For far-right extremists, the rise of a new enemy: Women

Key Points:

• Evidence from last week's deadly attack on a California mosque reveals the suspects' deep grounding in far-right, neo-Nazi ideology, including explicit misogyny, which experts say is a growing and integral part of white supremacist thought.
• The attackers' manifesto aligns with "anti-feminist conspiracies," portraying women as a primary enemy alongside Jews, reflecting a broader trend of misogyny intertwined with white nationalist violence and Islamophobia.
• The attack follows a known far-right "accelerationist" playbook, modeled after the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, aiming to inspire similar acts of violence by glorifying past attackers and promoting a race war to establish a white ethnostate.
• Experts criticize the 2025 U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy for omitting far-right extremism as a major threat, focusing instead on narcoterrorists, Islamist terrorists, and violent left-wing extremists, which they argue downplays the ongoing danger posed by white supremacist terrorism.
• The resurgence of far-right violence, including attacks inspired by neo-Nazi ideology and misogyny, underscores the need for renewed and serious attention to domestic extremism beyond partisan politics and outdated threat assessments.