The Bigger Threats From Far-Right Extremists for Domestic Home-Grown Terrorism

Narratives we've been told don't always add up to evidence-based facts.

Here are some extracted points, but you are encouraged to read the entire report

Far-right terror poses bigger threat to US than Islamist extremism post-9/11

Joanna Walters

the Guardian |

Since the 9/11 attack, far-right extremists killed more people in the US than did American-based Islamist fundamentalists

Donald Trump’s presidency was bookended with two of the ugliest outbursts of white nationalist violence in 21st century America – the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville and the 2021 storming of the US Capitol by his extremist supporters to sabotage the election results.

Rightwing apologists like to downplay these lethal events or dismiss them as aberrations, but experts warn this is a form of terrorism that’s not only entrenched but has ballooned to become the biggest domestic security threat in the US.

In the 20 years since 9/11, far-right extremists killed more people in the US than did American-based Islamist fundamentalists – but that’s often hard to discern from the way the federal government has treated domestic terrorism.

> Earlier this year an intelligence report warned that racially-motivated extremists posed the most lethal domestic terrorism threat. It said the menace was now more serious than potential attacks from overseas, and the White House published a strategy for countering the problem.

> "It’s undeniable that federal law enforcement has underplayed and misunderstood the level of white supremacist violence,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) national security project. . .Shamsi warned that after anti-government zealot Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City killing 168 and injuring 680 in 1995, the worst terrorism attack on US soil before 9/11, the threat to public safety from white supremacist violence “never went away – and is now escalating”.

> The New America thinktank in Washington DC, has analyzed the 251 killings it defined as perpetrated by US domestic terrorists since the 9/11 catastrophe -- Its report concluded that far-right extremists killed 114 people spanning more than three dozen violent attacks, while US-based individuals it terms “jihadists” killed 107 people across 14 attacks. . .The report said: “Far from being foreign infiltrators, the large majority of jihadist terrorists in the United States have been American citizens or legal residents” including those involved in “every lethal attack except one” since 9/11.

> In 2009 Obama administration intelligence officials issued a chilling warning to US police about the rise in violent rightwing groups fueled at that time by the economic recession, returning disgruntled military veterans and racist hostility over the election of America’s first Black president.

> Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was marked by his white nationalist rhetoric. He put this into action upon taking office, from the travel ban blocking immigrants from a list of majority-Muslim countries to slashing America’s refugee intake, to solidifying the barrier on the US-Mexico border, while separating families and blocking even asylum seekers there. . .Trump emboldened white supremacist groups and far-right terrorism. The dozen lethal far-right terrorist attacks during the Trump administration killed a total of 48 people and injured 59, and included antisemitic and anti-immigrant violence.

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