An Oklahoma man was sentenced to serve 16 months in federal prison earlier this year on four counts of communicating interstate threats against children in violation of 18 U.S. Code §§ 875. The judge noted that the sentence “was based, in part, on the need for adequate incapacitation and to deter similar conduct.” Federal charges for violating 18 U.S. Code §§ 875 have become much more frequent over the past several years. One contributing factor is the rise in the number of terrorism cases inside the United States that cannot be charged using federal terrorism statutes. Instead, for cases that aren’t directly linked to a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), prosecutors rely on charges like 18 U.S. Code §§ 875 to accomplish what the judge indicated—incapacitate the defendant from engaging in further threatening or violent behavior.
This strategy is complicated by the fact that sentencing guidelines stipulate relatively short terms of imprisonment. The guidelines, established by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (SRA), were intended to improve disparity in sentencing across similar offenses. Previously, sentencing was left to the discretion of the courts. However, shorter sentences have led to instances in which offenders engaged in further—and more extreme—acts of terrorism after their release. For example, an Atomwaffen Division leader served three years for armed robbery and was subsequently charged and convicted for conspiring to attack an energy facility within two years of his release.
Such cases highlight an obstacle when prosecuting terrorism—does ideology matter when it comes to sentencing?
To answer this question, our research team at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE) examined cases from four distinct violent extremist ideologies, with the defendants all being charged under 18 U.S. Code §§ 875 in each case. The four defendants were associated with the Atomwaffen Division, QAnon, the incel movement, or the Islamic State (ISIS).
Overall, we found that ideology does matter when it comes to sentencing, and this has implications for how the U.S. government prosecutes violent extremism and terrorism cases. The brief case studies below illustrate that defendants associated with ISIS are more likely to receive longer sentences than adherents of other extreme ideologies and organizations.
Atomwaffen Division
In 2021, a Texas man was convicted on federal charges in violation of 18 U.S. Code §§ 875 for his role in swatting attacks on at least 134 locations across the United States. Swatting is a harassment tactic that involves deceiving law enforcement or emergency services into responding to a false threat. The targets of the attacks were predominantly racially motivated, though they also included additional targets such as a U.S. Cabinet official in Virginia, targeted threats at Old Dominion University, and two investigative journalists. The defendant made various false claims such as that he had placed pipe bombs, taken hostages, or was engaged in other violent activity at the targeted location. In some cases, the locations were required to shelter in place until police discerned that it was a false threat. The defendant was convicted of communicating threats to injure others and conspiracy to commit an offense against the U.S. government. He was sentenced to 41 months’ imprisonment.
The defendant was a known member of the Atomwaffen Division (AWD)—a transnational neo-fascist, cultic, accelerationist group with roots in white supremacy and close ties to other nihilistic violent extremist groups, including Feuerkrieg Division, the Order of Nine Angles, and the New Social Order. At its peak, AWD had approximately 80 members across the United States and Canada. Though some of AWD’s targets were individuals, the group was also known for plotting attacks on critical infrastructure.
A review conducted by my team at NCITE identified 20 AWD members who received federal charges related to terrorist activity in the United States between 2017 and 2025. Their sentences ranged from 12 months to 216 months in prison. In the swatting attacks on the two journalists, the defendant falsely identified himself as “James Mason,” the author of Siege, which features prominently in AWD ideology and practices. The racially motivated targets also align with AWD’s ideology, as does the conspiring with other AWD members, which is a core element of their structure and organizational practices, which emphasize on online and offline collaboration within small cells of AWD members. These cells would also recruit new initiates and engage them through targeted activities intended to radicalize. Nearly two thirds of AWD members federally charged in the United States included a conspiracy charge.
