US sees surge in extremist mass killings

Many mass shootings perpetrated by extremists in the United States last year had ties to right-wing extremism and were often fueled by white supremacist ideology, the Anti-Defamation League says.

The ADL is a Jewish NGO in the US that bills itself as "the leading anti-hate organization in the world". Its Center on Extremism, which tracks killings linked to various forms of extremism in the country, said in its annual report that right-wing extremists killed 25 people in 12 separate acts in the US last year.

"It is not an exaggeration to say that we live in an age of extremist mass killings," the report said.

One of the most prominent cases was the shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York state, by Payton Gendron, 18, a white gunman who killed 10 black shoppers.

In another shooting, five people were killed and 17 wounded at a nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The gunman, Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, allegedly ran a website with neo-Nazi materials, said police during a hearing to determine if the shooter should face hate charges.

The ADL report said the number of cases linked to extremism in the past 10 years was three times what it was in any other span over a decade since the 1970s.

Only two to seven cases related to extremism had occurred every decade since the 1970s until 2000. However, by 2010 the figure had risen to 21, and the number of cases has continued to rise, the report said.

Between 2010 and 2020, 164 people died after being involved in a mass shooting by extremists. The number is higher than in any other decade except the 1990s. At least 93 percent of all murders were carried out with a firearm, the report said.

In addition to right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism is a concern, it said. The ADL found that "left-wing extremists engage in violence ranging from assaults to fire-bombings and arson, but since the late 1980s have not often targeted people with deadly violence".

Alarming trend

Some other mass murders have been fueled by Islamic extremists who support the Islamic State group.

However, those murders have decreased significantly in the US over the past five years, and if that trend continues, the main domestic threat in the US will be from white supremacists, the report said.

"Of particular concern in recent years are shootings inspired by white supremacist 'accelerationist' propaganda urging such attacks."

The Center on Extremism has followed trends in extremism since 2008 and has looked back at cases from the 1970s onward.

It said it had identified 62 extremist-connected mass killings since 1970, 46 of them being ideologically motivated. Fifty-seven percent of these killings occurred within the past 12 years over extreme ideology.

Last year 18 of the 25 extremist-related murders were committed in whole or part for ideological motives, the report said. The seven other murders either had no clear motive or were committed with a nonideological motive.

"White supremacists commit the greatest number of domestic extremist-related murders in most years, but in 2022 the percentage was unusually high: 21 of the 25 murders were linked to white supremacists.

"Again, this is primarily due to mass shootings. Only one of the murders was committed by a right-wing anti-government extremist — the lowest number since 2017."

Many of the gunmen who were inspired by hateful ideology left public manifestos online about why they felt they had to kill their victims.

Patrick Crusius, 21, carried out a shooting rampage in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019, killing 23 people who were mainly Hispanic at a supermarket. Minutes before the killings he posted an anti-immigrant manifesto online.

Similarly, Gendron, the gunman in the Buffalo shooting, posted a racist manifesto online before livestreaming his killings on social media.