Florida Killings: Radical Islam And The Far Right, Under One Roof
In The News Piece in NPR
July 19, 2017
Peter Bergen was quoted in an article by NPR about far right-wing terrorism:
The McVeigh case was one of several in the 1990s that focused attention on extreme right, anti-government groups.
Ever since the al-Qaida attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, that focus has shifted to radical jihadists. Yet both types of extremists remain very active.
"We have a jihadist terrorism problem. But we also have a neo-Nazi, far right-wing terrorism problem," said Peter Bergen, a national security analyst and vice president of the Washington think tank New America.
According to New America, far-right extremists have carried out more individual attacks in the U.S. since Sept. 11 than have radical Islamists, though the overall death toll in Islamist attacks is higher.
"Most Americans tend to frame terrorism as coming from Muslim, Islamist militants, and that's fair enough," Bergen added. "But there are other forms of political violence and we've certainly seen a steady number of right-wing, neo-Nazi attacks."