The emergence of a new type of terrorism in American society
Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism - American newspaper has reported the emergence of a new form of extremist violence in the United States, this time based not on a political orientation or religious ideology, but on a philosophical worldview.
ISNA reports that a series of high-profile killings and acts of violence have recently occurred in the United States for which investigations have failed to find an identifiable political or religious agenda or motive. The perpetrators of these acts of violence, which included shootings, bombings, and drone attacks, had little to do with previously familiar motives, whether they were Democratic or Republican or any other political party or movement, religious extremism, racism, or affiliation with the far right or far left. They were a new phenomenon.
According to the Washington Post, the attackers, in their statements, professed a philosophy of “nihilism,” expressing only their disgust with humanity and a desire to destroy human civilization. Now, law enforcement officials and federal prosecutors in the United States have described the violence under a new contemporary category called “nihilism.” It amounts to a revival of a 19th-century philosophical view that denies the existence of moral truth and meaning in the world.
The American newspaper continues its report by introducing several examples of recent attacks by nihilistic extremists in the United States: the 15-year-old shooter at a school in Madison, Wisconsin, left a manifesto titled “War on Humanity,” in which he called the human race an “evil”; the 24-year-old man who planned to blow up Nashville’s power grid with a drone attack claimed to want to “bring about the beginning of the end of an interconnected, globalized world”; and Guy Edward Bartkos, a 25-year-old who called himself “anti-reproductive,” blew himself up near an IVF clinic in May. He argued that humans should not be created without their consent.
According to the Washington Post, in March 2025, federal prosecutors adopted a new category to describe these acts of violence and terrorist attacks, coining a new official phrase: “nihilistic violent extremism.” They defined it as “criminal behavior directed toward political, social, or religious goals that is primarily motivated by widespread hatred of society and a desire to destroy it by wantonly creating chaos, destruction, and social instability.”
The first known use of the phrase was in the case of a Wisconsin teenager who murdered his parents in February 2025 with the motive of inciting a civil war and assassinating government figures.
Although the hatred of the perpetrators of these acts of violence against human society has sometimes been influenced by racist views, the striking issue in these cases, from the researchers’ perspective, is the general tendency of these perpetrators to attack society as a whole.
“We are seeing a series of cases where the existing definitions don’t apply,” says Cody Zushak, a fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and a former NYPD counterterrorism analyst who worked on counterterrorism policy at the State Department.
The United States has seen a wave of high-profile targeted violence in the past 18 months, including school shootings, multiple bombings, the assassinations of a Minnesota lawmaker, the head of the UnitedHealthcare Institute, and conservative political activist Charlie Kirk. The Washington Post analyzed files in which perpetrators left written explanations of their motives and found that of the 17 attacks that occurred between July 2024 and December 2025, six attackers showed a nihilistic pattern.
According to the Washington Post, what has made it easier for absurdist terrorists to carry out their attacks in this era is their access to the Internet and its tools, such as artificial intelligence, whereas in previous decades, people who hated society often had difficulty planning attacks. The Internet now gives them technical and specialized knowledge, and although these agents themselves are antisocial, technology has still allowed them to find their community. The IVF clinic bomber asked an AI program about the “explosion velocity” of chemicals. The Nashville attack planner also found information on how to build a drone on YouTube. They use online spaces to share their anger with like-minded people.
This emerging phenomenon poses a complex challenge to American security agencies and society; killers who are devoid of a traditional ideological message, but filled with pervasive hatred and a desire for pure destruction.
