By Bill Simons 

The growth and threat of far-right terrorism is tangible and threatening, particularly so for Jews since American antisemitism resides at its core. Despite antisemitism from the left metastasizing since October 7, it presently poses less of a clear and present danger to democracy than far-right terrorism. I recently reviewed “God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America” (New York: Columbia University Press, 2024), an important and highly recommended new book with a disturbing message, for the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs. Events since publication of the review provided impetus for interviewing authors Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware. On August 29, I dialogued with them over Zoom. 

Hoffman is one of the pre-eminent authorities on far-right terrorism. Over the past four decades, his professional responsibilities have encompassed critical leadership positions in government, think tanks and academia. Moreover, he has authored several of the most influential works concerning far-right sedition. Recipient of a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford and an alumnus of the Israeli national field hockey team, Hoffman’s impressive credentials encompass congressional appointment to head the review of the FBI’s Post-9/11 Response to Terrorism and Radicalization; scholar-in-residence for counterterrorism at the Central Intelligence Agency; director of the Center for Security Studies and the Center for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University; and Rand Corporation vice president for external affairs. His influential study “Inside Terrorism,” soon to appear in a fourth edition, is essential reading. His work has elicited commendation and threats.

Of late, Ware has collaborated with Hoffman. At age 29, Ware already ranks as an ascending expert on counterintelligence. He holds consultative positions at the United States Military Academy’s Modern War Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations. He has taught courses on counterintelligence at Georgetown and DeSales universities. Ware’s policy briefs include “The Atomwaffen Division and Rising Far-Right Terrorism in the United States.” During our interview, Ware, like Hoffman, displayed command of his field, candor and a disarming wit. 

As Hoffman and Ware demonstrate, paranoid anti-Communist extremists of the McCarthy era adhered to a perverse patriotism in defense of the United States’ government; not so contemporary far-right conspiratorialists don many masks, amongst them Boogaloo, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and QAnon. Emerging circa 1980, the modern far-right extremist movement, although far from unified in structure or tenets, views the federal government as corrupt and coercive, seeking to subjugate the people by depriving them of their guns and subjecting them to crushing taxation. Embracing a distorted form of Christian nationalism and toxic masculinity, today’s far-right espouses accelerationism and violent terrorism to eradicate the influence of the racial and ethnic minorities threatening them. The January 6, 2021, attack on Congress evidenced the seditious nature of a far-right terrorist movement fortified by heavily-armed militia groups. 

In the zeitgeist of far-right extremists, the conspiratorial Jew, explain Hoffman and Ware, is at the center of the degradation and decay of America. Intelligent, cunning and rapacious, American Jews, linked to Israel by Zionist internationalism, employ the “the great replacement” strategy of enlisting inferior minions by encouraging Black fecundity, non-white immigration and promoting LGBTQ access to minimize white Christian America. Hoffman and Ware assert that “the goal of the kind of far-right terrorism that we’ve seen in places like Oslo, Pittsburgh, Christchurch, El Paso, Buffalo [and] Jacksonville, is to reverse that great replacement.”

Although profiling potential terrorists poses problems, certain commonalities frequently surface. Hoffman and Ware point to “vulnerabilities, or susceptibilities” among far-right recruits, amongst them “loneliness, isolation, bullying, mental illness, violence in the home, romantic frustration, substance abuse.” Racism, antisemitism, espousal of replacement theory, gun ownership, social media distortion and distrust of government loom large in their thinking. While Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life murderer, checks many of the preceding boxes, Hoffman and Ware caution that it is impossible to precisely “define a radicalization pathway… because there is no one size fits all.” And as the path from lone actor Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to the January 6, 2021, mass assault on the Capitol illustrates, the far-right continuously evolves. 

Hoffman and Ware put forward an ambitious, multifaceted agenda, dependent on the commitment of substantial resources over time by a future Congress willing to prioritize combating right-wing terrorism. The U.S., they emphasize, is the most “well armed country in the entire world… with 123 firearms for 100 citizens.” Along with substantive gun control and authorizing Department of Justice enforcement, the authors advocate depriving terrorist exhortation from First Amendment protections, as well as identifying and separating from service military and law enforcement personnel advocating domestic violence. Increased social media accountability and literacy are also essential to the authors’ program. And augmenting assistance for individuals manifesting mental health issues is necessary. 

With the 2024 presidential election campaign in full swing, Hoffman and Ware counsel that its Tuesday, November 5, denouement poses potentially serious problems. They referenced the former president’s April 2017 “very fine people on both sides” dog-whistle affirmation after white supremacists physically attacked peaceful protesters in Charlottesville, VA. The return of Donald Trump to the White House raises the specter of further validation of far-right terrorists openly modeling racism and violence. 

Conversely, Hoffman and Ware point out that if the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, prevails, Trump and far-right loyalists will likely deny the legitimacy of the outcome and seek a reprise of the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. This time, the commander-in-chief would be a president committed to upholding constitutional processes during the interregnum between election and inauguration, and, unlike in 1860, those who would most likely migrate from ballot box to bullets are organizationally fragmented and geographically dispersed. Nonetheless, in the aftermath of a Harris victory, the far-right would rail that a fixed election invested a Black woman with the power to implement “the great replacement,” raising the very real threat of violence. 

We live in a dangerous and polarized time. Tomorrow is uncertain and the far right anticipates its moment. Keep in mind that a few key counties in swing states will determine the outcome of an election with democracy on the ballot. With Scranton an easy drive from Binghamton, consider knocking on doors in the swing Pennsylvania county of Lackawanna.