According to American political scientist George Michael, "right-wing terrorism and violence has a long history in America".[72] In the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954), members of a resurgent Ku Klux Klan perpetrated a campaign of terrorism against blacks, civil rights activists, Jews, and others.[73] Klansmen bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, killing four African American girls, and carried out other murders as well, including those of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner (1963), Lemuel Penn (1964), Viola Liuzzo (1965), and Michael Donald.[73][74] Between 1956 and 1963, an estimated 130 bombings were perpetrated in the South.[73]
During the 1980s, more than 75 right-wing extremists were prosecuted in the United States for acts of terrorism, carrying out six attacks.[75] In 1983, Gordon Kahl, a Posse Comitatus activist, killed two federal marshals and he was later killed by police. Also that year, the white nationalist revolutionary group The Order (also known as the Brüder Schweigen or the Silent Brotherhood) robbed banks and armored cars, as well as a sex shop,[76] bombed a theater and a synagogue and murdered radio talk show host Alan Berg.[77][78]
The 19 April 1995 attack on the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols killed 168 people and it was the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in the history of the United States.[79] McVeigh stated that it was committed in retaliation for the government's actions at Ruby Ridge and Waco.[80]
Eric Rudolph executed a series of terrorist attacks between 1996 and 1998. He carried out the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing—which claimed two lives and injured 111—aiming to cancel the games, claiming they promoted global socialism and to embarrass the U.S. government.[81] Rudolph confessed to bombing an abortion clinic in Sandy Springs, an Atlanta suburb, on January 16, 1997, the Otherside Lounge, an Atlanta lesbian bar, on February 21, 1997, injuring five and an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama on January 29, 1998, killing Birmingham police officer and part-time clinic security guard Robert Sanderson and critically injuring nurse Emily Lyons.
Post-2001[edit]
As of July 2020, the New America Foundation placed the number killed in terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11 as follows: 112 killed in far-right attacks, 107 killed in jihadist terrorist attacks, 12 killed in black separatist/nationalist/supremacist attacks, and 8 killed in ideological misogyny/"incel" ideology attacks.[82] According to a 2017 Government Accountability Office report, 73% of violent extremist incidents that resulted in deaths since September 12, 2001 were caused by right-wing extremist groups.[83][84]
A 2019 report found that 50 people in the United States were killed in murders by domestic extremists (including both ideologically and non-ideologically motivated homicides) during the previous year. Of these killings, 78% were perpetrated by white supremacists, 16% by anti-government extremists, 4% by "incel" extremists, and 2% by domestic Islamist extremists.[85] Over the broader 2009 to 2018 time period, there were a total of 313 people in the United States killed by right-wing extremists (including both ideologically and non-ideologically motivated homicides), of which 76% were committed by white supremacists, 19% by anti-government extremists (including those affiliated with the militia, "sovereign citizen," tax protester, and "Patriot" movements), 3% by "incel" extremists, 1% by anti-abortion extremists, and 1% by other right-wing extremists.[85]
New America's tally shows that 112 people have been killed in right-wing extremist attacks since 11 September 2001. Incidents causing death were the following:[82]
A report in The Washington Post, published on November 25, 2018, showed violent right-wing-related incidents up, and left-wing-related incidents down. Total domestic terrorism incidents was down to 41 in 2001, from a high of 468 in 1970, but then went up to 65 in 2017. Of those 65 events in 2017, 36 were right-wing-related (with 11 fatalities), 10 were left-wing-related (with 6 fatalities), 7 were related to Islamist extremism (with 16 fatalities), and 12, including the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, were categorized as "Other/Unknown" (with 62 fatalities, including 58 from the Las Vegas incident). The report found that 2018 was a particularly deadly year, with 11 people dying in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, 2 others in an incident in Kentucky, and two more in a shooting in Tallasshee. All three incidents were right-wing related.[88]
The Post reported that the upsurge in right-wing violence began during the Barack Obama administration and picked up steam under the presidency of Donald Trump, whose remarks after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 that there were "some very fine people on both sides" is widely seen as giving confidence to the right that the administration looked favorably on their goals, providing them with "tacit support". A former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, is quoted as saying that "[political leaders] from the White House down, used to serve as a check on conduct and speech that was abhorrent to most people. I see that eroding. ... The current political rhetoric is at least enabling, and certainly not discouraging, violence."[88]
According to analysis by the newspaper of data from the Global Terrorism Database, 92 of 263 domestic terrorism events – 35% – that occurred from 2010 to 2017 were right-wing related, while 38 (14%) were Islamist extremist-related, and 34 (13%) were left-wing related. Not only that, but a criminologist from John Jay College stated that right-wing attacks were statistically more likely to result in fatalities.[88]
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If you support Trump you deserve cancer.