CNN: U.S. right wing extremists more deadly than jihadists
Look! It’s an election year! Time for the media to scare the low-information voters again. CNN’s Peter Bergen and David Sterman from the “New America Foundation” write a piece at CNN which warns that right wingers are more dangerous than Muslim extremists based on a simple statistic;
According to a count by the New America Foundation, right wing extremists have killed 34 people in the United States for political reasons since 9/11. (The total includes the latest shootings in Kansas, which are being classified as a hate crime).
By contrast, terrorists motivated by al Qaeda’s ideology have killed 21 people in the United States since 9/11.
See? That’s how easy it is to understand; 34 is a bigger number than 21, so Bergen and Sterman are right. But, you have to look a little deeper at the people they’re calling “right wing terrorists”. For example;
In 2009, for instance, Shawna Forde, Albert Gaxiola, and Jason Bush raided a house in Arizona, killing Raul Flores and his daughter Brisenia. The three attackers sought to use the burglary to finance their anti-immigration vigilante group, Minutemen American Defense. Forde and Bush were convicted and sentenced to death. Gaxiola was sentenced to life in prison.
Coincidentally, that case was when this blog split from Little Green Footballs’ Charles Johnson. Jason Bush was the ringleader of that little venture, he was pretending to be a retired special forces master sergeant, but he was just a career criminal who had mesmerized a few disorganized anti-immigration bigots. The murder was a crime, hardly terrorism.
Berman and Sterman give only two examples of “right wing terrorism” and then they resurrect the Timothy McVeigh zombie to bolster their vacuous “research”;
Of course, the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil prior to 9/11 was the Oklahoma City bombing, which was masterminded by Timothy McVeigh, a man with deep ties to far-right militant circles. McVeigh killed 168 people when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building on April 19, 1995.
Despite this history of deadly violence by individuals motivated by political ideologies other than al Qaeda, it is jihadist violence that continues to dominate the news and the attention of policy makers.
I guess it would be inconvenient if I mentioned a few left wing terrorists at this point like Floyd Lee Corkins, who was influenced by left wing hate speech to try his hand at a mass shooting in the offices of the Family Research Council – that’s terrorism, fellas. Unlike Jason Bush who was only robbing his victims, Corkins’ intent was to just kill people to punctuate his political statements.
But, yeah, I guess this is the next shiny object to use to distract the attention deficit Headline News viewers/voters from the scandals and incompetence of the current administration.
And to distract from this CNN story about 100 decimated al Qaeda leaders at a very public convention in Yemen.
But, yeah, let’s take our eyes off the al Qaeda ball and start hunting people with opinions different from most journalists.
Category: Media, Terror War
Yeah? Well, when the US death toll from “right wing terrorists” reaches 2000, let me know. Until then, nevermind.
Of course, 2000 is still 1000 fewer than the approximate number killed on 9/11 – by Islamic Extremists.
It’s interesting to note they also leave out the DC Beltway Snipers- why, it’s almost like they want to ignore the connection to Islam and left-wing nut jobs in that one
So he leaves out 9/11 but then goes back to McVeigh? But he doesn’t mention USS Cole or the embassy bombings or the Kohbar Towers. No, no hidden agenda there.
What about Benghazi, the muslim-on-muslim violence, the Boston Marathon bombing,…
What should we expect from the Clinton News network? Surely not the truth!! I take that as the reason their ratings are in the septic tank barely above that of MSDNC!
So how many innocents have been killed by the new American Militarized Police Force since 9/11. I’ll bet it’s significantly higher than 34.
If John has 34 apples and Jane has 21 oranges, what is the difference? Answer…55 because we’re talking apples and oranges here. But Jonn nailed it in his comment. “Low information voters”. That is the problem right there. People who can tell what shoes Kim Karadashian is wearing and Justin Bieber’s latest hit but not who their U.S. Senator is.
That dude on MSNBC Rachel Madcow was prattling on about this last night (don’t ask, it was just what happened to be on where I was.)
Funny how they trot out the right-winger meme when it suits them, which is pretty much every chance they get.
I also recall Mumbles Menino and most of the talking heads thinking the Boston Bombing was the result of “Tea Party types” because it was on April 15th.
Yeah, set your way-back machine a year for that one, but how much you want to bet they shoved that shit as far down the memory hole as they could get it?
Remember right after the failed Times Square bombing they blamed it on a white middle aged Tea Party member?
“Right wing extremists” are the group that’s most dangerous to Prog fantasies, so of course they are the great boogey man to lefties.
What I find interesting is an attempt to make murder for ideological reasons another issue to separate the electorate instead of uniting the electorate against murder for political statement.
