The Buffalo killings are part of a pattern: Most extremist violence in the U.S. comes from the political right.
‘Numbers don’t lie’
Over the past decade, the Anti-Defamation League has counted about 450 U.S. murders committed by political extremists.
Of these 450 killings, right-wing extremists committed about 75 percent. Islamic extremists were responsible for about 20 percent, and left-wing extremists were responsible for 4 percent.
Nearly half of the murders were specifically tied to white supremacists:
Source: Anti-Defamation League
As this data shows, the American political right has a violence problem that has no equivalent on the left. And the 10 victims in Buffalo this past weekend are now part of this toll. “Right-wing extremist violence is our biggest threat,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, has written. “The numbers don’t lie.”
The pattern extends to violence less severe than murder, like the Jan. 6 attack on Congress. It also extends to the language from some Republican politicians — including Donald Trump — and conservative media figures that treats violence as a legitimate form of political expression. A much larger number of Republican officials do not use this language but also do not denounce it or punish politicians who do use it; Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, is a leading example.
It’s important to emphasize that not all extremist violence comes from the right — and that the precise explanation for any one attack can be murky, involving a mixture of ideology, mental illness, gun access and more. In the immediate aftermath of an attack, people are sometimes too quick to claim a direct cause and effect. But it is also incorrect to pretend that right-wing violence and left-wing violence are equivalent problems.
Fears in Washington
If you talk to members of Congress and their aides these days — especially off the record — you will often hear them mention their fears of violence being committed against them.
Some Republican members of Congress have said that they were reluctant to vote for Trump’s impeachment or conviction partly because of the threats against other members who had already denounced him. House Republicans who voted for President Biden’s infrastructure bill also received threats. Democrats say their offices receive a spike in phone calls and online messages threatening violence after they are criticized on conservative social media or cable television shows.
People who oversee elections report similar problems. “One in six election officials have experienced threats because of their job,” the Brennan Center, a research group, reported this year. “Ranging from death threats that name officials’ young children to racist and gendered harassment, these attacks have forced election officials across the country to take steps like hiring personal security, fleeing their homes, and putting their children into counseling.”
There is often overlap between these violent threats and white supremacist beliefs. White supremacy tends to treat people of color as un-American or even less than fully human, views that can make violence seem justifiable. The suspect in the Buffalo massacre evidently posted an online manifesto that discussed replacement theory, a racial conspiracy theory that Tucker Carlson promotes on his Fox News show.
(This Times story examines how replacement theory has entered the Republican mainstream.)
“History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse,” Representative Liz Cheney, one of the few Republicans who have repeatedly and consistently denounced violence and talk of violence from the right, wrote on Twitter yesterday. “The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and antisemitism,” Cheney wrote, and called on Republican leaders to “renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”
A few other Republicans, like Senator Mitt Romney, have taken a similar stance. But many other prominent Republicans have taken a more neutral stance or even embraced talk of violence.
Some have spoken openly about violence as a legitimate political tool — and not just Trump, who has done so frequently.
At the rally that preceded the Jan. 6 attack, Representative Mo Brooks suggested the crowd should “start taking down names and kicking ass.” Before she was elected to Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene supported the idea of executing Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats. Representative Paul Gosar once posted an animated video altered to depict himself killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and swinging swords at Biden.
Rick Perry, a former Texas governor, once called the Federal Reserve “treasonous” and talked about treating its chairman “pretty ugly.” During Greg Gianforte’s campaign for Montana’s House seat, he went so far as to assault a reporter who asked him a question he didn’t like; Gianforte won and has since become Montana’s governor.
These Republicans have received no meaningful sanction from their party. McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, has been especially solicitous of Brooks and other members who use violent imagery.
This Republican comfort with violence is new. Republican leaders from past decades, like Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, Howard Baker and the Bushes, did not evoke violence.
“In a stable democracy,” Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist, told me, “politicians unambiguously reject violence and unambiguously expel from their ranks antidemocratic forces.”
Article: [nytimes.com]
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I see a few problems with these "numbers" it appears death is the only deciding factor here, which doesn't necessarily determine who or what group commits more violence. For example that black supremacist terrorist that shot up the subway car in New York not too long ago, who shot 10 people, wouldn't be on the list. I'd also like to know how the people who came up with this data determined the motive behind all these 450 killings, I'd be willing to bet they didn't interview a single person responsible. Knowing the new york times, they probably used poor information sources over the internet.
Tejas
Level 8
May 17, 2022
1
Here's a quick search of the cities with the highest murder rates:
St. Louis, MO (69.4)
Baltimore, MD (51.1)
New Orleans, LA (40.6)
Detroit, MI (39.7)
Cleveland, OH (33.7)
Las Vegas, NV (31.4)
Kansas City, MO (31.2)
Memphis, TN (27.1)
Newark, NJ (25.6)
Chicago, IL (24)
Every single one of them has been controlled by Democrats for decades.
BD66
Level 8
May 17, 2022
0
I can see why the violent right would be killing people in these cities. The right are just racist assholes and idiots.
BD66:
@nogod4me So you think right wing people sneak into the Democratic cities, kill the Democrats, then frame the other Democrats for committing murder? Amazing! You would think if they could pull something like that off thousands of times per year, they could figure out how to win a single election in those cities.
