we wanted.”[11]) There also remains a pressing danger that actors on the far right might deputise themselves to facilitate Trump’s threats against various minority groups. The Maysville, Kentucky-headquartered Trinity White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, for instance, released a recruitment flyer depicting Uncle Sam booting out an immigrant family. “Proclamation: Mass Deportation January 20th [,] 2025,” the scroll declared. “We need your HELP [.] Monitor & Track all Immigrants [.] REPORT THEM ALL [.]”[12] (Additionally, in what may be considered good news for counter terrorism but more threatening to American democracy, many January 6 defendants have considered entering the political system.[13])
For all the focus on groups, however, most far-right violence today is in fact perpetrated by individuals. In an age of social media radicalisation, lone actors can launch attacks without needing broader organisational support. These lone actors also increasingly display erratic and personalised ideologies which either combine multiple ideological traditions or create new worldviews wholesale.[14] A 2023 mass shooting at a shopping mall in Allen, Texas, involved a Latino gunman who had tattooed a swastika on his chest. He had also posted content online consistent with incel ideology, at one point bluntly declaring, “I hate women”.[15] Although it was not the case in Allen, terrorists of various persuasions are also getting younger. Ken McCallum, the director general of MI5, recently warned that “One in eight people being investigated by the service for involvement in terrorism are minors […] a three-fold increase since 2021.”[16]
Many of these trends were encapsulated by the first significant act of far-right terrorism in the US during the second Trump administration: a January 2025 mass shooting targeting the Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee. The gunman, a self-loathing, African-American 17 year old, wrote a manifesto referencing several tropes associated with white supremacy’s “great replacement” theory, a conspiracy theory which insists that white people in Western countries are being steadily replaced through immigration and minority political rights in a “genocide” deliberately orchestrated by Jews and Marxists. His treatise called for “A better, neater, cleaner world by eliminating all undesirables [;] we must aid the Aryans regardless of our race.”[17] He also identified the rising prevalence of youth in the movement, warning his readers that “The Feds are cracking down and taking these things extremely seriously these years due to the influx of recent minor terror attacks worldwide.”
In Foreign Affairs magazine, the veteran terrorism scholar Robert Pape left little doubt as to the stakes of the current moment. “Violent populism – a phase of politics characterized by high levels of political violence and broad support for it – now represents a greater risk to American democracy than any competition with another country or any menace by a foreign terrorist group,” he wrote, adding that “Politicians on both the left and the right are now subject to an extraordinary degree of threat.”[18] The rising violence in America has economic implications, too. Multiple allied countries have issued travel advisories warning their citizens that travel to the US can no longer be guaranteed as safe, whether because of visa and border crackdowns or threats of violence.
Beyond the US: Far-Right Terrorism Threats Elsewhere
Far-right terrorism also remains a distinct threat in most Western and majority-white countries. In Europe, for instance, 2025 saw far-right riots in The Hague, as hundreds of far-right extremists clashed with the police and vandalised the offices of the centrist D66 party.[19]
In the United Kingdom, several recent arrests point to an underlying threat of lone-actor, white supremacist violence. One frightening case involved a 16 year old arrested while en route to commit an arson attack at a mosque in Greenock, Scotland. He had written that he was inspired by Adolf Hitler and Anders Breivik and was prepared to “die for my land”.[20] Further south, in Peacehaven on the southern coast, a mosque was set on fire by a small group of individuals, perhaps inspired by a Yom Kippur stabbing attack several days earlier in Manchester.[21]
London witnessed one of the largest far-right rallies in the country’s history in September, at which prominent far-right activist Tommy Robinson made common cause with similar movements abroad, warning, “It’s not just Britain that is being invaded, it’s not just Britain that is being raped. Every single Western nation faces the same problem: an orchestrated, organised invasion and replacement of European citizens is happening.”[22] The London rally underscored the power that immigration continues to hold in driving far-right radicalisation and mobilisation.
