Composed largely of groups and individuals with white supremacist or anti-government agendas, along with a few single-issue movements such as anti-abortion extremists, the extreme right in the U.S. has been a source of domestic terrorism for decades. Targets have ranged from the government to Jews and other minority groups to abortion clinics.

Members of the far right fringe in the U.S. spend much more time dreaming of firearms and explosives than they spend fantasizing about chemical or biological agents. However, right-wing extremists have sometimes dabbled with such agents. Moreover, two important attributes of the extreme right lend credibility to this threat. The first is the growing acceptance of the use of violence on the part of many segments of the extreme right; the second is the development within the extreme right of a cultural fixation on weapons, explosives, and other means of destruction.