Thread by @timjacobwise

1/ If u want to see the long arc of white supremacist terrorism & our nation's nonchalance about it, u can start with 9/11 & something that happened that day. Remember, prior to 9/11 the biggest recent single day act of terror on our soil had been OKC in 95...
#911Anniversary

2/ I say "recent" single day act bc there were larger or at least equal scale terror acts we often forget (Greenwood District in Tulsa in 1921, Sand Creek Massacre etc)...but anyway, as of 9/11 OKC was the most recent. Anyway, within a few hours of the attacks on 9/11...

3/ ...white supremacists were celebrating online. Neo-Nazi Billy Roper posted on a chat board that he wished "our people" had the "testicular fortitude" to do something like that. Others agreed. Even as they celebrated, no one cared about white racists IN AMERICA doing so...

4/ After all, the attacks appeared already by that time to have been the work of Muslims, so the Nazis didn't fit the story frame. Of course, neither did footage from the West Bank of some Palestinians celebrating...they had nothing 2 do with it either, but that ran constantly...

5/ So, even though the most recent attack prior to 9/11 had been by a right wing white guy inspired by The Turner Diaries (race war novel written by a Nazi), fear of 9/11 inspiring more like that wasn't a thing...focus was all on Muslims, even those w/no connection to the event..

6/ Meanwhile, we launch a "war on terror," destabilize much of the Middle East, go to war against Iraq (no connection to the event), help create ISIS by our actions, and all the while white supremacists are planning and plotting and advocating violence and no one cares...

7/ When the Obama admin tries 2 issue a report discussing the threat of right wing violence it gets hammered by conservatives & buried...The Obama admin puts some $$$ aside for monitoring and de-radicalization of these folks but Trump rescinds it...still focused on Muslims...

8/ Meanwhile, terror attacks are happening and violence on the right is growing, from the middle of Obama's 2nd term, at least, thru till today...far eclipsing the # of such attacks from Muslims or any other group/ideology...and still we refuse as a nation to name it...

9/ The myopia of all this would almost be laughable if the results were not so deadly. On this #911Anniversary let us not just recall the victims of terror that day (and those we created after with war), but the way in which it fed our willed ignorance to OTHER types of terror...

10/ And the way that ignorance has left us less safe. If the enemy is political terrorism (& not Islam), act like it. That means starting with the biggest/most ignored threat. It is white. It is right wing. It claims 2b Christian. Honor the dead by stopping the creation of more