Offering a valuable counterargument to fears of an ascendant violent far right, the latest edition of the University of Oslo’s Right-wing Terrorism and Violence (RTV) dataset, which tracks such violence in Western Europe, found that “both fatal and severe non-fatal attacks have steadily declined since 2010” and that there were no fatal attacks in 2023, while the “number of severe but non-fatal attacks in 2023 was 83, which is lower than in the early 2010s but consistent with recent years.”[23]
Far-right terrorism threats also continue to plague the broader Commonwealth. In 2025, University of Oslo scholar Shandon Harris-Hogan completed an exemplary set of articles tracking far-right terrorism threats in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, three of the Five Eyes countries. The reports detailed varying threats to these lesser-covered states, with the most recent article warning of “a chronic level of severe violence occurring across Canada”.[24] The FBI tipped off the New Zealand police about an imminent stabbing plot at a mosque, planned by an assailant who sought “notoriety”, had sexually exploited children online and kept videos of Brenton Tarrant’s assault on Christchurch in 2019.[25] (A different case in New Zealand reveals the broader dangers of extremism. The country’s first-ever prosecution for spying involved a white supremacist who “was caught offering to pass military base maps and photographs to an undercover officer posing as an agent.”[26]) In Australia, a group of some 50 men stormed a historical Aboriginal burial site in Melbourne, injuring several people.[27]
Singapore has also been affected by this pernicious violent movement. In 2021, a 16-year-old Christian plotted to attack two mosques to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the Christchurch attack. He was caught by the Internal Security Department.[28] 2025 saw the arrest of a 14 year old driven by a conglomeration of ideologies from Islamic State (IS) support to far-right extremism and incel ideology.[29] Singapore has endured a particularly tough challenge with youth radicalisation, with a global far-right digital ecosystem feeding “us versus them” narratives which Singaporean youth have adapted to their local context.[30]
The violent far-left reaction to the Trump administration seen in the US does not appear to have manifested elsewhere. Most global far-left terrorism in the past two years has seemingly been driven by the fallout of the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel and the latter’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza. In early October 2025, a suspected pro-Palestine protester vandalised the home of New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, after New Zealand declined to recognise a Palestinian state.[31]
Conclusion: America the Exporter
Over the past several years, the US has emerged as an exporter of far-right terrorism as well as broader gun violence.[32] In 2023, an election riot struck Brasilia in Brazil, seemingly inspired by similar grievances as in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Elsewhere, Slovakia and Turkey, both member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), were hit by white supremacist attacks that the US Department of Justice noted were “incited” by US persons associated with a network called the Terrorgram Collective (the collective was later designated by the US government as a “specially designated global terrorist” entity).[33]
Accordingly, as the second Trump administration continues to suffer (and to struggle to counter) a rise in violence, US allies cannot delude themselves into a belief that they will be safe from a violent contagion. Singapore has already endured one such warning: in February 2025, an 18-year-old Singaporean “detained for planning to attack Malays and Muslims after being radicalised by violent far-right extremist ideologies […] was inspired by white supremacists in the US.”[34] American counter terrorism failures will inspire and drive violence abroad as well. Domestic terrorism, in other words, will remain a considerable threat in the US and far beyond.
About the Author
Jacob Ware (Bluesky – LinkedIn – X) is a Research Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and at DeSales University. He is the co-author of “God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America.”
Thumbnail photo by Fabien Maurin on Unsplash
Citations
[1] Brady Knox, “Trump Names Joe Kent as NCTC chief and Sean Parnell as Pentagon Spokesman,” Washington Examiner, February 3, 2025, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/3309656/trump-names-joe-kent-nctc-chief-sean-parnell-pentagon-spokesman/.
[2] For more, see Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, “Assassinations in America: How Political Violence Became Personal,” Just Security, October 1, 2025, https://www.justsecurity.org/121425/assassination-america-political-violence-personal/.
[3] Center on Extremism, Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2024 (Anti-Defamation League, 2025), https://www.adl.org/resources/report/murder-and-extremism-united-states-2024. See also Center on Extremism, Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2023 (Anti-Defamation League, 2024), https://www.adl.org/resources/report/murder-and-extremism-united-states-2023.
