The New Orleans attack and Las Vegas Tesla explosion are examples of the US military’s violent extremism problem
- Written by: Mia Martin Hobbs, Research Fellow, Deakin University
On New Year’s Day, a truck rammed into a crowd in New Orleans, killing at least 14 people and injuring dozens more. The suspect, identified as 42-year-old Shamsud Din Jabbar, a United States citizen and Army veteran, was apprehended and killed on the scene of the attack, after firing on law enforcement. The night before, he recorded a video message for his family informing them he had joined ISIS – whose flag he carried in the truck.
The same day, Matthew Livelsberger, an active-duty US Army Green Beret soldier, blew up a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Las Vegas hotel, injuring seven people. He was found dead inside the vehicle, a gun at his feet, having died by suicide shortly before the blast.
Though both men had served in the military and deployed to Afghanistan, the Pentagon press secretary said there was no evidence of overlap between the two incidents, which are both still under investigation by the FBI. Yet both cases indicate common problems facing the US military today.
I am an oral historian researching veterans’ experiences with violence in the War on Terror, the US-led global military response to the September 11 2001 attacks. Through my research, I’ve encountered significant connections between military service and violent extremism.
Most military personnel go on to lead peaceful, well-adjusted lives. But US military members and veterans make up around 28% of the nations’s mass shooters and only 7% of its general public. Being a military member or veteran is on par with other statistically significant backgrounds of mass shooters, such as being a perpetrator of domestic violence (27%).
The data on mass violence shows that a history of inflicting violence in one setting can normalise using it to express one’s views and maintain social order.
Festering resentments
After attacks of mass violence, we commonly see widespread speculation that the perpetrator was mentally ill, particularly if they were a veteran. Yet most people who have a mental illness (including veterans) are nonviolent. In fact, experts of mass violence agree that mental illness tends to be incidental to attacks, rather than a motivating force behind them.
However, perpetrators of mass violence do have something else in common. They hold certain groups, or society at large, responsible for their suffering.
Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist who pioneered research into radical groups in the 1970s and 1980s, argues individuals who become radicalised tend to feel humiliated in their own society and victimised by power structures around them. They also tend to feel connected to a group they perceive as under attack – either as a part of the group, or as a defender of it.
The manifestos and suicide notes of perpetrators of mass violence – from mass shooters to suicide bombers – show a deep feeling of entitlement to a particular status, and a corresponding sense of injustice at being deprived of these entitlements.
Individuals who become radicalised tend to feel humiliated in their own society.
Shawn Fink/AAP
Veterans are at heightened risk for these factors. They have often been told, for their entire careers, that their military skills are highly sought after and that they will easily transition into the civilian world, with support from the government should they need it.
Yet this is often not the case. Nearly half of War on Terror veterans struggled to readjust to civilian life and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ bureaucracy is notoriously complex to navigate. Many veterans feel their value to society is diminished after their service.
By publicly celebrating veterans as heroes, militarised societies like the US can create an expectation of ongoing glory. These expectations are impossible to meet in reality. The rupture between expectation and reality can result in profound resentment, manifesting in conspiracies about hostility and abuse toward veterans.
Deceased New Orleans terror suspect Shamsud Din Jabbar.
FBI Handout/AAP
Following his discharge in 2020, Jabbar had reportedly experienced a turbulent few years of financial losses, a recent eviction, the sickness of his father and a third divorce that “burned the shooter financially”. Over the past few years, his former partners reported Jabbar was making threatening phone calls and acting erratically. One of his ex-wives limited his contact with their children.
The disparity between his service in the military – where he was publicly commended and automatically awarded a “Global War on Terrorism” medal for his service – and his struggles afterwards may have been a trigger for him to seek belonging elsewhere.
Finding belonging in rigid hierarchies
The military has been a key recruiting ground for extremist groups for decades. Historian Kathleen Belew has shown that after the Vietnam War, white power groups rapidly recruited soldiers, veterans and law enforcement who were disillusioned with post-war society and sought belonging in familiar structures.
The military has a rigid hierarchy, with clear lines of command and a sense of purpose. It is more conservative than wider US society and promotes traditional ideas of masculinity. Many who stay in the military long-term find this structure reassuring. Jabbar, for instance, was “grateful for his time in the military” because “it gave him some discipline” and “grounded him”.
Militias and terrorist organisations have similarly rigid structures. Both usually envision an idealised hierarchy for society, which can appeal to individuals who feel the loss of structure and purpose on discharge.
These groups also offer someone or something to blame for the sense of injustice the individual is experiencing – whether that be migrants, the government, foreign policy or changing cultural mores. They provide a vehicle for expressing the individual’s sense of injustice, tapping into conspiratorial thinking about how certain values are being undermined.