I bet the folks killed by Islamists feel much better about being murdered by the less dangerous killers from the religion of peace…
The entire premise of the study is a waste of resources, people who kill for political reasons do so because they are murderous idealogues whose theories on the lives of those different than themselves are a disgusting reflection of their own twisted minds.
The quack journalists engaging in this study are pursuing their own pre-fabricated notions of where the dangers to the United States are coming from, without any discussion of appropriate methodology for dealing with such danger. Sparks is correct when he states 55 people were killed by the “terrorists” in this wildly inaccurate piece of non-investigative tripe.
The reality is that the country is under constant scrutiny for weakness and susceptibility to attack from the less dangerous adherents to the religion of peace. Pretending that some idiots playing militia in the woods who claim to have some fundamentalist right wing views are more dangerous than the muslim fundamentalists misses the point entirely. Extremism is the problem, not left or right or center. Extremists use bombs to kill children in a school or murder people at a church. Our refusal to believe and accept the words of those who would kill us is a testament more to our stupidity than their sincerity. We, as a nation, need to be aware that extremism brings down nations and usually from within.
These two writers should be ashamed of themselves, I know they are not and will not be ashamed. Their misdirection does nothing to engage the reality of dealing with extremists of any stripe, it’s just another pathetic attempt to generate relevancy for a network rapidly becoming its’ own punchline.
Veritas Omnia Vincit Again thank you and well said.
34 to 21. Does CNN think this is like some sort murderous sporting event? Scare mongering vultures. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
The bottom line is 55 Americans died needlessly. Extremism is extremism, regardless of what “wing” the MSM chooses to slot them in.
is this a surprise? both CNN and MSNBS decided early on that the Boston bombing had to have been committed by a right wing evil white man, and even after evidence to the contrary, they clung to that as tightly as they could.
TAH are more dangerous than Muslim extremists to veterans
Fail troll is fail.
I believe the correct grammar would be “TAH are Cyber-Terrorists”, but then again you’d have to pass third grade to grasp that kind of advanced knowledge. Hyphens and Capitalization and Plural Sense, Oh My!
IP check, isle 9 please. This is either Dennis-Boi or SHorTBuSRidER41.
It could be Frank The Spank, also- or everyone’s favorite plane crashing phony CPO
I’m sorry, all I’m hearing here is that 15 years of trying real hard may have actually bought America some safety. It’s all rather silly. Especially given the very specific selection of cases and date ranges.
On only a slightly related note, wouldn’t our local jihadist nutjobs fall under the banner of ‘U.S. right wing extremists’ too?
How’s about we include in those numbers all the crimes committed by illegals and the odd assortment of home grown thugs who commit crimes because of left-wing judicial and legislative prerogatives? (To say nothing about the selective prosecution and application of the law by various feds.) While we are at it, how about including every crime which is directly related to the drug trade, since that is probably the single thing terrorizing more Americans than any other single causative factor in the crime rate?
That Jason Bush killed two people in my area in about 1996-97. One was a transient the second was a Meth buyer who ripped Bush off over a drug deal. The witnesses would not talk until Bush was caught in Arizona.
How about a truly objective comparison – number of Americans killed by RW extremists in the last 25 years – which would be a meaningful statistic. Then let’s look at the numbers killed by Islamist extremists normalized the same way. Hasan killed four times as many as the KC loonie, the WTC more than 13 times as many as McVeigh. Then normalize it as deaths per 100,000 like the rest of the statistics.
CNN did a story that wasn’t about that missing plane?
I’m surprised they didn’t bundle the Holocaust into that figure. The liberal establishment continues to say that the Nazis were a far right group (which is, of course, bull: “Nazi” is a shortening for, translated, “National Socialist German Worker’s Party”, which would make it a far left group).
To be honest, the definition of a “far right” organization is rather vague. Wouldn’t, given the American Left’s history of racism and cruelty towards anyone other than their own members, all of the numbers given by CNN be actually attributed to far left groups?
And the idea that conservatives have killed more than jihadists is insane. Did 9/11 just not count? Or the Boston Marathon bombings? Hey, CNN, have you gone to a Tea Party rally? They leave the spot pristine, unlike your Occupy movements which tend to just trash the place and force the cops to crack down on them!
Another one sided story from the Communist News Network. Does not surprise me a bit.
Just yesterday was the Boston Marathon bombing anniversary.
Those right wingers alright….
This cunt was in turbo mode trying to deflect attention to libtard policies which resulted in that disaster.
Oh, those crazed “rightwing” extremists who (Oh, no!) believe in the Constitution… are far outnumbered by those Democrat-favored Sharia-loving jihadists who want to teach all us infidels to convert or be good little dhimmis.