DoD
2020-05-07 20:48:24 UTC
Homegrown Extremists Tied to Deadlier Toll Than Jihadists in
U.S. Since 9/11
WASHINGTON In the 14 years since Al Qaeda carried out attacks
on New York and the Pentagon, extremists have regularly
executed smaller lethal assaults in the United States,
explaining their motives in online manifestoes or social media
rants.
But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those attacks
may come as a surprise. Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as
many people have been killed by white supremacists,
antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by
radical Muslims: 48 have been killed by extremists who are not
Muslim, including the recent mass killing in Charleston, S.C.,
compared with 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists, according to a
count by New America, a Washington research center.
The slaying of nine African-Americans in a Charleston church
last week, with an avowed white supremacist charged with their
murders, was a particularly savage case.
But it is only the latest in a string of lethal attacks by
people espousing racial hatred, hostility to government and
theories such as those of the sovereign citizen movement,
which denies the legitimacy of most statutory law. The assaults
have taken the lives of police officers, members of racial or
religious minorities and random civilians.
Non-Muslim extremists have carried out 19 such attacks since
Sept. 11, according to the latest count, compiled by David
Sterman, a New America program associate, and overseen by Peter
Bergen, a terrorism expert. By comparison, seven lethal attacks
by Islamic militants have taken place in the same period.
If such numbers are new to the public, they are familiar to
police officers. A survey to be published this week asked 382
police and sheriffs departments nationwide to rank the three
biggest threats from violent extremism in their jurisdiction.
About 74 percent listed antigovernment violence, while 39
percent listed Al Qaeda-inspired violence, according to the
researchers, Charles Kurzman of the University of North
Carolina and David Schanzer of Duke University.
Continue reading the main story
Homegrown Terrorism
In the United States since Sept. 11, terrorist attacks by
antigovernment, racist and other nonjihadist extremists have
killed nearly twice as many people as those by Islamic
jihadists.
deaths
50
40
30
20
10
0
Jihadists
Nonjihadist extremists
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2015
Fort Hood shooting
Boston Marathon bombing
|
Charleston shooting
Source: New America Foundation
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
A photo from a white supremacist website showing Dylann
Roof, the suspect in the Charleston, S.C., church shooting.
Federal Hate Crime Charges Likely in South Carolina Church
ShootingJUNE 24, 2015
An honor guard carried the coffin of State Senator Clementa
C. Pinckney, a shooting victim, in Columbia, S.C., on
Wednesday.
Charleston Families Hope Words Endure Past ShootingJUNE 24,
2015
State flags line the Capitol subway tracks in Washington.
Calls to Cut Ties to Symbols of the SouthJUNE 23, 2015
The Council of Conservative Citizens was most visibly
active in South Carolina during a fierce debate in 2000 over
flying the Confederate battle flag on the grounds of the State
House in Columbia, picketing in support of continuing to
display the emblem.
Council of Conservative Citizens Promotes White Primacy,
and G.O.P. TiesJUNE 22, 2015
Earl Holt III, president of the Council of Conservative
Citizens, in a 2013 image taken from the council's website.
White Supremacist Who Influenced Charleston Suspect Donated
to 2016 G.O.P. CampaignsJUNE 22, 2015
A photo from a white supremacist website showing Dylann
Roof, the suspect in the Charleston, S.C., church shooting.
Dylann Roof Photos and a Manifesto Are Posted on
WebsiteJUNE 20, 2015
A scene from a vigil at Morris Brown African Methodist
Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., for the victims.
Many Ask, Why Not Call Church Shooting Terrorism?JUNE 18,
2015
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, said Dr. Kurzman, whose study is
to be published by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and
Homeland Security and the Police Executive Research Forum.
John G. Horgan, who studies terrorism at the University of
Massachusetts, Lowell, said the mismatch between public
perceptions and actual cases had become steadily more obvious
to scholars.
Theres an acceptance now of the idea that the threat from
jihadi terrorism in the United States has been overblown, Dr.
Horgan said. And theres a belief that the threat of right-
wing, antigovernment violence has been underestimated.
Continue reading the main story
Related in Opinion
Op-Ed Contributors: White Supremacists Without BordersJUNE
22, 2015
Room for Debate: Homegrown HateJUNE 24, 2015
Counting terrorism cases is a subjective enterprise, relying on
shifting definitions and judgment calls.
