Claim: "Most U.S. terror deaths have come from 'extreme right wing groups' in recent years"

seeker3598

New Member
Seen this quote today from MSNBC article:
Title: Fmr. DHS Secy: Most U.S. terror deaths have come from 'extreme right wing groups' in recent years
archived link: https://archive.is/wXcks

I'm pretty apolitical but noticed recently that the FBI mentioned something similar that extreme right wing groups are the biggest terror threat. After seeing this quote today on MSNBC, I wanted to finally ask for some advice on where to find facts that back up the claim. I can only think of a few incidents but none that i'd describe as being in "recent years".

Did some research myself but most sources seem to be questionable or bias towards right wing/conservative. If I find anything in the mean time, will update this post.

Cheers.
p.s. Figured this would be the best place to ask, usually watch Mick's podcast and finally made an account here.
 
Thanks for the link Mick. I checked it out and compiled some notes (posted in 2nd section below horizontal line) for anyone who may be interested.

After researching the wikipedia list it feels like many recent events from 2020 seem to be quite comparable to events from the terror attack list. Again, i'm not well versed on this type of topic so maybe i'm ignorant of some classifications/definitions as to why the following events aren't at all comparable to terror/political/racial related attacks:
  1. Indianapolis woman killed by BLM members https://archive.is/XDcBV
  2. Multiple attacks during BLM protest/riots where BLM members targeted white people https://archive.is/4gm1W
  3. Armed BLM member protestor/riot blocking traffic is killed after raising rifle at a vehicle: https://archive.is/jq0fD
  4. BLM/anti police activist shoots driver while blocking traffic https://archive.is/UvFdy
  5. 19 year old antifa/blm protestor who threw large explosive over wall at courthouse: https://archive.is/Ayb6s
  6. colorado Samuel Young fires at driver at aurora protest, injures fellow protestors: https://archive.is/OUUBv
  7. Michael Reinoehl ambush of right wing/trump supporter in Portland: https://archive.is/ZwwLT
  8. multiple police buildings and vehicles were raided/destroyed by antifa/BLM affiliates
I believe the FBI stated that Antifa is an "idea not an organization", perhaps that statement allows all of the attacks in 2020 to be excluded? That feels a bit questionable though, maybe it feels questionable because i'm unaware of some legal classification etc?



--Wiki link notes--
wikipedia link notes on attacks since 2016, some required research due to lack of an entry so I searched the web to find out what "affiliation" a perpetrator had. Here is a brief overview of the list, may have missed something but figured i'd just include my notes in case anyone is interested.

ISIL/islam [9 total]:
  1. jan 7 2016 Philadelphia: police cruiser attacked, 1 injured
  2. 2016 Ohio restaurant machete attack: 4 injured
  3. '16 Orlando nightclub shooting: 49 dead, 53 injured
  4. Aug 20 2016, Roanoke VA stabbing: 2 injured
  5. St. Cloud mall stabbing: 10 injured
  6. 2016 NY and NJ bombings (4 bombings/bombing attempts) 34 injured
  7. Ohio State University attack 13 injured
  8. 2017 New York City truck attack: 8 dead, 11 injured
  9. Naval Air Station Pensacola shooting: 3, 8

Neo-Nazi/extreme right wing/right [9 total]:
  1. Stabbing of Timothy Caughman: 1 death
  2. 2017 Minnesota Mosque Bomb Attack: 0 injured
  3. Charlottesville car attack: 1 dead, 28 wounded
  4. Murder of Blaze Bernstein: 1 dead
  5. October 2018 United States mail bombing attempts (thankfully zero injuries, despite atleast 12 packages mailed)
  6. 2017 Portland train attack: 2 dead, 1 wounded
  7. Jeffersontown Kroger shooting: 2 dead
  8. Pittsburgh synagogue shooting: 11, 6
  9. California mosque fire & poway synagogue: 1, 3

extreme Left/antifa/anarchist [3 total]:
  1. 2017 Congressional baseball shooting: 6 wounded, target had 24 republican members of congress present
  2. 2019 Tacoma attack: 0
  3. Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot: anarchist anti-trump/anti-whitmer group plotted but was thankfully stopped. Note: I realize that Anarchist group isn't the same as leftwing, this seems to be the closest section for this group's ideaology

Black supremacist/black hebrew israelite [2 total]:
  1. Burnette Chapel shooting: 1 death, 7 injured
  2. 2019 Jersey City shooting: 4
 
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Seems weird to claim on the 20th anniversary year of 911, which is still claiming lives due to the toxic dust.
 
I suppose it depends on what you count as "in recent years".

the link is a video but the short blurb below it says
Chertoff saying that "over the last few years, most of the deaths in the U.S. that have come from acts of terrorism, they're not from global jihadist terrorists, but from extreme right wing groups."
Content from External Source
. video adds "in synagogues, mosques"

(he also says at end that Trump "pats white nationalists on the back", so.. yea numbers are probably needed to weed out bias. although aside from antifa, i havent heard of any environmental terrorist attacks or other typical left wing attacks in the last few years)


few years to me is at least 3 but not more than 10.

the banner below the interviewee says he is director of the Chertoff Group. so he might have data on his website.
 

Yes seems to be the case recently, Though if you go back to the 1970s, I would say the Left Wing were then doing far more of the terrorist attacks on US soil.
 