QAnon
In 2023, an Arizona man was charged with threatening a U.S. congresswoman in Texas. Among other grievances, the man threatened to shoot the congresswoman for being a “tranny” and a pedophile – though, at sentencing he conceded these accusations were not true. The defendant self-identified as an adherent of the Q Movement and the Q2 Truth Movement, both of which are part of the broader QAnon ideology. He believed that he was helping to eradicate transgender people who had infiltrated the U.S. government, a core belief in the QAnon ideology. The defendant was sentenced to 12 months and one day imprisonment on charges of communicating interstate threats in violation of 18 U.S. Code §§ 875. The judge noted that the prosecutors’ request for a hate enhancement was considered in sentencing.
The QAnon movement is named after an individual known online as “Q” who claims to be a high-ranking U.S. government official and posts about alleged conspiracies within the government. The conspiracies integrated into the QAnon ideology are varied, ranging from the belief that the world is run by a satanic pedophilic cabal of global elites to the more specific “PizzaGate”—a conspiracy theory positing that a group of political elite were involved in a pedophilic sex trafficking ring based out of a Washington D.C. pizza restaurant. Other theories that circulate within QAnon’s ideology include the belief that the U.S. government is attempting to imbed 5G microchips into its citizens and that certain retail outlets, such as Wayfair, are fronts to order children who have been sex trafficked.
Though the broader QAnon movement is large, the number of violent attacks linked to it is somewhat smaller. My NCITE team’s analysis revealed that 26 QAnon adherents have been federally charged in the United States since 2016, with sentences ranging from a pretrial diversion to 12 years’ imprisonment. For QAnon specifically, threats (especially to public officials) are an early indicator of mobilization and tend to be highly ideologically congruent.
Incels
In 2024, an Arizona man was charged under 18 U.S. Code §§ 875 after threatening to commit a mass shooting at the University of Arizona. The defendant was not a student at the university and the threat was conveyed in a group chat where he stated a desire to get revenge on “all the Chads and Stacies!!”—terms that are common to the incel ideology. The defendant communicated additional threats to female members of the group chat after noticing they had taken screenshots of his initial menacing remarks. Police investigated and found evidence that the defendant’s car was seen on Greek Row at the University of Arizona at least 9 times over the course of two weeks from 9:00 pm until 1:00 am. He was sentenced to 16 months’ imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release.
In addition to other indicators of the incel ideology—a shortened moniker for “involuntary celibates”—the defendant mentioned the 10th anniversary of “the day of retribution” on May 23, 2024. That is a reference to a mass shooting event on fraternities and sororities at a university in California carried out by a self-described incel named Elliot Rodger. The shooting, and Rodger himself, are central to the incel ideology and often referenced as inspiration or motivation in other attacks. Incels believe that women are to blame for the perceived deprivation of sexual and romantic gratification. As a result of their belief, incel adherents target and harass individuals who represent societal wrongs against them. On some occasions, they turn violent.
An NCITE analysis revealed 18 individuals who received federal charges in association with the incel ideology between 2014 and 2024.
The Islamic State (ISIS)
In 2018, a Kentucky woman was convicted on charges of communicating interstate threats in violation of 18 U.S. Code §§ 875 after posting the personal information of several U.S. Service Members and their families online with calls for violence against them. The defendant was a known ISIS adherent and regularly shared ISIS propaganda on social media. In her calls for violence against the service members, the defendant cited the need to execute them and their families for their alleged role in the killings of Osama Bin Laden and Anwar Al-Awlaki. Her posts included photos, names, and addresses of the victims. The defendant pled guilty to the charges of communicating interstate threats and was sentenced to 90 months’ imprisonment.
The Islamic State (ISIS)—a Salafi-jihadist transnational terrorist organization—is unique from the other three ideological groups analyzed here because it has been designated a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the U.S. government. The FTO designation expands the tools available to prosecute individuals associated with the organization, including the use of federal terrorism charges.
My NCITE team found that 261 individuals have been federally charged in the United States in association with ISIS since 2014, with the average sentence being 13 years’ imprisonment.
Does ideology matter?
The potential threshold to indict ISIS adherents is lower than AWD, QAnon, or incels because they can be charged with material support of an FTO without direct involvement in more violent or threatening activities. However, the sentences received by ISIS adherents are, on average, much longer. Which brings us back to the central question: Does ideology matter when it comes to sentencing terrorism and extremism convicts in the United States?
