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Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism

'Cultural Nationalist' groups

63. JTAC has defined 'Cultural Nationalism' as:

A belief that 'Western Culture' is under threat from mass migration into Europe and from a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups. The ideology tends to focus on the rejection of cultural practices such as the wearing of the burqa or the perceived rise of the use of sharia law. In the UK this has been associated with anti-Islam activist groups.[1]

64. MI5 notes that, although 'Cultural Nationalism' is the least explicitly violent of the three ideologies:

[We] assess the inspired threat from 'Cultural Nationalist' ideologies may be further reaching than 'White Supremacists' or 'White Nationalist' ideologies, owing to the mainstreaming of many of the 'Cultural Nationalist' principles into conventional media reporting. This increases the prospective audience for 'Cultural Nationalist' grievances and agendas to a far greater number than those of White Supremacist' and 'White Nationalist' ideologies, who are largely restricted to the online space.[2]

65. The Director General of MI5 explained the pervasiveness of 'Cultural Nationalism' across the ERWT spectrum, noting that there have been a number of examples of Self-Initiated Terrorist attacks linked to ‘Cultural Nationalist' narratives:

If it were the case that, for the sake of argument, the 'White Supremacist' strand of this was consistently the most dangerous, ***. But if you look at the particular instances where Right Wing Extremists have mounted attacks in this country—Thomas Mair against Jo Cox in 2016, and then Darren Osborne outside Finsbury Park Mosque in 2017, and then Vincent Fuller, the man who stabbed the Bulgarian individual in 2019—in no case was any of those three assailants a confirmed 'White Supremacist' individual. They were more, if you will, 'Cultural Nationalists', each with very strong anti-Islam sentiment in their make up, and so it is difficult, because the violence is not distributed in the same way that the sort of extremity of some of the ideological views are distributed.[3]

'Identitarian' movement

66. In the past five years, there has been a significant growth in the profile and influence of the 'Identitarian' movement (which includes groups such as Generation Identity in Europe, and spin-off group the Identitarian Movement in the UK). According to MI5, 'Identitarian' groups seek to normalise a combination of 'White Nationalist' and 'Cultural Nationalist' principles behind an intellectual façade, in order to be seen as a viable alternative for those who do not want to associate themselves with the negative connotations of "White Nationalist' and 'White Supremacist' groups. The 'Identitarian' movement—which actively distances


  1. JTAC paper, 16 May 2019.
  2. MI5 Strategic Intelligence Group paper, 13 January 2020.
  3. Oral evidence - MI5, 28 April 2021.

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