Politically motivated crimes on rise in US, data show
The United States is experiencing its most deadly wave of politically motivated crimes in decades, figures show.
At least 232 such violent acts have occurred since demonstrators stormed the US Capitol in Washington on Jan 6, 2021, hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Reuters said.
Among those acts, 11 attackers in 22 fatal incidents killed 44 people. In at least 15 out of all of the incidents in which 38 victims and seven attackers died, the perpetrators expressed far-right beliefs. In one, the person supported the left.
The FBI said that the number of domestic terrorism investigations it has conducted has doubled since 2020. In September 2,700 cases were being investigated. Many of the perpetrators are so-called lone wolves or self-taught radicals, it said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers in December: “I’ve never seen a time where all the threats or so many of the threats are all elevated all at exactly the same time.”
Morgan Moon, an investigative researcher for the Center on Extremism of the Anti-Defamation League, said it works hard to track extremism in real time, and that a lot of radicalization happens online.
The center “monitors, exposes, and disrupts extremist threats and activity on the ground and online”, Moon said.
Following party caucuses and primaries held throughout the US over the past two months, Democratic President Joe Biden and the former Republican President Donald Trump are expected to be their parties’ candidates for president in the general election in November.
Trump continues to say falsely that he won the 2020 election.
Some of the most recent attackers said that divisive political rhetoric or conspiracy theories had influenced their decision to strike out. Others said they were radicalized in online forums or chat rooms.
Last year David DePape, who used a hammer to attack the husband of the former speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi in his San Francisco home in October 2022, was found to support right-wing conspiracy theories as he carried out his attack, two weeks before elections.
The Department of Homeland Security warns that the “threat of violence from individuals radicalized in the US will remain high” during election year.
However, as officials try to cool the political discourse, one in three Republican respondents to a poll conducted last year said that “true American patriots” may have to resort to violence to “save” the country.
At least 22 percent of independents agreed with those sentiments along with 13 percent of Democrats, the survey, conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, found.