@seeker3598
I'm surprised you're classifying the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot as leftist; Wikipedia attributes it to the boogaloo movement, and puts that on the far right.
Article:
The suspects were tied to a paramilitary militia group that called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen. The group was co-founded by suspects Pete Musico and Joseph Morrison; the latter is considered the group's "commander".[22][23][24] An NBC News investigation into the suspects' social media profiles found links between their ideologies and those of the broader boogaloo movement.[25

Article:
The boogaloo movement, whose adherents are often referred to as boogaloo boys or boogaloo bois,[3] is a loosely organized far-right anti-government extremist political movement in the United States.
 
After researching the wikipedia list it feels like many recent events from 2020 seem to be quite comparable to events from the terror attack list. Again, i'm not well versed on this type of topic so maybe i'm ignorant of some classifications/definitions as to why the following events aren't at all comparable to terror/political/racial related attacks:
  1. Indianapolis woman killed by BLM members https://archive.is/XDcBV
Terror usually implies some kind of plan or strategy to effect political goals. Even your very first example doesn't rise to that standard.

If you want to gain an unbiased view of the violence surfounding the BLM protests, consult https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_during_the_George_Floyd_protests ; it improves on your list in completeness by also showing violence committed by right-wing perpetrators.

For example, this (emphasis mine):
In Oakland, California, amid unrest, a Federal Protective Service officer, David Patrick Underwood, was fatally shot outside a federal courthouse in a drive-by attack that also wounded another guard.[53] Underwood had been providing security at the courthouse during a protest.[51] The Department of Homeland Security labeled the shooting an act of domestic terrorism.[94][54] Boogaloo movement member Steven Carrillo was charged with the murder on June 16. He was also implicated in the murder of a Santa Cruz County deputy.
Content from External Source
 
The topic of the thread is deaths.

Chertoff -DHS secretary for George W. Bush-might be talking about after 2016? since there was a report examining sept 13, 2001 through Decemebr 2016.
Article:
PolitiFact recently examined the GAO report and found, like the Reveal investigation, that more attacks were carried out by far-right violent extremists. But more people died during attacks connected with Islamic jihadists.

Of those 225 deaths by extremists:

• 106 individuals were killed by far-right violent extremists in 62 separate incidents;

• 119 individuals were killed by radical Islamist violent extremists in 23 separate incidents;

1615657037522.png



edit: added who Chertoff is for context.
 
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Yes seems to be the case recently, Though if you go back to the 1970s, I would say the Left Wing were then doing far more of the terrorist attacks on US soil.

As others pointed out, this plot shows attacks, while the question asks about deaths.

Also, there were zero left-wing terrorist attacks in 2020? Unless you're using an exceptionally limited definition of terrorism for left wing groups and an exceptionally expansive definition of terrorism for right wing groups, that's impossible to believe. Just take one example from seeker3598's list, example #7:

In Portland, Oregon, Aaron J. Danielson was shot in the chest and killed on the night of August 29, amidst protests and riots in the city. Danielson wore a hat with the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group based in Vancouver, Washington that has clashed with protesters in the past.[88] Michael Forest Reinoehl, responsible for the shooting, who was an anti-fascist activist and self-described supporter of antifa, writing "I am 100% ANTIFA all the way!" in an Instagram post in June,[109] said in an Associated Press video interview earlier in the summer that he had provided security for other protesters.[110][111] In a Vice News interview after the shooting and before being killed by the police in conflicting reports,[112] Reinohel clarified that "I am 100% anti-fascist. I'm not a member of Antifa. I'm not a member of anything", stating that he "had no choice" and acted in self-defense.[113][114]

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_during_the_George_Floyd_protests
 
Unless you're using an exceptionally limited definition of terrorism for left wing groups and an exceptionally expansive definition of terrorism for right wing groups, that's impossible to believe.
heres teh link with the chart. They specifically talk about anti-fa as left wing. they include attacks and foiled plots too (sometimes). George Floyd died May 25, 2020
https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states

on the page (near bottom) is a link to methodology
https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/200616_Jones_Methodology_v3_0.pdf

in the 50 U.S. states and Puerto Rico between January 1, 1994, and May 8, 2020. This time period was selected in order to provide context on the history of domestic terrorism in the United States in recent decades, and in particular to allow analysis of how the current right-wing threat compares to the last major wave of right-wing violence in the 1990s.
Content from External Source
ATTACKS AND PLOTS We included both attacks and foiled plots in the data set, but a variable was added to distinguish between the two. Incidents were defined as plots if they demonstrated plans or intention to commit an act of terrorism that was prevented, most often due to law enforcement intervention or failure during the preparation stages (such as explosives detonating during production). Incidents were defined as attacks if action was taken to carry out an act of terrorism. This includes attacks that both succeeded and failed. We coded threats of violence as attacks rather than plots, even if the threat turned out to be a hoax
Content from External Source
 
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I'm pretty apolitical but noticed recently that the FBI mentioned something similar that extreme right wing groups are the biggest terror threat.

When the FBI has talked about this in the past, it wasn't necessarily about actual violent incidents. Their assessments have been more about right-wing objectives (and the capability to carry them out) and the potential results if those plots were to be successful - plots to overthrow the government, begin a civil war etc.

Jan 6th of course highlights those capabilities and objectives.
 
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