This claim, which echoes those of so many other Democrats – including Attorney General Merrick Garland, who says white supremacists pose “the most dangerous threat to our democracy” – is false.
Much of their “evidence” comes from groups with long histories of misinformation, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose business model depends on ginning up fears about supposed threats. In the aftermath of the Buffalo massacre, the New York Times trumpeted a 2021 “Murder and Extremism” report from the Anti-Defamation League to make the case that the “political right has a violence problem.”
But, as my RealClearInvestigations colleague James Varney reports, this characterization is as misleading as it is inflammatory. The ADL reports that white supremacists accounted for 244 (55%) of the 443 killings that the ADL “documented” between 2012 and 2021. Fifty-five percent – that sounds big! Varney notes that during that same period, there were about 165,000 murders in the United States. Thus, white supremacists accounted for 0.001% of the total.
It’s time to stand up to the left-leaning politicians and their media allies like the New York Times who are attempting to craft this narrative of white conservative domestic terrorism.