Stories matter: the recurring narrative of radical Islamic terror in America (a statistical outlier) makes it nearly impossible to avoid equating “terrorist” with “jihadi suicide bomber” – but the real domestic terror threat is white people, the Dominionists, ethno-nationalists, white separatists, white supremacists and sovereign citizens who target (or infiltrate) cops and blow up buildings.
Um. Vilifying all Muslims for the actions of a tiny minority is indeed despicable, and white supremacists are a real and very dangerous problem, but unless I’m missing something, the majority of terrorist killings in the US in the last 20 years have been carried out by radical Muslims. Claiming that’s not “real” doesn’t do much for anyone’s credibility.
Agreed. I live in a inner city with diverse groups of peoples, and I’ve been saying for the past five years that the only group I avoid are angry, white men. And I am a white guy. They’re the ones flinging a tire iron across the road when their truck breaks down. They’re the ones jumping into traffic to scream racial epithets toward people they feel aren’t moving fast enough. My friends used to look puzzled at my statement, but not after Trump. Trump was the racists’ big man on campus moment. But, like high school glory, I think it’ll end sooner than they think.
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In the past decade 17 white nationalist terror attacks, 17 attacks made by people declaring allegiance to Islamic terrorists. I’m on a phone or I would list them out. If you go back 20 years, then you end up with the majority being white nationalists.
Most of those Islamic terrorists were radicalized independent of any terrorist cell inside the US, and many of the spree killings were just claimed via social media by ISIS without a direct tie or propaganda found.
EDIT
And going by deaths 9/11 skews the data by being 99% (hyperbole but not by much) of terror related deaths in the United States period.
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The operative word in the title of the post is “threat”. That necessarily implies prediction of future events, which is a difficult thing to do.
It may be that new and completely unexpected threats will eclipse the ones we are currently worried about.
More precisely, it references a probability, which is based on actual occurrences, not just speculations about the future.
But, until that actually happens, we can still determine the current threats based on the current known facts.
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Since mass shootings (in which 4 or more people are killed) happen in the United States at the rate of over one per day, it shouldn’t take you very long to complete your tally.
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Dylan Roof only killed nine…I guess that doesn’t count…
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