User:Veritas Aeterna/Draft January 6th and Domestic Terrorism Sections

= January 6 United States Capitol attack =

Contemporary analysis and terminology
A week following the attack, journalists were searching for an appropriate word to describe the event. According to the Associated Press, U.S. media outlets first described the developments on January 6 as "a rally or protest", but as the events of the day escalated and further reporting and images emerged, the descriptions shifted to "an assault, a riot, an insurrection, domestic terrorism or even a coup attempt". It was variably observed that the media outlets were settling on the terms "riot" and "insurrection". According to NPR, "By definition, 'insurrection,' and its derivative, 'insurgency,' are accurate. 'Riot' and 'mob' are equally correct. While these words are not interchangeable, they are all suitable when describing Jan. 6." The New York Times assessed the event as having brought the United States "hours away from a full-blown constitutional crisis". Presciently, Brian Stelter, in CNN Business, wrote that the events of the Capitol attack "will be remembered as an act of domestic terrorism against the United States".

The Encyclopædia Britannica, initially described the attack "as an insurrection or attempted coup d'état". Since then, the encyclopedia has added that the “The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other law-enforcement agencies also considered it an act of domestic terrorism.” Furthermore, Encyclopædia Britannica classifies the Capitol attack under the topic of domestic terrorism and describes the United States Capitol as a “scene of domestic terrorism when supporters of Donald Trump stormed the building as Congress was in the process of certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election."

Naunihal Singh of the U.S. Naval War College, and author of Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups, wrote that the attack on the Capitol was "an insurrection, a violent uprising against the government" and "sedition" but not a coup because Trump did not order the military "to seize power on his behalf". The Coup D'état Project of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois, which tracks coups and coup attempts globally, classified the attack as an "attempted dissident coup", defined as an unsuccessful coup attempt "initiated by a small group of discontents" such as "ex-military leaders, religious leaders, former government leaders, members of a legislature/parliament, and civilians [but not police or the military]". The Cline Center said the "organized, illegal attempt to intervene in the presidential transition" by displacing Congress met this definition. Some political scientists identified the attack as an attempted self-coup, in which the head of government attempts to strong-arm the other branches of government to entrench power. Academic Fiona Hill, a former member of Trump's National Security Council, described the attack, and Trump's actions in the months leading up to it, as an attempted self-coup.

As mentioned, the FBI classified the attack as domestic terrorism. At the Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on March 2nd, 2021, Wray testified: "I was appalled, like you, at the violence and destruction that we saw that day. I was appalled that you, our country’s elected leaders, were victimized right here in these very halls. That attack, that siege was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism. It’s got no place in our democracy and tolerating it would make a mockery of our nation’s rule of law."

The Congressional Research Service also concluded that the attack met the federal definition of domestic terrorism. Republican senator Ted Cruz characterized it as terrorism at least eighteen times over the ensuing year, though he was among the Senate Republicans who blocked a bipartisan January 6 commission to investigate it.

=Domestic terrorism in the United States=

San Francisco Coal Miners Massacre (1849)
The Hounds, a white vigilante group in San Francisco, attacks a Chilean mining community, raping women, burning houses, and lynching two men.

Pottawatomie Creek Massacre (1856)
Abolitionist John Brown with like-minded settlers killed five pro-slavery settlers north of Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County, Kansas.

Mountain Meadows Massacre (1857)
The Mountain Meadows massacre was a series of attacks on the Baker–Fancher emigrant wagon train, at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah. The attacks began on September 7 and culminated on September 11, 1857, resulting in the mass slaughter of the emigrant party by members of the Utah Territorial Militia from the Iron County district, a Mormon group, together with some Paiute Native Americans. Intending to leave no witnesses and thus prevent reprisals, the perpetrators killed all the adults and older children – about 120 men, women, and children in total. Seventeen children, all younger than seven, were spared.

Harper's Ferry Massacre (1859)
Abolitionist John Brown leads a raid on Harper's Ferry arsenal to get weapons for arming slaves to resist slavery. Most of his men were killed, and he was tried for treason and hanged.

Lincoln assassination (1865)
Less than a week after Confederate general Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Union forces, marking the Union's victory in the American Civil War, a circle of Confederate sympathizers conspired to murder President Abraham Lincoln and members of his Cabinet in the hope of creating chaos and overthrowing the federal government. John Wilkes Booth successfully assassinated Lincoln.

