The U.S. Doesn’t Prosecute Far-Right Extremists as Terrorists. Here’s How It Could.
In recent years, far-right groups have been on the rise in the U.S. and around the world, with the number of violent acts committed by domestic groups on U.S. soil increasing as those by Islamist jihadists have declined. However, the U.S. does not yet have a way of addressing homegrown terrorism. If the State Department could place foreign far-right groups—those not currently designated as terrorist organizations—on the foreign terror list, the U.S. government could prosecute domestic extremist groups with ties to them. Jason Blazakis, who heads the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey was quoted in a Vice article as saying it would be positive for the State Department to use its placement tool to look at as many different groups as possible.