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	Deadly attacks and terrorist plots over the last 3 years that involved white extremists by Keegan Hamilton, Tess Owen Vice News, agencies USA   In a recent speech to U.S. military leaders, the president accused the media of ignoring terrorist attacks for political reasons. Without offering specifics, Trump referenced attacks in Europe and said “in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it,” adding, “They have their reasons, and you understand that.”   The White House later released a “timeline” of 78 attacks the administration believes did not receive adequate media attention. Except they did. Not only did all of these incidents receive plenty of media coverage, but the list also focuses exclusively on attacks perpetrated by Muslims, troublingly seeming to ignore incidents linked to far-right extremists and white nationalists even as the threat to Americans posed by these groups has grown.   The three most recent deadly jihadist attacks in the U.S., in San Bernardino and Orlando, claimed a combined total of 63 lives. (The shooter in the January attack in the Fort Lauderdale airport that killed five people claimed to have been inspired by the Islamic State group, but his ties to the group were unclear.)   But a 2015 study by the New America Foundation found that between 9/11 and June 2015, white supremacists and right-wing extremists killed nearly twice as many people (48) on American soil as radical Muslims did (26).   The nonpartisan think tank also noted that every lethal attack inside the United States from 9/11 to 2015 was committed by a citizen or legal resident, throwing water on Trump’s idea that restricting foreign immigration will reduce the risk of terrorism. The administration reportedly plans to deprioritize national security investigations into domestic right-wing extremists, focusing instead on “radical Islamic extremism.”   Here’s a list of deadly attacks and terrorist plots over the last three years in the U.S. and Canada that involved white extremists. Like Trump’s list, this collection of incidents is far from comprehensive — it’s something we cobbled together from the VICE News archives, reports by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Google. (The Global Terrorism Database has the most comprehensive information on terror attacks around the world from 1970 until 2015.   And much like the incidents flagged by the Trump administration, all of these cases received at least some level of media attention, but the White House either overlooked or chose to ignore them when compiling its list.   Date: Jan. 29, 2017 Location: Quebec, Canada   Incident: Alexandre Bissonnette, a 27-year-old Canadian described by authorities as a “criminal extremist” inspired by extreme right-wing French nationalists, killed six people and wounded 19 others at an Islamic Cultural Center in Quebec City. The attack was cheered by far-right groups in Canada, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer said it was “a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant,” apparently citing the attack as justification for Trump’s U.S. travel ban on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries.   Date: Oct. 14, 2016 Location: Garden City, Kansas   Incident: Three men allegedly belonging to a group called “The Crusaders,” an anti-immigrant, anti-government militia, were charged with conspiring to bomb a Somali immigrant community in Kansas. Patrick Stein, one of the defendants, told an undercover agent that he hoped the attack would be a “bloodbath.” Stein, Curtis Allen, and Gavin Wright stockpiled firearms and explosives, which they planned to use to attack a building complex that is home to many Somali immigrants. The men repeatedly referred to the Somalis as “cockroaches.”   Date: Nov. 27, 2015 Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado   Incident: Robert Louis Dear, a 57-year-old Colorado man, attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. Armed with four assault rifles and other weapons, Dear killed three people and injured nine others. According to court documents, Dear told investigators that he hoped he would be met in heaven “by aborted fetuses thanking him for saving unborn babies.” He said he was driven to action by false allegations that Planned Parenthood clinics sell baby parts. Dear also characterized members of the “Army of God,” a group of anti-abortion extremists behind other attacks on abortion clinics, as “heroes.”   Date: Nov. 24, 2015 Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota   Incident: Four men wearing ski masks attacked Black Lives Matter protesters during a demonstration, wounding five. Allen Scarsella, the only assailant with a gun, was convicted on assault charges. The other defendants were charged with second-degree assault. The four men reportedly met online in forums frequented by people with racist and anti-government views. The evidence against Scarsella included text messages he sent to his friends where he discussed shooting black people and photos on his phone that showed him posing with confederate symbols.   Date: July 23, 2015 Location: Lafayette, Louisiana   Incident: John Russell Houser opened fire at a movie theatre during a showing of “Trainwreck,” a film starring the comedian Amy Schumer. He killed two women, ages 21 and 33, and injured nine others before committing suicide. Houser espoused extremist right-wing views and was reportedly an ardent anti-feminist.   Date: June 23, 2015 Location: Charleston, South Carolina   Incident: Dylann Roof, a self-avowed white supremacist, walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, a historically black church, and joined bible study. After an hour, as congregants had their heads bowed in prayer, Roof opened fire, killing nine black churchgoers. Roof’s website, “The Last Rhodesian,” featured photos of him posing with neo-Nazi and white supremacist symbols and a manifesto, in which he expressed his racist views towards African-Americans.   