The Colfax Massacre (1873)
The Colfax Massacre occurred in Colfax, Louisiana on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873. Republicans had narrowly won the 1872 election to retain control of the state, but Democrats contested the results. Dozens of African-Americans were killed by white supremacist organizations such as the Knights of White Camellia and the Ku Klux Klan, who tried to reinforce antebellum policies of white supremacy.

Haymarket bombing (1886)
Two workers were killed by police in the course of a confrontation between striking workers and strikebreakers in the streets of Chicago. During a rally the next day, an unknown assailant threw dynamite at a line of police officers; the explosion and the mutual violence that followed killed eight police officers and at least four civilians. The attacker was most likely an anarchist, although the trial that convicted the members of a local anarchist cell has since been criticized as unfair.

Milwaukee Police Department bombing (1917)
The Milwaukee Police Department bombing was a November 24, 1917, bomb attack that killed ten people including nine members of local law enforcement. The perpetrators were never caught but are suspected to be an anarchist terrorist cell operating in the United States in the early 20th century. The target was an evangelical church in the Third Ward but killed only the police officers when the bomb was brought to the police station by a concerned member of the public.

Wall Street bombing (1920)
The Wall Street bombing was a terrorist incident on September 16, 1920, in the Financial District of New York City. A horse-drawn wagon filled with 100 pounds (45 kg) of dynamite was stationed across the street from the headquarters of the J.P. Morgan Bank. The explosion killed 38 and injured 400. Even though no one was found guilty, it is believed that the act was carried out by followers of Luigi Galleani.

Tulsa Race Massacre (1921)
On May 31 and June 1, 1921, a white mob started the Tulsa race massacre attacking residents and businesses of the African-American community known as Black Wall Street, in the Greenwood area in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in what is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in United States History. The attack, carried out on the ground and by air, destroyed more than 35 blocks of the district, did $30 million (2017 dollars) in damage, left 10,000 people homeless and up to 300 dead in a town considered the wealthiest black community in the nation.

16th Street Baptist Church bombing (1963)
On Sunday, September 15, 1963, members of the United Klans of America set a bomb consisting of a timing device and fifteen sticks of dynamite to explode at a historically black church in Birmingham, Alabama, that was a local focus of the Civil Rights struggle. The explosion killed four girls between the ages of 11 and 14 and did much other local damage. Three perpetrators were eventually caught years later and sentenced to life imprisonment for their roles. There had been other bombings in Birmingham, then grimly known as "Bombingham" for such attacks.

Unabomber attacks (1978–1995)
From 1978 to 1995, Harvard University graduate and former mathematics professor Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski – known by the codename "UNABOM" until his identification and arrest by the FBI – carried out a campaign of sending letter bombs to academics and various individuals particularly associated with modern technology. In 1996, his manifesto was published in The New York Times and The Washington Post, under the threat of more attacks. The bomb campaign ended with his capture.

Attacks by the Jewish Defense League (1980–1985)
In a 2004 congressional testimony, John S. Pistole, executive assistant director for counterterrorism and counterintelligence for the FBI, described the JDL as "a known violent extremist Jewish Organization." FBI statistics show that, from 1980 through 1985, there were 18 terrorist attacks in the U.S. committed by Jews; 15 of those by members of the JDL. Mary Doran, an FBI agent, described the JDL in a 2004 Congressional testimony as "a proscribed terrorist group". Most recently, then-JDL chairman Irv Rubin was jailed while awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy in planning bomb attacks against the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California, and on the office of Arab-American Congressman Darrell Issa. In its report, Terrorism 2000/2001, the FBI referred to the JDL as a "violent extremist Jewish organization" and stated that the FBI was responsible for thwarting at least one of its terrorist acts.

Oklahoma City bombing (1995)
The Oklahoma City bombing was a truck bomb attack by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols which killed 168 people on April 19, 1995 – the deadliest domestic-based terrorist attack in the history of the United States. The target being a government building, it was an act of retribution for the FBI and ATF's involvement at Ruby Ridge and in the Waco siege. It inspired improvements to United States federal building security.

Centennial Olympic Park bombing (1996)
The Centennial Olympic Park bombing was a terrorist bombing on July 27, 1996, in Atlanta, Georgia, during the 1996 Summer Olympics, the first of four committed by Eric Robert Rudolph, former explosives expert for the United States Army. Two people died, and 111 were injured.

Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting (2012)
On August 5, 2012, Wade Michael Page fatally shot six people (including himself) and wounded four others in a mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page was an American white supremacist and a United States Army veteran from Cudahy, Wisconsin, who was a member of the neo-Nazi skinhead Hammerskin Nation. All of the dead were members of the Sikh faith.

Boston Marathon bombing (2013)
On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs detonated 12 seconds and 210 yards apart at 2:49 p.m., near the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring several hundred others, including 16 who lost limbs. Kyrgyz-American brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were apprehended and claimed to have been motivated by radical Islamist beliefs.

Cartoon Drawing Contest shooting (2015)
On May 3, 2015, two gunmen, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, wounded a security guard before police shot and killed them. The two men targeted an exhibit featuring cartoon images of Muhammad taking place in the Curtis Culwell Conference Center in Garland, Texas.

Charleston church shooting (2015)
On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist, went into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and shot and killed nine people including South Carolina senator Clementa C. Pinckney. Roof was known to be a white supremacist who admired Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia and owned a website with a manifesto both called The Last Rhodesian in which he outlined his views toward blacks, among other peoples.

San Bernardino shooting (2015)
On December 2, 2015, 14 people were killed and 24 injured in a mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, United States. Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik targeted a San Bernardino County Department of Public Health training event and holiday party of about 80 employees in a rented banquet room. Farook was an American-born citizen of Pakistani descent, while his wife was a Pakistani-born legal resident of the U.S. He had attended the event as an employee before the shooting. Both had become radicalized through jihadist material on the internet, and stockpiled supplies in their home.

Orlando nightclub shooting (2016)
In the early hours of June 12, 2016, 49 people were killed and 53 were injured in a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The perpetrator, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, was a security guard and person of interest to the FBI in 2013 and 2014. At the time, this event was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history by a single gunman, later eclipsed by the 2017 Las Vegas shooting on October 1, 2017. Additionally, it was the deadliest confirmed terrorist attack on U.S. soil since the 9/11 attacks and the deadliest attack against LGBT people in U.S. history.

Congressional baseball shooting (2017)
While practice for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity was going on, James Thomas Hodgkinson opened fire on Republican Congressmen and Congresswomen on the field such as U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Crystal Giner, congressional aide Zack Barth and lobbyist Matt Mika, resulting in 6 injuries (4 critical) and the perpetrator’s death.

Charlottesville car attack (2017)
During the Charlottesville riots/Unite the Right rally on August 11–12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, by neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, white nationalists, alt-righters, Southern nationalists and Ku Klux Klansmen, Vanguard America (VA) member James Alex Fields drove his car into counter-protesters, killing 1 named Heather Heyer and injuring 28 others.

Pittsburgh synagogue shooting (2018)
On October 27, 2018, 11 people died and 6 more were injured at the Tree of Life - Or L'Simcha Congregation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by Robert Bowers, a racial extremist. The attack was motivated by anti-Semitism and a belief in the white genocide conspiracy theory.

Escondido mosque fire and Poway synagogue shooting (2019)
On March 24, 2019, a mosque in Escondido, California, was set on fire; no one was injured and the fire was contained without major damage. The following month, on April 27, 2019, an elderly Jewish woman named Lori Gilbert-Kaye was killed and three others (including Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein) were injured at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in Poway, California. The accused shooter, John T. Earnest, blamed Jews for "white genocide" and other ills in an anti-Semitic and racist open letter on 8chan confessing to the mosque arson and citing inspiration from the Christchurch mosque shooter Brenton Harrison Tarrant and Pittsburgh synagogue shooting perpetrator Robert Bowers.

El Paso Walmart shooting (2019)
On August 3, 2019, a domestic terrorist attack/mass shooting occurred at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, killing twenty-three people and injuring twenty-three others. The attack was carried out by Patrick Crusius, who wrote a manifesto and later posted it on 4chan in which he cited a supposed "Hispanic invasion of Texas" and "simply trying to defend my country from ethnic and cultural replacement brought on by an invasion" as motivations and also praising the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings.

January 6, 2021 United States Capitol attack
On January 6, 2021, following the defeat of then-U.S. President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, a mob of his supporters attacked the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. The mob was seeking to keep Trump in power by preventing a joint session of Congress from counting the electoral college votes to formalize the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. According to the House select committee investigating the incident, the attack was the culmination of a seven-part plan by Trump to overturn the election. Five people died either shortly before, during, or following the event: one was shot by Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three died of natural causes. Many people were injured, including 138 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack committed suicide within the next seven months. monetary damages caused by attackers exceed $2.7 million.

