The evolution of all-American terrorism
In 2017, we teamed up with Type Investigations to track every incident of domestic terror that occurred in the U.S. between 2008 and 2016. We found that despite President Donald Trump’s eagerness to identify “radical Islamic terrorism” within our borders, right-wing extremists were responsible for nearly twice as many terror plots as those claiming to act in the name of Islam. Domestic far-right extremist terrorism was also far more deadly: Nearly a third of these incidents involved fatalities, for a total of 79 deaths, compared with 13% of Islamist cases.
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We’ve now updated our database to include the years 2017 to 2019. In that time, White extremist terror has grown and become more lethal: It accounts for almost the same number of deaths during Trump’s first three years as it did during Barack Obama’s entire eight-year presidency.
But not only has Trump been far from eager to acknowledge the outsized threat of far-right violence, even as it’s expanded under his watch, he has fanned the flames of racism.
In this week’s episode, Reveal reporters Priska Neely and Stan Alcorn, along with Type Investigations’ David Neiwert, uncover the online platforms fueling this wave of extremist violence – and why law enforcement officials are still struggling to catch up.
Hear the episode.
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Coming July 4: American Rehab
For more than three years, we’ve been investigating a uniquely American phenomenon: unpaid labor in the name of addiction treatment. That reporting has now become our first-ever serialized podcast, American Rehab.
The eight-episode podcast series begins July 4 and will run on our podcast feed and on more than 500 public radio stations across the U.S.
We’re very excited to share it with you. To make sure you don’t miss an episode, please consider subscribing to our podcast (if you haven’t already) on whatever platform you prefer.
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What we're reading (and listening to):
How the virus won – The New York Times
The country was unaware of its own epidemic. Many tests released by the CDC didn’t work, leaving only enough to test people who had visited China or had contact with a handful of known cases. Over the next two weeks, the invisible outbreaks doubled in size, then doubled three more times.
What is owed – The New York Times Magazine
The names of the mechanisms of social control have changed, but the presumption that white patrollers have the legal right to kill black people deemed to have committed minor infractions or to have breached the social order has remained.
The least you could do – Reply All
Black people all across the U.S. are receiving the world's weirdest form of reparations: Venmo payments from White people.
My family saw a police car hit a kid on Halloween. Then I learned now NYPD immunity works – ProPublica
I spoke to four witnesses, including my wife. All of them said they saw the same thing. When I called (NYPD spokesperson Al) Baker back, he told me that my wife and the three others were mistaken. The car hadn’t hit the kid. The kid had hit the car.
As his statement put it: “One unknown male fled the scene and ran across the hood of a stationary police car.”
30 years ago, Romania deprived thousands of babies of human contact. Here’s what’s become of them – The Atlantic
The windows on Izidor’s third-floor ward had been fitted with prison bars. In boyhood, he stood there often, gazing down on an empty mud yard enclosed by a barbed-wire fence. Through bare branches in winter, Izidor got a look at another hospital that sat right in front of his own and concealed it from the street. Real children, children wearing shoes and coats, children holding their parents’ hands, came and went from that hospital. No one from Izidor’s Cămin Spital was ever taken there, no matter how sick, not even if they were dying.
Anthony Blue spent more than 40 years in Maryland prisons for a crime he said he did not commit. Then came coronavirus – The Baltimore Sun
Before prison, Blue had been a kid – he liked clothes, girls and trouble. In prison, he became a man tortured by schizophrenia and blindness, driven to hurt himself. But he attended church, savored Sam Cooke songs, and harbored modest dreams of a hot bath and running a soul food restaurant.
Black people are only 7% of the Bay Area, but 27% of those killed by police – Bay Area News Group
Many in the ultra-liberal (San Francisco) Bay Area imagine the region lies a world away from Minneapolis or Atlanta or Louisville, where the killings of unarmed Black people have ignited a national reckoning over police violence and race. But a Bay Area News Group review of 110 law enforcement killings in the five-county Bay Area since 2015 tells a different story.
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Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.
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