CNN Anchor Uses 9/11 To Claim 'Right-Wing Terrorism' Is Biggest Danger to America
On a day when most of America honored the victims of 9/11 and tried to set partisan politics aside, CNN anchor John Avlon retreated to a common leftist talking point, claiming that “right-wing terrorists” are America’s top threat.
Speaking on CNN, Avlon said America is enveloped in what he called “9/11 amnesia,” which he called “naive in the extreme because terrorism is always one bad day away from being the number one issue in America.”
“In the past year, we’ve also been forced to confront a growing threat from another form of violent extremism: white nationalist terrorism.”
Avlon listed several mass shootings and other attacks that have taken place since 9/11 (conveniently omitting the August shooting in Dayton, Ohio, in which gunman Connor Betts was labeled by the New York Post as possibly being “antifa’s first mass killer”).
“We’ve seen the deadliest attack targeting Latinos in recent U.S. history at a Walmart in El Paso. We’ve seen an attack on a synagogue near San Diego which followed the Tree of Life attack in Pittsburgh, the largest massacre of Jewish Americans in our history,” the anchor said.
Avlon implied that since the shooters targeted immigrants, Democrats and the Jewish community, they should be classified as right-wing terrorists.
“These terror suspects echoed white supremacist talk about replacement, hatred towards Jews, immigrant, refugees. And that’s not including the would-be attacks we’ve seen thwarted by law enforcement, like the arrest of an Ohio man who police say threatened a Jewish community center and the arrest of a Coast Guard officer with a massive weapons cache, accused of plotting to kill Democrats and journalists.”
Avlon then cited information from the think tank New America, which posted an article from the left-leaning Slate headlined “Right Wingers are America’s Deadliest Terrorists.” By Slate’s scorecard, jihadis have killed 104 people and right-wing terrorists 109 since 9/11.
Avlon failed to note a sentence in a New America report on terrorism that read, “America’s terrorism problem today is homegrown and is not the province of any one group or ideological perspective.”
Instead, he asserted that some Americans pay more attention to one group of extremists than other groups.
“There are some folks for who for their own political purposes would like to keep the focus on only one form of political violence over another, but that would be unwise because we don’t have the luxury of choosing what threats we face,” Avlon said.
Watch Avlon’s remarks below.
Conservative pundit Becket Adams voiced skepticism about Avlon’s segment in a Washington Examiner opinion piece.
“Avlon’s overall point is confusing enough, and it is not entirely clear why he and his producers thought it would be a good idea to air this comparison of jihadi and right-wing body counts on the 18th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which claimed some 3,000 innocent lives.”
Adams questioned any discussion of terrorism that omits the 9/11 attacks.
“That is one hell of a qualifier to say that right-wingers are the deadliest, as long as you don’t count the deadliest.”
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