The Director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, testified at the January 6th Committee Hearings, that the attack was "domestic terrorism". , the Brooking's Institute, The Atlantic , and the Encyclopædia Britannica. Republican senator Ted Cruz characterized it as terrorism at least eighteen times over the ensuing year after the attack, though he was among the Senate Republicans who blocked a bipartisan January 6 commission to investigate it.

=Terrorism in the United States=



In the United States, a common definition of terrorism is the systematic or threatened use of violence in order to create a general climate of fear to intimidate a population or government and thereby effect political, religious, or ideological change. This article serves as a list and a compilation of acts of terrorism, attempts to commit acts of terrorism, and other such items which pertain to terrorist activities which are engaged in by non-state actors or spies who are acting in the interests of state actors or persons who are acting without the approval of foreign governments within the domestic borders of the United States.

Since the end of the American Civil War, organised groups or lone wolf white supremacists have committed many acts of domestic terrorism against African-Americans. This terrorism has been in the form of lynchings, hate crimes, shootings, bombings and other acts of violence. Such acts of violence overwhelmingly occurred in the Southern United States, and they included acts of violence which were committed by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). White supremacist terrorist incidents include the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, the Rosewood massacre of 1923, and the Wilmington insurrection of 1898.

On November 19, 2019, according to remarks which were made by Matthew Alcoke, Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI Counterterrorism Division, Alcoke defines domestic terrorists as "individuals who commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of ideological goals stemming from domestic issues." Although acts of violence by domestic extremists consistently meet the definition, no US criminal charge for domestic terror exists. Rather, the phrase is an FBI investigative category which is used to classify four types of extremism: "racially motivated violent extremism, anti-government/anti-authority extremism, animal rights/environmental extremism, and abortion extremism." A 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that out of the 85 deadly extremist incidents which had occurred since September 11, 2001, white supremacist extremist groups were responsible for 73%, while radical Islamist extremists were responsible for 27%. The total number of deaths which was caused by each group was about the same, though 41% of the deaths were attributable to radical Islamists and they all occurred in a single event — the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting in which 49 people were killed by a lone gunman. No deaths were attributed to left-wing groups. A 2017 report by Type Media Center and The Center for Investigative Reporting analyzed a list of the terrorist incidents which occurred in the US between 2008 and 2016 and included the 2014 killings of NYPD officers and the 2016 shooting of Dallas police officers (a total of 7 deaths saying that they could "plausibly be attributed to a perpetrator with such sympathies".

In 2018, most ideologically motivated murders in the United States of America were linked to right-wing extremism. As of 2020, right-wing extremist terrorism accounted for the majority of terrorist attacks and plots in the US and has killed more people in the continental United States since the September 11 attacks than Islamic terrorism. The United States Department of Homeland Security reported in October 2020 that white supremacists posed the top domestic terrorism threat, which FBI director Christopher Wray confirmed in March 2021, noting that the bureau had elevated the threat to the same level as ISIS.

Recent trends
A 2017 report by The Nation Institute and the Center for Investigative Reporting analyzed a list of the terrorist incidents which occurred in the US between 2008 and 2016. It found:
 * 115 far-right inspired terrorist incidents. 35% of these incidents were foiled (this number means that no terrorist attacks occurred) and 29% of them resulted in fatalities. These incidents caused 79 deaths.
 * 63 Islamist inspired terrorist incidents. 76% of these terrorist incidents were foiled (this number means that no terrorist attacks occurred) and 13% of them resulted in fatalities. These incidents caused 90 deaths.
 * 19 far-left inspired terrorist incidents. 20% of these terrorist incidents were foiled (this number means that no terrorist attacks occurred) and 10% of them resulted in fatalities. Two of these incidents were described as "plausibly" attributed to a perpetrator with left-wing sympathies and caused 7 deaths. These are not included in the official government database.

According to a report which is based on Justice Department figures which were released by the U.S. government in January 2018, about three out of four people who were convicted on charges of international terrorism between September 11, 2001 to December 31, 2016, were foreign-born. According to the Justice Department, 549 people were convicted on charges of international terrorism, including 254 people who were citizens of other countries, 148 people were naturalized citizens and 148 people were natural-born-citizens. In a speech which he made before a joint session of Congress on February 28, 2017, President Donald Trump incorrectly attributed these findings to domestic terrorism, in actuality, these findings were based on cases in which international terrorists may have been brought to the United States for prosecution.

