For a long time after the Arab terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, which brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, damaged the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and killed close to 3,000 people, Islamic radicalism was regarded as the number one enemy.
In recent years, however, white supremacist/neo-Nazi violence has morphed into the chief threat facing Americans.
As the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf wrote in a report last month, “I am concerned about any form of violent extremism. But I am particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years.”
Wolf said that these extremists “seek to force ideological change in the United States through violence, death, and destruction.”
Interestingly enough, Wolf’s report does not even mention Antifa, the loose network of anti-fascist activists who have confronted white supremacists at demonstrations, most notably at Charlottesville in the summer of 2017.
Yet President Donald Trump has repeatedly blasted Antifa while soft-peddling white supremacy.
Since 2018, white supremacists have launched more violent attacks and caused more deaths than any other ideologically motivated extremists, according to the U.S. government.
They have carried out half of the sixteen major attacks that have killed 39 people across the country, 12 of whose victims were Jewish. They were murdered by neo-Nazi thugs in synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway, California.
The Homeland Security Department believes that white supremacist extremists will remain “the most persistent and lethal threat in the United States.”
These bigots target racial and religious minorities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, politicians, and anyone who promotes multiculturalism and globalization.
The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Christopher Wray, has drawn similar conclusions.
At a recent hearing in Congress, Elissa Slotkin, a member of the House of Representatives, asked Wray to discuss the dangers posed by white supremacists. “Racially-motivated violent extremists over recent years have been responsible for the most lethal activity in the U.S.,” he said, echoing Wolf.
Wray’s testimony has been endorsed by Michael Jensen, the principal investigator at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.
“Racially and ethnically-motivated violent extremists, specifically white supremacist extremists, will remain the most persistent and lethal threat to the homeland,” he said.
In a separate study, the Center for Strategic and International Security concluded that the “most significant threat likely comes from white supremacists, though anarchists and religious extremists inspired by the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda could present a potential threat as well.”
It’s abundantly clear that far-right extremists represent a clear and present danger to Americans, particularly Jews and African Americans.
When will Trump finally wake up and respond accordingly?