Date: Nov. 28, 2014 Location: Austin, Texas   Incident: Larry Steve McQuilliams, armed with a .22 caliber rifle, fired more than 100 rounds at government buildings in downtown Austin, including a police station, a Mexican consulate, a federal courthouse, and a bank. He tried to set the consulate on fire before he was shot dead by police. There were no fatalities. Police searched his rental van and found homemade bombs made from propane cans, a map containing 34 targets, and a white supremacist book called “Vigilantes of Christendom.” Police characterized McQuilliams as a “homegrown American terrorist trying to terrorize our people.”   Date: June 8, 2014 Location: Las Vegas, Nevada   Incident: Jerad and Amanda Miller, a couple who shared their extreme anti-government positions through videos posted online, shot and killed two Las Vegas police officers, and later killed a civilian in Walmart store. The Millers had spent time on Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s property during protests related to Bundy’s dispute with the federal government.   Date: June 4, 2014 Location: New Brunswick, Canada   Incident: Justin Bourque, a 24-year-old from Moncton, Canada, shot five officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, killing three and severely injuring two. He was captured after a 10-week manhunt. Bourque posted pro-gun and anti-police slogans on Facebook, and said he feared Russia would invade Canada in a third world war.   Date: April 13, 2014 Location: Kansas City, Missouri   Incident: Frazier Glenn Cross, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, opened fire on two Jewish sites in a Kansas City suburb on Passover eve, killing a doctor and his 14-year-old grandson and a third woman. Cross shouted “Heil Hitler” as he was taken into custody.   http://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2017/year-hate-and-extremism http://www.splcenter.org/news/2017/02/09/president-trump-dont-ignore-terror-radical-right Visit the related web page
	Demons and angels: strongman leaders and social violence by Ian Hughes Open Democracy   In his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, psychologist Steven Pinker argues that we may be living through the most peaceable era in human existence. As evidence for this remarkable assertion, Pinker cites the fact that the death rate from violence in the twentieth century—at around three percent of the global population—was only a fraction of the 15 percent estimated for pre-modern societies.   Even with the catastrophic wars and genocides of the twentieth century there has been a five-fold reduction in violence when measured in the aggregate, though this conclusion ignores the fact that certain groups and communities, and certain forms of violence, may have risen—against women, Muslims, and black males in the USA for example.   Perhaps less controversial is Pinker’s claim that changing circumstances—rather than changes in human nature—are responsible for these trends. Human nature, he explains, is always a mix of inner demons and better angels. Motives that impel us towards violence like predation, dominance and vengeance co-exist with motives that impel us toward peace like compassion, fairness, self-control and reason.   Changes in the prevalence of violence in society result from shifts in the social, cultural and material conditions that influence the balance between these different motives. If conditions favour our better angels violence remains low. If they reward our demons violence will increase.   However, in any population a subset of individuals exists with dangerous personality disorders who are predisposed to pathological behaviours. When those individuals gain access to positions of leadership and power, the likelihood of violence increases substantially as more and more people are pulled into a self-reinforcing cycle of ‘nature and nurture.’   The election of Donald Trump and the rise of other strongman leaders around the world is a warning that the conditions which favour our inner demons are once again becoming dominant.   One person who documented the dramatic shift in human behaviour from peace and tolerance to war and genocide was Andrew Lobaczewski. Lobaczewski was a Polish psychiatrist who observed the brutalisation of Polish society at first hand as first Hitler’s Nazis, and then Stalin’s Bolsheviks, forced their violent ideologies upon his homeland. Lobaczewski’s search for a rational explanation of the incomprehensible evil he observed led him to a radically new theory of human nature, and the clearest description we yet have of the origin and spread of evil.   According to Lobaczewski, “each society on earth contains a certain percentage of individuals, a relatively small but active minority, who cannot be considered normal.... individuals that are statistically small in number, but whose quality of difference is such that it can affect hundreds, thousands, even millions of other human beings in negative ways.”   Lobaczewski was writing before the advances of modern psychiatric science, but the ‘minority’ he was referring to are those who suffer from what we now know as paranoid personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and psychopathy. People with these disorders, Lobaczewski realised, play a catalytic role in a society’s descent into barbarism. The twentieth century’s most destructive tyrants, including Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Pol Pot, all displayed these characteristics. By pursuing their grandiose dreams regardless of the consequences for others, these dangerous individuals, along with their followers and enablers, played a central role in the worst atrocities in human history.   