Media Talk of "Boogaloo" A Distraction

For a while now, the media has gotten riled up over the “Boogaloo movement.” They missed the fact that it’s a meme, a joke among those who fear a civil war is coming and deal with those concerns by making light of it. Why else would the Hawaiian shirt become such a symbol? I mean, it’s not like it’s really camouflage or something.

Advertisement

Now, the media is really ramping up the fearmongering.

According to a recent report, deaths attributable to so-called “right-wing domestic terrorists” have increased by more than 300% since President Donald Trump took office in 2017.

A database compiled by the Type Media Center’s David Neiwert and based on government interpretations of ideological motivations showed that at least 87 people were “killed by far-right terrorists” during Trump’s first three years in office. That number swells to 145 dead in three years if the 58 people killed by [Vegas Killer’s Name Redacted] during the Las Vegas massacre in October 2017 are added in.

Except we don’t know that the Las Vegas shooting had anything to do with politics. Especially since the targeted festival was country music, which is far more likely to be listened to by Trump supporters than their opponents.

Of course, the Type Media Center isn’t exactly a non-biased source.

The Type Media Center was formerly known as The Nation Institute and was previously attached to The Nation magazine.

From 2013 through 2016, “right-wing” terrorists in the United States killed some 46 people.

Conversely, Neiwert notes, only 17 people have died due to domestic Islamic terrorism over the past three years. Left-wing domestic terrorism barely registered during the time span; only four such deaths occurred in the past three years.

Of course, I have to question their methodology here.

For one, if Las Vegas is potentially lumped in with “right-wing” terrorism, how many other BS acts fall into place.

Advertisement

Let’s also note that 46 people killed over four years is about 11 people per year, so pretty low.  The total of 87 over the last three years or so works out to 28 per year (rounded, of course, since you can’t kill a fraction of a person). That’s not a 300 percent increase. Math Lives Matter and all that.

Now, is that still a significant increase? Sure. However, a fair portion of that total likely comes from racially-motivated killings. For example, 11 were killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting. Yet, while many like to classify anti-Semitism as a right-wing cause, it has nothing at all to do with anything President Trump has said.

Further, the report using a big, scary number–300 percent–to grab attention, yet let’s also acknowledge that when we look at the total number of supposed homicides we’re talking about here, it’s statistical noise at most. In a nation of almost 330 million people, fewer than 30 people per year–while tragic–isn’t a pressing problem.

Unfortunately, some people seem to think otherwise.

Authorities who study extremism told Congress Thursday that far-right groups, not the radicals of antifa, currently pose the most serious threat of political violence in America — including attacks on the police.

“The facts are right now that right-wing extremism is the bigger problem. That’s where the violence is coming from,” said Heidi Beirich, the recent co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and former director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, where she spent the past two decades tracking and reporting on far-right extremist activity in the U.S.

Beirich was called to testify Thursday as part of a virtual hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence & Counterterrorism, along with JJ MacNab, a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, and John Donohue, the former chief of strategic initiatives for the New York City Police Department and a fellow at Rutgers University’s Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience.

Advertisement

Now, the hearing was prompted by events that actually happened where those who have identified with the “Boogaloo movement” were arrested for allegedly planning attacks during the Black Lives Matter protests, so it’s not completely because of fear-mongering.

Still, though, where are the hearings on the riots that ravaged pretty much every major city in this country? Where are the hearings on the coordinated nature of how these protests were hijacked into outright riots?

My days of taking Congress seriously are certainly coming to a middle, let me tell you.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Sponsored