In September 2020, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray appeared before the U.S. Senate\u2019s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, where he briefed senators on threats to the United States (Threats to the Homeland, 2020). In response to questions from Oklahoma Senator James Lankford about groups that may be instigating violence at otherwise peaceful protests across the country, Wray described the challenge of clear delineation between actors. He highlighted how \u201canarchist violent extremists\u201d and \u201cAntifa adherents\u201d collaborate and organize, before drawing attention to what he called the \u201cmore militia types\u201d, adding:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c…I think trying to put a lot of these things into nice, neat, clean buckets is a bit of a challenge because one of the things that we see more and more in the counterterrorism space is people who assemble together in some kind of mish-mash, a bunch of different ideologies. We sometimes refer to it as almost like a \u2018salad bar of ideologies,\u2019 a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and what they are really about is the violence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wray\u2019s testimony highlighted the possibility that contemporary perpetrators of violent extremism may no longer resemble what was at least thought of (traditionally) as ideologically coherent extremists. Whether his \u2018salad bar\u2019 characterization captures a genuinely new phenomenon (e.g. those whose primary <\/em>interest is committing violence, then subsequently seeking to justify or rationalize that act by selecting pieces of ideological content) or reflects longstanding variation and diversity that was previously ignored, downplayed or simply undetected, remains unclear. Nonetheless, Wray\u2019s concerns captured the attention of analysts, researchers, and practitioners worldwide, some of whom were already documenting the perceived rapid shift in the nature and content of ideologies as well as actors appearing to lack a single, clear, and coherent extremist belief system (Brace et al., 2023; Faust & Masellis, 2023; Gartenstein-Ross et al., 2023; Gilmour, 2024; Hoffman & Ware, 2020; Olson, 2025; Petersen & Johansen, 2025; Ramakrishna, 2024; Rousseau et al., 2024; Schlegel et al., 2025; Stewart, 2023; Ware, 2024). <\/p>\n\n\n\n A clear definition would make for a useful point of departure, yet we do not have one. Wray\u2019s use of the term \u2018salad bar\u2019 highlighted how some offenders appear to pick and choose their ideology(ies), sometimes not because of any meaningful affinity with the content or ideas associated with those ideologies, but because choosing a particular ideology, or selective content from an ideology, might hold some fleeting interest or serve some other function for the offender in question (e.g., to legitimize their actions, or simply seek additional notoriety by affiliating with some extremist worldview). Taken at face value, this implies a relatively casual, low-commitment relationship between the offender and ideological content. The degree of intentionality that people are assumed to display in mixing ideologies is certainly unclear, as is whether those \u2018mixed\u2019 ideologies are all more or less similar (perhaps united by some \u2018master\u2019 ideology) or all more or less different and seemingly incoherent, at least to an outside observer. None of any of this is clear. Chace-Donahue and colleagues (2022) interpret the FBI\u2019s concern as centering on \u201cmass attackers who appear to be mobilized by multiple \u2013 and at times seemingly contradictory \u2013 beliefs, interests, and grievances\u201d (para. 2). Wray\u2019s usage of the \u2018salad bar\u2019 analogy conveys \u201ca degree of intentionality on the extremist\u2019s part: people at a salad bar deliberately choose the combination of [food]\u2026rather than consuming them haphazardly\u201d (Chace-Donahue et al., 2022, para. 7). <\/p>\n\n\n\n We will address each of these issues in turn, but we must first acknowledge how quickly Wray\u2019s comments generated widespread attention. Alongside efforts to document cases in which the perpetrator exhibits some level of such mixed ideological beliefs (Bellaiche, 2021; Clarke, 2021; Gartenstein-Ross et al., 2023; Guhl et al., 2022; Kutner, 2020; Miller-Idriss & Hughes, 2021), a growing cluster of terms has emerged with remarkable speed. Table 1 below does not offer an exhaustive list and is merely an illustration of the proliferation of labels associated with, to varying degrees, \u2018salad bar\u2019 extremism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Table 1<\/strong>
Examples of terms associated with \u201cSalad Bar\u201d extremism.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n