Nihilistic violent extremism: What the FBI term means and why experts warn against overuse

In a time of rising political violence, partisans often race to pin brutal acts on a specific ideology. But someone’s motive does not always align with a clear-cut system of beliefs. 

Federal law enforcement officials have started using "nihilistic violent extremists" to describe perpetrators who don’t easily subscribe to one ideology but appear to be motivated by a desire to, as one expert put it, "gamify" real life violence.

The description appeared in a March search warrant application involving a Wisconsin teenager who was active on a Telegram network dubbed Terrorgram. Nikita Casap, now 18, is accused of killing his mother and stepfather in part of a larger plot to assassinate President Donald Trump, foment a political revolution and "save the white race" from "Jewish controlled" politicians, investigators said, quoting from a document on Casap’s phone. 

This extremism is not new, but the label seems to be.

"Nihilistic violent extremists," a federal law enforcement officer wrote in the court filing, act "primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability."

In such instances, perpetrators often take what they learn in online communities as fuel for  real-world horror. They may not singularly ascribe to the political left or right, to white supremacist thought or anti-government extremism, as they glorify violence or seek destruction.

The National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center at the University of Nebraska preliminarily identified more than two dozen federal cases in which suspects fit this emerging nihilistic violent extremism classification, including the mass shooter at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis.

What are these cases and how might they shape future domestic terrorism investigations?

How ‘nihilism’ fits with domestic violence and terrorism

"Nihilism" is a philosophical term associated with German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It is the belief that all values are baseless. 

Violent extremists are often trying to change specific government policy, University of South Florida associate professor Zacharias Pieri said.  Nihilistic extremists, by contrast, don’t necessarily have any clear, stated objective, he said; they are "gamifying violence in real life."

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein and extremism researcher Jacob Ware began covering the term’s emergence in federal cases in April and May.

In September, FBI director Kash Patel told a U.S. Senate committee that nihilistic violent extremism plays a significant role in domestic terror investigations.

"We have in this country 1,700 domestic terrorism investigations, a large chunk of which are nihilistic violent extremism, NVE — those who engage in violent acts motivated by a deep hatred of society, whatever that justification they see it is," Patel said.

Besides the Casap case, federal prosecutors have cited the nihilistic violent extremism label in a handful of news releases since March.

The Justice Department in April called the online pornography network 764 "a nihilistic violent extremist (NVE) network" when it announced the arrests of two people it said were involved in targeting children for sexual exploitation online. "The 764 network’s accelerationist goals include social unrest and the downfall of the current world order, including the U.S. Government," the department said.

Several weeks later, the FBI used the term about an Oregon 14-year-old who the agency said planned a May explosives attack and mass shooting at a Kelso, Washington, mall. The FBI said the teenager "shared nihilistic violent extremist ideology and the plans in online chats." 

KPTV in Oregon reported that police said the teenager posted the plans in an online chat. The teenager’s defense attorney said that online chat was connected to 764, which the teen joined after being bullied at school.

FBI, experts for years have said some extremists defy a single label

In 2020, FBI director Christopher Wray said some violent extremists hold a "salad bar of ideologies," containing "a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and what they are really about is the violence."

"We're having more and more challenges trying to unpack what are often sort of incoherent belief systems, combined with kind of personal grievances," Wray told senators in 2022. He referred to a Minneapolis case in which two men aligned with the far-right anti-government Boogaloo Bois movement were charged with providing material support to the militant group Hamas.

Other terms have also been used to describe these less absolute ideologies associated with violence. In the United Kingdom law enforcement uses the term "composite violent extremism" to refer to extremists who hold "multiple distinct ideologies, sentiments, grievances, and fixations" and "mixed, unclear, or unstable ideologies."

Experts said the NVE term is valid, but offered some cautions

Experts on extremism said they see value in using the term nihilistic violent extremism to acknowledge the evolving nature of threats. 

Oren Segal, an Anti-Defamation League extremism expert, said incidents in recent years involved suspects who appeared motivated to sow chaos. 

"Those are fairly described as nihilistic," Segal said.

The ADL said that school shooters in Evergreen, Colorado, Antioch, Tennessee, and Madison, Wisconsin, were active in online spaces that glorify violence and mass killings.

Marc-André Argentino, an independent researcher and expert on violent extremism, wrote in April that NVE "represents a convergence threat — part sadistic subculture, part extremist accelerationism, part organised cyber‑harassment — whose potency lies in its agility and absence of limiting ideology."

Unlike a right-wing group that may study doctrine for months, nihilistic violent extremists share "bite sized" information about how to do attacks such as knife attack, vehicle ramming or online crimes.

"The guiding principle is to flood the system with low‑cost, high‑chaos events — school shootings, animal‑cruelty viral clips, swatting campaigns — so that authorities expend resources faster than radicals expend effort," Argentino wrote. "Tactically, NVEs seek maximum systemic shock with minimal organisational footprint."

Experts cautioned against the term’s overuse. 

"If everything is going to be lumped together as nihilist violent extremism, it does disservice to those who try to understand where threats are emanating from," Segal said.

Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told PolitiFact that the label risks being used by prosecutors or a politicized FBI as "a blanket term that obscures or even excuses other ideological influences, especially white supremacy." 

One case with unclear motives was the 2022 Fourth of July mass shooting that killed seven and injured dozens in Highland Park, Illinois. FBI affidavits said that the shooter said he wanted to "wake people up." His online activity showed he had a fascination with violence. 

"This country is facing a growing threat of heavily armed young men who use too-easily acquirable weapons to commit unspeakable acts of violence," Segal wrote after the attack. "Some of them are extremists; most of them are not. Whatever their motivation, they need to be stopped. For now, that may be the only analysis we can all agree on."

PolitiFact Staff Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this article.

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