People with psychopathy, narcissistic personality disorder and paranoid personality disorder suffer from distortions in the basic cognitive and emotional structures of their minds. These disorders manifest as rigid patterns of behaviour that are difficult, threatening and harmful to others, including an increased propensity for violence and greed.   Psychopaths suffer from a dysfunction of the brain’s emotional system which renders them incapable of feeling empathy, love, guilt or shame. People with narcissistic personality disorder exhibit a grandiose sense of self-importance, an exhibitionistic need for constant admiration, and exploitative relationships with others.   Paranoid personality disorder is characterised by suspicion and an obsession with defending against enemies, both real and imaginary. At its most pathological it impels those who suffer from it to seek the annihilation of those they deem to be enemies.   Current estimates are that around six per cent of the population in any society suffer from one or more of these disorders. No effective treatment or cure is currently available. All that can be said with certainty with regard to their causes is that both nature and nurture are likely to contribute.   While everyone can manifest callous, narcissistic and paranoid traits depending on the circumstances, it is the rigidity of thoughts and feelings that marks out people with dangerous personality disorders. The majority of human beings can act from either or both of their angels and demons, but psychopaths are only capable of acting on the basis of violence, domination and greed.   People with these disorders do not ‘pivot.’ Their cognitive and emotional deficiencies mean that they are psychologically incapable of showing genuine empathy, solidarity and concern.   Lobaczewski’s contribution was not simply to recognise that a pathological minority can pose an existential threat. He also described how this minority can come to dominate a whole society. Dangerous leaders, Lobaczewski realised, are simply the most visible manifestations of a much wider malaise.   Political scientist Betty Glad later coined the phrase ‘the toxic triangle’ to capture the process through which such minorities come to power, namely the alignment of a dangerous leader, susceptible followers, and an environment conducive to their rise.   As Glad explains, any individual who rises to power must do so with the help of both a core group of supporters and a wider support base within the general population. The key to understanding the rise of Hitler, Stalin or any other pathological leader is to realise that individuals who also suffer from dangerous personality disorders form a key power base within the leader’s core group of followers.   Malignant narcissists already in positions of power in politics, media, academia and local political organisations respond to the opportunities that the pathological leader’s ascent to power presents for them to pursue their own ambitions.   This relatively small but influential group help to establish the violent, paranoid and post-truth characteristics of the leader as the new norm. Faced with this group’s increasing influence and dissonant propaganda, the general population experiences a growing collective confusion and loss of common sense, and an increasing inability to hold onto previously accepted standards of reason and morality.   This does not, however, allow us to escape the essential role that psychologically normal people play in aiding toxic leaders in their rise to power. In fact, as history and contemporary events both show, when the circumstances are right, toxic individuals almost inevitably find a mass following.   To understand why this is so, we must consider the third side of the toxic triangle—the conducive environment in which dangerous leaders gain widespread popularity.   Today’s political circumstances constitute an almost perfect storm of inequality, insecurity, economic hardship, terrorist threats and democratic decline. Unfortunately, under such conditions many people become more willing to accept assertive leaders and more ready to dehumanise their perceived enemies. Many who act from their better angels when circumstances are supportive can unleash their inner demons when they feel angry or fearful.   It is precisely this malleability of human nature that is currently allowing strongman leaders to gain support across the globe, stoking widespread public fear while posing as protectors against dangerous alien forces.   Those who struggle for freedom across the world know that free elections, the rule of law, human rights, freedom of the press, and equality regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation are the pillars of democratic systems that protect us from a minority who would subjugate us and turn us against one another for their personal gain. Democracy matters because it is all that stands between us and the Hitlers, Stalins, Maos and Pol Pots that live among us still.   Stemming the rise of authoritarian leaders and halting the spread of prejudice and hate that enables them demands that the rules and principles of democracy must be protected, extended and restored.   The failure to deepen and reinstate these rules and principles will see humanity sliding backwards to a position where violence and privilege, rather than justice and dignity, will direct human affairs.   In that process, a minority of people with dangerous personality disorders can fundamentally alter the swing of the pendulum from compromise to conflict, from inclusion to vilification, and from humanity to savagery. Containing this dangerous minority by reinvigorating democracy is an urgent necessity if human progress is to continue. Visit the related web page
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