The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) published a study illustrating that right-wing extremists have caused more violence in America than domestic “jihadis,” reported Vice News.
The SPLC’s report duly noted the tragedy of 9/11, where international jihadists killed over 3,000 Americans in a single attack. However, since that day, the SPLC found that “A large number of independent studies have agreed that since the 9/11 mass murder, more people have been killed in America by non-Islamic domestic terrorists than jihadists.”
From April 2009 to February 2015, there were 63 incidents of terrorism on American soil, and most of those were carried out by far-right extremists. Vice News reported that these incidents include attacks on abortion clinics, government agents, and the Fort Hood shooting. These attacks were committed by American “patriots,” anti-government gun nuts and ultra-religious zealots.
“We felt that the report demonstrated pretty clearly that some attention should be paid to the domestic radical right,” said Ryan Lenz, a writer at the SPLC’s Intelligence Project. “The domestic radical right has killed more people than radical Islam since 9/11 in the United States, without a doubt.”
Most of these acts are carried out by a “lone wolf;” the man who attacked a federal courthouse and Mexican consulate in Austin, Texas is a prime example of a “lone wolf” attacker. The shooter, Larry McQuilliams, was a 49-year-old anti-government “patriot” whose political sentiments motivated the attack. But he’s hardly the first of his kind.
Ring of Fire reported on the many attacks committed by American hate and religious groups including the Army of God, white supremacist groups, and many people who were unaffiliated with an organized hate group. Despite far-right domestic attacks outnumbering jihadist attacks in America, we still focus solely on Islamic jihadists.
“It probably has a lot to do with national myopia: because of the severity of 9/11 there are blinders on regarding everything else,” Lenz said. “Some people think that it’s easier to focus on Muslims than it is on white Christians… I think it has a lot to do with the fact that in an effort to address the threat of radical Islam, people have forgotten that there are terrorists here at home too.”
Indeed, we have international threats like ISIS, but we need to be ever-mindful that most of our domestic attacks come from right-wing, Christian zealots who attack abortion clinics and federal buildings. History has proven that Americans are more threatening to other Americans than any other group.
