The Extremism Roundup

Islamist & Anti-Muslim Extremism 

• A U.S. military raid in northwestern Syria led to the death of ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi.
• As U.S. forces closed in, Quraishi triggered a suicide bomb, killing himself and his family.
• Quraishi replaced ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after his death in 2019 under similar circumstances.
• U.S. officials claim Quraishi was directly overseeing ISIS operations in Syria and that this raid was something the group won’t be able to get over easily.

• Chicago Police announced the arrest of Shahid Hussain, 39, for spray painting swastikas on two Chicago area Jewish cultural locations.
• Hussain faces four hate crime charges and criminal charges for damage and defacement of property.

Alt-Right & Alt-Left Extremism

• Three members of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), Joshua Terrell, 46, of Medora, Ind., Jason Brown, 47, of Cape Canaveral, Fla., and Burt Colucci, 45, of Lakeland, Fla., are facing charges for their role in punching, spitting on, pepper spraying, and yelling antisemitic slurs at a driver of the Jewish faith during an NMS rally on Jan. 29 in Orlando, Fla. 
• Colucci is the leader of the NSM and already faces charges in Arizona, where police said he threatened a group of Black men with a gun outside of a hotel.

• Mohamed Hussein Abdi, 20, plead guilty to conspiracy to commit arson and was sentenced to five years probation for attempting to set fire to a high school in June 2020 during the Black Lives Matter riots in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.   
• More than 1,500 businesses in the St. Paul area were damaged or destroyed during the riots, totaling roughly $500 million in damages.

• A member of the Proud Boys, Jeffrey Erik Perrine, has filed to run for California Assembly. Perrine, 38, of Orangevale, Calif. is running in the newly drawn 7th Assembly District.

• The California Department of Justice is giving the leaders of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization 60 days to release details concerning the charity’s $60 million in donations, or face personal liability.

Hostile Foreign Influence Operations

• According to an OpenSecrets’ analysis of Foreign Agents Registration Act and Lobbying Disclosure Act data, Russian interests spent nearly $182 million on lobbying, foreign influence operations and propaganda in the U.S. since 2016. 
• Millions have been spent on lobbying around Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which has emerged as a bargaining chip in Russia's clash with Ukraine.

• News Corp, which owns the publishers of The Wall Street Journal and New York Post, disclosed the discovery of a "persistent cyberattack" targeting a limited number of employees.
• News Corp hired private cyber security company Mandiant to investigate and they concluded, "Those behind this activity have a China nexus.”

Research and Trends in Extremism

• The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) published a publicly available Violence Project Database that details a half century of U.S. data and identifies common traits of people who engaged in mass shootings.The report shows a significant increase in deaths by mass shootings during the last decade. Read more


• A study by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State San Bernardino shows a 46 percent increase in hate crimes across the nation, based on data from metropolitan police departments in 14 U.S. cities.  Read more