Peter Bergen Quotes

First of all, radical beliefs are not a predictor of terrorist behavior: most people who hold radical beliefs never become terrorists, and some terrorists don't hold radical beliefs.

ISIS uses traditional media platforms as well as widespread social media campaigns to propagate its ideology. With the broad distribution of social media, terrorists can spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize vulnerable persons of all ages in the U.S. either to travel to foreign lands or to conduct an attack on the homeland.

We often speak of domestic terrorism and hate crimes in the same breath, and there is a fine line between the two, and certainly overlap in some cases.

Social media has allowed groups, such as ISIL, to use the Internet to spot and assess potential recruits. With the widespread horizontal distribution of social media, terrorists can identify vulnerable individuals of all ages in the United States - spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize - either to travel or to conduct a homeland attack.

Assaults, bomb-throwings, and murders continue in East Prussia, Bavaria, and Holstein. It has now been officially established that the cases of arson and bomb-throwings at Konigsberg were committed by Nazis. The Government held a Cabinet meeting on the subject yesterday, but confined itself to threatening vigorous action. It obviously hesitates about getting on the wrong side of the Nazis.

Fundamentally, terrorism is about public relations.

This is the new wave, the new generation of terrorism. It's gone viral. It's very dangerous, and it's very hard to stop.

It's safe to assume none of us actually wants to see ISIS-inspired terrorists armed with semi-automatic rifles, able to attack at will within our own borders.

The FBI assesses HVEs are the greatest terrorism threat to the homeland.

They’re nothing more than domestic terrorists.

The bombing in Oklahoma City has focused renewed attention on the rhetoric that’s been coming from the right and those who cater to angry white men. Right-wing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Bob Grant, Oliver North, G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Reagan and others take to the air every day with basically the same format: Detail a problem, blame the government or a group and invite invective from like-minded people. Never do most of the radio hosts encourage outright violence, but the extent to which their attitudes may embolden or encourage some extremists has clearly become an issue.

The attacks in New York represent a new, privatized form of violence, which has nothing in common with the classical concept of war and is something to which we must find answers

Al-Qa’ida members -- including some who are US citizens --have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.

Unless Gingrich and Dole and the Republicans say, ‘Am I inflaming a bunch of nuts?’, you know we're going to have some more events (like the Oklahoma City bombing). I am absolutely certain the harsher rhetoric of the Gingriches and the Doles … creates a climate of violence in America.

I oppose the death penalty other than in cases of real international and domestic terrorism.

The Trump administration cannot accept the fact that what they refer to as "terrorism" is predominantly a white nationalist threat in this country. And they cannot accept the fact that their attempts to simply shine that lens onto the groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda, and therefore implicate Muslim and immigrant communities, is actually, even by their own standards, misguided, in terms of the raw amount of damage and destruction caused through these kinds of unwarranted attacks.

If you think you can finish ISIS off with the PYD and YPG, you cannot, because they are terrorist groups as well.

The fault lines are shifting from the boundaries of nations into the web of our societies and the streets of our cities. And, terrorism and extremism are a global force that are larger than their changing names, groups, territories and targets.

Israel is under a dual terrorist attack, from within and from without. And terrorism from within is always more dangerous than terrorism from without.

A 2014 survey found that 74% of law-enforcement agencies reported antigovernment extremism as one of the top terrorist threats. Just 3% of those agencies viewed the threat from Muslim extremists as severe.

Every lethal terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11 has been carried out by an American citizen or a legal permanent resident, not by recent immigrants or by refugees. So tamping down immigration won't fix the real issue, which is 'homegrown' terrorism.

What I'm concerned about are two things. I think one that John Miller talked about, and that's the radicalization over the Internet that ISIS is very adept at doing. The other one is a foreign fighter threat.

It's much harder to detect a lone wolf than it is somebody who's associated with a larger organization who's having planning meetings and making phone calls to people in the organization. And so that is really how the jihad has really developed in the United States.

When ISIS and al Qaeda have attacked or plotted attacks in the West in the past decade or so, they have invariably used hydrogen peroxide-based bombs because acquiring military-grade explosives or dynamite is nearly impossible for would-be terrorists in Western countries.

The homegrown terrorists are the most significant because any fighter returning from Syria to the United States would likely be identified and detected by our intelligence and law enforcement agencies.