[4] Institute for Economics & Peace, Global Terrorism Index 2024: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism (Vision of Humanity, 2024), http://visionofhumanity.org/resources.
[5] Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 118th Cong. 1 (2023) (statement of Christopher A. Wray, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation), https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2023-12-05_-_testimony_-_wray.pdf.
[6] Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America (Columbia University Press, 2024).
[7] Daniel Byman and Riley McCabe, “Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in the United States: What the Data Tells Us,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, September 25, 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/left-wing-terrorism-and-political-violence-united-states-what-data-tells-us. For an earlier edition, see Robert O’Harrow Jr., Andrew Ba Tran and Derek Hawkins, “The Rise of Domestic Extremism in America,” The Washington Post, April 12, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/domestic-terrorism-data/.
[8] Jessica Davis, “Is Left-Wing Terrorism on the Rise in the US?” Insight Threat Intelligence, September 26, 2025, https://newsletter.insightthreatintel.com/p/is-left-wing-terrorism-on-the-rise.
[9] See, for example, Lisa Mascaro, “On Jan. 6 Many Republicans Blamed Trump for the Capitol Riot. Now They Endorse His Presidential Bid,” Associated Press, January 6, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/jan-6-trump-biden-insurrection-congress-690af49cbf1f7a5696545b1ebbe45c47.
[10] Nathan Layne et al., “Trump’s Pardons will Embolden Proud Boys, Other Far-Right Groups, Say Experts,” Reuters, January 21, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-pardons-will-embolden-proud-boys-other-far-right-groups-say-experts-2025-01-21/.
[11] Daniel Byman and Riley McCabe, “Left-Wing Terrorism Is On the Rise,” The Atlantic, September 23, 2025, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/09/charlie-kirk-left-wing-terrorism/684323/.
[12] Propaganda flyer seen by the author.
[13] Diana Paulsen, “Several Trump Supporters Involved in Jan. 6 Are Running for Office This Year,” NBC News, April 2, 2024, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/several-trump-supporters-involved-jan-6-are-running-office-year-rcna146081.
[14] See, for example, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross et al., “Composite Violent Extremism: A Radicalization Pattern Changing the Face of Terrorism,” Lawfare, November 22, 2022, https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/composite-violent-extremism-radicalization-pattern-changing-face-terrorism.
[15] Megan Squire, “Allen, Texas, Killer Posted Neo-Nazi, Incel Content Online,” Southern Poverty Law Center, May 8, 2023, https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hate-watch/allen-texas-killer-posted-neo-nazi-incel-content-online/.
[16] Rob Picheta, “‘Resurgent’ ISIS and Al Qaeda Targeting Europe Once Again, Britain’s MI5 Chief Warns,” CNN, October 8, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/08/uk/mi5-terrorism-speech-isis-al-qaeda-gbr-intl/index.html.
[17] Colin Clarke and Jacob Ware, “The Nashville Attack Displayed Several Hallmarks of Modern Terrorism,” The Soufan Center, January 30, 2025, https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2025-january-30/.
[18] Robert A. Pape, “America’s New Age of Political Violence,” Foreign Affairs, October 9, 2025, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/americas-new-age-political-violence.
[19] Evelyn Ann-Marie Dom, “Anti-Immigration Demonstration in The Hague Turns Violent, Weeks Before General Election,” Euronews, September 20, 2025, https://www.euronews.com/2025/09/20/anti-immigration-demonstration-in-the-hague-turns-violent-weeks-before-general-election.
[20] Katie Hunter, “Teen Who Planned Mosque Mass Murder Given 10-Year Sentence,” BBC News, August 21, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3r434nplw8o.
[21] Hsin-Yi Lo, “Further Arrest Made Over Mosque Arson Attack,” BBC News, October 9, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdr61g4m4jko.
[22] “Britain’s Biggest Far-Right Protest: More Than 100,000 Attend Tommy Robinson’s Unite The Kingdom Rally,” Hope Not Hate, September 13, 2025, https://hopenothate.org.uk/2025/09/13/britains-biggest-far-right-protest-more-than-100000-attend-tommy-robinsons-unite-the-kingdom-rally/.
