The Homegrown Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland
By Lorenzo Vidino
The Real Instituto Elcano, Spain’s leading think tank, has just published my analysis of the homegrown terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland (building on a much longer analysis I published last year in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism titled Homegrown Jihadist Terrorism in the United States: A New and Occasional Phenomenon?):
Summary: The wave of arrests and thwarted plots recently seen in the United States has severely undermined the long-held assumption that American Muslims, unlike their European counterparts, are virtually immune to radicalization. In reality, argues this policy brief, evidence existed also before the fall of 2009 highlighting how radicalization affected some small segments of the American Muslim population exactly like it affects some fringe pockets of the Muslim population of each European country. After putting forth this argument, the brief analyzes the five concurring reasons traditionally used to explain the divergence between the levels of radicalization in Europe and the United States (better economic conditions, lack of urban ghettoes, lower presence of recruiting networks, different demographics, more inclusive sense of citizenship). While all these characteristics still hold true, they no longer represent a guarantee, as other factors such as perception of discrimination and frustration at U.S. foreign policies could lead to radicalization. Finally the brief will look at the post-9/11 evolution of the homegrown terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland and examine possible future scenarios.
Read the analysis from Elcano's website.
