So claims a recent New York Times article, citing data to the effect that since 9/11, the former have killed more Americans than have the latter. Megan McArdle pokes some holes in this accounting:
I find it very hard to understand why [many] cases were included, except to pad out the count of “deadly right-wing attacks.” Presumably we are looking for political terror for a political purpose, not every violent crime by a Muslim or a right-winger. This means the acts must include some amount of premeditation, some intent to pursue an ideology, not a flash shootout precipitated by a completely unrelated event, like beating your wife or getting your utilities shut off. . . .
[O]nce you start throwing in the gray cases on the right-wing side, shouldn’t we be similarly permissive on the Islamic-terror side? In prison, one of the Beltway snipers penned rambling anti-American screeds in which the Baltimore Sun said that “the most recurring theme is that of jihad . . . against America.” The Beltway snipers killed ten people, which all by itself would bring the number of jihadist killings up to 36. Then the story becomes less “right-wing terror is much more dangerous than jihad” and more “Muslim terrorists have killed some people in the United States, and other kinds of ideological murderers have, too.” . . .
The parameters these particular researchers chose might not be the criteria you would use; they are certainly not the ones that I would have chosen. And even if you agree that these are absolutely the right and proper numbers, that still doesn’t tell us that right-wing terror is more dangerous to us, the living, than to the people during the time period they studied. To know that, you would need to know who remains out there, plotting dark things.
Read more on Bloomberg: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-30/tallying-right-wing-terror-vs-jihad