If terrorism is defined as ideological violence, for instance,
should an attacker who has merely ranted about religion,
politics or race be considered a terrorist? A man in Chapel
Hill, N.C., who was charged with fatally shooting three young
Muslim neighbors had posted angry critiques of religion, but he
also had a history of outbursts over parking issues. (New
America does not include this attack in its count.)
Likewise, what about mass killings in which no ideological
motive is evident, such as those at a Colorado movie theater
and a Connecticut elementary school in 2012? The criteria used
by New America and most other research groups exclude such
attacks, which have cost more lives than those clearly tied to
ideology.
Some killings by non-Muslims that most experts would categorize
as terrorism have drawn only fleeting news media coverage,
never jelling in the public memory. But to revisit some of the
episodes is to wonder why.
In 2012, a neo-Nazi named Wade Michael Page entered a Sikh
temple in Wisconsin and opened fire, killing six people and
seriously wounding three others. Mr. Page, who died at the
scene, was a member of a white supremacist group called the
Northern Hammerskins.
In another case, in June 2014, Jerad and Amanda Miller, a
married couple with radical antigovernment views, entered a Las
Vegas pizza restaurant and fatally shot two police officers who
were eating lunch. On the bodies, they left a swastika, a flag
inscribed with the slogan Dont tread on me and a note
saying, This is the start of the revolution. Then they killed
a third person in a nearby Walmart.
And, as in the case of jihadist plots, there have been sobering
close calls. In November 2014 in Austin, Tex., a man named
Larry McQuilliams fired more than 100 rounds at government
buildings that included the Police Headquarters and the Mexican
Consulate. Remarkably, his shooting spree hit no one, and he
was killed by an officer before he could try to detonate
propane cylinders he drove to the scene.
Continue reading the main story
Recent Comments
Concerned citizen June 25, 2015
The figures are too small to come to any statistically valid
conclusion like the one stated. 911 dwarfs all the murders by
right wing...
Mary Kay Klassen June 25, 2015
I really don't think that we should separate gun violence into
tidy pockets. We have the daily gun violence in most major
cities. We have...
bern June 25, 2015
But, have they caught up with 9/11? And, just wait!
See All Comments
Some Muslim advocates complain that when the perpetrator of an
attack is not Muslim, news media commentators quickly focus on
the question of mental illness. With non-Muslims, the media
bends over backward to identify some psychological traits that
may have pushed them over the edge, said Abdul Cader Asmal, a
retired physician and a longtime spokesman for Muslims in
Boston. Whereas if its a Muslim, the assumption is that they
must have done it because of their religion.
On several occasions since President Obama took office, efforts
by government agencies to conduct research on right-wing
extremism have run into resistance from Republicans, who
suspected an attempt to smear conservatives.
A 2009 report by the Department of Homeland Security, which
warned that an ailing economy and the election of the first
black president might prompt a violent reaction from white
supremacists, was withdrawn in the face of conservative
criticism. Its main author, Daryl Johnson, later accused the
department of gutting its staffing for such research.
William Braniff, the executive director of the National
Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to
Terrorism at the University of Maryland, said the outsize fear
of jihadist violence reflected memories of Sept. 11, the
daunting scale of sectarian conflict overseas and wariness of a
strain of Islam that seems alien to many Americans.
We understand white supremacists, he said. We dont really
feel like we understand Al Qaeda, which seems too complex and
foreign to grasp.
The contentious question of biased perceptions of terrorist
threats dates back at least two decades, to the truck bombing
that tore apart the federal building in Oklahoma City in April
1995. Some early news media speculation about the attack
assumed that it had been carried out by Muslim militants. The
arrest of Timothy J. McVeigh, an antigovernment extremist,
quickly put an end to such theories.
The bombing, which killed 168 people, including 19 children,
remains the second-deadliest terrorist attack in American
history, though its toll was dwarfed by the roughly 3,000
killed on Sept 11.
If theres one lesson we seem to have forgotten 20 years after
Oklahoma City, its that extremist violence comes in all shapes
and sizes, said Dr. Horgan, the University of Massachusetts
scholar. And very often, it comes from someplace youre least
suspecting.
