Trump, Fox and others have a lot to answer for
By David Badash
A new report from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism reveals that all extremist-related murders in 2022 were committed by right-wing extremists.
More than four out of five extremist-related murders last year were committed by white supremacist right-wing extremists.
The report finds that nearly all extremist-related mass
killings were committed by right-wing extremists, and warns the numbers of
those mass murders “is of growing concern.”
“All
the extremist-related murders in 2022 were committed by right-wing extremists
of various kinds,” the ADL’s Center on Extremism (COE) reports, “who typically
commit most such killings each year but only occasionally are responsible for
all (the last time this occurred was 2012).”
“Left-wing
extremists engage in violence ranging from assaults to fire-bombings and
arsons, but since the late 1980s have not often targeted people with deadly
violence.”
The report adds:
“White supremacists commit the greatest number of domestic extremist-related murders in most years, but in 2022 the percentage was unusually high: 21 of the 25 murders were linked to white supremacists. Again, this is primarily due to mass shootings. Only one of the murders was committed by a right-wing anti-government extremist—the lowest number since 2017.”
Last year, COE notes, “domestic extremists killed at least 25 people in the U.S., in 12 separate incidents. This represents a decrease from the 33 extremist-related murders documented in 2021 and is comparable to the 22 extremist-related murders in 2020.
It continues the recent trend of fewer extremist-related
killings after a five-year span of 47-78 extremist-related murders per year
(2015-2019).”
The Associated Press,
pointing to the “especially high number” of extremist killings “linked to white
supremacy” reports they “include a racist mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York,
that left 10 Black shoppers dead and a mass shooting that killed five people at an LGBT nightclub in
Colorado Springs, Colorado.”
The “main threat in the near future will likely be white supremacist shooters, the report found,” The AP adds.
“The increase in the number of mass killing
attempts, meanwhile, is one of the most alarming trends in recent years, said
Center on Extremism Vice President Oren Segal.”
In a separate article on
that LGBT nightclub mass shooting, Club Q, also published
Thursday, the AP reports the “22-year-old accused of carrying out the deadly
mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs in November ran a neo-Nazi
website and used gay and racial slurs while gaming online, a police detective
testified Wednesday.”
“Anderson
Lee Aldrich also posted an image of a rifle scope trained on a gay pride parade
and used a bigoted slur when referring to someone who was gay, Detective
Rebecca Joines said.”