The Extremism Roundup

Islamist & Anti-Muslim Extremism 

• Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart have reintroduced legislation urging the State Department to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization.
• Several U.S. allies, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, have designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror group.
• Hamas, which is a Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, is designated a terrorist organization by the State Department.

• A knife attack on a train in Bavaria on Nov. 6  is being investigated as an act of terrorism.
• An initial evaluation of the social media accounts of the accused showed that an Islamist motive for the crime could not be excluded.

• The Department of Homeland Security issued a terror threat bulletin warning that al Qaeda and ISIS-linked terrorists are ramping up online activity to try to inspire attacks on the U.S. homeland.
• Officials also see an uptick in publications by online magazines encouraging U.S.-based actors and providing advice on different methods of attack.
• The recent threat bulletin warns of calls for violence against "elected officials, political representatives, government facilities, law enforcement, religious communities or commercial facilities, and perceived ideological opponents." 

Alt-Right & Alt-Left Extremism

• Antifa radicals clashed with anti-vaccine mandate protesters Saturday night outside the mayoral residence in New York City.
• Video from the protest shows police officers forming a barricade between the two sides.

• An 18-year-old college student and recent member of the Texas State Guard, Franklin Barrett Sechriest, was charged with a Halloween arson attack upon a synagogue in Austin, Texas.
• Nazi propaganda was recovered from Sechriest, according to an FBI special agent.
• Sechriest had a series of handwritten journals suggesting a virulent hatred for Jewish people, and memorialized his alleged Halloween night crime in one entry by scrawling, “I set fire to a synagogue.”
• If convicted, Sechriest faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

• Three teens from Woodsboro High School in Texas dressed in Ku Klux Klan costumes and harassed  black teenagers on Halloween.
• Up to six victims, all juveniles, were assaulted. One was shocked with a stun gun.

• An ex-black militia group member was removed by police from a November 9 school board meeting held by the Fort Worth Independent School District. 
• The man, identified as Malikk Austin, is a former member of the black militia group known as The Brotherhood Movement.
• At the meeting, Austin told anti-CRT(critical race theory) parents that he's “got over a thousand soldiers ready to go” who were “locked and loaded.”

• Members of the New Mexico Civil Guard, an armed civilian militia group, were detained following the shooting of a man during a protest on June 15, 2020.
• Though the alleged shooter apparently wasn’t a member of the group, prosecutors blamed the organization for fomenting the violence and are demanding that Facebook hand over data that would confirm the identity of militia group members and page administrators.
• Facebook says those records no longer exist.
• Facebook’s policy of deleting all traces of these types of groups raised questions and concerns over how serious Facebook is about preventing extremists from resurfacing on the platform, let alone aiding real-world investigations into such groups.

• Small-business owners in downtown Kenosha, Wisc. are preparing for a return of protesters, crime and vandalism regardless of the outcome in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.
• Several businesses that were targeted by demonstrators last year were either closed or unoccupied on Monday of this week. 

Hostile Foreign Influence Operations

• U.S. firms and their China affiliates are ramping up investment in Chinese semiconductor companies.
• From 2017 through 2020, investment deals in China’s semiconductor industry more than doubled from the prior four years. 
• Investors have participated in financing rounds that have raised billions for Chinese chip start-ups.
• Lawmakers consistently raise concerns over the economic and military implications of a loss of U.S. leadership in semiconductors.