Domestic security is national security. As homegrown terrorism becomes more of a concern, it’s hard not to remember cartoonist Walt Kelly’s Pogo exclaiming in a 1970s cartoon: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” The recently released Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Homeland Threat Assessment 2025 focused much of its concern on domestic violent extremists (DVEs). With what we are seeing in Minneapolis, Portland, and Los Angeles, the violent assaults on law enforcement and destruction of property bear witness to the validity of the Threat Assessment – violence against Americans by Americans.
DVEs were the topic of an earlier Liberty Nation News report, which highlighted the dangerous behavior of groups like Antifa, an anarchist, domestic terrorist organization. To that end, President Donald Trump designated the domestic troublemakers as a domestic terror organization. But according to the latest DHS threat assessment, the scope of the domestic terrorism problem is larger than just Antifa terrorists. In describing what law enforcement is up against, the Threat Assessment explained:
“Lone offenders and small groups continue to pose the greatest threat of carrying out attacks with little to no warning…Looking into 2025, the threat of violence from US-based violent extremists—including DVEs who are motivated by various ideologies and FTO [Foreign Terrorist Organization]-inspired homegrown violent extremists (HVEs)—will remain high. The threat will continue to be characterized primarily by lone offenders or small cells motivated to violence by a combination of racial, religious, gender, or anti-government grievances; conspiracy theories; and personalized factors.”
The Assessment goes on to explain that DVEs have focused their efforts on a variety of targets that include “ethnic and religious minorities, government officials, and ideological opponents, while HVEs have targeted faith-based organizations.” The violence is amplified by social media rants and “sociopolitical drivers emphasized in popular discourse.”
Rioting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has become the poster child for such extremism. The street thugs and violent agitators who have attempted to impede Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency officials from carrying out their law enforcement duties in Minneapolis and other cities harboring criminal illegal aliens could be classified easily as DVE activities. What we’ve seen and, by the admission of the perpetrators, the violent protesters are there to disrupt ICE’s lawful execution of its mandate to bring criminal illegal aliens to justice – not for any more noble purpose. The attempts at disrupting ICE agents’ performance of their duties have quickly morphed into violence, with the destruction of ICE agents’ automobiles, pelting ICE agents with chunks of hardened snow, theft of government property, and vile epithets hurled at the agents. One very quickly gets the impression that these violent activities have nothing to do with advocating for illegal aliens and everything to do with mindless, rampant violence for its own sake. The perpetrators quickly become the very definition of DVEs.
There is emerging a subset of the DVEs that the FBI has identified as Nihilistic Violent Extremists (NVE). Newsweek reported that NVE is a recently coined term that is used “to describe actors who commit violence without allegiance to any clear political ideology. Instead, they are characterized by a generalized hostility toward societal institutions and a desire to inflict harm or chaos.” In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September of last year, again from Newsweek, FBI Director Kash Patel told the committee, “A large chunk of [domestic terrorism investigations] are nihilistic violent extremism—those who engage in violent acts motivated by a deep hatred of society, whatever that justification they see it is.”
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