Attacks by white extremists are growing, so are their connections

[Mormolyce]

Attacks by White Extremists Are Growing. So Are Their Connections.

In a manifesto posted online before his attack, the gunman who killed 50 last month in a rampage at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, said he drew inspiration from white extremist terrorism attacks in Norway, the United States, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

His references to those attacks placed him in an informal global network of white extremists whose violent attacks are occurring with greater frequency in the West.

An analysis by The New York Times of recent terrorism attacks found that at least a third of white extremist killers since 2011 were inspired by others who perpetrated similar attacks, professed a reverence for them or showed an interest in their tactics.

The connections between the killers span continents and highlight how the internet and social media have facilitated the spread of white extremist ideology and violence.

In one instance, a school shooter in New Mexico corresponded with a gunman who attacked a mall in Munich. Altogether, they killed 11 people.

One object of fascination for the Christchurch killer and at least four other white extremists was Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right extremist who killed 77 in a bombing and mass shooting in Norway in 2011.

Mr. Breivik’s lengthy manifesto offered a litany of grievances about immigration and Islam — and the attacks became a model for future ones.

“I think that Breivik was a turning point, because he was sort of a proof of concept as to how much an individual actor could accomplish,” said J.M. Berger, author of the book “Extremism” and a research fellow with VOX-Pol, a European academic initiative to study online extremism.

“He killed so many people at one time operating by himself, it really set a new bar for what one person can do.”

Shortly after the Norway massacre, a prominent American white supremacist named Frazier Glenn Miller wrote on a white supremacist forum that Mr. Breivik had “inspired young Aryan men to action.” Mr. Miller opened fire on a Jewish retirement home and community center in Kansas a few years later, killing three.

Mr. Breivik was not the only mass killer to inspire copycats. The Christchurch shooter also paid tribute to a Canadian man who opened fire inside a Quebec City mosque in 2017, writing his name on one of the guns used in his attack.

That Canadian gunman read extensively about Dylann Roof, the American who killed nine worshipers at a black church in South Carolina in 2015.

At least four white extremist killers made statements online praising Elliot Rodger, a racist and misogynist who targeted women in a 2014 spree, before carrying out their own attacks.

All these attacks occurred amid a surge of white supremacist and xenophobic terrorism in the West that has frequently targeted Muslims, immigrants and other minority groups, the Times analysis found.

The analysis was based on data from the Global Terrorism Database and identified nearly 350 white extremist terrorism attacks in Europe, North America and Australia from 2011 through 2017, the latest year of available data. We also examined preliminary data on attacks in the United States in 2018.

The database is a project of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. It relies on news reports and other records to capture episodes that meet its definition of terrorism: the use of violence by a non-state actor to attain a political or social goal.

Over this period, white extremism — an umbrella term encompassing white nationalist, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, xenophobic, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic ideologies — accounted for about 8 percent of all attacks in these regions and about a third of those in the United States.

Erin Miller, who manages the database, said the increase in white extremist terrorism parallels a rise in hate crimes and bias episodes in the West and that deadly attacks are occurring more often.

“There’s a common framing of far-right terrorism or domestic terrorism as being ‘terrorism lite’ and not as serious,” she said. “It’s an interesting question given that far-right attacks can be quite devastating.”

Xenophobia Drives Violence in Europe
In recent years, Europe has seen a surge in far-right and xenophobic violence amid an influx of migrants and refugees from conflicts in the Middle East and Africa.

Attacks in North America Are More Deadly
In North America, the ideologies of older white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan have mixed with anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment and the fresh-faced fascism of the “alt right” to give rise to a more lethal terror.

The Global Reach of White Extremism
There were five white extremist attacks in Australia from 2011 through 2017, all of which were attacks on mosques and Islamic centers. There were no such attacks in New Zealand during that same period.

Then the massacre of worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch on March 15 — the deadliest shooting in modern New Zealand history — helped put the global nature of white extremism into relief.

Experts say the same broad motives are at play whether the target is a mosque in Perth or an asylum seekers’ shelter in Dresden or a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Attackers who identify as white, Christian and culturally European see an attack on their privileged position in the West by immigrants, Muslims and other religious and racial minorities.

The difference now is that it is easier than ever for extremists to connect both domestically and across continents, according to Mr. Berger, the “Extremism” author. The entry point for radicalization is less narrow than it was during earlier waves of white supremacist action, when finding ideological fellow travelers typically required meeting in person.

