Stop comparing jihadi and white nationalist body counts

First, it’s weird to respond to shooting events by arguing that a thing that is undeniably deadly and horrifying is worse than another thing that is undeniably deadly and horrifying. What is even the point of that conversation?

If the goal of underscoring “right-wing extremism” is to push back against those who’ve cited jihadi terror as a justification for so-called Muslim bans and registries, that’s a poor counterargument. It distracts from the main issue with a separate topic, it conflates jihadi with Muslim and it ignores the (false) argument that entire groups can be lumped with their bad actors.

Secondly, people should probably back away from the right-wing versus jihadi comparisons because the most commonly cited source for this claim appears to rely on some questionable methodology, as the Washington Examiner has explained in previous reports.

Though comparing body counts was a much bigger media trend before a Muslim extremist murdered 49 people this year at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla., a shooting incident this weekend in Washington, D.C., has resurrected the flawed and faulty argument.

The Examiner’s first brush with this comparison was in 2015 when CNN showed an on-air graphic claiming “right-wing extremism” is responsible for more deaths since 9/11 than “Muslim extremism.”

The numbers at the time, 48 non-jihadi murders to 26 jihadi murders, came from the New America Foundation. The data currently available on NAF’s website, which accounts only for attacks carried out on American soil by extremists who are either United States citizens or permanent residents, shows that 50 people have been killed by “homegrown non-jihadists” since 2001, while jihadis have killed 94.

NAF’s current tally shows a clear imbalance between murders committed by jihadis and non-jihadis, but even before the Orlando shooting offset everything, the data were still suspect.

The group’s criteria for defining events that could be labeled “right-wing extremism,” for example, is wide-ranging and accounts for multiple ideological groups, including “white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics” and, broadly enough, other “non-Muslim extremists.”

The D.C.-based think tank said specifically that it monitors “those motivated by other ideologies that are non-jihadist in character, for example right wing, left wing, or idiosyncratic beliefs.” Various media newsroom, including the New York Times and CNN, have used this overly broad definition to claim “right-wing extremism” has been a deadlier force in the U.S. post-9/11 than jihadi terrorism

NAF’s “jihadist” tag focuses specifically on extremists who have been inspired by jihadi ideology, especially those in connection with al Qaeda and “its affiliated groups,” the group explained on its website.

Aside from the fact that beginning the tally after Sept. 11 seems disingenuous itself, there’s also the question of how NAF groups extremist events.

NAF’s database of jihadi extremists inexplicably excludes the infamous Beltway Sniper, John Allen Muhammad, who was responsible for murdering 10 people during the fall of 2002.

Perhaps more puzzling, NAF’s list of non-jihadi extremists includes Joshua Cartwright, who shot and killed two police officers in 2009 as they attempted to arrest him on domestic violence charges. Cartwright appears on the list of supposed “right-wing” extremists because his wife reportedly told authorities he was “severely disturbed'” by the election of Barack Obama.

NAF’s list also excludes the 2012 Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooting as well as the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, despite that these examples could fall under the group’s claim that it counts violent acts brought on by “idiosyncratic beliefs.”

In short, the most commonly cited source for the jihadi versus right-wing comparison uses some sketchy figures, and one-upmanship over which extremist ideology is more deadly is a bit silly anyway.