Las Vegas explosion and New Orleans attack highlight extremist violence perpetrated by active military and veterans

The military ties of the man who carried out an attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day and another who died in an explosion in Las Vegas the same day highlight the increased role of people with military experience in ideologically motivated attacks, particularly those aimed at mass casualties. .

In New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. Army veteran, was killed by police after a deadly van rampage that left 14 dead and dozens injured. This is an act of terrorism inspired by the Islamic State group.

In Las Vegas, officials say Matthew Livelsberger, an active-duty member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, shot himself in the head in a Tesla Cybertruck filled with fireworks mortars and cans of camp fuel, shortly before it exploded in front of the entrance to the Trump International hotel. , injuring seven people. On Friday, investigators said Livelsberger wrote that the explosion was meant to serve as a “wake-up call” and that the country was “terminally ill and heading toward collapse.”

Servicemembers and veterans who become radicalized represent only a tiny fraction of a percentage point of the millions upon millions who have honorably served their country. But an Associated Press investigation published last year found that radicalization among veterans and active-duty military personnel was on the rise and that hundreds of people from the military had been arrested for extremist crimes since 2017. The AP found that from the extremist plots they were involved in during that period, nearly 100 people were killed or injured.

The AP also found multiple problems in the Pentagon’s efforts to combat extremism in the ranks, including that there is still no force-wide system to track it, and that A seminal report on the issue contained old data, misleading analysis and ignored evidence of extremism. issue.

Since 2017, veterans and active-duty military members have been radicalized at a faster rate than people without military training, according to data from terrorism researchers at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, from the University of Maryland. Less than 1% of the adult population currently serves in the U.S. military, but active-duty military personnel account for a disproportionate 3.2% of extremist cases discovered by START researchers between 2017 and 2022.

Although the number of people with military backgrounds involved in violent extremist plots remains small, the participation of active military personnel and veterans gives extremist plots a greater risk of injury or death, according to data collected and analyzed by the AP and START.

More than 480 people of military background have been charged with ideologically motivated extremist crimes between 2017 and 2023, including more than 230 people arrested in connection with the January 6, 2021 insurrection – 18% of those arrested for the attack at the end of last year. year, according to START. The data tracked individuals from the military, most of whom were veterans, involved in plans to kill, injure or inflict harm for political, social, economic or religious purposes.

The AP analysis found that plots involving people with military training were more likely to involve mass casualties, weapons training or firearms than plots not involving someone with training. military. This was true whether the plots were carried out or not.

The Islamic State group’s jihadist ideology, apparently linked to the New Orleans attack, would make it an exception in the motivations of previous attacks involving people with military training. Only about 9 percent of these military-bred extremists subscribed to jihadist ideologies, START researchers found. More than 80% of them identify with far-right, anti-government, or white supremacist ideologies, with the rest split between far-left or other motivations.

Still, there have been a number of significant attacks motivated by Islamic State and jihadist ideology in which the attackers had U.S. military training. In 2017, a US National Guard veteran who had served in Iraq killed five people in a mass shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida after being radicalized through jihadist chat rooms and promising his support for the Islamic State. In 2009, a psychiatrist and an Army officer opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 people and wounding dozens more. The gunman had been in contact with a known al-Qaeda member before the shooting.

In the shadow of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — carried out in part by veterans — law enforcement officials have said the threat from domestic violent extremists is one of the most persistent terrorist threats and most pressing for the United States. The Pentagon said it is “committed to understanding the root causes of extremism and ensuring that such behavior is promptly and properly addressed and reported to the appropriate authorities.”

Kristofer Goldsmith, an Army veteran and CEO of the Task Force Butler Institute, which trains veterans to research and counter extremism, said the problem of violent extremism in the military transcends lines. ideological. Yet, he said, as the Biden administration tried to mount efforts to address it, congressional Republicans opposed them for political reasons.

“They’ve thrown up, you know, every obstacle possible to say that all veterans are being called extremists by the Biden administration,” Goldsmith said. “And now we’re in a situation where we’re four years behind where we could have been.”

During their long military careers, Jabbar and Livelsberger served at the U.S. Army base formerly known as Fort Bragg, North Carolina, one of the largest military bases in the country. One of the officials who spoke to the AP said there was no overlap in their assignments at the base, now called Fort Liberty.

Goldsmith expressed concern that the new Trump administration will focus on the New Orleans attack and ISIS and ignore that the deadliest attacks in the United States in recent history have come from far right, particularly if Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is confirmed.

Hegseth has justified the medieval crusades that pitted Christians against Muslims, criticized the Pentagon’s efforts to combat extremism in the ranks, and, ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration in the weeks following the Jan. 6 attack, was itself reported by another National Guard member as possible. internal threat.

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AP reporter Tara Copp contributed from Washington, D.C.