White supremacists are a bigger threat to the US than radical Islam

While Republican politicians talk of preventing Syrian refugees from coming to the US following the Paris attacks, statistics show that the threat from terrorism is actually much closer to home.

In the wake of two recent shootings by white perpetrators in the US - one at a Black Lives Matter protest and the other at an abortion clinic - figures on domestic terrorism from the New America Foundation have re-surfaced.

The thinktank's statistics show that of the terror attacks on US soil since 9/11, two-thirds of deaths have been caused by "right-wing" attackers.

Speaking to Vox, David Sterman, the senior programme association at the New America Foundation, explained:

There is a conventional wisdom that terrorism in the US is the province of foreigners and is seen as a problem of infiltration.

And while there is certainly a reason for that perception, as the September 11 attacks were conducted by people who came in from abroad, in the 330 cases we’ve examined since September 11, we found 80 per cent are US citizens.

So maybe Donald Trump, who has called for a database of all Muslims in the US, and the assault rifle-wielding citizens protesting outside some American mosques should refocus their energy elsewhere.

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