Right-wing terrorists twice as likely to kill Americans than Muslim jihadists are - report

[Jay Stevens]

[Shoot a rightist, neutralize another terrorist. It's what the
2A is for.]




.. Begin Report ,,,

Nearly twice as many Americans have been killed by right-wing
extremists since 9/11 as have died at the hands of radical
Muslims on US soil, a new report found. There have also been
nearly three times as many deadly right-wing attacks as
jihadist ones.

In almost a decade-and-a-half, 48 Americans have died in the US
in 19 attacks by white supremacists, so-called “sovereign
citizens” and other non-Muslim extremists, while 26 have died
in seven jihadist attacks on US soil during that same time
period, research center New America found as it compiled a new
database on deadly attacks in the US since 9/11.

"Since 9/11, our country has been fixated on the threat of
jihadi terrorism," said Richard Cohen, president of the
Southern Poverty Law Center, according to the Kansas City Star.
"But the horrific tragedy at the Emanuel AME reminds us that
the threat of homegrown domestic terrorism is very real."

Last Wednesday, nine African-Americans were shot and killed at
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South
Carolina. Dylann Storm Roof, who later confessed to the
massacre, made racist statements as he killed his victims,
survivors told police. A website believed to belong to Roof
contained a white supremacist manifesto, as well as photos of
him posing with a gun, carrying the Confederate flag and
burning an American flag. The Charleston shooting has not been
officially labeled as terrorism, however, and Roof has not been
charged with any crimes more heinous than murder.

The purpose of this database is to provide as much information
as possible about American citizens and permanent residents
engaged in violent extremist activity as well as individuals,
regardless of their citizenship status, living within the
United States who have engaged in violent extremist activity,”
Sterman and Bergen wrote. "We examine both those individuals
motivated by Jihadist ideology, understood as those who worked
with or were inspired by al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups, as
well as those motivated by other ideologies that are non-
Jihadist in character, for example right wing, left wing, or
idiosyncratic beliefs.”

from http://securitydata.newamerica.net

There were killings that gripped the national conscience but
were not included. A North Carolina man who confessed to
killing his three Muslim neighbors and had posted angry
critiques about religion online, for instance, was omitted
because the shooting may have been related to a parking
dispute. Likewise, New America did not include massacres that
did not appear to have ideological motives, such as the Aurora,
Colorado movie theater shooting or the Sandy Hook Elementary
School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

The report may even be understating the number of right-wing
terrorist attacks in the US because the media often reports
other, non-political motivations when the perpetrators are
white, critics contend.

“With non-Muslims, the media bends over backward to identify
some psychological traits that may have pushed them over the
edge,” Abdul Cader Asmal, a longtime spokesman for Boston’s
Muslim community, told the New York Times. “Whereas if it’s a
Muslim, the assumption is that they must have done it because
of their religion.”

New America noted that it focused on the acts themselves and
remained neutral on whether the perpetrators’ motivations were
considered to be violently extreme.

“We recognize that extremism is a subjective term and that the
First Amendment protects the right to hold extreme political
views,” Sterman and Bergen wrote. “Our dataset takes no stance
on whether particular ideologies are extreme but focuses on
violent extremism understood as the use of violence in pursuit
of any political ideology whether that ideology is considered
mainstream in the United States or not.”

Facts vs. public perceptions

The New America database runs counter to public perception,
which says that Muslim jihadists on US soil are a much larger
threat to Americans. The people tasked with rooting out violent
extremists and preventing attacks from occurring, however, see
threats in line with what the dataset found, according to a
survey about to be published.

That study ? set to be published this week by the Triangle
Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security and the Police
Executive Research Forum ? asked 382 police and sheriff’s
departments nationwide to rank the three biggest threats from
violent extremism in their jurisdiction.

from http://securitydata.newamerica.net

About 74 percent listed anti-government violence, while 39
percent listed “Al Qaeda-inspired” violence, according to study
authors Charles Kurzman of the University of North Carolina and
David Schanzer of Duke University.

“Law enforcement agencies around the country have told us the
threat from Muslim extremists is not as great as the threat
from right-wing extremists,” Kurzman told the NY Times.

The mismatch between public perceptions and actual cases of
jihadism in the US has become steadily more obvious in
scholarly research, but that realization hasn’t made its way
into the mainstream American conscience yet, John G. Horgan,
who studies terrorism at the University of Massachusetts
Lowell, told the NY Times.

“There’s an acceptance now of the idea that the threat from
jihadi terrorism in the United States has been overblown,”
Horgan said. “And there’s a belief that the threat of right-
wing, antigovernment violence has been underestimated.”

The government ? or at least Republicans on the House Committee
on Homeland Security ? may be playing into the public
misconception that jihadi terrorism is the biggest threat
Americans face. On Friday, the committee introduced its new,
monthly Terror Threat Snapshot that will track “the escalating
and grave threat environment facing the United States.”

“Terror threats to the US homeland have reached unprecedented
levels,” committee chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said in a
statement. “There have been 116 homegrown jihadist plots in
America since 9/11— more than half of those have occurred in
just the past three years.”

According to that tool, the number of homegrown terror plots
since 9/11 has tripled in the past five years. The data was
compiled by the committee’s majority staff.

https://www.rt.com/usa/269506-american-terroist-attacks-study/