While much remains unknown about the man who carried out an attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Eve and another man who was killed in an explosion in Las Vegas the same day, the violence is fueled by the growing role of people with military experience in ideologically driven attacks. especially in attacks that seek mass casualties.
In New Orleans, Shamsud-Deen Jabbar, a US Army veteran, was killed by police after a deadly explosion in a pickup truck killed 14 other people and injured dozens more. It is being investigated as a terrorist act inspired by the Islamic State group.
In Las Vegas, authorities say Matthew Leavelsbarger, an active-duty member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, detonated his head in a Tesla Cybertruck filled with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters moments before it exploded outside the entrance to the Trump International Hotel. I got shot. , seven people injured. On Friday, investigators said Livelsberger wrote that the blast was intended to be a “wakeup call” and that the country was “finally sick and headed for collapse.”
Service members and veterans who are radicalized make up a small fraction of a percentage point of the millions who have honorably served their country. But an Associated Press investigation published last year found that radicalization was on the rise among both veterans and active-duty service members and that hundreds of people with military backgrounds had been arrested for extremist crimes since 2017. Nearly 100 people were killed or injured during the period the AP found they were involved in extremist plots.
The AP also found several issues with the Pentagon’s efforts to address extremism in its ranks, including that there is still no force-wide system to track it, and that a cornerstone report on the issue contained outdated data. , included misleading analysis and ignored evidence. crisis.
Since 2017, both veterans and active duty service members became radicalized at a faster rate than those without military backgrounds, according to data from terrorism researchers at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland. Are. Less than 1% of the adult population currently serves in the US military, but 3.2% of the extremist cases found by START researchers between 2017 and 2022 are active duty military members.
While the number of people with military backgrounds involved in violent extremist plots is small, the involvement of active duty military and veterans makes extremist plots more likely to result in mass injury or death, according to data collected and analyzed by the AP and START.
More than 480 people with military backgrounds were charged with ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 to 2023, including more than 230 people arrested in connection with the January 6, 2021 insurrection – the previous day arrested for attacks 18% of those committed last year, according to START. The data tracked individuals with military backgrounds, most of whom were veterans, who were involved in plans to kill, injure, or harm for political, social, economic, or religious goals.
The AP’s analysis found that conspiracies involving people with military backgrounds were more likely to involve mass casualties, weapons training or firearms than conspiracies that did not involve anyone with a military background. This is true whether conspiracies were carried out or not.
The Islamic State group’s jihadist ideology is clearly linked to the New Orleans attack, which would make it an outlier among the motivations of previous attacks involving people with military backgrounds. START researchers found that only about 9% of extremists with military backgrounds subscribe to jihadist ideology. Over 80% identify with far-right, anti-government or white supremacist ideologies, with the rest divided between far-left or other persuasions.
Nevertheless, there have been several significant attacks inspired by Islamic State and jihadist ideology in which the attackers had a US military background. In 2017, a US Army National Guard veteran who had served in Iraq killed five people in a mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale Airport in Florida after becoming radicalized through jihadist message boards and pledging support for the Islamic State. Had done. In 2009, an Army psychiatrist and officer opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 people and wounding dozens of others. The shooter was in contact with a known member of al-Qaeda before the shooting.
In the shadow of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — which was led in part by veterans — law enforcement officials said the threat from domestic violent extremists was one of the most persistent and serious terror threats to the United States. The Pentagon has said it is “committed to understanding the root causes of extremism and ensuring that such behavior is promptly and appropriately addressed and reported to the appropriate authorities.”
Christopher Goldsmith, an Army veteran and CEO of the Task Force Butler Institute, which trains veterans to research and counter extremism, said the problem of violent extremism in the military transcends ideological boundaries. Yet, he said, while the Biden administration made efforts to address it, Republicans in Congress opposed them for political reasons.
“You know, they pulled out every stone to say that all veterans are being labeled as extremists by the Biden administration,” Goldsmith said. “And now we’re in a situation where we’re four years behind where we could have been.”
During their long military careers, both Jabbar and Leavelsbarger spent time at the U.S. Army base formerly known as Fort Bragg in North Carolina, one of the largest military bases in the country. One of the officials who spoke to the AP said there is no overlap in their operations at the base, now called Fort Liberty.
Goldsmith said he is concerned that the incoming Trump administration will focus on the New Orleans attack and ISIS and ignore that most of the deadliest attacks in the United States in recent history have come from the far right, especially if Trump’s Pete Hegseth, nominated for Secretary of Defense, has been confirmed.
Hegseth has justified the medieval crusade that pitted Christians against Muslims, criticized Pentagon efforts to address extremism in the ranks and himself in the weeks after the January 6 attack before Joe Biden’s inauguration. Was flagged as a possible suspect by a fellow National Guard member. “Insider threat.”