Ilhan Omar Claims “White Men” Are Greater Threat Than Jihadis
Ilhan Omar Claims “White Men” Are Greater Threat Than Jihadis
By Robert Spencer
The ever-controversial Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) recently claimed that “our country [in this case she meant the United States, not Somalia] should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country.” She called for “profiling, monitoring, and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men.” As crazy as this sounds, it is a commonplace claim on the Left these days. But that doesn’t make it even remotely true.
No, they don’t. It is a false claim that “white men” or “right-wing extremists” are a bigger threat to Americans than Islamic jihad terrorists. As I noted in November 2018 when CNN’s Don Lemon made the same claim, this claim originated with an April 2017 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study that counted 106 people killed in 62 attacks by “far-right violent extremists,” as compared to 119 people killed in 23 attacks by “radical Islamist violent extremists.”
That’s it then, right? 39 more attacks by “far-right violent extremists” than by “radical Islamist violent extremists.” Although 13 more people were killed in the jihad attacks, this establishes definitively that America has a much bigger problem with the “far-right” than with jihadis, right?
No. One major problem with the Government Accountability Office study is clear on page 6 of its report, where you will see that the count of fatalities committed by “far right wing extremists” and “radical Islamist extremists” begins on September 12, 2001. Why was that day chosen for the beginning of the study? If the GAO had gone back one more day, the number of Americans killed by Islamic jihadists would have been several thousand more than those killed by “far-right violent extremists.”
Did the GAO start on September 12, 2001 in order to manipulate the results so as to exaggerate the terror threat from the “far-right” and minimize it from Islamic jihadis? Could there be any other possible explanation?
Another major issue: The study doesn’t take failed plots into account. At my site Jihad Watch, I’ve tracked jihad activity in the United States and around the world every day since October 2003. In the course of that nearly sixteen-year span, I’ve posted hundreds of reports on failed jihad plots inside this country. No one was killed or injured in those, and for that we can all be grateful. But if those plots had succeeded, there would have been hundreds and possibly thousands more fatalities of Islamic jihad activity.
Failed plots are quickly forgotten. They shouldn’t be. And it should be noted that there is nowhere near an equivalent number of foiled plots by “far-right violent extremists.” Most Americans have no idea how indefatigably jihadis are continuing to attempt mass murder inside the United States. Just last Monday, a Muslim in New York City shoved a commuter onto the subway tracks and screamed “Allahu akbar” when he was arrested. On July 8, a Muslim in Florida tried to stab a man with scissors at a Walmart and screamed while he was being arrested: “We are coming for you Trump. We are coming for you with knives. God will send angels to destroy you. I need Trump cut. I want to cut, two portions.” On Facebook, he had written: “Whoever knows why I came to America wait for the urgent news on television screens and victory is from Allah.”
And several weeks ago, two Somali Muslim “refugees” were arrested in Tucson, Arizona for plotting either to join the Islamic State (ISIS) overseas or carry out a jihad massacre in the United States. One of them declared: “I love jihad so much. If I go to Syria I want to be the beheading person, … I want to kill them so many I am thirsty their blood.”
Further, the GAO study doesn’t take into account the fact that there is a global network of Islamic jihadis. They are found on every inhabited continent. Major jihad organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have repeatedly called upon Muslims to murder Americans.
By contrast, there is no global network of “right-wing extremists,” and they have not called for the indiscriminate murder of American civilians.
This propaganda is everywhere, but all the repetition of these lies doesn’t make them true, even when Ilhan Omar is repeating them to the ecstatic ululations of an adoring media.