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The US Has a Homegrown Terrorist Problem, It’s Coming from the Right | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Richard W. Collins III’s graduation gown. (Neal Augenstein/Associated Press)


Richard W. Collins III, fatally stabbed last May on the University of Maryland’s College Park campus, was as innocent as the 22 victims slain in the Manchester suicide bombing on Monday. Collins, an African American, newly commissioned US Army officer from Maryland, was, like the victims of the Manchester, England, massacre, not bothering anybody. Slated to graduate from Bowie State University this week, Collins was simply out with friends enjoying himself. So, too, were those killed and wounded in Manchester.

Authorities are investigating Collins’s death, allegedly at the hands of a knife-wielding University of Maryland student, Sean Urbanski, as a possible hate crime. Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), speaking on the House floor, called the killing of his constituent a “vicious crime probably motivated by hate.” The cause has not been pinned down.

In Manchester, there’s certainty.

That attack is deemed an act of terrorism spurred by an aim to intimidate and make a statement about the presumed religion, nationality and cultural values of the victims.

But the suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, reportedly was radicalized recently. Flirtation with the dark side may have also attracted Urbanski.

According to University of Maryland Police Chief David Mitchell, Urbanski belonged to a Facebook group where members post racist and other offensive statements. Mitchell described the postings as “despicable” and said they showed “extreme bias against women, Latinos, persons of the Jewish faith and especially African Americans.”

What’s striking about these unprovoked attacks is how much is known about motivators of extremists abroad and how little is known, or at least discussed, about instigators of extremism here at home.

As the Anti-Defamation League noted in a new report, “A Dark & Constant Rage: 25 Years of Right-Wing Terrorism in the United States,” the United States has experienced a long string of terrorist incidents, with many connected not to Islamist terrorists but to right-wing extremists.

The findings were startling.

The ADL analyzed 150 terrorist acts in the United States that were committed, attempted or plotted by right-wing extremists. “More than 800 people were killed or injured in these attacks,” the ADL said, noting that the attacks “surged during the mid-to-late 1990s and again starting in 2009” — the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency.

They also looked at other acts of violence and determined that “from 2007 to 2016, a range of domestic extremists of all kinds were responsible for the deaths of at least 372 people across the country. Seventy-four percent of these murders came at the hands of right-wing extremists such as white supremacists, sovereign citizens and militia adherents.”

(The Washington Post)