WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — According to the US policy think tank New America Foundation, right-wing extremists have carried out almost twice as many deadly attacks in the United States since September 11, 2001, and killed 48 people versus radicalized Muslims who killed 26.
“Unfortunately it’s something that’s come to be accepted by the public and by the media that unless a Muslim is involved in an act of violence, it can’t be labeled as terrorism.”
Dylann Roof, who murdered nine African Americans in a church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, 2015 for racial ideological reasons and with the intention of starting a civil war, was identified by US media as a “racist,” and not as a “terrorist,” Hooper said.
Hooper argued that such stereotypical bias was “counterproductive to our nation’s [United States’] interests, it is counterproductive to inter-faith relations, it’s just something that is harming us as a nation.”
“People need to assign importance to attacks of violence by racist groups, supremacist groups and by government groups, instead of just putting it down to deranged loners or other kinds of dismissive people.”
The New America Foundation report noted that some US law enforcement agencies view the threat of domestic terrorism as equal to or greater than, foreign terrorist groups, including the Islamic State, according to media accounts.