In 2020, the “vast majority” of domestic terrorism acts were committed or motivated by “white supremacists or militias or other like-minded, violent, far-right entities,” counterrorism expert Seth Jones told Yahoo Finance.

“In the last few years, what we've seen is a significant increase in the number of individuals involved in what we call violent far-right, and to some degree, of smaller numbers, violent far-left terrorism,” Jones, the director of the Transnational Threats Project and senior adviser to the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Yahoo Finance Live, noting that Wednesday’s violent riots and breach of the Capitol were “certainly” terrorism.

“I think one can characterize this as a form of domestic terrorism,” he said, adding that the people present at the Capitol were armed and used violence or threatened violence.

Terrorism is defined as “the use or the threat of violence designed to achieve political objectives,” he said.

“After 9/11, much of the major threat we faced in the U.S. is, as everyone knows, it generally came from organizations like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State,” said Jones.

But a recent report from CSIS has found that last year, terror acts from far-right groups far outpaced those from far-left or jihadist groups.

According to the study, 67% of attacks and plots for attacks originated from “white supremacists, anti-government extremists from the violent far-right, and involuntary celibates (incels).”

One-fifth of attacks were committed by far-left groups with the remainder of domestic terror plots and attacks were committed by other groups with different motivations.

Jones said that the president and “Trumpism” has “definitely had an impact” on the rise of far-right and white supremacist attacks.

“It's hard to pull out how much of an impact. There are clearly other factors that are going on,” Jones explained, adding that the coronavirus pandemic has also played a role, and “brought out individuals that simply do not trust the government,” on both extremes.

“But where the president has played an influential role, though, is in stoking these conspiracy theories, and I think, as we saw this week, encouraging individuals to take action against locations like the Capitol building,” Jones said.

Kristin Myers is a reporter and anchor for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.

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