I will refrain from commenting on something that I know very little about and I'll leave it to you to interpret this NYT piece.
The Growing Right-Wing Terror Threat
The Growing Right-Wing Terror Threat
17
June, 2015
THIS
month, the headlines were about a Muslim man in Boston who was
accused of threatening
police officers with a knife. Last month, two Muslims attacked
an anti-Islamic conference in Garland, Tex. The month before, a
Muslim man was charged with plotting
to drive a truck bomb onto a military installation in Kansas. If you
keep up with the news, you know that a small but steady stream of
American Muslims, radicalized by overseas extremists, are engaging in
violence here in the United States.
But
headlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States
is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing
extremists. Just ask the police.
In
a survey we conducted with the Police
Executive Research Forum
last year of 382 law enforcement agencies, 74 percent reported
anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats
in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al
Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent
identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with
7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism.
The
self-proclaimed Islamic State’s efforts to radicalize American
Muslims, which began just after the survey ended, may have increased
threat perceptions somewhat, but not by much, as we found in
follow-up interviews over the past year with counterterrorism
specialists at 19 law enforcement agencies. These officers, selected
from urban and rural areas around the country, said that
radicalization from the Middle East was a concern, but not as
dangerous as radicalization among right-wing extremists.
An
officer from a large metropolitan area said that “militias,
neo-Nazis and sovereign citizens” are the biggest threat we face in
regard to extremism. One officer explained that he ranked the
right-wing threat higher because “it is an emerging threat that we
don’t have as good of a grip on, even with our intelligence unit,
as we do with the Al Shabab/Al Qaeda issue, which we have been
dealing with for some time.” An officer on the West Coast explained
that the “sovereign citizen” anti-government threat has “really
taken off,” whereas terrorism by American Muslim is something “we
just haven’t experienced yet.”
Last year, for example, a man who identified with the sovereign citizen movement — which claims not to recognize the authority of federal or local government — attacked a courthouse in Forsyth County, Ga., firing an assault rifle at police officers and trying to cover his approach with tear gas and smoke grenades. The suspect was killed by the police, who returned fire. In Nevada, anti-government militants reportedly walked up to and shot two police officers at a restaurant, then placed a “Don’t tread on me” flag on their bodies. An anti-government extremist in Pennsylvania was arrested on suspicion of shooting two state troopers, killing one of them, before leading authorities on a 48-day manhunt. A right-wing militant in Texas declared a “revolution” and was arrested on suspicion of attempting to rob an armored car in order to buy weapons and explosives and attack law enforcement. These individuals on the fringes of right-wing politics increasingly worry law enforcement officials.
Law
enforcement agencies around the country are training their officers
to recognize signs of anti-government extremism and to exercise
caution during routine traffic stops, criminal investigations and
other interactions with potential extremists. “The threat is real,”
says the handout from one training program sponsored by the
Department of Justice. Since 2000, the handout notes, 25 law
enforcement officers have been killed by right-wing extremists, who
share a “fear that government will confiscate firearms” and a
“belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”
Despite
public anxiety about extremists inspired by Al Qaeda and the Islamic
State, the number of violent plots by such individuals has remained
very
low.
Since 9/11, an average of nine American Muslims per year have been involved in an average of six terrorism-related plots against targets in the United States. Most were disrupted, but the 20 plots that were carried out accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.
Since 9/11, an average of nine American Muslims per year have been involved in an average of six terrorism-related plots against targets in the United States. Most were disrupted, but the 20 plots that were carried out accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.
In
contrast, right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the
decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities, according to a
study
by Arie Perliger, a professor at the United States Military Academy’s
Combating
Terrorism Center.
The toll has increased since the study was released in 2012.
Other
data sets, using different definitions of political violence, tell
comparable stories. The Global
Terrorism Database
maintained by the Start
Center
at the University of Maryland includes 65 attacks in the United
States associated with right-wing ideologies and 24 by Muslim
extremists since 9/11. The International
Security Program
at the New America Foundation identifies 39 fatalities from
“non-jihadist” homegrown extremists and 26 fatalities from
“jihadist” extremists.
Meanwhile, terrorism of all forms has accounted for a tiny proportion of violence in America. There have been more than 215,000 murders in the United States since 9/11. For every person killed by Muslim extremists, there have been 4,300 homicides from other threats.
Public
debates on terrorism focus intensely on Muslims. But this focus does
not square with the low number of plots in the United States by
Muslims, and it does a disservice to a minority group that suffers
from increasingly hostile public opinion. As state and local police
agencies remind us, right-wing, anti-government extremism is the
leading source of ideological violence in America.
Correction:
June 19, 2015
An
Op-Ed article on Tuesday omitted the given name of a scholar of
counterterrorism at West Point. He is Arie Perliger.
Those
who know 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof, the man arrested and charged
with killing nine people in a historic African-American church, have
described him as “smart,” “wild,” “sweet” and “quiet,”
but he was also known to make racist comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.