Right wing violence is far more dangerous than Islamist terrorism, despite what the hype of governments and media suggest.

The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism investigated terrorist acts in 30 European states between the 2000 and 2014.

The researchers expected to find that a majority of those responsible were motivated by religion. In fact, their investigation, Countering lone actor terrorism, found religiously driven acts accounted for only a handful of fatalities. Right wing terrorists were much more lethal, accounting for nearly half of all deaths.

The Guardian quoted co-author Melanie Smith on this: “It became clear that actually the vast majority [of resources] were going to looking for religiously inspired terrorists … which kind of made sense to us because that’s what we were expecting too, but that’s not the case”. 

Islamophobic prejudices explain the distorted coverage and focus.

Focused on the violent edge, the report acknowledges that this fringe is connected to much bigger right wing groups. Pegida in Germany, UKIP in Britain, the Front National in France and similar groups in Sweden and the Netherlands are all associated with right wing terrorists. At the very least they provide “moral oxygen” to the terrorists with hateful demonstrations and vicious rhetoric.

Nationalist, anti-immigrant and Islamophobic sentiments drive the far right. These ideas are familiar to governments happy to scapegoat asylum seekers and demonise Muslims.

“The most frequent targets were civilians”, the report says, “in particular ethnic and religious minorities, asylum seekers and immigrants. A large majority of religious targets were Muslim”.

Germany alone recorded over 220 attacks on refugee homes in 2015. Far from bearing responsibility for violence, Muslims and asylum seekers are the targets.