Jihadism, not the Far Right, Is the West’s Biggest Threat
Europol confirmed it in its latest annual report
For the Biden administration, there is no doubt that the biggest threat to U.S. national security is the far-right. An observation that is echoed by the majority of Western European governments. But is this really the case?
Absolutely not. The latest EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report published by Europol clearly shows that it is still jihadism that poses the biggest threat to the national security of the European Union (EU), a situation that could easily be transposed to North America.
In 2021, 15 completed, foiled and failed terrorist attacks were recorded in the territory of the union. Of these 15 attacks, 11 were classified as jihadist terrorism. Four of them were completed, but none originated from the far-right; three were committed under the umbrella of jihadism, the other by a left-wing individual or organization. Of these three jihadist attacks, two of them killed two people in France and Spain.
Also in 2021, EU authorities arrested 388 suspects for terrorism-related crimes, 260 of whom were part of the jihadist movement. More than two-thirds of the arrests were made in just three countries: Austria, France, and Spain.
Now, some figures regarding the far-right. In 2021, only three attacks were linked to this ideological current. These figures are comparable to those of 2020 (4) and 2019 (2). None of these attacks were completed, while two were foiled in Sweden and Austria, and the other one failed in Belgium. In all, 64 people from this movement were apprehended in 2021, compared to 260 jihadists.
The Europol report does not fail to mention a steady increase in incidents related to “doxxing”, which is associated mainly with the left and which consists in publicly revealing private personal information about an individual or organization. It is a practice used mainly against government officials, diplomatic offices, political party offices, politicians (mainly right-wing ones), and journalists.
We cannot for the moment compare the situation in Europe with that in the United States, but we can imagine that it is not very different. In the West, although the threat from the far-right (and the far-left) must be taken seriously, it is Islamic terrorism that still represents the biggest threat to national security, whatever the governments say about it.
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