Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-05-21
Source: The Conversation – in French- By Elizabeth Sheppard Sellam, Head of the “Policies and International Relations” program at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Tours The United States’ 2026 counterterrorism strategy, recently formalized by the Trump administration, exploits the fight against terrorism to serve an ideological vision.
Targeting “far-left extremists,” it hardly mentions far-right movements, which nevertheless commit more violent crimes. The United States regularly publishes national counterterrorism strategies in order to define the main threats and the administration’s priorities in the field of security.
These documents existed before September 11, 2001, but that day profoundly transformed their importance, making the fight against terrorism the central axis of American national security.
The firstNational Strategy for Combating Terrorismfrom the post-September 11 era was published by the Bush administration in 2003 as part of the “Global War on Terror.” Since then, each administration has adapted its priorities according to the strategic context and perceived threats.
These strategies are not legally binding, but they play an important role in political and bureaucratic guidance. They influence the priorities of federal agencies, budgets, security doctrines, and relationships with allies. Above all, they reveal Washington’s perception of the main threats facing the United States and the responses to be made.
Theofficial document published by the White House in mid-May, titled “2026 Counterterrorism Strategy”, now places in the same category — those of major threat sources to the United States — the cartels, jihadist networks, and “violent far-left extremists.” Immigration blockage, strengthening border controls, fighting the “internal enemy,” and defending the “American way of life” are presented there ascentral themes of counterterrorism.
What is absent from the document is, however, just as revealing. Behind the highlighted threats, several major blind spots emerge, in a context of increasing politicization of national security issues.
When counterterrorism becomes political The Strategy strongly emphasizes the alleged “instrumentalization” of security tools under the Biden administration and accuses it several times of having used intelligence and counterterrorism services to target conservative Americans, notably by adopting measures aimed at protecting against their intervention in holding events in schools.meetings on gender issues or health restrictions.
The document thus records part of the American political and cultural divides within the issue of counterterrorism, following an explicitly political and ideological logic. The strategy incorporates several central themes of the “America First” ideology and the MAGA movement.
The southern border becomes a major security front.
The Mexican cartels and certain Venezuelan criminal networks recently designated as terrorist organizations, like theAragua Train, are presented as actors capable of directly destabilizing the United States, while illegal immigration is regularly associated with terrorism and organized crime.
This approach is part of a broader discourse carried by several figures of the Trump administration. Remarks by the vice presidentJ. D.
Vance at the Munich Security Conference in 2025At the recentNational Security Strategy, references to the decline of the West and the necessity to close borders and proceed with a form of “civilizational restoration” now occupy an increasingly prominent place in American strategic priorities.
But this focus on certain risks, real or supposed, raises a crucial question: are there forms of terrorism that this strategy chooses to ignore today, at the risk of weakening tomorrow the ability of the United States to anticipate, prevent, and counter these threats?
The forms of terrorism relegated to the blind spot While the strategy strongly focuses on “violent far-left extremists,” it gives a much more marginal place to violence originating from the far right, whether it is the work of white supremacists targeting communities deemed foreign or extremists determined to attack government representatives.
Yet, for several years experts have been warning about the rise of forms of radicalization linked to armed militias, toaccelerationist movementsor to violent conspiracy networks. In recent years, ofnumerous attacks related to these environments have occurred in the United States, so much so that specialists now consider far-right movements as one of themajor internal terrorist threats of the country.
The attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, motivated by antisemitic conspiracy theories, or even the2022 Buffalo racist shooting, from which the author was inspired by supremacist content and the theory of the “great replacement,” constitute two very well-known examples among numerous incidents of violence linked to far-right extremism recorded in recent years in the United States.According to data from the Anti-Defamation League(ADL), all murders committed for extremist motivations recorded in the country in 2024 were linked to far-right movements.
Let us add that for years, American federal agencies like the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) considered these movements as one of the main domestic terrorist threats to the country – an analysis that the new counterterrorism strategy of the Trump administration completely ignores.
It is obviously not a question of denying the reality of the dangers mentioned in the Strategy. But the central question remains that of the hierarchy of threats adopted by a document intended to prepare the United States for the most dangerous forms of terrorism of tomorrow.
This prioritization also raises questions in the current context of tensions with Iran and its affiliated networks.
While the strategy explicitly mentions proxies supported by Tehran, hybrid operations, and certain planned attacks targeting Americans, Iranian dissidents, or Israelis on American soil, these issues nevertheless appear far less central in the document than other priorities — and this, despite the context of open confrontation with Iran, the multiplearrests related to attack plansattributed to pro-Iranian networks in recent years, as well as the intensification of regional tensions.
The other major blind spot of the document concerns the digital dimension of contemporary terrorism.
Jihadist groups, but also violent far-right and far-left movements, now use social networks, encrypted messaging services, and platforms like Telegram, Discord, or 4chan to spread propaganda, victimization narratives, and incite acts.The Christchurch attack (New Zealand)in 2019 marked a major turning point: the terrorist had published his manifesto online before broadcasting the attack live on Facebook, in a logic of viral propaganda and imitation.
Several of these mechanisms were found during the Buffalo shooting mentioned above and, very recently, during the attack on a mosque in San Diego in May 2026, whose perpetrators alsobroadcast online content and references the Christchurch (New Zealand) attack and its perpetrator.
This logic recalls certain methods previously used by Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, who had extensively used social networks and viral content to recruit and encourage isolated acts. The Strategy indeed mentions new technologies and artificial intelligence, but mainly from the perspective of weapons of mass destruction.
It pays much less attention to the digital ecosystems in which certain forms of radicalization are currently taking shape.
This omission is all the more notable as the Trump administration has simultaneously reduced or eliminated severalfederal structures responsible for monitoring disinformation campaigns and foreign interference, such as the Department of State’s Global Engagement Center or certain capabilities of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) related to information threats.
The risk then is that by increasingly interpreting terrorism through an ideological lens, this Strategy ends up underestimating threats that have already been identified for years by the American security agencies themselves. When terrorism becomes a political category This debate does not concern only the United States.
France and other European countries are also facing increasingly hybrid forms of radicalization, where terrorism, digital propaganda, and political polarization tend to merge. The assassination of Samuel Paty in 2020 particularly illustrates this evolution. Before the attack, aviral campaign on social networkshad contributed to publicly designating the teacher as a target, mixing misinformation, community mobilization, and online hate.
The subject remains deeply present in the French public debate, as shown again by the recent release of the filmAbandonment, dedicated to the last days of the murdered professor. But jihadism is not the only threat facing European democracies.
Most of them also facerise of radicalized far-right movements, violent conspiratorial networks and foreign interference campaigns exploiting Western political and cultural divisions. Ignoring certain far-left violence out of political reflex would be a similar mistake.
The difficulty for democratic countries therefore remains the same: how to protect society without gradually turning terrorism into a political category that varies according to the governments and ideologies of the moment? An anti-terrorism strategy always reveals how a State defines its priorities, but also its fears.
The danger is not only to underestimate certain emerging threats. It also lies in the temptation to permanently politicize the very definition of terrorism and national security.
When a State begins to interpret threats primarily through an ideological lens, it progressively becomes less capable of lucidly identifying the dangers of tomorrow, precisely at a time when they evolve faster than ever.
Elizabeth Sheppard Sellam does not work for, advise, own shares in, receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and has declared no other affiliations than her research institution. –ref.
Counterterrorism according to Trump: a vision more ideological than security-related –https://theconversation.com/le-contreterrorisme-selon-trump-une-vision-plus-ideologique-que-securitaire-283127