Too often over the past several years, American communities have felt the

condemn and 
confront 
domestic 
terrorism 
regardless of 
the particular 
ideology that 
motivates 
individuals to 
violence.
“
includes reducing the factors contributing to domestic terrorism. Those factors have multiple 
dimensions, including incitement to imminent violence online, some transnational linkages, 
and certain self–proclaimed private “militia” activity that, to varying degrees, is prohibited 
by the laws of all 50 states. Addressing these factors contributing to domestic terrorism is, in 
part, a means to achieving the first objective of preventing the violence itself and handling the 
threats we face today; but it must also be its own objective, as reducing the contributing factors 
can make a difference in diminishing the threat we might otherwise face tomorrow.

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14
National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism
Additionally, pursuing the goal of preventing, disrupting, and deterring acts of domestic 
terrorism means achieving the type of resilience that can prevent domestic terrorists from 
gaining traction and adherents in the first place. Resilience can take many forms. It can mean 
raising public awareness of how terrorists deliberately seek overreaction, which can help to 
avoid precisely that overreaction and instead thwart terrorists’ own strategies. And it can 
mean, broader still, cultivating the type of digital literacy that can empower the American 
public to resist those who would use online communications platforms and other venues to 
recruit, radicalize, and mobilize to violence. Fostering and ultimately attaining these and other 
forms of resilience is a third goal, and one whose achievement would strengthen the United 
States against domestic terrorism as well as other threats to U.S. national security.

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