After 9/11, modern media has paid more attention to terrorist attacks conducted by ISIS and other groups in the United States and around the world, rather than paying equal attention to attacks conducted by domestic terrorist organizations such as the KKK, and lone wolves from the alt-right political party.
Many of these attacks conducted by alt-right believers are racially motivated, such as the Charleston Church attack, where a white terrorist, Dylann Roof, shot and killed 9 innocent African-American church attendees, including the senior pastor because he “just wanted to kill black people”. Another example of a racially motivated attack by a white American, was earlier this year in February, when a white male, a firm supporter of President Trump, shot and killed two Hindus whom he told: “Get out of my country”. The man later bragged about shooting “Two Iranians” with the bartender.
A report released by the Department of Justice in 2015 shows that there have been over 800 racially motivated attacks by white people against Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, South Asians, and people believed to be of Middle Eastern descent.
In the span of 2006-2015, there have been about 201 official terrorist incidents conducted on United States soil. About 115 of these terrorist incidents were conducted by alt-right Americans who had racially motivated causes for their attacks. The same study shows 19 attacks by left-wing extremists in which the attacks’ causes consisted of environment protection and animal rights. Islamic-extremists conducted 63 attacks in the United States, compared to the 115 conducted by alt-right white Americans.
The New America Foundation shows in their June study, “that white extremists were by far the most dangerous. They pointed to the recent Emanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston, S.C., and the 2012 attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, as well as many lesser-known attacks on Jewish institutions and on police. They found that 48 people were killed by white terrorists, while 26 were killed by radical Islamists, since Sept. 11.”
American media has had a long and disturbing history of double standards when it comes to terrorism ― starting with the hesitation from mainstream media to label attacks by white terrorists as “terrorism,” but how quick they are to label terrorist attacks by nonwhite’s “Terrorists”.
Neiwert said, “It’s reflected in the way the press report upon various kinds of domestic terror attacks: When it’s a white domestic terrorist, they underplay it, write it off to mental illness.”
