Acts of Terrorism megathread

[Zanza]

Media reports that the perpetrator was a very outspoken apostate and helped Saudi Arabian women to flee from oppression.

He was sharing content of German fascists (and Musk ofc) and argued against illegal immigration and was apparently afraid of Islamisation in Germany.

So looks like a Nazi, not an Islamist. 

[Syt]

Seems one of his most recent posts was a rant about a "hidden operation" of the German state to hunt Saudi ex-Muslims while giving refuge to Syrian jihadists.

Paranoia is a hell of a drug.

[Legbiter]

Déjà vu. 

[Duque de Bragança]

Possible terrorist attack in Northern France, five killed. 

Unlike the recent attack in Magdeburg, this is not seen by the police by a terrorist attack. More of a local brutal score settling.

[Josquius]

Media reports that the perpetrator was a very outspoken apostate and helped Saudi Arabian women to flee from oppression.

He was sharing content of German fascists (and Musk ofc) and argued against illegal immigration and was apparently afraid of Islamisation in Germany.

So looks like a Nazi, not an Islamist. 

It's a Christmas miracle. This is the man to bring all together in mutual hate.
Rational folk get to condemn him for being a nazi, nazis get to condemn him for being brown.

Unconfirmed. But I have read on twitter they blocked his account, deleted any tweets mentioning the afd or anything that way leaning, then unblocked it.

[mongers]

Possible terrorist attack in Northern France, five killed. 

Unlike the recent attack in Magdeburg, this is not seen by the police by a terrorist attack. More of a local brutal score settling.

Yes I did wonder what happened, on the news, then suddenly dropped off of the radar.

[Sheilbh]

So looks like a Nazi, not an Islamist. 

From what I've read I think it seems even less coherent than that - also big on Greater Israel and pro-asylum (just it should be for different people, people like him), for example.

I've mentioned before I think but the UK's counter-extremism program obviously has long established work against violent Islamists and neo-Nazis but I think they've said a few times recently that the fastest growing group are people who are sort of self-radicalising with "incoherent or mixed" ideology.

I think a fairly common type now is politically motivated but not politically coherent. It's individuals (often with a violent or criminal past, especially violence against women) with very idiosyncratic, incoherent political views. Think of the guy who attacked Pelosi's house: microdosing psychadelic enthusiast, Bernie supporting Qanon Trumpist.

I think it's something we've seen in many attacks around the world now and is perhaps almost the norm when you get these lone wolf style attacks. It's why I always wonder if mass shooter/killer is a better frame for understanding them than terrorist attacks (if this was a 15 year old, we would be far more comfortable discounting a political explanation). Not to go all Big Lebowski but I do feel like terrorism should involve more than one person and some organisation.

[Zanza]

Another car deliberately driven into a crowd by a terrorist. Ten dead. This time in New Orleans. 

[Maladict]

Another car deliberately driven into a crowd by a terrorist. Ten dead. This time in New Orleans. 

The car was flying an IS flag apparently. Just what we need. 

[crazy canuck]

The. NYTimes is reporting that pipebombs rigged for remote detonation were found in the vehicle and in the surrounding area.  This appears to have been a planned attack.

[Syt]

So on Monday a guy drove into a group of people in Mannheim, killing one. In this case it was a German citizen, apparently with ties to a neo-nazi group.

In Vienna, a guy drove a van into the Pest Column in the Graben pedestrian area near Stephansplatz. This, however, was just a drunk in a stolen vehicle.

[Josquius]

Finding it very curious you always get so much reporting when failed asylum seekers and other nuts drive their cars into crowds, but we are seeing a spate of such incidents lately and nary a peep.

Eg.


https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-strikes-tesla-counter-protester-vehicle-idaho-police/story?id=120308032

[viper37]

Car bomb in Palm Springs, in front of a fertility clinic.
One dead, car occupant.

Link

[Josquius]

Another car nutter. This time against celebrating crowds in Liverpool.

BBC News - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cn5xnlkegz0t
Liverpool parade latest: Man, 53, arrested after car driven into crowd - BBC News

Interesting they prominently mention he's a white brit. Getting ahead of the idiots and their speculation and malicious misinformation?