Researchers of violent extremism argue that belief in conspiracy lies “at the heart of nearly all extremist movements”. These include white power movements, sovereign citizen movements and Islamic terrorism.
Soldiers’ attraction to extremist ideologies
The recruitment of soldiers and veterans into white power and sovereign citizen movements is a major, ongoing problem in the US: 244 (15%) of those charged for involvement in the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol had ties to the military or law enforcement.
Some studies estimate that current and former military make up “at least 25% of militia rosters”. And one of the deadliest attacks on US soil in history was by white supremacist and US army veteran Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people and injured hundreds more in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
One of the deadliest attacks on US soil was by white supremacist and US army veteran Timothy McVeigh, in 1995.
AP
Expressing allegiance to Islamic extremist groups is less common. But Jabbar is not the first US soldier or veteran to do so.
Nidal Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist, was radicalised after hearing his military patients describe actions in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s and being harassed by his military colleagues because of his faith.
Facing a deployment to Afghanistan in 2009, Hasan killed 13 people in his attack at Fort Hood, Texas. His actions were motivated by anger and a sense of injustice, rather than piety.
Though Jabbar was raised a practising Muslim after his father converted, his upbringing was moderate. He “took a step away from religion at some point in his life”. Although he returned to faith in recent years, neighbours in his Muslim community reported they had “never seen him worshipping in our lives”.
Instead, Jabbar’s interest in Islam appeared to be focused on condemning the excesses of a modern American society that he believed was leaving traditional ideals behind. For instance, he warned rap music was luring Muslims “into the things that God had made forbidden to us”. His brother connected the attack on Bourbon Street to Jabbar’s disapproval of “drinking and partying”.
Jabbar’s apparent initial plan to kill his family indicates a grievance toward the breakdown of his marriages and his inability to control his former partners and children. His allegiance to ISIS – a group that upholds an intensely patriarchal vision for structuring society – suggests he was attracted to an organisation that offered a rigid hierarchy and traditional worldview.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan.
Uniformed Services University/AAP
The ISIS-led “war between the believers and the disbelievers” mirrors the vision of veterans in white supremacist groups. Both groups see the world as made up of “good guys and bad guys”, and fighting as “the only way to stand up to the bad guys”. These reductive reasonings echo the US military’s in the War on Terror.
It is not surprising a person embedded in the US military for decades would have absorbed this approach to the world – and adopted a parallel ideology upon leaving it.
Violence as a solution
There are further parallels between the military, and militia and terror groups. Both view violence as an appropriate method for maintaining social order, and use it as the primary solution to social problems. Veterans have been conditioned to this worldview through military training.
Both attacks on New Years’ Day reflected a mentality that violence is the solution to a corrupted world.
In Las Vegas, Livelsberger left two letters on his phone. In them, he declared his attack was a “wake up call” for a country being led by the “weak” who only serve to “enrich themselves”.
The authorities have framed the New Orleans incident as a terror attack and the Las Vegas Tesla explosion as a “tragic case of suicide involving a heavily decorated combat veteran who was struggling with [post-traumatic stress disorder]”.
But using violence to express a political position is the accepted definition of terrorism.
Matthew Livelsberger’s ID was found inside the Tesla Cybertruck involved in an explosion outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas Police Department/AAP
What can be done?
Extremist groups actively recruit for individuals with military experiences, eager to draw on their training and experience. The vulnerabilities of serving military personnel and veterans to extremist groups have led terrorism experts to repeatedly encourage the US departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to vet new recruits and security clearances more carefully. They’re also encouraged to closely monitor the soon-to-be discharged personnel most vulnerable to recruitment.
These actions might remove a handful of potential extremists from the military. Yet veterans themselves offer other, more proactive approaches.
Significant numbers of War on Terror veterans have turned away from violence and joined the US veteran peace movement. These activists mourn the losses of war without glorifying any and all military action. They demand more substantial support for the veteran community and run programs to help veterans reconcile their military background with a peaceful future. They call for an end to unjust wars and oppose the growing militarism in US society.
Such anti-war demands can be taken up by the broader US population, and by American allies. More sober commemorations of war would lessen the expectation (and so resentment) of a venerated status, or valourised life. Public engagement on issues such as veteran support and reintegration programs would reduce the civil–military divide, helping veterans adjust to civilian life.
And insisting on public scrutiny of US military actions, holding them to higher moral standards, would demonstrate that no one’s violence is above the law.
Authors: Mia Martin Hobbs, Research Fellow, Deakin University
Daily Bulletin
