Are far-right extremist attacks on the rise? Analysts say it depends on where you look

Virginia State Police block chanting protestors from the make-shift memorial to Heather 0Heyer August 12, 2018 in Charlottesville on the one year anniversary of her death at the hands of a white supremacist in a speeding car - Last year's protests in Charlottesville saw hundreds of neo-Nazi sympathizers, accompanied by rifle-carrying men, yelling white nationalist slogans and wielding flaming torches in scenes eerily reminiscent of racist rallies held in America's South before the Civil Rights movement. (Photo by Logan CYRUS / AFP) (Photo credit should read LOGAN CYRUS/AFP/Getty Images)

The national and international debate on extremism has been a prominent topic of public discourse in recent years.

A few days after the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand, President Trump said he did not think white nationalism was on the rise.

Research from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland asserts that far-right extreme crimes have stayed at a steady rate since they began collecting data in 1970, according to the WSJ.

But a New York Times analysis last week, which utilized data from START as well, found that the rise in global white extremist attacks is on the rise, as are the networks of extremists worldwide.

We dig into global and domestic data to determine what qualifies as an extremist attack and how such attacks are perceived differently domestically vs. on a global scale.

Guests:

William Braniff, director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) and a professor of the practice at the University of Maryland

Brian Michael Jenkins, senior advisor to the president of the RAND Corporation think tank and one of the nation’s leading experts on terrorism and homeland security; he tweets

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