[Syt]

https://archive.is/20250913101747/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2025/09/12/is-radical-left-violence-really-on-the-rise-in-america

Is "radical-left" violence really on the rise in America?
The killing of Charlie Kirk is part of a grim pattern of political violence. This is what the data show

ON SEPTEMBER 10th Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist, was shot dead while speaking at a university in Utah. Although a suspect is in custody, the motive of the killer is still unknown. President Donald Trump, who has himself been the target of gunmen, pinned the blame on rhetoric from the "radical left". Assessing political violence in America is inherently subjective: analysts must determine which forms of violence count as political and assign ideological labels to attackers or victims. But the studies and datasets available—largely compiled by researchers whom sceptical conservatives would probably dismiss as biased—suggest that the killing of Mr Kirk is not representative of broader trends.



Distinguishing madmen and militants is never simple, but the Prosecution Project, led by Michael Loadenthal of the University of Cincinnati, analyses felony criminal cases involving political violence to see which ideologies are most common. The project examines criminal complaints, indictments and court records, looking for crimes that seek "a socio-political change or to communicate" to outside audiences, says Mr Loadenthal. Its data show that extremists on both left and right commit violence, although more incidents appear to come from right-leaning attackers (see chart 1). The figures do not, however, capture the severity of the crime nor the death toll. In 2001, for instance, there were more cases of right-wing violence than attacks by Islamists, even though the September 11th attacks by al-Qaeda killed almost 3,000 people that year.

One paper by Celinet Duran of the State University of New York at Oswego studied political violence between 1990 and 2020. It found that there were far more frequent and deadly attacks by the hard-right than the hard-left, although left-wing violence increased throughout the study period. A separate tally by the Anti-Defamation League, an advocacy group, shows that 76% of extremist-related murders over the past decade were committed by those on the right. Such tallies, however, depend on how extremism is defined and how ideology is assigned. The ADL uses public records such as media reports and police filings to reach their numbers. But those who commit violence often leave a messy trail of resentments that defy easy classification, and some are clearly mentally ill.



There is no single definition of political violence and no federal database. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), another research outfit, defines it as the use of force with political purpose or effects. By its count 37 people have been killed in such attacks in America this year, and 373 since 2020. The incidents it classifies as political range from a July shooting in midtown Manhattan, when a man killed four people in the NFL's headquarters, blaming the league for his alleged brain injuries; to more straightforward attacks, such as the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staff in Washington.

Most Americans reject political violence. Fewer than one in ten say they support it, with little difference between left and right. Yet that leaves potentially millions willing to condone violence—and some proportion of them willing to commit it—in a country awash with guns. Mr Kirk, himself a gun-rights champion, once said that some shootings were a price worth paying for protecting the constitutional right to bear arms. But he did not advocate political violence, and relished debate.



Demonstrators or political activists, such as Mr Kirk, are a frequent target of terrorism in America, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think-tank in Washington. CSIS defines terrorism as violence by non-state actors intended to achieve political goals through psychological impact. It draws on ACLED data and analyses propaganda and media reports. Attacks that randomly target individuals, such as the 2022 mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, are the most common. Between 2020 and 2025 the government was the second-most frequent target.



Data from CSIS also show that after a lull in the early 2000s, terrorist attacks and plots against government targets—including politicians and state employees—are rising again. The increase in those motivated by partisan political beliefs is particularly striking: between 2016 and 2025 there were 25 such incidents compared with just two in the previous 22 years.

That marks a shift from earlier eras. Some social movements in the 1960s were brutally violent but not partisan, notes Lilliana Mason of Johns Hopkins University: "It wasn't that Democrats were on one side of it and Republicans were on the other."



Attacks and plots have grown more common in recent decades, but the picture is muddier around threats and harassment (see chart 5). The Capitol Police investigated over 9,000 threats against members of Congress last year, up from fewer than 4,000 in 2017. John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, warned of growing threats to federal judges in his end-of-year report in 2024.

In recent months, however, the Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI), a research group at Princeton University, recorded a decline in threats and harassment aimed at local officials after peaking in 2024 when there were 600 incidents—a 14% rise on 2023 and a 74% increase from 2022. In surveys, more than 70% of local officials said that the hostility stemmed from their support for specific issues. Whether delivered through menacing tweets or in-person confrontations, the threats chill local officials. In BDI's surveys, two-fifths of them say concerns about hostility have made them less willing to work on controversial topics or run for re-election.

Researchers stress that violent attacks remain rare. "The amount of actual political violence that has occurred is nowhere near what it was in the 1960s," says Ms Mason. She also sees a different trend: attacks against political figures to get attention, not to advance a cause. "A lot of these are people who probably would have committed violence in some way," she says. "It's just that our politics has kind of aimed them towards political targets."