Extremists from a variety of different movements were involved in murders in 2017, including various types of white supremacists, anti-government extremists, Islamic extremists, and black nationalists, as well as one adherent of the alt lite. Sometimes extremists adhere to or are influenced by more than one extremist movement; in such cases, extremists are categorized here by the ideology that seems to be the most important to them.

Usually such categorizations are straightforward, but occasionally incidents emerge that are much harder to characterize. Perhaps no better example exists than Jeremy Christian, who is accused of stabbing to death two people and severely injuring a third as they tried to defend two teenaged girls—one Muslim and the other African-American—in a confrontation reportedly initiated by Christian in Portland, Oregon in May. Based on comments made by Christian, descriptions of him by people familiar with him, as well as his social media postings, Christian emerges as a volatile, angry man who appears to have fueled his rage with ideas from a variety of sources. Christian frequently expressed hatred of people on the left, and showed up at right-wing events in the Portland area, but had been a supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders—seemingly because he thought Sanders would smash the establishment. Most of Christian’s influences seem to have been right-wing in nature and include some from the white supremacist movement and others from anti-government extremists such as sovereign citizens and the militia movement. It is clear that Christian belongs somewhere on the extreme right but it’s difficult to categorize him precisely. For purposes of this report, his murders have been categorized as white supremacist in nature, but others could look at the available evidence and possibly come to a different conclusion.

In some instances, not enough evidence has emerged to be able to categorize a particular murder as extremist-related. The most noteworthy such case from 2017 was the May stabbing murder of Richard W. Collins III, an African-American student at Bowie State University in Maryland, allegedly by a white University of Maryland student, Sean Urbanski. After his arrest, Urbanski was widely characterized as a white supremacist based on his membership in a racist Facebook group called “Alt-Reich Nation.” However, that Facebook group included people who were not white supremacists as well as people who were, and no other specific information has emerged suggesting Urbanski had ties to the white supremacist movement.

In October 2017, Urbanski was charged with a hate crime in connection with the murder. This was a result of the police investigation, which uncovered what one prosecutor described as “lots of digital evidence” of a racial motive. This evidence, if revealed or presented in court, may in the future provide confirmation of an extremist tie on the part of Urbanski, but based on presently available information, the Collins murder does not appear in this report.

Even without incidents such as the Collins murder, white supremacists were responsible for the majority of extremist-related killings in 2017, as is usually the case each year, though it was not true for 2016. White supremacists were responsible for 18 of the 34 murders documented in 2017. A right-wing anti-government extremist committed one murder (see below), while an adherent of the alt lite—an offshoot of the alt right that rejects explicit white supremacy while retaining the alt right’s other hateful views of Muslims, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals, the left, and especially women—committed another.

Thus 20 of the 34 extremist-related murders in the United States in 2017, or 59%, were related to right-wing extremism. This can be compared to 2016, in which only 20% of extremist murders were related to right-wing extremism—though, again, 2016 was an aberration. Over the past 10 years (2008-17), domestic extremists have been responsible for at least 387 murders; of these, 274 (71%) were committed by right-wing extremists of one type or another.

Some of the murders involving right-wing extremists made headlines around the world, such as the murder of Heather Heyer, allegedly by James Fields, during an alt right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, or the May 2017 Tampa, Florida murders reportedly confessed to by Devon Arthurs, one of four roommates who were all members of Atomwaffen, a neo-Nazi group. Arthurs, who had recently converted to Islam (though apparently not a radical form of Islam), reportedly became angry that his roommates made fun of his conversion and he shot two of them. A fourth roommate, Brandon Russell, who was not present at the time of the shootings, subsequently pleaded guilty to unrelated federal explosives charges after bomb-making materials belonging to him were discovered during the murder investigation.

Several murders involving right-wing extremists appear to have stemmed from arguments over their extremist beliefs or affiliations. In July 2017, Lane Maurice Davis, an alt lite conspiracy theorist, was accused of stabbing his father to death at their home on Samish Island, Washington, following an argument with his parents over Davis’s beliefs and conspiracy theories. Across the country, a teenager from Reston, Virginia, was charged with shooting and killing his girlfriend’s parents in December after they convinced their daughter to break up with him because of the teenager’s white supremacist beliefs.

James Fields and Lane Davis also stand out as adherents of the alt right and alt lite, respectively (the latter movement diverging from the former in 2017). Prior to 2017, the alt right was overwhelmingly an online phenomenon, with people expressing opinions in online venues ranging from 4chan and Reddit to Twitter and Facebook, as well as more obscure sites and platforms. Energized by the 2016 presidential election and the media attention given to the movement, alt right adherents (and, after the split, alt lite adherents, too) increasingly involved themselves in the real world as well as the virtual realm, forming actual groups such as Identity Evropa, while engaging in a variety of real-world activities ranging from protests and rallies such as the August “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville to racist fliering campaigns targeting college campuses in the United States and Canada.

With the expansion to real world activities, it was inevitable that some alt right and alt lite adherents would engage in violent acts, like previous extremists before them. Another such act involved James Harris Jackson, a Maryland white supremacist and fan of the alt right website Daily Stormer. Jackson travelled to New York to launch a series of attacks against African-American men. On March 30, he used a sword to fatally stab a homeless African-American man, Timothy Caughman, in what Jackson later admitted to police was a “practice run” for a planned violent spree in Times Square. Jackson, who turned himself in to police before killing anybody else has been charged with murder as an act of terrorism.

It is quite likely that the future will see yet more violent acts stemming from the ranks of the alt right and the alt lite as more of their adherents move their activities into the real world.

Islamic extremists were responsible for nine of the 34 killings (26%) documented in 2017, with eight of those stemming from the bike path attack by Sayfullo Saipov. The other incident was the February 2017 murder of a transit security guard in Denver, Colorado, allegedly by Joshua Andrew Cummings, a convert to Islam who had once been reported to the Department of Homeland Security by members of a local mosque as possibly becoming radicalized. After his arrest for the murder, Cummings told a journalist that, though he subsequently pledged allegiance to the terrorist group ISIS, the murder of the security guard had not been committed on behalf of ISIS but rather for the “pleasure of Allah,” a somewhat inscrutable statement. This murder is presently categorized in this report as a non-ideological murder rather than an ideological murder, though that may change if more information emerges.

Over the past 10 years, Islamic extremists have been responsible for at least 99 of the 387 documented extremist-related murders (26%). What is most remarkable about these murders is that the overwhelming majority were committed in just a handful of relatively high-casualty attacks, as opposed to the much more numerous but usually smaller-scale deadly incidents involving other types of extremists.

Finally, five of the 34 murders (15%) were committed by black nationalists (for purpose of simplicity, the Center on Extremism includes both black nationalists and anarchists in the broader category of “left-wing extremism,” while acknowledging that black nationalists include some adherents who don’t necessarily fit neatly within that category). In April 2017 in Fresno, California, Kori Ali Muhammad was accused of allegedly murdering a security guard at a hotel, then several days later embarking on a shooting spree that seemed to target white people as victims. Muhammad was charged with killing three people in that spree, bringing his total to four deaths, before police were able to arrest him. Muhammad’s father subsequently said his son believed in a war between whites and blacks. The following month in Dallas, Texas, Derick Lamont Brown, a member of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club and former Dallas chairman of the New Black Panther Party, shot and killed his godfather, with whom he shared a residence, then wounded a neighbor and an EMT before fatally shooting himself after police arrived at the scene.

These deadly events followed the 2016 murders of eight police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge at the hands of black nationalists; the attempted vehicular murders of police in Phoenix by Payne, described above; a shootout with police in Belleville, Illinois, in June 2016 initiated by Angelo Brown, the head of the Revolutionary Black Panther Party; and the 2014 plot by two black nationalists in St. Louis, Missouri, to kill police officers and bomb the Gateway Arch. Taken together, these incidents represent the most significant black nationalist-related violence since the early 1980s and should be something of a concern as a possible emerging extremist threat, though one that is so far still far smaller than threats posed by right-wing extremists and Islamic extremists.