Time for that semi-regular reminder from the media that there’s a growing, violent threat from the “far right” in this country that by comparison makes Islamic extremism seem cute. And like each reminder before, the idea is still almost entirely a fantasy.
NBC News, on Monday, reported that the threat of terrorism, “particularly from the far right,” is on the rise in Europe and the United States. To back up that assertion, NBC looked to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank that was published over a month ago.
“We see an increasing percentage of plots and attacks in the United States shifting over the past couple of years from jihadist motivations, increasingly, to far-right activity,” said Seth Jones, who co-authored the study.
That certainly sounds like an alarming trend, especially in the current political climate with so much racial unrest and a sitting president who every three seconds is called a fascist by someone in the media (and that’s just during Don Lemon’s hour on CNN).
As described in my book Privileged Victims, virtually all studies attempting to make some variation of this same point — Creeping white supremacy! Emboldened right-wing extremism! — are set up to paint a certain picture and reach a specific conclusion by tinkering with the numbers in the dumbest ways.
The point of them, naturally, is to convince people that what they know to be legitimate threats are nothing compared to those scary right-wingers.
The NBC story says, for example, that “in the almost two decades since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., more Americans … have been killed by adherents of a form of right-wing extremism than any other terrorist ideology.”
That’s a convenient starting point, don’t you think? I wonder why they chose to start there. Oh, well!
More than that, though, is how the study defines “right-wing terrorism.” The scope is more expansive than the definitions for both “left-wing terrorism” and “religious terrorism.”
Right-wing terrorism includes: white supremacists, anti-government extremists, and “incels,” men resentful of their lacking sex lives. This version of terrorism “refers to the use or of violence by sub-national or non-state entities whose goals may include racial or ethnic supremacy; opposition to government authority; anger at women, including from the incel (‘involuntary celibate’) movement; and outrage against certain policies, such as abortion,” the authors wrote.
What exactly do any of these groups have in common? It’s a mystery, given that the “Right” is most often associated with authoritarian tendencies and yet “anti-government extremists” are identified here as “right-wing.” In addition, how did mentally troubled men who can’t get dates become associated with the “Right”?
Included as an example of “incel”-driven terrorism was the October 2015 mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. That attack was perpetrated by 26-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer, who witnesses said was asking victims if they were Christian. If they said yes, he pulled the trigger.
A crazed gunman targeting Christians in Oregon. Sounds just like what you’d expect in an episode of “right-wing terrorism.”
In contrast, to “right-wing” terrorism, “religious terrorism” is defined solely as: “Violence in support of a faith-based belief system.”
This would be like proving European food (Italian, French, Spanish, etc.) is far more popular than Mexican food (just Mexico).
When you account for 9/11, according to the study’s own numbers, religious terrorism has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 victims. For “right-wing” terrorism, the number is 335.
The Government Accountability Office published a study in 2017 that looked at violent incidents and corresponding ideology between 2001 and 2016. The supposed far-right in that analysis included “white supremacists,” “anti-government” people, and “right-wing extremists,” coming in at a total of 62 incidents with 106 victims. The “radical-Islamist extremists,” who were literally just Muslims and no one else, accounted for 23 incidents with a total of 119 victims.
That’s less than two victims per “far right” attack versus at least five victims per Muslim attack. Put another way, Muslim extremists had one-third of the “incidents” that the “far right” had during that time period, but they claimed more victims.
Studies purporting some growing threat from the “far right” aren’t very new. And they aren’t getting any better.