[23] Jacob Aasland Ravndal, Charlotte Tandberg and Anders Ravik Jupskås, “Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence in Western Europe: Updated Dataset and Key Findings,” RightNow!, April 1, 2025, https://www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/news-and-events/right-now/2025/right-wing-terrorism-and-violence-in-western-europ.html.
[24] Shandon Harris-Hogan, “The Evolution of Far-Right Violence in Canada,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2025), https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2025.2515488; Shandon Harris-Hogan, “Was the 2019 Christchurch Attack a Black Swan Event? Understanding Far-Right Violence in New Zealand,” Behavioural Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression (2023), https://doi.org/10.1080/19434472.2023.2294732; and Shandon Harris-Hogan, “Is Far-Right Violence Actually Increasing in Australia? Tracking Far-Right Terrorism and Violence in Australia between 1990-2020,” Perspectives on Terrorism 17, no. 2 (2023), https://pt.icct.nl/article/far-right-violence-actually-increasing-australia-tracking-far-right-terrorism-and-violence.
[25] “Hawke’s Bay Extremist Admits Plot for Mass Stabbing After FBI Tip-off,” posted October 3, 2025, by nzherald.co.nz, YouTube, 2 min., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnsqjI8KGGk.
[26] “Soldier Guilty of Attempted Espionage in New Zealand’s First Such Case,” The Guardian, August 18, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/19/new-zealand-military-court-finds-soldier-guilty-of-attempted-espionage.
[27] Prinita Thevarajah, “Australian Neo-Nazi Attack on Sacred Indigenous Site a Worrying Trend,” Al Jazeera, September 6, 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/6/australian-neo-nazi-attack-on-sacred-indigenous-site-a-worrying-trend.
[28] “Singapore Boy Held for Christchurch-Inspired Mosque Attack Plot,” BBC News, January 27, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55836774.
[29] Kumar Ramakrishna, “The ‘Salad Bar’ of Extremist Ideologies in Youth Radicalisation: A New Threat?” RSIS Commentary, no. 191 (2025), https://rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/rsis/the-salad-bar-of-extremist-ideologies-in-youth-radicalisation-a-new-threat/.
[30] Fabian Koh, “IN FOCUS: Singapore Confronts Emerging Threat of Far-Right Extremism,” Channel News Asia, March 19, 2025, https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/far-right-extremism-rehabilitation-deradicalise-youth-focus-5007011.
[31] Eva Corlett, “New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ Home Vandalised ‘During a Protest’,” The Guardian, October 6, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/07/new-zealand-foreign-minister-winston-peters-home-vandalised-during-protest-ntwnfb.
[32] For more, see Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, “American Hatred Goes Global,” Foreign Affairs, September 19, 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/american-hatred-goes-global; and Jacob Ware, “American Gun Violence Goes Global,” Foreign Affairs, July 9, 2025, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/american-gun-violence-goes-global.
[33] See “Leaders of Transnational Terrorist Group Charged with Soliciting Hate Crimes, Soliciting the Murder of Federal Officials, and Conspiring to Provide Material Support to Terrorists,” United States Department of Justice, September 9, 2024, https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/leaders-transnational-terrorist-group-charged-soliciting-hate-crimes-soliciting-murder; and “Terrorist Designations of The Terrorgram Collective and Three Leaders,” United States Department of Justice, January 13, 2025, https://2021-2025.state.gov/office-of-the-spokesperson/releases/2025/01/terrorist-designations-of-the-terrorgram-collective-and-three-leaders/.
[34] Sonia Sarkar, “Transnational White Supremacy: Digital Violent Extremism from West to East,” Global Network on Extremism & Technology, August 1, 2025, https://gnet-research.org/2025/08/01/transnational-white-supremacy-digital-violent-extremism-from-west-to-east/. See also “White Supremacy Is Radicalizing Individuals to Racial Violence Far Beyond the West,” Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, February 18, 2025, https://globalextremism.org/post/white-supremacy-is-radicalizing/.
