WHERE'S GENERAL RENO WHEN WE NEED HER:

In the US, violent rightwing activity was linked to at least 50 deaths in 2018. Research by the Anti-Defamation League showed that over the last decade, 73.3% of all extremist-related fatalities in the US could be linked to domestic right-wing extremists, while 23.4% were attributable to Islamist extremists.

So are we nearing the moment of turnaround, when counterterrorist agencies get the upper hand? Many specialists fear the answer is no, simply because the resources and attention focused on rightwing violence are insufficient.

Last year, the former head of the Metropolitan police's counterterrorism unit said the UK had not "woken up" to the threat posed by the far right. In the US, experts at the Soufan Centre, founded by the former FBI special agent Ali Soufan, described a "long-running US double standard with concerns over crime and terrorism that are inspired by the narrative of Bin Ladenism versus crime and terrorism inspired by right-wing ideology".

Though there are substantial differences, rightwing and Islamist extremism, and extremists, share a great deal. The basic mechanics of the process of radicalisation - by peers, through the internet or otherwise - are very similar. As is the way both forms of violent activism are on the fringe of a much broader movement, much of which has bled into the mainstream in different parts of the world. There are no "lone wolves", at least not in the sense of a solitary actor without links, whether virtual or real, to others.

In a "manifesto" published online by the suspect in the Christchurch attack, for instance, he said he was not a "direct member" of any group or organisation but had interacted with, or donated to, many.

Another shared element is the belief that "resistance" to tyranny is not just acceptable but an obligation. Islamist militant thinkers say rulers or regimes should be overthrown if they stand in the way of the rule of the enlightened and faithful. Rightwing extremists also see the government as the oppressor of their imagined community, defined by "race" and sometimes faith, the authority of which should be rejected and sometimes fought.

Both Islamists and rightwing extremists believe their communities are facing an existential threat, placing an obligation on the individual to fight back. For the Islamists, the belief that a belligerent west has been set on the humiliation and exploitation of the world's Muslims for the best part of 1,000 years is axiomatic.

Demography looms large for far-right nationalists. Protesters in the US have paraded beneath swastikas, shouting: "Jews will not replace us."

The New Zealand suspect's manifesto is titled "The great replacement", a theory predicting the end of the European white race as it is displaced by immigrants from other races. It starts with the phrase "it's the birthrates" repeated three times and predicts "the European people spiralling into decay and eventual death" if nothing is done. The atrocity, the manifesto says, was "a partisan action against an occupying force".

Once again, President Donald Trump is having a tough time calling out far right-wing white nationalism.

His response to the carnage in New Zealand, where 49 people died in an attack on two mosques, is also raising fresh questions about his attitude toward Islam following a long history of anti-Muslim rhetoric -- and about the extent to which the President has a responsibility to moderate his language given the rise in white supremacy movements across the world. [...]

But asked whether he saw a worrying rise in white supremacy movements around the world, Trump said he did not, blaming a small group of people "with very, very serious problems." He also told reporters that he had not seen the manifesto linked to by a social media account that's believed to belong to one of the attackers, which mentioned Trump by name and saw him as a symbol of renewed white identity.

[W]hite supremacist radicalism, whether aimed at Muslims in New Zealand or Jews in Pittsburgh, differs very little from Islamist radicalism, much of which also happens online. Participants are lured in slowly but soon feel part of a strong alternative, international community, one that has its own language, its own symbolism, its own set of grievances. Its members come to hate the "normal" world, with its virtues of democracy and tolerance, and some of them begin plotting to use violence to bring it down.

There is a difference, though, in how they have been treated. Since 2001, governments around the world have approached online Islamist radicalism with grim seriousness, blocking its financial sources, searching out potential terrorists, working with Internet platforms to stop its spread. By contrast, we have yet to treat white supremacism with anything like the same kind of vigor. Many hours after the New Zealand shooting, it was still ridiculously easy to find the video online. There are few special government programs to fight the milder forms of this violent ideology, and relatively little time has been devoted to thinking about it. The U.S. president has not taken a stand against it; an Australian politician, in the wake of the attack, even seemed to endorse it.

Both radicalisms kill. But while we dither, the death toll -- in Norway, South Carolina, Britain -- continues to rise. And the alternate world continues to tell jokes, make memes -- and draw people in.

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