U.S. Since 9/11
WASHINGTON In the 14 years since Al Qaeda carried out attacks
on New York and the Pentagon, extremists have regularly
executed smaller lethal assaults in the United States,
explaining their motives in online manifestoes or social media
rants.
But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those attacks
may come as a surprise. Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as
many people have been killed by white supremacists,
antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by
radical Muslims: 48 have been killed by extremists who are not
Muslim, including the recent mass killing in Charleston, S.C.,
compared with 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists, according to a
count by New America, a Washington research center.
The slaying of nine African-Americans in a Charleston church
last week, with an avowed white supremacist charged with their
murders, was a particularly savage case.
But it is only the latest in a string of lethal attacks by
people espousing racial hatred, hostility to government and
theories such as those of the sovereign citizen movement,
which denies the legitimacy of most statutory law. The assaults
have taken the lives of police officers, members of racial or
religious minorities and random civilians.
Non-Muslim extremists have carried out 19 such attacks since
Sept. 11, according to the latest count, compiled by David
Sterman, a New America program associate, and overseen by Peter
Bergen, a terrorism expert. By comparison, seven lethal attacks
by Islamic militants have taken place in the same period.
If such numbers are new to the public, they are familiar to
police officers. A survey to be published this week asked 382
police and sheriffs departments nationwide to rank the three
biggest threats from violent extremism in their jurisdiction.
About 74 percent listed antigovernment violence, while 39
percent listed Al Qaeda-inspired violence, according to the
researchers, Charles Kurzman of the University of North
Carolina and David Schanzer of Duke University.
Continue reading the main story
Homegrown Terrorism
In the United States since Sept. 11, terrorist attacks by
antigovernment, racist and other nonjihadist extremists have
killed nearly twice as many people as those by Islamic
jihadists.
deaths
50
40
30
20
10
0
Jihadists
Nonjihadist extremists
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2015
Fort Hood shooting
Boston Marathon bombing
|
Charleston shooting
Source: New America Foundation
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
A photo from a white supremacist website showing Dylann
Roof, the suspect in the Charleston, S.C., church shooting.
Federal Hate Crime Charges Likely in South Carolina Church
ShootingJUNE 24, 2015
An honor guard carried the coffin of State Senator Clementa
C. Pinckney, a shooting victim, in Columbia, S.C., on
Wednesday.
Charleston Families Hope Words Endure Past ShootingJUNE 24,
2015
State flags line the Capitol subway tracks in Washington.
Calls to Cut Ties to Symbols of the SouthJUNE 23, 2015
The Council of Conservative Citizens was most visibly
active in South Carolina during a fierce debate in 2000 over
flying the Confederate battle flag on the grounds of the State
House in Columbia, picketing in support of continuing to
display the emblem.
Council of Conservative Citizens Promotes White Primacy,
and G.O.P. TiesJUNE 22, 2015
Earl Holt III, president of the Council of Conservative
Citizens, in a 2013 image taken from the council's website.
White Supremacist Who Influenced Charleston Suspect Donated
to 2016 G.O.P. CampaignsJUNE 22, 2015
A photo from a white supremacist website showing Dylann
Roof, the suspect in the Charleston, S.C., church shooting.
Dylann Roof Photos and a Manifesto Are Posted on
WebsiteJUNE 20, 2015
A scene from a vigil at Morris Brown African Methodist
Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., for the victims.
Many Ask, Why Not Call Church Shooting Terrorism?JUNE 18,
2015
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, said Dr. Kurzman, whose study is
to be published by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and
Homeland Security and the Police Executive Research Forum.
John G. Horgan, who studies terrorism at the University of
Massachusetts, Lowell, said the mismatch between public
perceptions and actual cases had become steadily more obvious
to scholars.
Theres an acceptance now of the idea that the threat from
jihadi terrorism in the United States has been overblown, Dr.
Horgan said. And theres a belief that the threat of right-
wing, antigovernment violence has been underestimated.
Continue reading the main story
Related in Opinion
Op-Ed Contributors: White Supremacists Without BordersJUNE
22, 2015
Room for Debate: Homegrown HateJUNE 24, 2015
Counting terrorism cases is a subjective enterprise, relying on
shifting definitions and judgment calls.
