By conservative estimates, far-right terror killed 87 people during the first three years of the Trump administration, nearly twice as many as the last three years of the Obama administration. White supremacist violence accounts for the majority of terrorist attacks committed in the United States, the frequency and lethality of which is only escalating. Most recently, six women of Asian descent were killed in the recent Atlanta spa shootings. It’s a grim testament to our national numbness toward tragedy that those slain are barely being talked about anymore.
While former President Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric is in part to blame for the rise in white supremacist attacks, the other side of the coin is Trump’s Federal Bureau of Investigationirector Chris Wray, whom President Joe Biden has said he does not plan to fire or replace. Wray oversaw this surge in far-right terror, and did little to mitigate the growing movement of organized white nationalist violence. As a result, those who find themselves in the crosshairs of white supremacist conspiracy theories are more vulnerable to racist attacks—and in the case of the Atlanta spa shootings, face targeted killings.
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