Most Of America’s Terrorists Are White, And Not Muslim

When it comes to domes­tic ter­ror­ism in America, the num­bers don’t lie: Far-right extrem­ists are behind far more plots and attacks than Islamist extremists.

There were almost twice as many ter­ror­ist inci­dents by right-wing extrem­ists as by Islamist extrem­ists in the U.S. from 2008 to 2016, accord­ing to a new report from The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund and The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal.

Looking at both plots and attacks car­ried out, the group tracked 201 ter­ror­ist inci­dents on U.S. soil from January 2008 to the end of 2016. The data­base shows 115 cas­es by right-wing extrem­ists ― from white suprema­cists to mili­tias to “sov­er­eign cit­i­zens” ― com­pared to 63 cas­es by Islamist extrem­ists. Incidents from left-wing extrem­ists, includ­ing ecoter­ror­ists and ani­mal rights mil­i­tants, were com­par­a­tive­ly rare, with 19 incidents.

While the data­base makes a point of dis­tin­guish­ing between dif­fer­ent groups with­in right-wing extrem­ism, lead reporter David Neiwert told HuffPost that “those are all gra­da­tions of white suprema­cy, vari­a­tions on the same thing.” When it comes to right-wing extrem­ism, attack­ers are also “most­ly men” and “almost pure­ly white,” Neiwert said.

Attacks by right-wing extrem­ists were also more often dead­ly, with near­ly a third of right-wing extrem­ist inci­dents result­ing in deaths com­pared with 13 per­cent of Islamist extrem­ist cas­es result­ing in deaths. However, the sheer num­ber of peo­ple killed by Islamist extrem­ists ― a total of 90 peo­ple killed ― was high­er than the death toll at the hands of right-wing extrem­ists ― 79 peo­ple killed.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has focused his rhetoric and poli­cies almost entire­ly on coun­ter­ing Islamist extrem­ism, not white suprema­cist extremism.

“As with a lot of things relat­ed to Trump and the Islamophobic right, the real­i­ty is viewed through an upside-down look­ing glass,” Neiwert said. “The real­i­ty is the most sig­nif­i­cant domes­tic ter­ror threat we have is right-wing extrem­ism.”

The Investigative Fund’s find­ings reflect those of pre­vi­ous stud­ies of domes­tic ter­ror­ism. The New America Foundation, for instance, which has been track­ing dead­ly ter­ror inci­dents on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11 attacks, also finds an almost two-to-one ratio of attacks by far-right extrem­ists to Islamist extrem­ists, with 21 dead­ly attacks by far-right extrem­ists, com­pared to 11 by Islamist extremists.

Despite the facts, many Americans still asso­ciate ter­ror attacks with Islamist extrem­ists rather than far-right extrem­ists, Neiwart noted.

“I think the larg­er per­cep­tion in pub­lic ― and this includes many pro­gres­sives and lib­er­als ― is the inver­sion of the real­i­ty: that the great­est threat we face is Islamist rad­i­cals,” Neiwert said. “And it’s reflect­ed in the way the press report upon var­i­ous kinds of domes­tic ter­ror attacks: When it’s a white domes­tic ter­ror­ist, they under­play it, write it off to men­tal illness.”

The media has a long his­to­ry of dou­ble stan­dards when it comes to cov­er­ing ter­ror­ism ― start­ing with how slow main­stream media is to label attacks by white per­pe­tra­tors as “ter­ror­ism,” and quick to label them as such when attack­ers are per­ceived as non­white or “oth­er” ― and specif­i­cal­ly, Muslim.

Part of the prob­lem is the com­plex nature of how offi­cials choose to cat­e­go­rize attacks as ter­ror­ism. The FBI has spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria to clas­si­fy ter­ror­ist inci­dents ― but the pub­lic doesn’t always agree with offi­cials’ labels. For instance, many peo­ple con­demned the gov­ern­ment for not label­ing Dylann Roof a ter­ror­ist after killing nine black church­go­ers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, even though he specif­i­cal­ly said he was there “to shoot black peo­ple,” accord­ing to witnesses.

“There’s actu­al­ly a debate over whether what Dylann Roof did was domes­tic ter­ror­ism, when it so plain­ly is domes­tic ter­ror­ism,” Neiwert told HuffPost. “A lot of this has to do with embed­ded judg­ments about where these threats come from ― and that has to do with fear-mon­ger­ing around Islamophobia.”

According to Neiwert, the solu­tion lies with the gov­ern­ment first acknowl­edg­ing the scale of the prob­lem of far-right extrem­ism and then ded­i­cat­ing resources to fight­ing it.

So far, Trump has shown a clear dou­ble stan­dard in his response to ter­ror­ism: After Islamist extrem­ists attacked London on June 3, for instance, Trump con­demned the vio­lence on Twitter the same day ― but after an attack in Portland, Oregon, by a white suprema­cist on May 26, Trump wait­ed more than two days before tweet­ing about it. After the London attack, Trump also called on the courts to rein­state his trav­el ban on cer­tain Muslim-major­i­ty coun­tries ― which was round­ly crit­i­cized. After the Portland attack, Trump made no calls to change pol­i­cy to pre­vent future attacks.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion also report­ed­ly just dropped fund­ing for non­prof­it Life After Hate, which helps peo­ple leave the white suprema­cist movement.

But it’s not just Trump that’s the prob­lem. The Fund’s data­base goes back to 2008 and shows clear­ly how gov­ern­ment resources have been dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly ded­i­cat­ed to tack­ling Islamist extrem­ism over right-wing extrem­ism. The gov­ern­ment suc­ceed­ed in inter­rupt­ing the vast major­i­ty of Islamist extrem­ist ter­ror cas­es since 2008; for instance: 76 per­cent of inci­dents tracked were “foiled plots,” which the group not­ed showed “a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment of law enforce­ment resources.” When it came to right-wing extrem­ism, only about a third of inci­dents were inter­rupt­ed ― 35 per­cent ― and the major­i­ty of the cas­es includ­ed acts of vio­lence that led to deaths, injuries, or dam­aged property.

At the end of the day, it’s not only on the gov­ern­ment to acknowl­edge the real­i­ty of the grow­ing threat of far-right extrem­ism; accord­ing to Neiwert, it’s also on every­one from the media mem­bers to aver­age Americans.

“First thing we need to do is rec­og­nize that it’s there, it’s a prob­lem, it’s a threat ― as great a threat as Islamists,” Neiwert said. “And it needs to be tak­en seri­ous­ly.” http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​d​o​m​e​s​t​i​c​-​t​e​r​r​o​r​i​s​m​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​s​u​p​r​e​m​a​c​i​s​t​s​-​i​s​l​a​m​i​s​t​-​e​x​t​r​e​m​i​s​t​s​_​u​s​_​5​9​4​c​4​6​e​4​e​4​b​0​d​a​2​c​7​3​1​a​8​4df.