Far-right groups blamed for most US terror incidents: New study

Terrorism by far-right groups and individuals across the US accounts for “the majority of all terrorist incidents” in America since 1994, a newly-released report by a leading US think tank reveals amid a new wave of terror attacks and plots from white supremacist elements in the country.

“The majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years,” says the latest in-depth analysis of far-right terrorism released last week by the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) as cited in a Saturday report by The Guardian.

The CSIS report  -- titled, The escalating terrorism problem in the United States -- further points out that the US-based far-right groups and elements were responsible for two-thirds of terror attacks and plots in 2019, and 90 percent of such acts in 2020.

The research study further underlines that “Far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators,” noting that the second most significant source of attacks and plots in the US has been attributed to “religious extremists” mostly linked to radical Salafi Muslims inspired by Daesh (ISIL) and al-Qaeda terrorist groups that are widely believed to be sponsored and financed by the US-backed Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Arab dictatorships across the Persian Gulf and West Asia.

Moreover, the CSIS study analyzed 25 years of domestic terrorism incidents throughout the United States and found that the majority of attacks and plots have come from the far-right. By contrast, it showed that the far-left has played a negligible role in such attacks since the mid 2000s.

The new study drastically contradicts repeated claims by US President Donald Trump and mostly right-wing Islamophobia industry and elements across America blaming Muslims and even the religion of Islam for most terror attacks in the Western world.

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The development came after the US Justice Department announced last Monday that it had brought a range of charges, including terrorism related offenses, against a US army soldier who subscribed to a mix of white supremacist and satanist beliefs that are characteristic of the so-called “accelerationist” neo-Nazis such as the Atomwaffen Division.

This is while federal charges were also brought against Steven Carillo last week for the murder of a federal security officer and a sheriff’s deputy. Like the three men detained earlier this month for an alleged terror plot in Nevada, the FBI stated that Carillo identified with the extreme anti-government “boogaloo” movement, which is mainly concerned with removing government regulation of firearms.

Critics, however, question the timing and motivations of the intelligence community’s pivot to combating right-wing extremism as it comes at a time when some are arguing the legal and institutional counter-terrorism apparatus established to battle overseas-based terror groups should now be adapted to domestic extremists, according to the report.

For some that has profound implications for civil liberties and constitutional rights, especially when it comes to suggestions that new laws should be adopted to certify such groups as domestic terrorist groups.

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Meanwhile, the lead author of the CSIS report, Seth Jones, offered his backing for the formal designation of terror groups, saying: “I still think it’s important to think through the first amendment implications and other pros and cons. But I do support taking a serious look at designation.”

Designation could open the way to also probing people who support such groups without having formal membership in any, Jones added as cited in the report.

The report further points to statements by Mike German, a research fellow at the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice and former FBI agent that investigated right-wing extremists, who regards arguments for domestic terror statutes as part of a broader reorientation of the “national security establishment” away from conflicts in the Middle East.

German attributes this move to a realization “that ISIS and al-Qaeda were not as threatening to Americans as they had been, and that foreign counter-terrorism in general was sort of running out of steam.”

“It’s a way of expanding the target realm that gives the counter-terrorism enterprise targets that they can use to get statistical accomplishments, rather than looking at whether or not the violence itself is reduced,” he emphasized as quoted in the report.

German has further insisted that US federal officials should prioritize the investigation of violent crimes committed by far right extremists and refer to them as terrorist acts where appropriate, but that they should be prosecuted using existing laws, with a consideration of alternative responses such as restorative justice.

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