The Anti-Defamation League’s
annual report on extremist killings in the United States, released Wednesday, found that individuals linked to right-wing extremist movements committed every single extremist-related murder in the country in 2018.
Right-wing extremists killed 50 people last year, mostly with firearms, making them responsible for more deaths than in any year since 1995, according to the ADL’s data.
The report focuses on incidents like the
February mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida, committed by a teenager who expressed sympathy towards white supremacist ideology; the
massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue by an avowed anti-Semite; and the
shooting spree at a Tallahassee yoga studio by a man bent on committing violence against women.
Guns were responsible for 42 of the 50 deaths documented by the ADL.
“The white supremacist attack in Pittsburgh should serve as a wake-up call to everyone about the deadly consequences of hateful rhetoric,” ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt said in a statement accompanying the report’s release. “It’s time for our nation’s leaders to appropriately recognize the severity of the threat and to devote the necessary resources to address the scourge of right-wing extremism.”
