Americans are being killed. Murdered not for what they have done or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Slaughtered again and again because, whether Jewish, or black, or simply not “pure” white, they are seen as a pestilence to be purged.
Their murderers are followers of a vile and hateful ideology that meets the FBI definition of terrorism. But some top current and former law enforcement officials say that they are not treated as terrorists, because they are American, and they are white.
But amid the rising number of deadly white supremacist attacks, the officials say that must change. White supremacy must be called terrorism and tackled with the same vigor as ISIS and al Qaeda.
White supremacist murders in the US “more than doubled in 2017,” with far-right extremist groups and white supremacists “responsible for 59% of all extremist-related fatalities in the US in 2017,” ADL’s audit shows. They were responsible for 20% of these fatalities the year before.
Depending on who you ask, white supremacist terrorism is either not a problem, or the biggest threat to American democracy in years, but one that’s often ignored.
President Donald Trump has said he does not regard white nationalism as a rising global threat.
When asked in the aftermath of the New Zealand mosque massacres if he saw a worrying rise in white supremacy movements around the world, he replied: “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.”
Source: CNN
