Democrats and liberal media outlets were focused on hyping up terror threats linked to White supremacy while downplaying threats from jihadist terrorist groups like ISIS prior to the New Orleans terrorist attack on Wednesday.
On New Year's Day, a 42-year-old Native Texas man plowed his pickup truck into a crowd of New Year's revelers on Bourbon Street, New Orleans, killing at least 14 and injuring more than 30 others. The FBI identified the man responsible for the attack as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who was flying an ISIS flag on his truck at the time of the attack. The incident has revived previous comments on national security threats made by liberal pundits and Democratic lawmakers.
"According to the intelligence community, terrorism from White supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not al Qaeda — White supremacists," President Biden said in June 2021.
Biden would again call White supremacy the "most dangerous terrorist threat" facing the nation during a commencement address at Howard University on May 13, 2023. The following day, MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart asked Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas if he thought Biden's remarks about White supremacy being the "most dangerous terror threat" facing the nation were correct. "It tragically is," Mayorkas responded.
Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick Garland gave similar responses at a congressional hearing in 2021 when asked by then-Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., if "White supremacy extremists remain the most persistent lethal threat we face in the homeland today?"
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"Indeed, that is the case," Mayorkas said.
When Garland was asked if he agreed with Mayorkas, he responded, "I do, and that's the most recent assessment of the FBI."
Their comments came on the heels of a reported released by the Director of National Intelligence that found racially motivated extremists pose the most lethal domestic terrorism threat to America. In a March 2021 congressional hearing, FBI director Christopher Wray testified that the threat from domestic violent extremism was "metastasizing" across the U.S.
According to DHS, there were 231 domestic terrorism incidents between 2010 and 2021. Of these, about 35% were classified as racially or ethnically motivated. These attacks were also the most lethal, however the FBI and DHS does not break down the racial background of the offenders in this category.
Anti-government or anti-authority-motivated violent extremism was the second-largest category of attacks and resulted in 15 deaths over the same 11-year period.
A report from the New America think tank concluded that far-right extremists have killed 134 people across more than three dozen attacks, while US-based individuals that the FBI terms "Jihadists" killed 107 people across 14 attacks. The FBI defines far-right terrorism as consisting of anti-government, militia, White supremacist and anti-abortion violence.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul stated in a speech to New Yorkers on Nov. 22, 2022, that "White supremacists, right-wing extremists and domestic terrorists are trying to stoke fear in the hearts of New Yorkers," and that "they want us to think twice about our safety before we worship, before we get on a subway."
Joy Reid, host of MSNBC's "The ReidOut," explained why she thinks domestic terrorism isn't condemned in the same vitriolic way that foreign terrorism is by Republicans, in a Nov. 2023 broadcast.
"Iran becomes a surrogate for Muslims, we're going to shoot people in Mexico and talking about fentanyl becomes a surrogate for brown people south of our border," Reid said.
Her guest, Cornell Belcher, was also disheartened by the idea that not enough attention is being drawn to White supremacist terror when compared with foreign threats.
"You never hear them say we're going to take out, or we're going to smoke White supremacy out of this country, in the same way that they talk about terrorism in other places," Belcher said.
"I wonder why that is?" he asked.
ISIS is a jihadist group that has carried out terrorist attacks worldwide but has lost momentum in recent years, including in 2019 when U.S. forces killed Iraqi militant and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The FBI said Thursday that Jabbar had been "inspired" by ISIS, adding it had not found any evidence that he was directed by ISIS to carry out the attack.
The brother of the suspected terrorist told The New York Times that Jabbar had been raised Christian, but converted to Islam. The sibling, Abdur Jabbar, underscored that his brother does not represent the Islamic faith and instead called his actions an example of "radicalization."
Fox News' Emma Colton contributed to this report.
