christiefan915
Catalyst
So much for Muslims being the biggest threat to our country.
"The mass killings that erupted last year seemed linked by little more than a hail of gunfire. Their locations became etched in public memory, the terror and bloodshed drawing our attention to a church in Charleston, S.C., military facilities in Chattanooga, Tenn., and most recently, a holiday gathering in San Bernardino, Calif. But together, these violent rampages contributed to a grim statistic: At least 52 people in the United States were killed by domestic extremists in 2015, the highest number in two decades, according to a report released Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
“What a tragically noteworthy year 2015 was in terms of extremist violence,” said Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the center.
More people were killed by domestic extremists last year than in the prior two years combined, and 2015 was the deadliest single year for such violence since 1995, when a federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed by men with ties to the U.S. militia movement, the report said.
The ADL linked all 52 deaths to people with ties to just four movements: White supremacists, anti‐government extremists, domestic Islamist extremists and antiabortion extremists. Pitcavage said the death toll represents the minimum possible final count for 2015, because it can take at least a year for extremist connections to emerge in some killings.
Nearly two-thirds of the 52 victims were killed in incidents directly related to these movements, where ideology played at least some role in their deaths, the report said. The rest were killed by extremists acting in ways unrelated to their beliefs. For example, the ADL counts Trevor Casper, a Wisconsin state trooper killed by a bank robber who had been involved with skinhead and neo-Nazi movements. Casper died in a shootout with the bank robber that was unrelated to ideology. More than half the 52 deaths occurred in incidents involving multiple victims — a sharp contrast to recent years, when most killings carried out by extremists involved a single victim, according to the group’s research. And all but four of the victims died by gunfire.
“The blunt fact is that, in the past 50 years, firearms in the hands of domestic extremists have killed far more Americans than have bombs, blades, chemical or biological weapons, or any other type of weapon,” the ADL report said. This ADL report, which The Post reviewed before its release, is the latest attempt to track and quantify the danger posed by violent extremists in the United States. New America, a Washington research center that also tallies such violence, has identified 93 deaths by “homegrown extremists” since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; the killings have been split about equally between right-wing attackers (48) and people inspired by jihad (45), the center says.
...In recent years, law enforcement officials have grown acutely concerned about violent domestic extremism — particularly from anti-government extremists. Michael A. Clancy, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, warned in 2012 about “smaller, localized acts of violence” that could be carried out by domestic extremists, calling this threat one of the bureau’s highest priorities.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...xtremist-violence-in-two-decades-report-says/
"The mass killings that erupted last year seemed linked by little more than a hail of gunfire. Their locations became etched in public memory, the terror and bloodshed drawing our attention to a church in Charleston, S.C., military facilities in Chattanooga, Tenn., and most recently, a holiday gathering in San Bernardino, Calif. But together, these violent rampages contributed to a grim statistic: At least 52 people in the United States were killed by domestic extremists in 2015, the highest number in two decades, according to a report released Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
“What a tragically noteworthy year 2015 was in terms of extremist violence,” said Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the center.
More people were killed by domestic extremists last year than in the prior two years combined, and 2015 was the deadliest single year for such violence since 1995, when a federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed by men with ties to the U.S. militia movement, the report said.
The ADL linked all 52 deaths to people with ties to just four movements: White supremacists, anti‐government extremists, domestic Islamist extremists and antiabortion extremists. Pitcavage said the death toll represents the minimum possible final count for 2015, because it can take at least a year for extremist connections to emerge in some killings.
Nearly two-thirds of the 52 victims were killed in incidents directly related to these movements, where ideology played at least some role in their deaths, the report said. The rest were killed by extremists acting in ways unrelated to their beliefs. For example, the ADL counts Trevor Casper, a Wisconsin state trooper killed by a bank robber who had been involved with skinhead and neo-Nazi movements. Casper died in a shootout with the bank robber that was unrelated to ideology. More than half the 52 deaths occurred in incidents involving multiple victims — a sharp contrast to recent years, when most killings carried out by extremists involved a single victim, according to the group’s research. And all but four of the victims died by gunfire.
“The blunt fact is that, in the past 50 years, firearms in the hands of domestic extremists have killed far more Americans than have bombs, blades, chemical or biological weapons, or any other type of weapon,” the ADL report said. This ADL report, which The Post reviewed before its release, is the latest attempt to track and quantify the danger posed by violent extremists in the United States. New America, a Washington research center that also tallies such violence, has identified 93 deaths by “homegrown extremists” since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; the killings have been split about equally between right-wing attackers (48) and people inspired by jihad (45), the center says.
...In recent years, law enforcement officials have grown acutely concerned about violent domestic extremism — particularly from anti-government extremists. Michael A. Clancy, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, warned in 2012 about “smaller, localized acts of violence” that could be carried out by domestic extremists, calling this threat one of the bureau’s highest priorities.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...xtremist-violence-in-two-decades-report-says/
