'It Is Serious & Intense': White Supremacist Domestic Terror Threat Looms Large In US
Last edited Mon Oct 19, 2020, 08:04 AM - Edit history (1)
'It is serious and intense': white supremacist domestic terror threat looms large in US. The Guardian, Oct. 19, 2020.
From the frequency of attacks to the scope of ambition, racist terror groups – encouraged by the president, are showing unparalleled activity in the modern era. On 6 October Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, released his department’s annual assessment of violent threats to the nation. Analysts didn’t have to dig deep into the assessment to discover its alarming content. In a foreword, Wolf wrote that he was “particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years.
[They] seek to force ideological change in the United States through violence, death, and destruction.”
Later revelations revealed that a group of anti-government paramilitaries that included some of those arrested had also discussed kidnapping. Two days later, the FBI swooped. It arrested 13 rightwing extremists who had allegedly been plotting to carry out a range of attacks in Michigan, including the kidnapping of Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer. Later revelations revealed that a group of anti-government paramilitaries that included some of those arrested had also discussed kidnapping the governor of Virginia.
- Ku Klux Klan parade, Washington, D.C., 1926.
As the FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress in February, “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists” have become the “primary source of ideologically-motivated lethal incidents” in the US. The danger overshadowed the jihadist threat that has dominated the security debate since 9/11...Last year was the deadliest on record for domestic extremist violence since the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. White supremacists were responsible for most of that bloodshed in 2019 – 39 out of 48 deaths, including 23 people who died at the hands of an anti-Hispanic racist in El Paso, Texas, and a Jewish worshipper murdered at Poway Synagogue in California.
If 2019 was the deadliest year in a quarter of a century for domestic terrorism in America, 2020 is shaping up to be the year that white supremacy spreads its wings. Groups are showing a degree of confidence unparalleled in the modern era. Agitators have seized the dual opportunities of the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests to come out of the shadows and onto the streets. Even before the start of the pandemic, they were flexing their muscles. Felbab-Brown recalls attending the gun rally in Richmond, Virginia, in January that attracted thousands of extremists carrying semi-automatic assault rifles.
“There were militia members from all across the US, Trump supporters with guns, gun rights supporters, all mixing together in large crowds. They drew energy from each other, enlarged their networks and emboldened their thinking – and that was before Covid.”...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/19/white-supremacist-domestic-terror-threat-looms-large-in-us
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