LONDON ¨C Extreme right-wing terrorism, mostly of the ¡°white nationalist¡± variety, is becoming as big a problem as Islamist terrorism in many places. That¡¯s certainly the case in the United States, where the U.S. Government Accounting Office calculated last year that 119 Americans have been killed by Islamist extremists since the 9/11 attacks, and 106 Americans by far-right extremists.
It¡¯s also true that almost all the attacks are designed to exploit social media. Brenton Tarrant, the suspect in the New Zealand mosque attacks, had a number of semi-automatic rifles with him in Christchurch, but his real weapon was the GoPro camera on his headband live-streaming his atrocities.
All too common in the world, but I was still astounded when I heard that such a huge terrorist attack had happened in New Zealand. Fifty murdered in two mosques! This is a country of over 4 million people where there were only 35 homicides in all of last year. Then I heard that the terrorist was an Australian, and it made a bit more sense.
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