Thursday, Oct. 15, 2020
Do US officials say Black separatist groups pose as large a domestic terror threat as white supremacist groups?
While the Federal Bureau of Investigation monitors Black separatist groups for "racially motivated violent extremism," the agency's director said in September that "people subscribing to some kind of white supremacist-type ideology is certainly the biggest chunk of that." According to the FBI, Black extremist violence peaked in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Department of Homeland Security deemed white supremacy the most "persistent, lethal threat" in an October 2020 report, making no mention of Black separatist groups.
The 2019 Global Terrorism Database report reports that from 2015 to 2019 white supremacist and nationalist groups carried out 34 armed attacks and killed 64 people, while Black Hebrew Israelites, a Black extremist group, carried out 3 armed attacks and killed no one.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- The Hill: Racially motivated violent extremism makes up most of FBI's domestic terrorism cases
- DocumentCloud: Department of Homeland Security—Homeland threat assessment, October 2020
- DocumentCloud: FBI Intelligence Assessment—Black identity extremists (shared by Foreign Policy)
- Southern Poverty Law Center: Black separatist movement
- Anti-Defamation League: Black Hebrew Israelites
- University of Maryland: Global Terrorism Overview—Terrorism in 2019
- Center for Strategic and International Studies: The escalating terrorism problem in the United States
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