Our analysis suggests that ideology matters greatly. The four cases discussed above are all individuals charged with communicating interstate threats in violation of 18 U.S. Code §§ 875. In each case, the defendant was only charged under 18 U.S. Code §§ 875, with the exception of the AWD member who also received a conspiracy charge—a factor that may explain the longer sentence he received relative to the incel and QAnon defendents. Further, in each case the actual activity surrounding that charge tends to strongly reflect their ideology, and that in turn has implications for the sentencing.
The ISIS adherent had the longest sentence at 90 months – more than double the length of the AWD defendant’s sentence and an even greater discrepancy from the sentences in the QAnon and incel cases. The markers of ideology in her case demonstrated clear alignment with ISIS and its broader mission. Though she called for others to attack the targets, she did not have further indicators of mobilization herself. Her explicit ties to ISIS as documented in the court records combined with the degree of harm in her communicated threat (doxxing U.S. Service Members) resulted in a much longer sentence, even in the absence of a terrorism charge.
The swatting attacks conducted by the AWD defendant carried several markers of the group’s overall ideology: working with co-conspirators, elements of racially-motivated target selection, accelerationism, use of online networks, and a degree of nihilism (violence for the sake of violence). The threats themselves did not necessarily indicate further mobilization to violence, yet the nature of the communication (swatting) and the targets (including a U.S. cabinet member) led to the second longest sentence of the four cases (41 months) by a significant amount.
Conversely, the threats to engage in a campus shooting by the incel defendant only received a 16-month sentence. The defendant received this relatively short sentence despite evidence introduced by prosecutors showing that he actively surveilled the sorority house over several weeks, stated his intent to use a firearm (AK-47), and exhibited other strong markers of ideological motivation (as demonstrated in his language, target selection, planning, and stated motivation). His surveillance and planning for the attack demonstrate greater mobilization indicators than what was evidenced in the swatting or doxxing attacks committed by other defendants in this study, though the sentence he received was less than half that in the AWD defendant’s case. The QAnon adherent had the shortest sentence (12 months) even though the target was a U.S. congresswoman and the threat was motivated by a broader ideology. The sentence did not include a hate enhancement, despite the defendant’s anti-LGBTQ sentiments, which could have increased the sentence.
It’s hard to assess the severity of each of the four defendants’ threats in comparison to others. However, if solely considering mobilization indicators, the incel defendant showed the greatest intent and plans to engage in a physical attack. Both the AWD defendant and the QAnon adherent targeted U.S. government officials with their threats, though the use of swatting by the AWD defendant indicates greater intent to harm (at least as it relates to interstate communication). However, the content of the threat was more severe in the case of the QAnon adherent.
Finally, though the ISIS defendant did not express plans to engage in an attack herself, her threats called for others to attack the victims and provided information on how the targets may be located. Her sentence length seems, in part, motivated by her ideological affiliation, particularly since she did not display further mobilization indicators.
Implications for Policy
The four cases here suggest that ideology matters when it comes to charges and subsequent sentencing. Despite guidelines for this charge, the length of sentences for each case shows differences that can only be accounted for by a deeper analysis of the court records themselves and the ideological markers that were evident in their actions. In terms of policy implications, this begs the question not of whether ideology does matter when it comes to sentencing, but whether it should matter. We argue the answer to both is affirmative.
Ideology can’t be separated from activity when it comes to violent extremism—the two are closely intertwined and the broader implication of their criminal activity carries more weight when it is ideologically-motivated. The opening case from Oklahoma shows how this charge is applied for non-ideologically motivated crimes and how it relates to deterrence of violence. However, when ideology drives the intent behind the activity, it cannot be discounted in terms of the broader threat posed not only by the defendant themselves, but of other ideological adherents. Sentencing guidelines are important to establish a framework to guide prosecutions but the courts also need to be able to account for the broader impact of the ideology when it comes to countering violent extremism, particularly when limited to non-terrorism charges.
