The heirs of Timothy McVeigh are busy. Violence perpetrated by individuals and groups affiliated with far-right groups is bad and getting worse, according a report released last week by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, a privately-funded, independent institution located at the Army academy.

Not only is right-wing violence claiming more victims every year, the main ideological strands within it—white supremacy, anti-federalism, and Christian fundamentalism—which are united by a common American nationalism, link violent conduct to their underlying ideology and “reinforce one other in the organizational frameworks of the American violent far right.”

To understand the American violent far right, the report analyzes 4,420 violent incidents that occurred between 1990 and 2012 in the United States, and which caused 670 deaths and 3,053 injuries. All the incidents were perpetrated by groups or individuals affiliated with far-right associations or were intended to promote ideas compatible with far-right ideology.

The report found a “very clear” overall trend of increasing attacks from the early 1990s onward, with the average number of attacks rising from 70.1 in the 1990s to 307.5 in the 2000s, a jump of more than 400%. Fourteen of the 21 years covered saw an increase in attacks over the previous year. Other findings include the following:

• Far-right violence increases during presidential election years and the years preceding.

• Far-right violence increases when political conservatives win power in Congress.

• Three clusters of events facilitated the rise of far-right violence: the Supreme Court decisions against segregation in the education system; the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, and the gun control legislation of 1993-1994.

• Far-right violence is concentrated in heterogeneous areas, where peoples of varying ethnic and religious backgrounds interact.

• The South is no longer the hub of far-right violence. Judged by per capita attacks, the worst states are Oregon, Maine, New York, Vermont and Massachusetts.

-Matt Bewig

To Learn More:

Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right (by Arie Perliger, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point) (pdf)

Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right (press release)

The Americans Who Inspired the Norwegian Mass Murderer (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)