Morning Briefing: Increasing Number of Incidents 'Linked to Terrorism and Right-Wing Extremist Violence'
Data on right-wing extremist violence indicates "landscape shaped by preparatory behaviors, ideological mobilization, and institutional response," according to recent analysis.
Morning Briefing: During the first month of 2026, the number of “incidents linked to terrorism and right-wing extremist violence” increased compared to the final month of 2025, according to an analysis by the International Observatory for Terrorism Studies (OIET).
While the increase in incidents “suggests renewed operational activity at the start of the year,” the incidents apparently follow the “established pattern observed in previous months, with incidents concentrated in a limited group of countries where these ideologies maintain a sustained presence.”
Anthony Hudson, Republican candidate for governor of Michigan, has reportedly “made a habit of threatening elected officials with hanging” and claiming that the officials are guilty of “treason.”
In Seattle, Washington, Andre Karlow was convicted of a “hate crime as well as second-degree assault,” and is facing “five to seven years in prison for attacking a transgender woman.”
Stephen Spencer Pittman was indicted by a grand jury and “accused of setting fire to Mississippi’s largest synagogue on a charge of first-degree arson against a place of worship,” and the first-degree arson is punishable by a sentence of five to 30 years and the “hate-crime enhancement could double that penalty to up to 60 years.”
In Nixa, Missouri, Anthony Altick has been charged with domestic assault, and allegedly made verbal threats and physically assaulted his domestic partner. Altick reportedly has “links to white supremacist groups, including the Goyim Defense League (GDL), Blood Tribe, and Hate Club 1844.”
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Jill Filipovic writes that “this is not a drill. These are not dog whistles or insinuations. This is a coordinated federal strategy to attract racists and to fold white supremacist ideology into the governing of the nation. This is the world’s richest man, and one of its most powerful, promoting white minority rule. We have tipped into autocracy. There wasn’t a single moment; it was more like weights slowly added to one side of a scale. And this autocracy is an explicitly racial one. That isn’t new for America — the Southern US has had long periods of being a racist authoritarian sub-state — but it is different this time around, with different tools and pressure points, and with a federal government united in the imposition of tyranny. I don’t know how we navigate it, let alone come back from it. But the moment is here. It is, of course, our duty to defy despair and resist this regime however we can. And the absolute least we can do is call it what it is.” [Throughline]
Jordan Green writes that a trial that begins this week in Fort Worth, Texas “will test whether President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice can use a criminalized notion of ‘antifa’ to convict nine anti-ICE activists of attempted murder and terrorism, after they shot fireworks and vandalized government vehicles… The indictment described the defendants as members of ‘a North Texas Antifa cell,’ while defining ‘antifa’ as ‘a militant enterprise made up of individuals and small groups … which explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States government, law enforcement authorities, and the system of law.’ As part of the government’s effort to build an ‘enterprise’ case around the defendants’ supposed adherence to ‘antifa’ ideology and hold them jointly liable for the shooting, prosecutors have highlighted some defendants’ involvement in printing political literature.” [Raw Story]
Ben Lorber writes that “MAGA influencers, of course, often find it useful to amplify the imagined threat of conspiratorial, all-powerful enemies lurking around every corner. From the ‘Q drops’ of QAnon to the pages of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Rightists chase like catnip anything that promises a forbidden glimpse into the hidden heart of Leftist power. But the Minneapolis ICE Watch signal group was no fairytale—which is precisely what scared them. Beneath their fevered calls for federal prosecution was the grudging acknowledgment that their side could never pull this kind of thing off. They’re forced to admit that they don’t really have people power—the kind that makes neighbors stand side by side in the cold, again and again, over the long haul. And they never will, because the right-wing project is genuinely unpopular, which makes it precarious and fragile.” [Religion Dispatches]
Weekly from Radical Reports: Morning Briefing provides a daily round-up of reporting on the Radical Right; Extremist Links offers a weekly round-up of extremists activities including the white supremacist and militia movements; Narratives of the Right delivers weekly analysis of the current narratives in far right online spaces and promoted by right-wing media; and Research Desk provides monthly highlights research and analysis from academia on the Radical Right.
