The movement's ideology has elements in common with the ultra-rightist militias of the United States: fear of world conspiracies of Jews, freemasons and financiers, and a fascination with Hitler.
Mr Hoffman, who helps run a terrorism research centre at the University of St Andrew's in Scotland, has argued that ultra-rightist militias in America, millenarian sects in Japan and Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East are all representatives of the same trend: towards a sort of insatiable fanaticism which has no agenda other than destruction and revenge.