BD66:
@nogod4me My point is "The subject is bullshit"
There are thousands of murders going on every year in these cities:
St. Louis, MO (69.4)
Baltimore, MD (51.1)
New Orleans, LA (40.6)
Detroit, MI (39.7)
Cleveland, OH (33.7)
Las Vegas, NV (31.4)
Kansas City, MO (31.2)
Memphis, TN (27.1)
Newark, NJ (25.6)
Chicago, IL (24)
but you are all spun up over a very small number of murders defined as "extremist" by the Anti-Defamation League and covered exhaustively by the news media. A murder is a murder. The person who is murdered is dead regardless of how their killer is classified by the Anti-Defamation League.
BD66:
Murders per year in the USA: 24,576
Murders "by extremists" in the USA: 29
According to an annual analysis of extremist fatalities by ADL Center on Extremism, domestic extremists were responsible for killing at least 29 people in the United States, in 19 separate incidents.
That's roughly 0.1% of the murders in the USA.
You are obsessing over 0.1% of the murders and ignoring 99.9% of the murders.
Get it now?
BD66:
@nogod4me Numbers don't lie:
Let's assume the Anti-Defamation League does not lie either:
White supremacists killed more people in 2021 than any other type of extremist. Nearly half of the deaths last year (13) were attributable to white supremacists.
Let's put that in perspective:
13 people killed by white supremacists in 2021.
24,563 people killed by somebody other than white supremacists in 2021.
White supremacists were responsible for .0529% of murders in the USA in 2021.
Someone other than white supremacists were responsible for 99.9471% of murders in the USA in 2021.
Let's compare white supremacist homicides to other types of homocides:
13 people killed by white supremacists in 2021.
40 people (on average) killed by dogs each year.
62 people (on average) killed by bees each year.
195 people killed in St. Louis in 2021
397 people killed in Los Angeles in 2021
485 people killed in New York City in 2021
524 people killed in Chicago in 2021
850 people (on average) killed by bicycles each year.
4000 people drown on average each year.
So there you have it.
White supremacists pose about 1/3 the threat of dogs, 1/5 the threat of bees, and about 1/65th the threat of bicycles.
@BD66 I've never even been bitten by a dog, I've been stung a few times by bees, however, I have experienced leftist hate myself and have seen or heard of it quite often over the years, without a year going by that a right-wing extremist hasn't committed some kind of violence.
................
As in most years, lethal extremist violence in 2021 was heavily dominated by right-wing extremism. All but three of the 29 murders (90%) documented in this report had ties to forms of right-wing extremism, including white supremacy, anti-government extremism of several types, right-wing conspiracy theory adherents and toxic masculinity adherents.
Over the past decade, right-wing extremists have committed the majority of extremist-related killings in all years but one—2016, the year of the shooting spree at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by a person motivated by Islamist extremism. Of the 443 people killed at the hands of extremists over that 10-year period, 333 (or 75%) were killed by right-wing extremists.
Right-wing extremists in the U.S. commit such a large proportion of murders for a range of reasons. The far right in this country is large, comprising many movements, including multiple white supremacist and anti-government extremist movements, as well as a variety of single-issue extremists and conspiracy-based movements. Most of these movements have some degree of association with violence, with many even engaging in terrorist plots and attacks. Even the newest right-wing movements to emerge in recent years—movements that include incel/manosphere extremists, QAnon adherents and anti-government boogalooers—have all quickly developed violent track records.
In 2021, 14 of the extremist murders appear to have been committed in whole or in part as ideological killings, while 15 were committed for one or another of the non-ideological motives mentioned above or for which no motive has been revealed. The difficulty of determining how murders should be categorized in this fashion can be illustrated by the case of Aidan Ingalls, who committed one of the 2021 murders. Ingalls opened fire at people at a pier in South Haven, Michigan, killing a man and wounding his wife. The victims were white, and Ingalls had a history of fantasizing and plotting about killing people, but he also went to the trouble of decorating the firearm he used for the shootings with swastikas and other white supremacist symbols, much like white supremacist Brenton Tarrant had done to his weapons for his shooting spree at mosques in New Zealand in 2019. This murder ended up being categorized as non-ideological because the motive remains opaque.
BD66:
@nogod4me You are obsessing over 0.01% of murders in the USA. A large portion of those 0.01% are committed by white prison gangs. How many of the other 99.99% do you think were committed by black prison gangs? Latino prison gangs? Asian prison gangs? My guess is a lot more than the 0.01% committed by right wing extremists. Why are murders by black prison gangs, Latino prison gangs, Asian prison gangs not counted as extremist murders? If you included those, you would not be obsessing over about 0.01% of the murders committed in the USA.
BD66:
@nogod4me I'm not trying to excuse anything. I'm trying to get you to put things in perspective. Right-wing extremists (which include white prison gangs), likely commit fewer murders than black prison gangs and Latino prison gangs. They are responsible for a lot fewer deaths than dogs, bees, and bicycles.
@BD66 I do not believe you are so innocent. You are trying to justify and mitigate these racist atrocities, You change the subject and you add other criteria to try and lessen the gravity of what they do. Who cares about your dogs, bees, and bicycles unless that is what these racist shit-eaters are using to kill people.
The fact is: The Buffalo killings are part of a pattern: Most extremist violence in the U.S. comes from the political right.
"The attempt to justify an evil deed has perhaps more pernicious consequences than the evil deed itself. The justification of a past crime is the planting and cultivation of future crimes. Indeed, the repetition of a crime is sometimes part of a device of justification: we do it again and again to convince ourselves and others that it is a common thing and not an enormity." - Eric Hoffer
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