by Brian Nussbaum
A series of recent arrests and incidents suggest a disturbing pattern of individuals associated with various extremist organizations and movements using explosives and other related weapons – including arson and an improvised rocket of sorts – to conduct attacks in the United States. Much attention has been paid to recent attempted attacks by Islamic militants – like the printer-cartridge cargo plot by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) – and with good reason. However, in light of such high profile events, there has been a tendency to ignore or under play a series of serious events stemming from homegrown racist and extremist threats.
Too often attacks by racists and their ilk are dismissed as incidents just involving lone wolves and crazed individuals. While it may be the case that many of these cases are not the work of well-trained “terrorist cells” that would hardly serve as a consolation to victims of their attempted attacks. In recent months, at least four major events occurred that are worth considering.
1. The one major national news story among the four was the discovery of a bomb in a backpack along the route of a parade to celebrate Martin Luther King Day in Spokane, WA. The representative of the Joint Terrorism Task Force heading the investigation said “It was a device that clearly was intended to harm or kill people…’’ A police bomb squad rendered the bomb safe at the scene. While officials would not discuss the mechanics of the device on the record, numerous reliable news sources (ABC News, MSNBC, etc) reported that it had a remote controlled detonator and shrapnel. This would mean it was fairly sophisticated compared to pipe bombs and other simpler varieties of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
2. In late January, two men were charged with attempting to murder police officers in Hemet, CA. These men, taking their tactics from a “white power guerilla warfare manual” spent 9 months attacking law enforcement facilities and personnel. According to the prosecuting attorney, the manual contained information on explosives and boobytraps, as well as other militant tactics. The men – aged 37 and 40 – are accused of firing a “World War II era training rocket” at the Hemet Police station, setting various booby traps targeting police officials, conspiring to murder a police officer, and engaging in arson.
3. An Arizona man, age 27, was indicted for possession of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The man—a former member of the neo-Nazi organization the National Alliance and reportedly tied to the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM) — had built pipe bombs that were packed with ball bearings. While individuals sometimes make pipe bombs for mischievous reasons, the inclusions of ball bearings – as is often the case in suicide bombing vests – is designed to create shrapnel to tear flesh, shatter bone, and otherwise injure whoever is near the blast site.
4. A 63 year-old man was arrested in Dearborn, MI where he is accused of a plot to bomb a mosque. The arrest stemmed from a tip to police following the man’s bragging about his plan in a local bar. An alert staff member took down his license plate and called the police. While the man did not have commercial – or even improvised – explosives per se, he had a number of powerful fireworks (described alternately as “M-80s” and “Class C fireworks”) when police arrested him near the mosque.
All four of these events suggest an increasingly active and in some cases sophisticated threat emanating from white supremacist, racist, and neo-Nazi fringe movements. The fact that at least two of these plotters using explosives went out of their way to include shrapnel in their devices, suggests that they are indeed looking to harm and kill. These are hardly people looking to “draw attention to their cause,” rather they are attempting cold-blooded mass murder.
In recent years, we have largely been spared the campaigns of organized and continuing racist and extremist violence that groups like the “The Order” and “The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord” (CSA) spread around the United States in the 1980s. Hopefully these recent events do not provide evidence of the return of these kinds of violence. It is of course dangerous to draw major implications from anecdotal evidence, but it is indeed worthwhile to remind ourselves that violent extremists need not be engaged in “Jihad” to be a serious threat to the safety of Americans.
Dr. Brian Nussbaum has worked as an intelligence analyst in state government, and currently serves as an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice, and as affiliated faculty in Middle East Studies, at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts
