The Blind Spot in America’s Legal Framework

In December 2016, a North Carolina man walked into a Washington, D.C., pizzeria carrying a handgun and an AR-15 style rifle. As employees and customers panicked and fled the restaurant, the man fired several shots from the rifle into a back wall and employee door. Luckily, no one was injured. He was there for what is now known as the PizzaGate conspiracy, on a mission to “rescue” children which he believed were being trafficked through the pizzeria by a satanic cabal of global elites. The gunman’s actions were violent, terrorizing, and ideologically motivated. He was ultimately sentenced to four years in prison. Unfortunately, violent incidents from individuals inspired by ideologies driven by conspiracy theories are far from isolated. The PizzaGate conspiracy theory would become the core of what would later be known as the QAnon movement. 

In the U.S., domestic violent extremism (DVE) cases have risen by a staggering 357 percent since 2011, with investigations doubling since 2020. The heightened threat posed by DVE has led to scrutiny surrounding how the legal system is addressing these cases. The unfortunate truth is that across the U.S., DVE groups inspired by violent ideologies—such as QAnon conspiracies and the misogynistic incel movement—are prosecuted under a patchwork of non-terrorism-related charges, leading to a potential blind spot that fails to capture the gravity of the threat posed by these violent ideologies.

Extremists We Can’t Define 

The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation divide domestic violent extremist threats into five broad categories, based on ideological motivation: racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism (REMVE); anti-government and anti-authority violent extremism (AGAAVE); animal rights/environmental violent extremism; abortion-related violent extremism; and all other violent extremism. These ideological categories are key to defining and understanding the motivations behind DVE groups. However, while these five categories address some ideological motivations, they neglect a nuanced understanding of many ideologies housed under the “all other violent extremism” category, contributing to ambiguity surrounding these threats. 

Both incels and QAnon adherents challenge the traditional definitions of violent extremist groups by combining personal grievance, decentralized organization, online radicalization, and ideologies motivated by extreme misogyny and conspiracy theories, respectively. These ideologies are not defined by the current ideological threat categories. As a result, both QAnon and incel threats are lumped into the “other” category. The lumping of such ideologies into the “other” category has led to a lack of understanding surrounding these threats, cascading into a fragmented legal strategy meant to address them.

Involuntary celibates, or incels, are individuals (mostly men) who believe that society, and women, unfairly withhold sexual and romantic attention that they feel entitled to receive. The incel ideology is marked by extreme misogyny with its core motivation being to harm or carry out mass casualty events against women. The threat posed by the incel ideology has grown since the significant 2014 Isla Vista attack carried out by infamous incel Elliot Rodger. Since then, incels have been responsible for violent acts across the globe, including the 2018 Toronto van attack which killed 11 and injured 15 and the 2018 Tallahassee shooting of six women. Incels exist primarily in online spaces, using social media and other internet platforms to spread ideological rhetoric, recruit members, and plan attacks. Often these incel communities exist in online echo chambers that churn personal grievances toward violence against themselves or others.

On an equally dark corner of the internet exists QAnon. QAnon is a wide-ranging conspiracy theory centered on the idea that the world is run by a pedophilic, satanic, sex trafficking cabal of elites. QAnon adherents are ideologically motivated by a plethora of conspiracy theories, with some alleging that the global COVID-19 pandemic was a hoax directed by the U.S. government, the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen, and that the government is attempting to implant citizens with 5G microchips. QAnon is a mostly decentralized group, not following a traditional leadership hierarchy. Instead, the QAnon adherents follow the word of Q, an anonymous individual that claims to be a former high ranking government official. Q periodically shares new conspiracy theories online, and because of the importance accredited to Q, adherents often take these releases as a call to violent action. Because of the decentralized nature of these messages, the threat posed by QAnon adherents and the conspiracy theory-driven ideology they espouse has grown significantly in recent years. Similar to incels, QAnon adherents primarily use online spaces to radicalize others and plan attacks. 

The Broken Compass: How Our Laws Miss the Mark 

Both incels and QAnon adherents receive relatively light sentences, with an average sentence length of 14 months and 16 months, respectively. The ideologies motivating incels and QAnon adherents fall into the “other” category, which leaves law enforcement and prosecutors with ambiguity surrounding the tools they can use to address these ideological threats. This unclear categorization means that prosecutors often struggle to bring charges that adequately reflect the ideological underpinnings of these violent acts, leading to inconsistent sentencing and a diminished deterrent effect. 

Since 2014, 18 incels have been charged federally in the United States with more than 30 federal crimes ranging from 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B)—possession of child pornography—to 18 U.S.C. § 875(c)—communicating interstate threats. All of these individuals have been charged with non-terrorism related offenses, resulting in more lenient sentences. Starting in 2013, a self-proclaimed incel in California began harassing, threatening, and stalking multiple women. Over the course of several years the man sent disturbing messages detailing his plans to abduct, rape, and murder the victims and other women. He was charged in 2020 with two counts of 18 U.S.C. § 2261A (2)—cyber stalking—and one count of 18 U.S.C. § 875(c)—communicating interstate threats. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison and 36 months of supervised release. This relatively light sentencing is a common theme among the 18 federally charged incels, the longest of which was 84 months in federal prison.

Of QAnon adherents, 26 have been federally charged with over 150 different charges since 2016. This wide array of non-terrorism charges includes 18 U.S.C § 1703(a)—delay or destruction of mail—and 18 U.S.C. § 1751(c)—attempt to kill or kidnap the president. In September 2020, a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent began posting threatening messages on his Facebook account. The man was threatening the lives of his superiors who he believed to be associated with a sex trafficking, pedophilic cabal, consistent with the QAnon ideology. He signed off his threats with the popular QAnon phrase “WWG1WGA”, meaning “where we go one, we go all.” He was charged with 18 U.S.C § 115(a)(1)(B)—threatening to assault, kidnap, or murder a United States official, judge, or federal law enforcement official, but his case was dismissed and deferred to pretrial diversion. The longest sentence in our dataset was 120 months in federal prison. 

Rethinking Ideological Threat Categories

It is time to reimagine how the U.S. categorizes ideological threats. A strong first step in this conversation would be to recognize two new ideological DVE threat categories: Misogyny-Motivated Violent Extremism (MMVE) and Conspiracy Theory-Motivated Violent Extremism (CTMVE). By introducing these categories to the existing five, law enforcement would be able to better understand and prosecute the ideological underpinnings of domestic violent extremism. 

Clear categorization is about more than just semantics. By identifying misogyny and conspiracy theories as ideological drivers behind violent extremism, academics, law enforcement, prosecutors, and other practitioners can advocate for more funding to understand and prevent violence from groups motivated by these ideologies. While these categories would not directly result in longer sentences for individuals who adhere to these ideologies, having these categories would allow prosecutors to better illustrate the threat these individuals pose. Beyond the legal benefits that could stem from this change, clear categorization could allow law enforcement agencies and practitioners to allocate more (or less) resources toward expanding prevention and deradicalization programs, as well as toward public awareness campaigns to address these violent ideologies. With this proposed reform, academics and policy makers can work together to gain a clearer understanding of the trends and goals behind groups that adhere to violent ideologies across the board.

Expanding the ideological threat categories is not an end to police thought and does not infringe on citizens’ protected constitutional right to freedom of expression. This approach is solely focused on addressing criminal conduct motivated by violent ideologies. In a world where online radicalization and mobilization increasingly drive violent acts, ignoring these ideologies is a dangerous gamble. 

Justice in the Age of Extremes 

Failing to adapt our ideological threat categories is ultimately a failure to adapt to our legal framework. In turn, domestic violent extremists are able to exploit these gaps and are emboldened by the lack of adequate sentences. By failing to act and update the public’s understanding of ideological motivation, an ecosystem of extremism is given the room to thrive, ultimately eroding trust in the justice system and inspiring further violence. Inaction additionally hampers the ability of law enforcement, prosecutors, academics, and other practitioners to collect and analyze accurate data. Without this, the true scope of the threat posed by these ideologies flies under the radar, escaping the full legal response it warrants.

The stakes for understanding these threats are alarmingly high. The increase of violence and activity coming from groups that ideologically adhere to misogyny and conspiracy theories is proof that these ideologies need to be understood to ensure national safety. Making this shift would not be unprecedented. Recently, partner nations such as the U.K. have made changes to their categorization to include misogyny motivated violent extremism and are beginning to tackle the threat these ideologies pose.

As the justice system begins to grapple with this, policy makers must ask: Is it truly prepared to address the full scale of the domestic violent extremist threat, or are we allowing complacency to persist? The path to fully addressing the ideological motivations behind domestic violent extremist groups requires clarity and courage. Creating these new ideological threat categories will allow the justice system to advocate for more funding, gain understanding, and begin to fully address the threat. If the justice system does not adapt its understanding of ideological motivation, it will continue fighting yesterday’s battles while tomorrow’s threats go unchecked.