2025 is already on track for an increase in deaths from extremist violence: Exclusive

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The number of people killed by extremists in America dropped for a third consecutive year last year, but this year’s death toll has already exceeded 2024 and is likely to rise even more, according to new data provided exclusively to Paste BN by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. 

Throughout the year, researchers at the center track injuries and deaths resulting from extremist violence. The last three years saw a significant drop in extremist murders ‒ in 2022, extremists killed 28 people across the country according to the tally; in 2023, that number dropped to 20 and last year it dropped again to 13. 

But the number of deaths in 2025 has already exceeded last year’s count. As it completed its 2024 report, researchers had already documented 15 deaths at the hands of extremists in the first six weeks of 2025, with 14 of those stemming from a single incident ‒ the vehicular terrorist attack on New Year’s Day in New Orleans, which was carried out by a jihadist extremist. The 15th was a murder allegedly committed by a white supremacist prison gang member in Georgia.

Ever since the ADL started tracking extremist deaths in 2008, the majority of those killings have been by far-right extremists including white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Researchers who track extremist groups say it’s too early to tell whether 2025 will see a resurgence of the far-right groups that typically spawn violent extremists. But the ADL warns a recent upsurge in jihadist violence, spurred in part by the ongoing war in Gaza and by new developments in the Middle East, could make this a particularly deadly year.  

“Every murder is a tragedy and a decrease in extremist-related killings is always a welcome trend,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO. “Unfortunately, we already know this trend will be interrupted in 2025 and we are increasingly concerned by the threat of Islamist terror that seems to have spiked in the past year.”

All extremist murders in 2024 committed by the far-right

For the third year in a row, all of the extremism-related murders last year were committed by far-right extremists, the ADL researchers found.

The murders in 2024 included eight killings involving white supremacists and five deaths at the hands of far-right anti-government extremists. At least two of those 13 murders were committed last year by members of the so-called “Sovereign Citizen” movement," a collection of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of anti-government radicals who believe they're not subject to local or national laws or authority. 

Far-right extremist groups have been cowed in the last four years by the fallout and prosecutions from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, said Katherine Keneally, head of threat analysis and prevention at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

“That accountability had a significant impact on people ‒ on extremist’s willingness to do stuff in the open,” Keneally said. 

But in the month since President Donald Trump issued pardons and commutations of everyone charged in the Jan. 6 attack, including violent felons and members and leaders of known extremist groups, researchers have seen the spaces where far-right extremists congregate come roaring back to life ‒ at least online.

Keneally said her team, which monitors more than 1,000 online accounts run by extremists of all stripes, has seen a surge in calls for recruitment by extremist organizations.   

“The accountability has been stripped away,” she said.

Keneally and other researchers cautioned, however, that it’s still too soon to tell whether this increase in online activity will translate into new real-life activity by far-right groups and whether that leads to consequent violence and murders.

"Have we been tracking an increase in hate online amongst these groups? Absolutely!" she said. "Is there enough data to prove it? Not yet.”

Will 2025 see more extremist violence?

The last three years saw a period of relative calm as far as extremist-related killings. 

The five preceding years from 2015 to 2019, by contrast, had seen 47 to 79 extremist-related murders per year. The ADL analysts put the recent decline down to reduced numbers of attacks by jihadist extremists and far-left extremists. 

But they worry the deadly New Year’s Day attack, committed by a man the FBI said was “100% inspired by ISIS,” marks the next step of a deadly new period of jihadist terrorism in the United States.

In 2024, the ADL published a report detailing an increase in jihadist terrorist incidents nationwide, including several plots to cause mass casualties. The report notes that most of these plots were discovered before anybody was killed or injured. 

“When we're seeing increasing numbers of people motivated by ISIS or Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations who are willing to try to carry out attacks even when they fail, that's an indicator that we have to take it seriously,” said Oren Segal, ADL senior vice president for counter-extremism and intelligence.

However, Javed Ali, senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council in 2017 and 2018 noted that the six weeks since the New Orleans attack have not seen a spike in jihadist activity or any new attacks. 

The war in Gaza, the unstable ceasefire and Trump’s recently announced plans for the United States to “Take over” Gaza could conceivably lead to more people plotting or carrying out attacks, Ali said.

“Jihadist violence has been an enduring threat in the country since mid- to late-2000s, and it certainly hasn't gone away but has ebbed and flowed in intensity,” Ali said. “It's just a question of when are people willing to move from that spectrum of being radicalized to being mobilized?”  

But like Ali and other extremism researchers, Segal noted that the biggest threat to American lives for decades has been far-right extremists. He voiced concern about Trump’s pardons and commutations and what signal that sends groups with a history of violence like the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers or other armed so-called “militia” groups.

“When the disincentives are removed, when accountability is removed and extremists feel emboldened or supported or that they're able to get away with anything, that means that they inherently become more dangerous,” Segal said.