In 2015, the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security and the Police Executive Research Forum conducted a nationwide survey of 382 police and sheriff departments. Nearly 74% of respondents stated that anti-government violence was their top concern with regard to threats from violent extremists, while about 39% of respondents stated that "Al Qaeda-inspired" violence was their top concern.

For the past decade, the national conversation on terrorism has largely focused on Islamic extremist acts, however, law enforcement groups have made it clear that Muslim extremists perpetrate a minute percentage of the ideologically based terrorist attacks which are perpetrated in the United States. Since November 9, 2001, only about 9 American Muslims per year have taken part in terrorist plots in the United States, in total, 20 incidents resulted in about 50 deaths. A 2012 study showed that in about the same time period right-wing extremists were responsible for about 337 attacks per year, in total, they killed more than 5 times the number of people killed by Muslims in the United States.

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism maintains Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States, a database which contains over 1,800 profiles of individuals who have been radicalized by ideologies since 1948. The database shows that from 1948 through 2016, 40.0% of identified extremists were far-right, 24.5% of identified extremists were Islamist and 17.4% of identified extremists were far-left, while 18.2% of identified extremists were "single issue" individuals.

In May 2019 and for the first time in its history, the FBI identified fringe conspiracy theories as a potential source of domestic terrorism, it specifically cited QAnon.

A June 2020 study of domestic terrorist incidents by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reported that during the previous 25 years, the majority of attacks and plots were perpetrated and hatched by far-right attackers. This trend has accelerated in recent years, with this sector being responsible for about 66% of all of the attacks and plots which were perpetrated in 2019, and it was also responsible for 90% of all of those attacks which were perpetrated in 2020. The next most potentially dangerous group has been "religious extremists", the majority "Salafi jihadists inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda", while the number planned by the far left has reduced to a minute fraction since the mid-2000s.

In October 2020, the Department of Homeland Security released the "Homeland Threat Assessment", a report detailing various domestic threats to US national security. It states that, out of all domestic terror attacks resulting in lethal threats to life between 2018 and 2019, "WSEs [white supremacist extremists] conducted half of all lethal attacks (8 of 16), resulting in the majority of deaths (39 of 48)".

Right-wing and anti-government extremism

 * April 19, 1995: Oklahoma City bombing: A truck bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. Far-right terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were convicted in the bombing.
 * July 27, 1996: Centennial Olympic Park bombing by Eric Robert Rudolph occurred in Atlanta, Georgia, during the Atlanta Olympics. One person was killed and 111 injured. In a statement released in 2005 Rudolph said the motive was to protest abortion and the "global socialist" Olympic Movement.
 * July 27, 2008: Knoxville Unitarian Universalist church shooting: Jim David Adkisson enters the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee with a shotgun, killing two and injuring several congregants before being tackled to the ground. Adkisson stated to the police and in a manifesto that he desired to kill Democrats, liberals, African Americans and homosexuals. Adkisson pleaded guilty to the crime in February 2009 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
 * November 1, 2013: 2013 Los Angeles International Airport shooting: 23-year-old Paul Ciancia kills a Transportation Security Administration agent and wounds 7 others, 3 of them TSA agents. Ciancia was shot and taken into custody. A note found in Ciancia's pocket said he believed he was a "patriot" upset at former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and that he wanted to kill "TSA and pigs".
 * June 8, 2014: 2014 Las Vegas shootings: Two Las Vegas police officers while eating pizza in a restaurant and one civilian were shot to death by Jerad and Amanda Miller, a married couple, in a suicide attack. A Gadsden flag, swastika and a note promising "revolution," was placed on the deceased officers bodies. The couple were thrown out of a patriot group defending rancher Cliven Bundy. The Millers were both killed in a shootout with police on the same day.
 * October 22 – November 1, 2018: October 2018 United States mail bombing attempts: At least twelve confirmed packages containing pipe bombs were mailed within the U.S. Postal Service system to several prominent critics of U.S. President Donald Trump, including various Democratic Party politicians (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Eric Holder, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Maxine Waters, Cory Booker), actor Robert De Niro, billionaire investor George Soros, former CIA Director John O. Brennan, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. On October 26, a 56-year-old man named Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr. was arrested by authorities in Plantation, Florida in connection with the explosive devices. The suspect has a criminal history. A white van covered in stickers (several showing support for Donald Trump) was also seized by authorities.