Thread by @egavactip

I'd like to share in this thread some of the interesting findings in our new report, "Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2021."

adl.org/murder-and-ext…

We were able to identify at least 29 people killed in the U.S. in 2021 by domestic extremists. This is 6 more than in 2020, but still less than in previous recent years. The main reason? Those years had more extremist shooting sprees, which cause death totals to rise. A lot.

Extremist shooting sprees were behind all the highest yearly death tolls except 1995, the year of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Even leaving shooting sprees aside, firearms allow extremists to kill people cheaply, easily, almost effortlessly. Almost every year, firearms are the weapons most used by domestic extremists to kill.

The vast majority of the extremist murders in 2021 were committed by right-wing extremists--26 out of 29. However, there were two murders by black nationalists and one by a domestic Islamist extremist.

Over the past decade, right-wing extremists have been responsible for about 75% of all killings by domestic extremists. I thought left-wing deadly violence might rise during the Trump years, but basically it didn't (2017 had a number, but 2018-2019 had 0 and 2020 just 1).

When you examine the killings by right-wing extremists during that same time period, it turns out white supremacists were responsible for nearly 3/4 of them. This 10-year average has changed little over the past 7 years. White supremacists kill more than other extremists.

Part of the reason for this is that white supremacists not only engage in a lot of ideologically-motivated deadly violence, targeting perceived enemies, but also group-related violence (killing suspect informants, internal rivals, members of other groups, etc.), and traditional

deadly violence ranging from violence against women to home invasions.

Among white supremacists, white supremacist prison gangs commit the most murders--they are quite deadly--but they are hardly alone. One significant contributor to death totals in earlier decades, however,

racist skinheads, have seen their numbers drop significantly over the past decade. This is due to the decline of this subculture, in part bc of the rise of the alt right, which has appropriated for itself many of the young males who in previous eras might have become skinheads.

Extremists killed three law enforcement officers in 2021. Most years, 1-3 officers are killed by extremists each year. Over the past 10 years, left-wing extremists (mostly black nationalists) and right-wing extremists have been roughly equal in their killing of officers.

This is only one measure of extremist-related danger/violence, I should stress. Extremists attempt or carry out terrorist plots, armed standoffs & shootouts, hate crimes, spontaneous violence at traffic stops and residence visits, traditional crimes, and more.