The new age of online radicalization in which we find ourselves awash—one in which a steady stream of “red-pilled” young white men gradually morph from trolling and shitposting on 4chan to posting a manifesto there and opening fire with an AR-15 in a public space—can be very confusing. Are they really terrorists? Are we really certain they fit into the clear ideological categories that have always defined terrorists in the past?
The new radicalization has an important peculiarity that may give us some insight to what’s happening to us: These terrorists increasingly express idiosyncratic, often highly individualized, ideological worldviews that defy easy categorization.
The El Paso killer, in addition to his core frame of hateful white nationalism and nativism, also expressed alarm in his manifesto about environmental conditions in the world, and had an obsession about the human costs of automation. The Christchurch killer, who mostly was obsessed with Muslim immigrants, also expressed some alarm about global climate change.
The same thread runs through the recent history of mass killings and domestic terrorism: While the general ideological thrust of most of the acts originates with far-right extremism, many of the people acting out violently also voice beliefs that have little to do with such politics.
This is because, increasingly, these acts are being fueled less by discrete political ideological movements and more by the conspiracy theories themselves that these movements use to recruit. And yet, one only needs to read their manifestoes to see that their intentions are purely terroristic. They see their violence as a way to force political and cultural changes, just like classic terrorists.
A recent FBI memorandum, disclosed last week by Yahoo News, explored this new reality in a manner that’s surprising for the agency, which is not renowned for thinking outside the box. But it suggests for the first time the powerful role that conspiracy theories play in generating these horrifying acts of public violence.
Titled “Anti-Government, Identity Based, and Fringe Political Conspiracy Theories Very Likely Motivate Some Domestic Extremists to Commit Criminal, Sometimes Violent Activity,” the memo was written in the agency’s Phoenix field office. It shows how the agency, like most law-enforcement agencies and the courts, have been grappling with how to deal with the online-radicalization phenomenon.
Most FBI assessments of this kind of criminal activity are discussed as forms of domestic terrorism, which necessarily has an ideological frame that places the acts in the context of discrete political ideologies. But conspiracy theories are often ideological only secondarily and frequently exist in their own idiosyncratic bubble of extremism.
This memorandum eschews such language, instead focusing on “domestic extremists” and how their violent acts are often fueled by conspiracist belief systems:
The FBI assesses anti-government, identity based, and fringe political conspiracy theories very likely motivate some domestic extremists, wholly or in part, to commit criminal and sometimes violent activity. The FBI further assesses in some cases these conspiracy theories very likely encourage the targeting of specific people, places, and organizations, thereby increasing the likelihood of violence against these targets.
These assertions are backed up with sound analysis, noting that “these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modem information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts.”
It lists several domestic-terrorism cases as examples of conspiracy-fueled crimes, including a widely reported incident in July 2018 when a fervent believer in the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theories blocked traffic across Hoover Dam in Nevada, as well as a 2013 attack on security officers at Los Angeles International Airport.
It also mentions two incidents that had not been previously reported in the media:
- The December 2018 arrest of a California man found in possession of bombmaking materials, who allegedly “planned to travel to Springfield, Illinois and blow up a satanic temple monument at the Illinois Capitol rotunda in order to ‘make Americans aware of 'Pizzagate' and the New World Order (NWO), who were dismantling society.’ ”
- The October 2016 arrests of two Georgia men, originally for drugs, who were discovered to be stockpiling guns, ammo, and tactical gear as preparation for an attack on a government radar-research station in Alaska they believe is manipulating the weather—a conspiracy theory long promoted by the Militia of Montana.
The memo is also remarkably astute in its assessment of the mechanics of conspiracist radicalization. Its definition of “conspiracy theory” may lack an esoteric component, but it is pragmatic and to the point: “an attempt to explain events or circumstances as the result of a group of actors working in secret to benefit themselves at the expense of others.” It explains how they “typically allege wrongdoing by powerful others (for example, public officials, business executives, scientists) or societally marginalized groups (for example, Muslims, Jews), and are most prevalent among individuals with extreme political views.”
It points directly to the aspect of conspiracism that gives it an unusual power to unhinge its believers: namely, the estrangement from factual reality.
Conspiracy theories typically “ignore stronger evidence that would refute their claims. Consequently, they are usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.”
“Relying on the premises that nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected, conspiracy theorists tend to view every bad outcome as the result of an intentional decision by an evil actor, dismiss disconfirming evidence as ‘fabricated’ by the conspirators, and connect a wide range of seemingly unrelated occurrences to suggest a larger plot,” the memo explains.
And it is clear that conspiracy theories are no longer mere entertainment or goofy stuff to dabble in for fun, because they have become recruitment tools for extremist belief systems that deepen the hold these movements have on their followers:
In addition, academic research indicates conspiracy beliefs are not only prevalent and influential in domestic extremist circles and among those with extreme political views, but often serve to magnify and exacerbate existing extremist sentiments.
The recent El Paso massacre provided a vivid illustration of this reality. Its perpetrator made clear in the manifesto he posted at 8chan that he subscribes avidly to white-nationalist conspiracy theories about “cultural Marxism,” particularly an aspect of those theories claiming that immigrants are being deliberately imported into white-majority nations as part of the plot to destroy Western civilization—the “Great Replacement.”
“I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion,” he wrote.
A recent study from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue examined this conspiracy theory in depth as a source of inspiration for a number of violent acts, including most notably the massacre in March at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The theory, it found, has significant potential “to drive extreme-right mobilization and terrorist acts,” in large part because it “lends itself to calls for radical action against minority communities—including ethnic cleansing, violence and terrorism.”
The Great Replacement theory is able to inspire calls for extreme action from its adherents, ranging from non-violent ethnic cleansing through ‘remigration’ to genocide. This is in part because the theory is able to inspire a sense of urgency by calling on crisis narratives.
It also observed that a sense of disempowerment helps drive these terrorists to violence, noting that the Christchurch shooter referenced the defeat of Front National leader Marine Le Pen in the 2017 French elections as a “turning point.” “While we should be cautious about taking the so-called manifesto at face value, we have seen similar rhetoric surface repeatedly in closed chat channels frequented by the extreme-right, with adherents to the Great Replacement theory advocating for violent action when they have given up on political solutions.”
Making conspiracy theories a component of analyzing terrorist motivations may force the reassessment of a number of recent violent incidents, most notably the October 2017 mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas in which 58 people were killed and 422 wounded. The official investigation into that massacre by Las Vegas Metro police was unable to determine what motive the shooter might have had: ““What we have not been able to definitively answer is ... why Stephen Paddock committed this act,” Sheriff Joe Lombardo told reporters.
The FBI, a few months later, similarly reached no conclusion about the motive for the massacre: “Throughout his life, Paddock went to great lengths to keep his thoughts private, and that extended to his final thinking about this mass murder,” its report read. Both reports cited Paddock’s lack of organizational affiliation as a key reason the massacre was not considered an act of terrorism.
Yet there was abundant evidence, from both reliable witnesses and others whose testimony to investigators was never substantiated, that Paddock in fact was an avid conspiracy theorist who hated the federal government and believed it was plotting to take Americans’ guns away—and that he committed the killings in the vain hope that his act would inspire the government to begin its crackdown, and finally “wake up the American public.”
The recent FBI memo does not see any cessation of the current trend on the horizon, predicting that “anti-government, identity based, and fringe political conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace over the near term, fostering anti-government sentiment, promoting racial and religious prejudice, increasing political tensions, and occasionally driving both groups and individuals to commit criminal or violent acts.”
