Last week, the U.S. intelligence community warned that domestic extremists, emboldened by the siege on the U.S. Capitol and by conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic and alleged fraud in the 2020 election, will almost certainly attempt violent attacks this year. The assessment cites a contentious political environment as one of the main factors motivating white supremacists and militias, followed a warning by FBI Director Christopher Wray earlier this month that the threat of domestic terrorism in the United States is “metastasizing.”
These dire warnings sound eerily like the threat the United States faced after the 9/11 attacks. Then, Americans easily united against what was framed as a foreign—and Muslim—enemy that was trying to kill U.S. citizens. But today’s enemy defies such tidy characterizations. There is no bearded Osama bin Laden hiding in a cave, just hundreds of Timothy McVeighs huddling at home.
