by Madeleine Rowley and Alex Gutentag at PUBLIC
White nationalist groups like the Patriot Front and far-right groups like the Proud Boys are on the rise and represent the greatest threat to our country’s security, according to President Joe Biden, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Last August, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that investigations into domestic terrorism have “more than doubled” and that the threat comes from “those who advocate for the superiority of the white race” as well as “Anti-Government or Anti-Authority Violent Extremists.” In February, the ADL reported that white supremacist ideology catalyzed 80% of extremism-related homicides in 2022. And in May, Biden called white supremacy “the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland.”
But there’s no good evidence that domestic terrorism is increasing. Neither the FBI nor the Department of Homeland Security have submitted “comprehensive data to Congress in required reports” regarding violent extremism, found the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Last year there were only 21 homicides linked to white supremacists in the entire country. By comparison, Chicago alone saw an average of 58 homicides every month. From 2013 to 2021, the FBI’s domestic terrorism-related investigations increased by 357 percent, but there was no similar increase in terrorist attacks during that period.
Terrorism and racism are declining virtually everywhere, including in the U.S. The Global Terrorism Index reported that in 2022, deaths from terrorism fell by 9%, which is 38% lower than its peak in 2015. The number of terror attacks also decreased by 28% from 2021 to 2022. And a 2019 study found that in the United States, conscious and unconscious prejudice for “sexuality, race, and skin-tone attitudes” have decreased over the last decade.
If the number of open FBI cases reflected the actual level of extremist violence, there would be a domestic terrorist attack every day.
And now, a new investigation by Public finds that the FBI is not only…
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