Written for general readers and professionals alike, this succinct but comprehensive work examines the hybrid nature of the two violent extremist movements threatening the United States: Islamist extremism and white nationalism. Scholarship as well as popular discourse on terrorism often focuses disproportionately on specific groups without paying sufficient attention to the ideology that motivates them. This book emphasizes understanding and countering the ideology that fuels extremism over preoccupation with specific organizations such as Al Qaeda or ISIS. It sets contemporary terrorist threats in perspective, avoiding fearmongering and political rhetoric. The book examines the nature of violent extremism today in all its forms, including lone wolves and cyber threats. Focusing on both international and domestic terrorism, it analyzes each threat in depth as a multidimensional hybrid phenomenon: as an ideology, as distinct groups espousing that ideology, and as a network of followers. Written in an accessible style by an author who has studied terrorism for more than 30 years and provided extensive media coverage on the subject, this book makes a valuable contribution to the literature on violent extremism.

In the country’s changing threat environment, homegrown violent extremism (HVE) represents the next challenge in counterterrorism. Security and public policy expert Erroll Southers examines post-9/11 HVE – what it is, the conditions enabling its existence, and the community-based approaches that can reduce the risk of homegrown terrorism. Drawing on scholarly insight and more than three decades on the front lines of America’s security efforts, Southers challenges the misplaced counterterrorism focus on foreign individuals and communities. As Southers shows, there is no true profile of a terrorist. The book challenges how Americans think about terrorism, recruitment, and the homegrown threat. It contains essential information for communities, security practitioners, and policymakers on how violent extremists exploit vulnerabilities in their communities and offers approaches to put security theory into practice.

Terrorism and ideologically inspired violence are persistent and serious threats to U.S. national security. This report uses interviews to explore why and how 32 individuals joined extremist organizations and how some of them exited these groups.

A groundbreaking investigation into why so many Islamic radicals are engineers The violent actions of a few extremists can alter the course of history, yet there persists a yawning gap between the potential impact of these individuals and what we understand about them. In Engineers of Jihad, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog uncover two unexpected facts, which they imaginatively leverage to narrow that gap: they find that a disproportionate share of Islamist radicals come from an engineering background, and that Islamist and right-wing extremism have more in common than either does with left-wing extremism, in which engineers are absent while social scientists and humanities students are prominent. Searching for an explanation, they tackle four general questions about extremism: Under which socioeconomic conditions do people join extremist groups? Does the profile of extremists reflect how they self-select into extremism or how groups recruit them? Does ideology matter in sorting who joins which group? Lastly, is there a mindset susceptible to certain types of extremism? Using rigorous methods and several new datasets, they explain the link between educational discipline and type of radicalism by looking at two key factors: the social mobility (or lack thereof) for engineers in the Muslim world, and a particular mindset seeking order and hierarchy that is found more frequently among engineers. Engineers' presence in some extremist groups and not others, the authors argue, is a proxy for individual traits that may account for the much larger question of selective recruitment to radical activism. Opening up markedly new perspectives on the motivations of political violence, Engineers of Jihad yields unexpected answers about the nature and emergence of extremism.

Countering violent extremism consists of various prevention and intervention approaches to increase the resilience of communities and individuals to radicalization toward violent extremism, to provide nonviolent avenues for expressing grievances, and to educate communities about the threat of recruitment and radicalization to violence. To explore the application of health approaches in community-level strategies to countering violent extremism and radicalization, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a public workshop in September 2016. Participants explored the evolving threat of violent extremism and radicalization within communities across America, traditional versus health-centered approaches to countering violent extremism and radicalization, and opportunities for cross-sector and interdisciplinary collaboration and learning among domestic and international stakeholders and organizations. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Although violent extremism is not a new phenomenon, it is increasingly recognized as a major challenge of our times. The recruitment of foreign fighters by extremist organizations, and its potential impact on public safety in the countries from which they come, is also emerging as a complex issue at the forefront of international preoccupations. This book presents the proceedings of the three day NATO Advanced Research Workshop, "Countering Violent Extremism Among Youth to Prevent Terrorism", held in Milan, Italy, in June 2014. The best way to respond to violent extremism in general, and the radicalization of disaffected youth in particular, is far from clear, but the stakes are so high and the potential threat to countries worldwide so great that inaction is not an option. The goal of the workshop was to enhance the capacity of policymakers and practitioners to design strategies that will achieve verifiable human-rights based outcomes to counter violent extremism. Subjects covered in the 19 papers which go to make up this book include: the causes or drivers of violent extremism; the factors which facilitate the recruitment of youth by violent extremist groups; the risk of growing Islamophobia in some Western and Central European countries; and proactive measures to counter the radicalization of youth. The book will be of interest to all those involved in policy development, prevention programs, de-radicalization programs or research aimed at countering violent extremism and the radicalization of young people.