White Supremacists Are Major Threat, Says One State

Who's the biggest threat in New Jersey? Not al-Qaeda or ISIS. Not anarchists or black separatists. It's white supremacists, according to a terrorist-threat report released Friday by New Jersey Homeland Security officials. "The threat from white supremacist extremists increased from moderate to high in 2020 due to the number of threats, plots, and attacks conducted in 2019, including the El Paso attack where Patrick Crusius killed 22 people and injured 24," the report reads, per NBC New York. It also points to a New Jersey man who allegedly conspired with neo-Nazis to deface synagogues in the Midwest, and increasing recruitment efforts by white supremacists. Reported efforts to distribute such propaganda went up from 46 in 2018 to 168 in 2019.

"Some white supremacist extremists argue that participating in mass attacks or creating other forms of chaos will accelerate the imminent and necessary collapse of society in order to build a racially pure nation," says the report, per the New York Daily News. The only other group ranked as highly was homegrown violent extremists. Among those cited in the report are Basking Ridge resident Jonathan Xie, who was collared in 2019 for allegedly funding Hamas militants, and attacks like the one that killed three sailors at a Florida naval air station. Groups at the moderate threat level include anarchists, anti-government groups, and black separatists. Infamous terror groups like ISIS, Boko Haram, and al-Qaeda were ranked at low level. (More white supremacists stories.)