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applegrove

(118,022 posts)
Tue Sep 12, 2017, 05:32 PM Sep 2017

5 absurd attempts to equate right-wing terrorists with left-wing groups

KALI HOLLOWAY, ALTERNET and Salon

http://www.salon.com/2017/09/12/5-absurd-attempts-to-equate-right-wing-terrorists-with-left-wing-groups_partner/

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1. Right-wing extremists commit nearly all political violence in America

A recent study from the Anti-Defamation League finds nearly all political violence in the United States over the last decade has been carried out by right-wing terrorists. Between 2007 and 2016, there were at least 372 politically motivated murders, 74 percent of which were committed by right-wing extremists. Islamic extremists committed 24 percent of those murders, while left-wing militants were responsible for 2 percent. Every murder is a tragedy, but as the numbers show, it’s ridiculous to pretend that left-wing violence and right-wing violence deserve equal concern. Going back to a 2015 law enforcement study, we’ve known that right-wing terrorists pose a far greater threat to this country than any other political group.

“We find that the right groups and the jihadi groups are more violent than the left,” Gary LaFree, head of the University of Maryland National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism and co-author of a recent study on political violence across the spectrum, told the New York Times.


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The far right — an umbrella term that includes white nationalists, neo-fascists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, alt-right adherents, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant groups, anti-government militias, and anti-abortion fanatics like clinic bombers — are the heirs apparent of violent right-wing terror groups dating to the earliest eras of American history. It’s therefore not terribly surprising that based on every statistical measure, as Mother Jones notes, they have “held a near-monopoly on political violence since the 1980s.”

That’s echoed by Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project leader Heidi Beirich, who told the Nation, “if you go back to the 1960s, you see all kinds of left-wing terrorism, but since then it’s been exceedingly rare.” Right-wing terror has proliferated since that era, “going back to groups like the Order, which assassinated [liberal talk-radio host] Alan Berg [in 1984] right through to today.”


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