In 2017, white supremacists converged on Charlottesville, Virginia, and terrorized the city for days, culminating in the murder of Heather Heyer.
In 2019, a gunman massacred 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, after posting a manifesto proclaiming he wanted to kill as many Hispanic people as he could.
In 2020, a member of the far-right Boogaloo movement murdered two officers at Black Lives Matter protests in Oakland and Santa Cruz, hoping to spark a civil war.
And last night, a right-wing militia member traveled 20 miles to instigate violence at protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he murdered two protesters and gravely injured a third.
That doesn’t even begin to summarize the scourge of far-right extremist violence that has gripped the country since 2017. But you wouldn’t know this domestic terror threat even existed listening to Trump. Department of Homeland Security officials trying to sound the alarm have been repeatedly stymied by the Trump administration, finding their efforts to prioritize the threat and increase funding to combat it always lose out to immigration enforcement and border security. The administration even refused to use the term “domestic terrorism” to describe the surge of far-right extremist attacks.
But Trump, with the help of Attorney General William Barr and the conservative media ecosystem, is more than happy to use “domestic terrorism” to describe “Antifa,” a loosely coordinated network of far left activists. They have been stoking fears about violent “Antifa” gangs roaming the streets and suburbs attacking random citizens and destroying buildings, dialing up their narrative to a fever pitch in recent months. But multiple analyses point to one conclusion: the anti-fascist violence Trump claims is the greatest threat facing our country simply does not exist.
Don’t believe his fear-mongering about “Antifa” and left-wing violence. The real terror threat is far-right, white supremacist violence, and the Trump administration is letting it happen
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