What are the current FBI definitions of domestic terrorism ideologies?
Executive summary
The FBI defines domestic terrorism as violent, criminal acts committed by individuals or groups in the United States to further ideological goals that arise from domestic influences — political, religious, social, racial, or environmental — and that lack foreign direction or control [1] [2]. For operational purposes the FBI and DHS commonly use the terms “domestic violent extremism” (DVE) and “homegrown violent extremists” (HVE) to describe actors and incidents, and they categorize threats by the motivating ideology rather than by naming specific domestic “terrorist organizations” [3] [4] [2].
1. The statutory and working definition the FBI applies
Statutorily, U.S. law frames terrorism as unlawful violence intended to coerce a civilian population or influence government conduct, and the FBI’s working definition for domestic terrorism echoes that: violent criminal acts in furtherance of ideological goals rooted in domestic influences [5] [4] [2]. The FBI emphasizes that domestic terrorism investigations focus on unlawful violent conduct and its prevention, not on prosecuting beliefs per se, and that there is no single federal criminal charge called “domestic terrorism” — underlying criminal statutes (murder, explosives, etc.) are typically used [1] [6] [7].
2. Domestic Violent Extremist (DVE) and Homegrown Violent Extremist (HVE) distinctions
The FBI and DHS distinguish DVEs — actors operating primarily within the U.S. without direction or inspiration from foreign terrorist groups — from HVEs, who are radicalized in the United States but may be inspired by foreign terrorist ideologies without receiving individualized direction from them [4] [8]. These operational distinctions matter for investigations and intelligence assessments, because the agencies flag whether an actor has a foreign nexus or is entirely domestic in origin [9] [8].
3. The ideological threat categories the FBI tracks
Federal reporting and FBI/DHS products organize domestic terrorism threats into broad motivation-based categories: racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism (notably white supremacist extremism), anti-government or anti-authority violence, single-issue extremism (including environmental or animal-rights-related violence), religiously motivated violence of domestic origin, and other socio-political grievances that can spur violence [4] [8] [3]. The FBI has repeatedly identified racially/ethnically motivated violent extremism as among the most lethal and persistent domestic threats in recent years [4] [6].
4. Ideology versus conduct: how the FBI frames “violent extremism”
In its public materials the FBI pairs ideological descriptors with the term “violent extremism,” stressing that the underlying belief systems may inspire criminal activity that does not always rise to terrorism but sometimes does — the focus is therefore on steps toward or actual use of unlawful force rather than on abstract doctrine [7] [3]. The bureau’s analytical products and indicators are intended to detect behaviors and mobilization pathways across ideologies, including lone actors and small cells inspired by mixed or hybrid motivators [9] [3].
5. What the FBI does not publish or designate publicly
The FBI and DHS do not maintain a public, comprehensive list of designated domestic terrorist organizations in the way the U.S. government lists foreign terrorist organizations; instead, they report threat categories and incident data and reserve prosecutorial tools for charging underlying crimes [2] [8]. Congressional and GAO reviews note this operational posture and also highlight that reporting and data collection have methodological limits — there is no mandatory incident reporting requirement for state and local agencies, which affects aggregated counts [7] [10].
6. Known subcategories and edge cases the FBI mentions
Law enforcement publications and the intelligence community documents cite subtypes such as eco- or animal-rights violence (historically labeled by some as “eco-terrorism”), nihilistic violent extremism lacking clear political ideology, and mixed-motivation attackers who draw on multiple ideological threads; those labels are used to shape prevention indicators and investigative priorities rather than to criminalize beliefs [11] [12] [9]. The agencies also emphasize lone-offender and small-group violence as central operational challenges in the contemporary domestic threat environment [3] [9].