Right-Wing Groups Commit Nearly 3 Out of Every 4 Deadly Extremist Attacks In US

RADICAL ISLAMIC ATTACKS HAPPEN LESS FREQUENTLY, BUT ARE LARGER IN SCALE

The federal government's General Accounting Office (GAO) has measured data gathered on extremist attacks in the United States between September 12, 2001 - the day after the 9/11 attacks - and December 31, 2016. They found that of "the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far right wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent)."

It may seem like attacks carried out by radical Islamic extremists happen more often, but in reality, there are far more deadly attacks carried out by far-right extremists. However, the attacks carried out by radical Islamic extremists were larger in scale, resulting in more deaths in a single incident. "41 percent of the deaths attributable to radical Islamist violent extremists occurred in a single event—an attack at an Orlando, Florida night club in 2016," the GAO report said.

Overall, the reports says, "from September 12, 2001 through December 31, 2016, attacks by domestic or 'homegrown' violent extremists in the United States resulted in 225 fatalities, according to the ECDB. Of these, 106 were killed by far right violent extremists in 62 separate incidents, and 119 were victims of radical Islamist violent extremists in 23 separate incidents." 

Based on data collected in the US Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), far-right extremist attackers are more likely to subscribe to beliefs that are: 

• Fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)
• Anti-global;
• Suspicious of centralized federal authority;
• Reverent of individual liberty (especially right to own guns; be free of taxes)
• Believe in conspiracy theories that involve a grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty;
• Believe that one's personal and/or national "way of life" is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent;
• Believe in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in or supporting the need for paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism;
• Express support for some version of white supremacy, the Ku Klux Klan, and neo-Nazism.

With a released progress report of the Federal Government's 2011 Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Violent Extremism (SIP-CVE), the Government Accountability Office found that only 19 of 44 tasks had been implemented, 23 were still in progress, and two had been ignored completely. 

According to the GAO, "The federal government does not have a cohesive strategy or process for assessing the overall CVE effort. Although GAO was able to determine the status of the 44 CVE tasks, it was not able to determine if the United States is better off today than it was in 2011 as a result of these tasks." -NCRM