As the United States deals with insurgent forces at home, security professionals should look to the Middle East for insight on how this threat may evolve:



There are a lot of parallels between right-wing US extremism, and post-colonial Islamic extremism.

The most prominent, I feel, is the one between the @newtgingrich era GOP and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood, like most early Islamic terrorism, was a reaction to European colonialism in the Middle East.

What starts as a political movement interested in social change becomes an insurgent group engaged in violent extremism.



The same radicalization factors can be identified. It’s disenfranchisement and cultural erosion all the way down.

Both groups want a return to “tradition” to strengthen a culture they feel they’ve lost because of modernity. Both groups feel they’ve been economically and culturally disenfranchised by a foreign oppressor. You can see roots of this same problem in the Confederacy.

In our case at home, this is because of the inherent cultural divide between conservatives and liberals. Many conservatives do not feel that liberals are real Americans. This is an important factor for later.