‘White terrorism’ turning into a real threat in US

Nahla Abdelmonem

The United States waged many wars outside its borders under the pretext of fighting terrorism and the danger posed by Islamist radicalism.

Nevertheless, a rise in the number of shootings inside it, ones that left dozens of people dead and injured so far, raises questions on whether Western states are on the right track as far as the real fight on terrorism is concerned.

Western media tends to quickly describe attacks launched by those harboring Islamist ideologies as “terrorist” ones. However, the same media becomes very cautious when it deals with attacks carried out by western nationals.

The rise in hate and racism crimes in Western societies also makes Islamist terrorism go down to the bottom of the list of security dangers faced by these societies. What is known as “White terrorism” takes the stead of this Islamist terrorism at the top of the list. White terrorism is perpetrated by whites who refuse the presence of immigrants and the followers of other religions and other cultures in Western societies.

Rise

The latest attacks in the US invited attention yet again to the scope of White terrorism in the American society. The latest example in this regard was of a man who opened the fire of his semi-automatic rifle on passersby near a bar in Ohio. Several people were killed and others injured. According to the Australian newspaper Sydney Morning, the attacker is a Spanish-American who is against immigration.

A few hours before this attack took place, another occurred in Texas. This attack was carried out by a 21-year-old White American who killed 20 people.

The attacker left behind a number of messages in which he expressed his hatred for immigrants. He described these immigrants as the most serious threat facing the American society. He told police that he had planned to kill the largest number of Mexican migrants, which was why he selected a border city to carry out his attack.

Debate

These attacks have stirred up an internal debate in the US. The weekly news magazine, Newsweek, ran an interview on August 3 with the former assistant director of counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Frank Figliuzzi, who accused US President Donald Trump of making such attacks possible.

He said the situation in the US has become a lot similar to Islamist extremism. Figliuzzi added that the US suffers from increasing rates of hate and the spread of arms and violence.

He called for treating racist crimes as a type of terrorism. Figliuzzi revealed that almost half of the cases investigated by the FBI are related to White terrorism.

He said this is a type of hate abetted by Trump’s administration.