In 2022, right-wing extremists committed every ideologically driven mass killing identified in the U.S., according to a new report from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
The report released Thursday found that last year, domestic extremists killed at least 25 people in the U.S. in 12 separate incidents. 18 of those 25 killings were committed in whole or in part with ideological motives. And the remaining seven either had no clear motive or were committed for a non-ideological reason.
Although extremist killings decreased in 2022 compared to 2021 — when 33 extremist-related murders took place — the trend is still concerning as an “unusually high” proportion were carried out by white supremacists, according to the ADL’s report.
The report found that 60% of the deaths tied to extremist mass killings last year came from two incidents: the racist mass shooting in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York and the mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that we live in an age of extremist mass killings,” the report said.
The number of extremist mass killings across the U.S. in the past decade is at least three times higher than any decade since the 1970s, according to the ADL.
“The 26 mass killing incidents over the past 12 years actually exceed those from the previous 40 years (20),” the report reads.
The number of deaths associated with mass killing incidents has increased, according to the report. And the numbers speak for themselves.
Between 2010 and 2020, 164 people died in ideological extremist-related mass killings, more than in any other decade except the 1990s, in which almost all the deaths were caused by the Oklahoma City bombing — when a domestic terrorist bombed a federal building and killed 168 people.
