Perspective: Home-grown terrorismDeadly Violence Heightens Concerns about Domestic Terrorism and White Supremacists

Federal and local authorities recently have said there are heightened concerns about domestic terrorism and white supremacy.

In July, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee that a majority of domestic terrorism cases the bureau has investigated are motivated by white supremacy. Wray assured the panel that the FBI was “aggressively” pursuing domestic terrorism and hate crimes.

“Our focus is on the violence,” he said. “We, the FBI, don’t investigate the ideology, no matter how repugnant. We investigate violence.”

Suhauna Hussain writes in the Los Angeles Times that deadly mass shootings have prompted Congress to scrutinize how resources are allocated for investigating groups that post domestic terrorist threats.

Michael McGarrity, head of the FBI’s counter-terrorism unit, in May testified during a congressional hearing that the bureau was investigating about 850 cases of domestic terrorism.

Brian Levin, director of Cal State San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, said it can be difficult to classify attacks. For example, the gunman in the Parkland, Fla., shooting in February 2018 that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School fixated on racist imagery, but authorities did not designate the attack as a hate crime, and Levin’s center did not include it in a recent report, Levin said.

Levin said political polarization and a rise of far-right nationalism is contributing to hate crime around the globe.

“We’re seeing a coalescence of traditional hate crime with political violence,” he said.