According to a report from the Daily Beast, domestic terrorists and white nationalists are looking on with interest at how Donald Trump is conducting the response to the coronavirus pandemic and likely taking notes at all the flaws in the system under the resident's guidance.
In her column, Rita Katz wrote, "From neo-Nazis to jihadists, the COVID-19 pandemic has proved to many terrorists that the United States is not the ever-prepared, all-knowing power it once appeared to be, and nor are many of its Western allies."
"As the world looks on in awe at the governmental, economic, and societal vulnerabilities exposed by COVID-19, terrorists are taking note, and because a novel coronavirus was able to cripple the planet, bad actors are taking the idea of weaponizing disease more seriously than they have for years. Some have discussed ways to use the coronavirus itself to promote their various anarchic and apocalyptic agendas," she continued. "When it comes to weaponizing biological agents, the current pandemic is a proof of concept demonstration about the potential impact of a new or undetected disease. As the same ISIS-linked 'Bio-Terror' video from 2018 put it, plagues like those it suggested “cannot be detected or tracked… escaped or avoided.”
According to the author of the piece, the same applies to America's homegrown neo-Nazi and white nationalist terrorist movements.
As she notes, chatter among the groups have included comments such as, "Now the facade’s all cracked and all we can see is the world for what it is. There’s no “system” which can stop such a pathetic little thing as a virus, this microbe is singlehandedly responsible for shattering man-made concepts, currencies, transactions and beliefs."
"Far-right terrorists have been particularly aggressive, embracing COVID-19 itself as a weapon, directing their community members to 'go visit your local synagogue and hug as many jews as possible, cough on all the door knobs.' While such messages may sound insincere—even ludicrous—recent events show far-right terrorists are quite willing to attack during this pandemic using any means at their disposal," the report continues, before adding, "Encouraging the spread of a plague in one’s own homeland might seem contrary to the interests of white nationalists, but it actually fits well with many of their objectives."
"Far-right extremists increasingly embrace a political philosophy called 'accelerationism,' which encourages terrorists to accelerate the forces destroying society so that they may rebuild their own in the ashes," Katz wrote. "To that end, every effect of this crisis—from the social isolation and the economic meltdown to the crisis of public health and confusion about basic information—is a potential situation to be exploited or tool to be weaponized."
She then offered a dire warning, writing, "While the toll mounts, contradictory advice from public figures, scarce medical supplies, and conflicting mitigation measures among different levels of government show that America and other countries lack the infrastructure and preparedness to handle potential bioterrorism threats."
You can read more here.