Extremist Violence From the Fatherland to the Homeland

Abstract

The creation of open-source terrorist and extremist crime databases has led to a more complete understanding of violence committed by members of the extreme far-right movement in the United States. Yet, important questions remain about how serious forms of extremist violence in the United States compare with far-right violence in other nations, which are also facing this type of threat to homeland security. The current study draws from structured action theory of extremist violence and extends an open-source methodology for the purposes of making cross-national comparisons of incident-, offender-, and victim-level characteristics of extreme far-right homicide in the United States and Germany. Despite some similarities, such as in offender race, legal outcomes, and places where homicides occurred, we find several key differences in the nature of extreme far-right homicide across these two countries. In particular, we find differences in geographic and temporal patterns as well as offender and victim demographic and background characteristics. We conclude our study by considering how the unique social, political, and economic contexts of the United States and Germany over the last 25 years serve to shape our findings.