“This is a particularly strong wave,” Mr. Berger said, “and I think it’s being fueled by a lot of political developments and also by the sort of connective tissue that you get from the Internet that wasn’t there before that’s really making it easier for groups to be influenced and to coordinate, or not necessarily coordinate but synchronize over large geographical distances.”

Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, said that given these international connections, it’s important to reconsider the nature of the threat. “We conceive of this problem as being a domestic one,” she said. “But that’s not the case.”

The challenge for law enforcement will be to buck a sometimes myopic focus on Islamic extremism as the only driver of international terrorism.

It may also require rethinking the legal framework for what constitutes terrorism: from violence that arises from a command and control structure to a looser definition that can account for a wider range of violent actors who share a common ideology.

“They don't see themselves as Americans or Canadians, very much like the Christchurch killer didn’t see himself as an Australian; he saw himself as part of a white collective,” Dr. Beirich said.

“It has never been the case that these people didn’t think in a global way. They may have acted in ways that looked domestic but the thinking was always about building an international white movement.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...istchurch.html

Check out the article, it has some impressive infographics for the US and Europe.

[NoKingRulesForever]

Watch out, there might be a white extremist hiding under your bed...

The liberal media desperately wants there to be a white extremist problem. It's a way of coping with events like what happened in NZ. The same way Islamic terrorists were demonized after the 9/11 attacks. History repeats itself it seems.

[Kaleredar]

Watch out, there might be a white extremist hiding under your bed...

The liberal media desperately wants there to be a white extremist problem. It's a way of coping with events like what happened in NZ. The same way Islamic terrorists were demonized after the 9/11 attacks. History repeats itself it seems.

Given the United State's history with white nationalism and its (within living memory) position of power it formerly held, I'd say that it's a more pressing issue within the United States.


And before everyone starts saying "well ANTIFA/BLM/other left-wing boogeymen are just as bad!" that is not true. Like, statistically not true. There is NO statistical equivalence between right wing and left wing violence in the United States:

I posted it in another thread, but I think it would be good to get this on the front page of this one as well, to at least attempt to curtail the "THEY'RE BOTH THE SAME!" idiots hand-waving away right wing extremism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-...#United_States

As of December 2018, the New America Foundation placed the number killed in terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11 as follows: 104 killed in jihadist terrorist attacks, 86 killed in far-right attacks, 8 killed in black separatist/nationalist/supremacist attacks, and 8 killed in ideological misogyny/"incel" ideology attacks.[64] The politically conservative Daily Caller News Foundation using data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), found 92% of all "ideologically motivated homicide incidents" committed in the United States from 2007 to 2016 were motivated by right-wing extremism or white supremacism.[65] According to the Government Accountability Office of the United States, 73% of violent extremist incidents that resulted in deaths since September 12, 2001 were caused by right-wing extremist groups....

According to analysis by the newspaper of data from the Global Terrorism Database, 92 of 263 domestic terrorism events – 35% – that occurred from 2010 to 2017 were right-wing related, while 38 (14%) were Islamist extremist-related, and 34 (13%) were left-wing related. Not only that, but a criminologist from John Jay College stated that right-wing attacks were statistically more likely to result in fatalities.

So right wing extremists are more dangerous, more active in terrorist activities, and more connected and act in a country that has a problem with them holding power.

But the conservatives are saying we should all be scared of... the immigrants? The "socialists?" Some junior congresswoman with a Hispanic last name?

[ButterBeast]

Watch out, there might be a white extremist hiding under your bed...

The liberal media desperately wants there to be a white extremist problem. It's a way of coping with events like what happened in NZ. The same way Islamic terrorists were demonized after the 9/11 attacks. History repeats itself it seems.

we should just close our eyes and pretend that the rightwing aint getting more and more radicalized.


https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2018

[Mighty Tim]

I worry it is the spark that will set off the powder keg. It's becoming increasingly clear that multiculturalism was a doomed experiment and the more the government seems unable to deal with the fall out more and more people will take it upon themselves to fix what they see as the problem.

Future is going to be rather grim sadly as what was started comes to ahead.

[Shibito]

Ah the white boogeyman while ignoring the islamic truebelievers. Classic lefties.

[NoKingRulesForever]

we should just close our eyes and pretend that the rightwing aint getting more and more radicalized.


https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2018

ADL lacks credibility. They label anyone who criticizes Israel for anything as anti-semitic. I trust them as much as I trust Bernie Sanders!

