Homegrown extremists have killed nearly twice as many people and participated in more than twice as many attacks in the United States as self-proclaimed jihadists since the 9/11 terrorist attack, according to a recent count by the New America Foundation.
The tally challenges perceptions of the terror threat in the United States, according to experts quoted by the New York Times.
The count listed 48 deaths in 19 attacks related to political extremism on the left and right and “idiosyncratic views,” that were committed by people who were not Muslim, according to the study. Those motives included white supremacy, anti-government views, anti-Semitism and anti-foreign views.
In contrast, 26 have died in seven attacks that were connected to people who were self-proclaimed jihadists, including a 2006 shooting at the Seattle Jewish Federation that killed one and injured five others (the family of the convicted shooter Naveed Haq of Pasco testified in his first trial that he has had mental illness for years).
The New York Times article notes that while the public in general may not be aware of the numbers, it has been on the radar of law enforcement. A survey of police and sheriff’s departments to be released this week shows that antigovernment violence was identified nearly twice as many times as “Al Qaeda-inspired violence” as one of the top three threats, according to the newspaper.
The story comes a week after white supremacist Dylann Roof was charged in a deadly shooting in a South Carolina church that killed nine black members of the congregation, and the day of a sentencing hearing of convicted bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who, influenced by extremist Islamic and anti-American views, orchestrated a deadly attack of the 2013 Boston Marathon with his brother.
You can check out the data at the New America Foundation.
