Report: Right-wing radicals now a larger threat than Jihadists in U.S.

Members of the National Socialist Movement “salute” a speaker during a neo-Nazi rally at the Jackson County Courthouse in Kansas City, Missouri, Nov. 9, 2013. Thedate was the 75th anniversary of Kristallancht, when Nazi Storm Troopers and others killed almost an estimated 91 Jews, destroyed synagogues, Jewish homes and shops and began the process that became the Holocaust. Photo by Dave Kaup/Reuters

When most people think of terrorism, they often conjure images of Islamic extremists huddled in far-away caves plotting intricate plots to harm non-believers of their faith.

But since Sept. 11, a new face of terrorism has emerged: the right-wing extremist. White supremacists, anti-government crusaders and other extremist groups have killed nearly twice as many people during that time than radical Muslims in the U.S., according to a report by New America, a Washington research center. Non-Muslim extremists killed 48 people in the U.S. while Jihadists claimed 26 lives.

Last week’s massacre of nine African-Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina, church was a particularly heinous crime reflective of the wave of hate-motivated violence echoing across the country.

“Law enforcement agencies around the country have told us the threat from Muslim extremists is not as great as the threat from right-wing extremists,” one of the researchers, Charles Kurzman, told the New York Times.

The study found that these right-wing extremists were largely white males who used personal firearms a majority of the time to carry out their attacks.

“On a federal level there is no agency that is working specifically on domestic terrorist threats, almost all of them are looking at foreign-oriented threat,” Ryan Lenz, a writer at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Vice News.

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