DHS terrorism report shows more damage from Left than Right
Thursday, July 5, 2012 at 9:46AM 
FBI Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists are mostly aligned with the Left. None are rightwingers. (Photo: FBI)Under the administration of President Barack Obama, the Dept. of Homeland Security created an impression that the biggest threats to national security come from the Right. In 2009 shortly after Obama took office, DHS issued a report titled “Rightwing Extremism.” The report stirred up a lot of controversy because just about anyone who didn’t like big government would be classified as an extremist. This is the way the Left categorizes supporters of Tea Party principles.
Recently Obama’s DHS chief Janet Napolitano came up with the ‘See Something, Say Something’ campaign. DHS videos showed suspicious people wearing hoodies—they were mostly white people.
A terrorism report funded by U.S. taxpayers turned up some information that flies in the face of Obama's politics. Historically, the Left has done far more damage than the Right.
DHS gave about $12 million taxpayer dollars to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. A report was compiled, “Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970 to 2008.”
The report showed that Leftists have traditionally posed the greatest threats, followed by groups best described as “other.”
Threats from Islamist groups and sympathizers aren’t broken out as such.
The authors of the report had rightwingers on the brain:
“We were also interested in what patterns of terrorist attacks looked like once events were distinguished by ideological motivation. For example, are there hot spots of extreme right-wing terrorist events?”
As it turned out, the totals for incidents/attacks by group over the 38-year study period makes right wingers look like choirboys:
Extreme Right Wing: 58
Extreme Left Wing: 364
Religious: 14
Ethno-National Separatist: 320
Single Issue: 337
Based on the government’s data, it’s obvious the most violent groups are Leftwing or other.
The report also noted, “Nearly 30% of all attacks took place in just 5 counties. The largest number of events occurred in Manhattan County, NY (n = 343; 13.1%), followed by Los Angeles County, CA (n = 156; 6.0%), Miami-Dade County, FL (n = 103; 3.9%), San Francisco County, CA (n = 99; 3.8%), and Washington DC (79; 3.0%).”
There’s more than one sanctuary city on that list; the report doesn’t break out threats from illegal aliens like a number of the hijackers on 9/11, for instance.
One other hotspot is Maricopa County, Arizona, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio is not only fighting drug cartels, traffickers and other criminals. Arpaio is also fighting the U.S. Dept. of Justice, an agency apparently unconcerned about who’s really doing the crime.
There’s another snippet of anecdotal data that’s intriguing.
If you look at the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list or Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists, there’s not a rightwinger in sight. The majority of most wanteds on those lists are either leftwingers (animal rights groups), Islamists or drug-related.
The Infowars site noted:
“The rush to denounce legitimate political beliefs as thought crimes, or even mundane behaviors, by insinuating they are shared by terrorists, has accelerated in recent months.”
If DHS is promoting the idea that conservatives and Libertarians are the greatest threats to the U.S., the agency is operating outside the realm of reality, opting to promote politics. That is not only dishonorable, it is a threat to the nation’s security and a violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
(Commentary by Kay B. Day/July 5, 2012)
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