Right-wing extremists killed 38 in U.S. last year, report finds
Right-wing extremists, including of the threat to a "national threat priority" for fiscal year 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a congressional hearing this month.
Wray's statements indicate the FBI is just as concerned about racially-motivated violent extremists as it is about the threat posed by homegrown extremists inspired by foreign terrorist organizations such as ISIS. Wray said both pose a grave threat because the perpetrators are often "lone actors," self-radicalized online, who choose easily available weapons and often look to attack "soft targets" such as public gatherings, retail locations or houses of worship.
In many cases, perpetrators can move quickly from rhetoric to violence, Wray said.
The report also includes killings by extremists linked to other ideologies, such as the killing of a police officer in Jersey City, New Jersey and three others at a kosher grocery store in December 2019. Authorities have said the assailants, David Anderson and Francine Graham, had identified in the past as Black Hebrew Israelites, a group with some sects known to rail against whites and Jews.
In addition, it tracks murders by extremists that were not motivated by their ideologies, but rather linked to gangs, domestic violence and robberies.
Attacks by extremists of all kinds have grown deadlier in recent years, and the ADL found an increase in extremist-related shooting sprees of particular concern. Guns were involved in 86% of the killings in 2019, according to the report. Over the past decade, 72% of those killed in the U.S. by extremists were killed by gunfire, the group found.
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