The Anti-Defamation League has a new report that suggests far-right violent extremism is now a greater threat to the U.S. than Islamic extremism. That is manifestly untrue. The vast majority of U.S. violent extremist plots are Islamist extremist. Intelligence and law enforcement activities are rightly prioritized on that threat.
The ADL knows this to be true. Buried in the middle of its report, the ADL notes, “The fact that only one person was killed by a domestic Islamist extremist in the U.S. in 2018 should not be taken as an indication that the threat posed by this form of extremism has diminished.” But the ADL also suggests that resources should be allocated away from that threat and toward far-right extremist threats. At the start to the report’s policy recommendations, it claims, “For too long, policymakers have focused disproportionate attention on the threat of Islamist extremism — to the detriment of readiness to address many other security issues.”
