Almost twice as many people in the United States have been killed in terrorist attacks by individuals aligned with white supremacy and anti-government ideologies than by Muslim extremists since the Sept. 11 attacks, data compiled by one Washington-based research group suggests.
Data analyzed by New America revealed that 48 people have been killed in "lethal terrorist incidents" in the U.S. committed by non-Muslims since September 2001, compared to the 26 who were killed by attackers who self-identified as jihadist. The ongoing analysis, which the center has been compiling since 2011, made headlines Wednesday after the New York Times cited the findings in a report on the threat of U.S.-born radicalism in the wake of last week's deadly shooting at a South Carolina church.
Non-Muslims have carried out 19 deadly attacks since 9/11. Attackers identified as jihadists by the researchers launched seven in the same period.
Given the subjectivity of labeling cases as terrorism and weighing those incidents without clear motive, the researchers excluded several infamous attacks, including the mass killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado, and even the fatal shooting by a white man of his three Muslim neighbors in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The shooter in that case was said to be motivated by a parking dispute.
In its list of deadly jihadist attacks, researchers included incidents of ideological murder committed by non-Muslims that received short-lived national media attention, including the 2012 neo-Nazi murder spree at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and the 2014 rampage by antigovernment and neo-Nazi couple Jerad and Amanda Miller, who killed two police officers and a third person in a Las Vegas Walmart.
