The Resurgent Threat of White-Supremacist Violence

Although the leaders of the white-supremacist alt-right insist their movement is nonviolent, racist rhetoric and hateful ideas can inspire violence if taken to their logical conclusion. A lone individual, encountering white-supremacist propaganda, can become convinced that it is a cause worth fighting for. Timothy McVeigh read The Turner Diaries, a story of a race war written by a notorious white supremacist, before he carried out the Oklahoma City bombings. Dylann Storm Roof frequented racist and anti-Semitic sites before he walked into an African American church and gunned down nine parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina.

And the threat they pose is not trivial. According to the, white supremacists were responsible for more than half of the 34 fatalities linked to domestic extremists of all stripes last year, claiming 18 lives in 2017.