Democrats Weaponized FBI To Falsely Claim White Supremacists Posed Greater Terror Threat Than Radical Islamists There was never any evidence that right-wing political violence was increasing by @shellenberger FBI Director Christopher Wray; New Orleans terrorism suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar; President Joe Biden A 42-year-old former Army IT specialist named Shamsud-Din Jabbar committed an act of terrorism by killing 15 in his truck in New Orleans early on New Year’s Day, says the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). And there appears to be abundant evidence, including testimony from his close relatives and videos he posted to Facebook, that radical Islamic ideology motivated Jabbar. Jabbar’s motivations may come as a surprise to millions of Americans. After all, for the last four years, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), President Joe Biden, and other United States agencies that constitute the Intelligence Community (IC) have emphasized that the greatest threat of terrorism comes from white supremacists, not radicalized Islamists. The “top threat we face from DVEs [Domestic Violent Extremist] continues to be those we identify as Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (‘RMVEs’), specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told Senate Judiciary Committee on March 2, 2021. “According to the intelligence community,” said Biden in 2021, “terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not al Qaeda — white supremacists.” As a result, Wray said in 2021 that " racially motivated violent extremism is the biggest chunk of our domestic terrorism portfolio, if you will, overall. I will also say that the same group of people we're talking about have been responsible for the most lethal attacks over the last decade." Those arguments have continued over the last four years. In August 2024, the New Yorker reported “around 2018 the F.B.I. began seeing an increase in racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists—in particular, ‘individuals espousing the superiority of the white race.’” The evidence never supported any of those claims. Between 2012 and 2021, Islamic extremists committed five acts of domestic US terrorism that killed 77 people, whereas white supremacists committed four acts of domestic terrorism that killed 49 people. And even if the numbers were reversed, at just 12 cases of domestic terrorism, the sample size is too small to be able to claim, scientifically, any kind of discernible trend about DVE. The total number of killings by white supremacists annually is very low. In 2022, 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. In 2022, there were a total of 24,849 homicides. Thus, the share of them that were by white supremacists was .08%. This is not to suggest that the FBI could have prevented the New Orleans attack on New Year’s had it been more focused on the threat of would-be Islamic terrorists. The FBI was still on the alert for Islamic terrorism, even as it claimed that white supremacists posed a greater threat. And some mass killings are difficult to prevent so long as we live in a relatively free society. But the fact that some mass killings may be difficult to prevent is no excuse for the FBI to mislead the public, policymakers, and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The FBI’s claim that white supremacy was the main driver of the acts of terrorism was also misleading. Most of the white supremacist killers appeared to suffer from mental illness, whereas most of the radical Islamicists appeared sane and driven overwhelmingly by ideology. The Wisconsin shooter had a history of alcoholism and depression; the Charleston and Pittsburgh shooters showed signs of paranoia; the El Paso shooter was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a chronic and serious mental illness that combines the symptoms of schizophrenia, including hallucinations or delusions, with a mood disorder like depression or bipolar disorder; and the Buffalo shooter had been temporarily committed to a mental hospital. The only exceptionto this appears to be the Orlando shooter. Thus, there was never any good evidence that there was a rising threat of terrorism from the political ideology of white supremacy, nor that it was greater than the threat of Islamist terrorism. And yet FBI Director Wray, President Biden, and the whole of the US IC have claimed, repeatedly, for four years, that it was. Why? Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning journalism, and to read the rest of the article! x.com/shellenberger/…
