Far-right extremists far greater threat than left-wing militants: Experts
Alex Nowrasteh of the libertarian Cato Institute notes that in the past twenty-five years, right-wing extremist plots in the United States have been far more deadly than far-left plots.
Nowrasteh says that White nationalists, militia movements, anti-Muslim attackers, I.R.S. building and abortion clinic bombers, and other right-wing groups were responsible for twelve times as many fatalities and thirty-six times as many injuries as communists, socialists, animal rights and environmental activists, anti-white- and Black Lives Matter-inspired attackers; and other left-wing groups.
The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland has studied nearly 1,500 individuals for a study of radicalization in the United States from 1948 to 2013. The study found that 43 percent espoused far-right ideologies, compared to 21 percent for the far left. Far-right individuals were more likely to commit violence against people, while those on the far left were more likely to commit property damage.
“We find that the right groups and the jihadi groups are more violent on the left,” said Gary LaFree, one the researchers and the director of START, told the Times. LaFree cautioned that the data set is in the process of being updated, so it does not reflect current state of extremism, but “in general, we’ve been seeing this fairly robust trend in right-wing cases.”
“The extreme left has not been nearly as organized” in recent decades, Brent Smith, the director of Terrorism Research Center at the University of Arkansas, told the Times. “Leaders of the extreme left died off and they’re floundering without leadership.”
GWU’s MacNab said that while right-wing antigovernment activists have been fomenting and building their anger since 2008, the left-wing Antifa is a more nascent movement, reflected in their scale. The far right has a scattered membership of a few hundred thousand, MacNab estimated, compared with a few thousand Antifa activists.
MacNab’s estimates dovetail with the estimates by FBI and DHS experts, who say that there are 400,000-500,000 Americans who are affiliated, in one way or another, with various right-wing extremist groups. The FBI, DHS, and state and local law enforcement consider right-wing extremists to be an order of magnitude more dangerous to public safety in the United States that left-leaning extremists.
“[Left-wing extremists are] less structured, they’re less organized, they’re active on social media but not to the extent of others. They don’t have the entree into and oxygen of support from the mainstream left,” Levin said.
Levin told the Times that although Antifa and black block “are on my radar,” he still considers violent Salafist jihadists and white nationalists, neo-Nazis, “sovereign citizens,” and radical anti-abortion extremists — the coalition of far-right agitators — more concerning.
