The Extremism Roundup

Islamist & Anti-Muslim Extremism 

Investigative Reporting

• An Islamist terrorist pounced on a police officer in an area southwest of Paris, France and stabbed her to death. The terrorist was shot and killed. The 49-year-old officer was the mother of two children.
• The extremist is not believed to have been under investigation or on law enforcement’s radar and was not previously arrested. He came to France illegally from Tunisia in 2009 and was granted residency last year.

DOJ

• An ISIS terrorist has been sentenced to life for setting off a pipe bomb in a subway station near the Port Authority bus terminal in New York City in 2017. He attempted to carry out a suicide bombing but only injured himself and was then arrested.
• The terrorist was a U.S. citizen and permanent resident of Bangladesh. 
• After the news broke, Clarion Project’s Ryan Mauro said on Fox News that about 140,000 Bangladeshis had come to the U.S. since 2005, while polling data showed that 26 percent of the population in Bangladesh feel that suicide attacks are often or sometimes justified.

DOJ

• A woman from Des Moines, Iowa pled guilty to charges related to her attempt to run over two children with her vehicle in 2019.
• She first tried to run over two children because she thought they were from the Middle East-North African region. One child was injured. She then drove to a high school and ran over a 14-year-old girl who she suspected was Mexican. The victim survived but was hospitalized for two days.
• She then went to a gas station and threw items at a worker while yelling racial slurs at him. She was then arrested.

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

• A man has been arrested for vandalizing the Moorhead Fargo Islamic Community Center in Minnesota by spraying anti-Muslim and racist graffiti onto the building and breaking a window.
• The graffiti included a swastiska and “Death to Islam.” 

Alt-Right & Alt-Left Extremism

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

• Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and the city’s police chief are asking residents to help “unmask” the Alt-Left rioters whose rampage is forcing the state of emergency to be extended. Wheeler described the attackers as “anarchists” who just “want to burn.” 
• Wheeler asked residents to write down the license plates of vehicles transporting the Antifa-type extremists who hide their identities by wearing all-black attire, a tactic known as “black bloc.” He also asked residents to listen for people boasting about their crimes afterward.
• “When somebody attacks a church that serves the LGBTQ community and homeless populations, they’re going to talk about it. When somebody attacks the Boys and Girls Club, which focuses on youth of color in our community, they’re going to talk about it,” he said.

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

• Of 93 federal cases filed in Portland last year against rioters, 47 were dismissed, including people who assaulted police officers. Ten pled guilty and two are being detained until their trial starts.
• The sentencing is mostly limited to community service.  

Investigative Reporting

• Polling data shows that 27 percent of millennials and 30 percent of Generation Z view Marxism favorably, and 16 percent of millennials and Generation Z say they’d be likely to vote for a Communist. About the same percentage said communism is fairer than capitalism and the U.S. should consider implementing it.
• Another poll found that, while only 15 percent of Americans favor abolishing the police, it is supported by 33 percent of those under the age of 35. 
• The polls recently received major attention because progressive comedian Bill Maher mentioned them in a monologue blasting millennials for ageism. After citing the polls, Maher said, “The problem isn’t that I don’t get what you’re saying or that I’m old. The problem is that your ideas are stupid.”

Investigative Reporting

• The Justice Department expects the number of arrests related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol to surpass 500. Over 400 people have already been charged.
• The statement was first made in court filings related to the prosecution of Robert Gieswein, who wore riot gear to the rally and used a baseball bat to participate in the riot. Gieswein accused politicians of “selling” the country to Israel and the Middle East and having “completely destroyed our country and sold them to the Rothschilds and Rockefellers.”
• Approximately 800 people broke into the Capitol building and over 10,000 entered the Capitol grounds. 

Hostile Foreign Influence Operations

Investigative Reporting

• Senior U.S. intelligence officials are working to declassify information about Russian and Chinese disinformation operations after a request from nine regional military commanders.
• They called on the country to start aggressively “waging the truth in the public domain against America’s 21st century challengers” and to declassify intelligence in order to “supply ammunition in the ongoing war of narratives.”

Investigative Reporting

• Student government leaders at Cornell, including the president of the Cornell College Republicans and the chair of the Cornell Progressives’ Anti-War Committee, are demanding that the university disclose all its funding from Saudi Arabia and sever its relationships to Saudi institutions and U.S. companies they accuse of being involved in Saudi human rights abuses.
• The Student Assembly passed a resolution on April 15.
• Clarion Project’s Ryan Mauro told The College Fix that “Many schools have been caught blatantly ignoring the law when it comes to foreign funding. There are a myriad of ways for foreign adversaries to poison academia with their funding, and the public disclosures in our tally are just the tip of the iceberg.” 
• Clarion Project released a documentary titled Covert Cash about the scandal involving foreign funding of U.S. colleges and universities.

Other Ideological Extremism

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

• The FBI’s most recent Hate Crimes Statistics Report shows that Jews are three times more likely to be targeted for a hate crime than any other religious group. 
• Over 60 percent of hate crimes motivated by bias against a religion targeted Jews. The targeting of Jews has increased by 41 percent since 2015.
• If the targeting of Jews is considered an ethnicity-based hate crime, then Jews are 17 percent of the victims, second only to black Americans.
• Just over the past week, six attacks were perpetrated against four synagogues in Bronx, N.Y. by an individual who threw rocks at the buildings, sometimes breaking windows.

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

• A self-identifying “Incel” was arrested for sending a bomb threat to a restaurant in New York City. He went to the restaurant and recorded himself telling women next to him that he was about to detonate a bomb and pretending to be a jihadist by saying “Allah Akbar.”
• He previously posted videos declaring himself a follower of Elliot Rodgers, the “Incel” icon who killed 6 and injured 14 in a terrorist attack at a California university in 2014.
• He posted other videos declaring his support for violence against women, showing himself harassing women, and, in one case on March 20, using pepper spray on someone who confronted him during the harassment. He was then arrested and released.
• Incels have killed at least 28 people in the U.S. and Canada in five separate attacks since 2014.