“NVE” is far from the only counterterrorism label that suffers from definitional problems. Authorities around the world have struggled for years to classify violent extremist threat actors who combine multiple (sometimes contradictory) ideological worldviews, frequently change their ideologies, or only vaguely express violent extremist ideologies. However, unlike the rest of the terms coined to try to describe these fuzzy categories—including the United States’ “salad bar extremism,” the United Kingdom’s “mixed, unclear, and unstable,” and academic formations such as “composite violent extremism”—NVE has one particularly glaring problem: “Nihilistic violent extremism” is an oxymoron. ******While no objective or official U.S. definition of “nihilism” exists, dictionary definitions widely concur that a central aspect of nihilism is the belief that there is no purpose to existence, meaning, or values. In contrast, the federal definition of the term “DVEs” explicitly states they are distinct from other physical threat actors in that they “seek to further political or social goals.” Even the federal definition of NVE claims that NVEs act “in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals.”