Right-wing violence on the rise in US: Study

The Washington Post analysis of data on global terrorism published on Sunday shows that violence by white supremacists and other far-right attackers has been on the rise since Barack Obama’s presidency and has surged since President Donald Trump took office.

Of 263 incidents of domestic terrorism between 2010 and the end of 2017, a third — 92 — were committed by right-wing attackers, according to The Post’s analysis.

“Terrorism researchers say right-wing violence sprouted alongside white anxiety about Obama’s presidency and has accelerated in the Trump era. Trump and his aides have continuously denied that he has contributed to the rise in violence. But experts say right-wing extremists perceive the president as offering them tacit support for their cause,” the newspaper said in its report.

The study found that this year has been especially deadly, with 13 people dying in two incidents in just the last month.

In the first incident in October, a gunman in the state of Kentucky attempted to enter a historically black church, then shot and killed two black patrons in a nearby grocery store.

In the second incident, a man who had expressed anger about a caravan of Central American refugees that Trump termed an “invasion” has been charged with gunning down 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, in what the media described the deadliest act of anti-Semitic violence in US history.

This month brought two more deaths. A US military veteran who had railed online against women and blacks began shooting in a yoga studio in Tallahassee, Florida, killing two women and wounding five.

Overall, researchers say at least 20 people have died this year in suspected right-wing attacks.

While Trump has blasted Democrats as “an angry left-wing mob” and the “party of crime,” researchers have identified just one fatal attack in 2018 that may have been motivated by left-wing ideologies.

Among the right-wing terrorist attacks was the vehicle attack in August 2017 by a neo-Nazi man that killed one person and injured 35 others protesting a rally by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.

James Fields, 21, who is due to go on trial on Monday, was among hundreds of white nationalists who attended the “Unite the Right” rally on August 12, 2017, where prosecutors say he plowed his car into people protesting the event, killing Heather Heyer, 32. 

Terrorism researchers say right-wing violence sprouted alongside white anxiety about Obama’s presidency and has accelerated in the Trump era. Trump and his aides have continuously denied that he has contributed to the rise in violence. But experts say right-wing extremists perceive the president as offering them tacit support for their cause.

A similar report released in early November found that the number of attacks carried out by white supremacists and right-wing extremists in the United States has grown significantly over the past decade.

The report, published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank, found that right-wing attacks doubled in the US from 2016 to 2017.