If terrorism is defined as ideological violence, for instance,
should an attacker who has merely ranted about religion,
politics or race be considered a terrorist? A man in Chapel
Hill, N.C., who was charged with fatally shooting three young
Muslim neighbors had posted angry critiques of religion, but he
also had a history of outbursts over parking issues. (New
America does not include this attack in its count.)
Likewise, what about mass killings in which no ideological
motive is evident, such as those at a Colorado movie theater
and a Connecticut elementary school in 2012? The criteria used
by New America and most other research groups exclude such
attacks, which have cost more lives than those clearly tied to
ideology.
Some killings by non-Muslims that most experts would categorize
as terrorism have drawn only fleeting news media coverage,
never jelling in the public memory. But to revisit some of the
episodes is to wonder why.
In 2012, a neo-Nazi named Wade Michael Page entered a Sikh
temple in Wisconsin and opened fire, killing six people and
seriously wounding three others. Mr. Page, who died at the
scene, was a member of a white supremacist group called the
Northern Hammerskins.
In another case, in June 2014, Jerad and Amanda Miller, a
married couple with radical antigovernment views, entered a Las
Vegas pizza restaurant and fatally shot two police officers who
were eating lunch. On the bodies, they left a swastika, a flag
inscribed with the slogan Dont tread on me and a note
saying, This is the start of the revolution. Then they killed
a third person in a nearby Walmart.
And, as in the case of jihadist plots, there have been sobering
close calls. In November 2014 in Austin, Tex., a man named
Larry McQuilliams fired more than 100 rounds at government
buildings that included the Police Headquarters and the Mexican
Consulate. Remarkably, his shooting spree hit no one, and he
was killed by an officer before he could try to detonate
propane cylinders he drove to the scene.
Continue reading the main story
Recent Comments
Concerned citizen June 25, 2015
The figures are too small to come to any statistically valid
conclusion like the one stated. 911 dwarfs all the murders by
right wing...
Mary Kay Klassen June 25, 2015
I really don't think that we should separate gun violence into
tidy pockets. We have the daily gun violence in most major
cities. We have...
bern June 25, 2015
But, have they caught up with 9/11? And, just wait!
See All Comments
Some Muslim advocates complain that when the perpetrator of an
attack is not Muslim, news media commentators quickly focus on
the question of mental illness. With non-Muslims, the media
bends over backward to identify some psychological traits that
may have pushed them over the edge, said Abdul Cader Asmal, a
retired physician and a longtime spokesman for Muslims in
Boston. Whereas if its a Muslim, the assumption is that they
must have done it because of their religion.
On several occasions since President Obama took office, efforts
by government agencies to conduct research on right-wing
extremism have run into resistance from Republicans, who
suspected an attempt to smear conservatives.
A 2009 report by the Department of Homeland Security, which
warned that an ailing economy and the election of the first
black president might prompt a violent reaction from white
supremacists, was withdrawn in the face of conservative
criticism. Its main author, Daryl Johnson, later accused the
department of gutting its staffing for such research.
William Braniff, the executive director of the National
Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to
Terrorism at the University of Maryland, said the outsize fear
of jihadist violence reflected memories of Sept. 11, the
daunting scale of sectarian conflict overseas and wariness of a
strain of Islam that seems alien to many Americans.
We understand white supremacists, he said. We dont really
feel like we understand Al Qaeda, which seems too complex and
foreign to grasp.
The contentious question of biased perceptions of terrorist
threats dates back at least two decades, to the truck bombing
that tore apart the federal building in Oklahoma City in April
1995. Some early news media speculation about the attack
assumed that it had been carried out by Muslim militants. The
arrest of Timothy J. McVeigh, an antigovernment extremist,
quickly put an end to such theories.
The bombing, which killed 168 people, including 19 children,
remains the second-deadliest terrorist attack in American
history, though its toll was dwarfed by the roughly 3,000
killed on Sept 11.
If theres one lesson we seem to have forgotten 20 years after
Oklahoma City, its that extremist violence comes in all shapes
and sizes, said Dr. Horgan, the University of Massachusetts
scholar. And very often, it comes from someplace youre least
suspecting.