Terrorism in America

Manon Scialfa, Writer|November 4, 2017

[Something like: ‘Recently, a high-profile terror attack in New York has thrust terrorism and immigration policy back into the spotlight…]

Trump and his base’s support for a ‘Muslim Ban’ shows that many in America fear foreign radical Islamist terrorist attacks. However, most terrorist attacks in the United States are not committed by foreigners. As New America reports , “every jihadist who conducted a lethal attack inside the United States since 9/11 was a citizen or legal resident.” Many are converts or recruited from social media, and hardly any are illegal immigrants.

In fact, Islamist extremists are not as much of a threat on American lives as right-wing extremists. Since 2002, right-wing militants have launched twice as many attacks and killed more people in the United States than Islamic militants. [Additional Sourcing that would allow for some compelling points to be made: This DHS intelligence study talks about the renewed rise of RW extremism after Obama’s election. This FBI intelligence assessment talks about RW and WS infiltration of police departments by recruiting LEOs and sending members to become LEOs. This talks about Trump admin’s DHS shifting funding away from programs meant to counter home-grown extremism. Furthermore, I think point to make would be that after New York, the attack was immediately denounced by the mayor and media as an act of terrorism, yet after Cville and Las Vegas, public perception and official response shied away from denouncing the actions as terrorism (an oft-made observation, but nevertheless important to reinforce that there is a brand of terrorism outside of Islamist).]

The idea that violence threatening Americans mostly come from foreign terrorist infiltrators is outdated. Most terrorists are Americans, not Syrian refugees or Iraqi immigrants. [Also interesting to mention is that the New York attacker was Uzbek, meaning the Admin’s current travel ban wouldn’t have prevented anything.]