February 17, 2017
PAY THEM:
So, American Mass Shooters and Islamic Terrorists Do Have Something in Common (Alana Conner, 2/17/17, Defense One)
According to a publicly available dataset from the New America Foundation, in the years since 9/11, jihadists born in the US have killed 69 victims. Right-wing extremists born in the US have murdered 50 victims. Foreign-born jihadists are the least lethal of these groups, with a total of 25 victims.These numbers offer evidence that an immigration ban will not stop the murder of Americans. But they also point to a larger flaw in the way we talk about domestic terrorism in the US. We treat right-wing extremists and radical Islamic killers as if they are two separate issues. But in fact, research suggests that the same underlying factors cause homegrown Americans to break bad--whether they join a radical Islamic terrorism group or the Ku Klux Klan. [...]Research from our Stanford University lab, led by Lyons-Padilla, suggests that a similar psychological process may drive white Americans to join white supremacist and other militant right-wing groups. The slow death of manufacturing, the isolation of smaller American towns and rural areas, and stagnating working- and middle-class wages have left a broad swath of Americans feeling unmoored and insignificant. The widespread acceptance of redneck jokes, white-trash impressions, and comments about "basket of deplorables" rub salt into these wounds.Like radical Islamic groups, white supremacist and other right-wing terrorist groups offer people (especially men) who feel isolated and disempowered a chance to feel important and welcome. It's the same psychological phenomenon, different culture war. And thus the KKK gains new recruits along with ISIL.
Posted by Orrin Judd at February 17, 2017 5:32 AM
