The Department of Homeland Security issued a national terrorism alert warning that violent national extremists could attack in the coming weeks, fueled by the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
DHS, in an alert issued Wednesday, said violent extremists opposed to the government and the presidential transition “could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence.” The department said it has no evidence of a specific plot.
The DHS publication was part of a public alert called the National Terrorism Advisory System newsletter.
The alert is the department’s first in about a year. The latest bulletin from this DHS arrived in January 2020, warning about Iran’s potential to carry out cyberattacks. DHS did not issue an alert ahead of the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, DC, which turned into a mass siege at the Capitol, despite online public talks that extremists had planned to hold.
Wednesday’s alert described a number of factors in the recent past that have increased the potential for violence among American extremists.
Violent extremists have been “motivated by a number of issues, including anger over Covid-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results and the use of force by police,” the alert said. The alert also lists opposition to immigration, citing it as a motivating factor in the murder of 23 people on a white supremacist in El Paso, Texas, in 2019.
DHS said it is “concerned that these same drivers of violence remain until early 2021 and some [domestic violent extremists] may be encouraged by the non-compliance of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, to address elected officials and government facilities. ”
“This is a bulletin that should have been published in late December,” said Elizabeth Neumann, a former DHS counterterrorism officer who served during the Trump administration and who has been critical of how the department has approached it. the question. “I am grateful that the new DHS team has quickly assessed the available intelligence and has fulfilled its legal duty to warn the public about the threat we face.”
Since the January 6 riots, far-right groups have used increasingly violent rhetoric in online chats, sharing materials to make bombs and guerrilla tactics and calling for an asymmetric war with the government, according to researchers in the Soufan group. a non-partisan center that tracks extremist movements.
“There is open talk of war, of the coming war, 2021 will be our year,” said Mollie Saltskog, an analyst at the Soufan group. “That’s all after January 6th.”
The Proud Boys, a far-right group, have tried to downplay their role in the Capitol Revolt. A WSJ investigation shows that at many of the key moments of the day, Proud Boys was in the lead. Photographic illustration: Laura Kammermann
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