[insert random number]

I worry it is the spark that will set off the powder keg. It's becoming increasingly clear that multiculturalism was a doomed experiment and the more the government seems unable to deal with the fall out more and more people will take it upon themselves to fix what they see as the problem.

Future is going to be rather grim sadly as what was started comes to ahead.

Blaming multiculturalism for the rise in white supremacist related terror is pretty close to blaming jews for the rise of nazism.

You are blaming the scapegoat through the proxy of multiculturalism, which is a hair's breath away from supporting the ideology that drives these attacks.

[Mighty Tim]

Ah the white boogeyman while ignoring the islamic truebelievers. Classic lefties.

What boogeyman man? While I would argue this surge is a direct result of current governments failing in spectacular fashion with immigration Pandora's box has been opened. In the governments failure to act in keeping it's people safe a new power is rising up to challenge it.

[Ihavewaffles]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...istchurch.html

Check out the article, it has some impressive infographics for the US and Europe.

There is no single international organisation for this hysteria. These actions would have happened without the internet due to domestic situations.

Article is for big brother n less freedoms, using attacks for this..

[Mighty Tim]

Blaming multiculturalism for the rise in white supremacist related terror is pretty close to blaming jews for the rise of nazism.

You are blaming the scapegoat through the proxy of multiculturalism, which is a hair's breath away from supporting the ideology that drives these attacks.

I am simply not blind to the world... when you start to expect terrorism from one group constantly and your cities streets being littered with the bodies of their victims people will take it upon themselves to solve the problem... it's how we got nazis in the first place.

People want a reckoning for those tortured and killed in attacks. They want justice for the now sadly thousands of children raped instead they got the chatty chant of " not all muslims" this is the logical end of such refusal of action.

[Machismo]

Watch out, there might be a white extremist hiding under your bed...

The liberal media desperately wants there to be a white extremist problem. It's a way of coping with events like what happened in NZ. The same way Islamic terrorists were demonized after the 9/11 attacks. History repeats itself it seems.

There's white nationalists in the White House...

[d00mGuArD]

It seems Europa has much much much more attacks than anywhere else according to the OP link




Germany, skandinavia(sweden), UK seem to be the worst.
It seems things are much better in the U.S.
It is clear where immigrants should be heading! To the better places! They should avoid Europe and their constant attacks

[Machismo]

I worry it is the spark that will set off the powder keg. It's becoming increasingly clear that multiculturalism was a doomed experiment and the more the government seems unable to deal with the fall out more and more people will take it upon themselves to fix what they see as the problem.

Future is going to be rather grim sadly as what was started comes to ahead.

Multiculturalism is nothing more than not trying to restrict the freedoms of others based on religion, race, or ethnicity. It's weird how you guys keep popping up to defend racism.

- - - Updated - - -

Don't use adl as a source for anything. They have a cleaŕ agenda.

Can you actually refute the information they provided?

Everyone has an agenda, including those who constantly try to deflect for racists.

- - - Updated - - -

Ah the white boogeyman while ignoring the islamic truebelievers. Classic lefties.

Who is ignoring radical Islamists?

[NoKingRulesForever]

There's white nationalists in the White House...

Oh look, there's a child molester in the house.

See how easy it is to make baseless accusations?

[Machismo]

Oh look, there's a child molester in the house.

See how easy it is to make baseless accusations?

You chose to literally ignore the accusations.

Gorka, Miller, Bannon... yeah.

They sure can pick em, can't they?

[Serpha]

Bunch of fearmongering conspiracy theories. Article trying deliberately mislead thy reader that it's all "white nationalists" consipracy when in fact a lot of them have nothing to do with nationalism let alone "white". Fuck off.

[Lochton]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...istchurch.html

Check out the article, it has some impressive infographics for the US and Europe.

It is sad, isn't it?

My only annoyance with this article is the fact that they don't call Breivik a terrorist. He killed anything that was in his wake - there's no white extremist card to hide behind - is a terrorist. The idiot changed his name to Fjotolf Hansen because he believed that'll change people's views.

[Grimbold21]

Yes, yes, the west is in danger of turning into one big racist state.

As credible as the west turning islamist in a few years

[Draco-Onis]

It's always good to see the hypocrisy of same people that freak out about ISIS dismiss this.