Ted Cruz accuses Democrats of weaponizing white supremacy to attack Republicans
© Mariam Zuhaib, STF / Associated Press
FILE - U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks during a news conference on April 7, 2022, in Washington. Arizona Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego lashed out at Texas Republican Sen. Cruz in a series of profane tweets in response to the massacre at a Texas elementary school. Gallego responded Tuesday, May 24, 2022, to Cruz's comments predicting that Democrats and the media would try to politicize the shooting. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz this week accused Democrats of focusing excessively on white supremacist violence, while overlooking attacks on white people, police and Jewish and Asian Americans, in an effort to inflict political damage on Republicans.
“Unfortunately, we see over and over again efforts to politicize acts of violence,” Cruz said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on domestic terrorism, where he alleged that Democrats in Congress “try to use the charge of ‘white supremacy,’ which is undoubtedly evil, bigoted and wrong, and weaponized by their own party, they try to use that as a proxy for attacking a political party they disagree with.”
Cruz added that violence “is always wrong, whatever your ideology: left-wing, right-wing, no wings.”
The Texas Republican’s remarks drew a swift rebuke from U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who noted that the vast majority of “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” investigated by the FBI in 2020 were white supremacists.
Federal law enforcement data and expert studies have shown that terrorist attacks by violent extremists have risen sharply in recent years. The trend has been driven largely by white supremacists and the far right, though left-wing extremists accounted for an increasing proportion of terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. last year.
In a report published last month, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies found that violent far-right terrorist attacks and plots have outnumbered those of every other group, including left-wing extremists, in every year since at least 1994.
Video: Violence linked to white supremacy rises (NBC News)
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Terrorist incidents peaked in 2020, when right-wing extremists accounted for 73 terrorist attacks and plots — nearly three times the 25 far-left incidents recorded by CIS that year, including those that arose during protests over the death of George Floyd. The ideological gap narrowed last year, however, with 38 far-right terrorist attacks and plots, compared with 31 from left-wing extremists, according to CIS.
The group also found that nearly three-quarters of terrorist attacks and plots at demonstrations last year were committed by those on the far left, “including anarchists, anti-fascist extremists, and violent environmentalists” mostly spurred by “opposition to far-right ideologies and opposition to law enforcement.”
Still, right-wing extremists accounted for all but two of the 30 fatalities from terrorist attacks in the U.S. last year, committed by a mix of white supremacists, anti-government extremists, a “violent misogynist” and an “anti-vaccination perpetrator.”
The FBI has reported similarly lopsided numbers. Since early 2020, the agency has ramped up its domestic terrorism caseload and assigned more people to investigate those cases, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray. As part of those efforts, federal authorities have arrested and charged more than 800 people accused of participating in the attack on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021.
In the Judiciary Committee hearing, Cruz acknowledged that violence from “white supremacist extremist organizations” is a problem. He also pointed to incidents caused by other “hate groups,” including a mass shooting on a subway train in Brooklyn earlier this year that Cruz said was carried out by a “Black supremacist who called for racial violence.”
“When it comes to violence, the Department of Justice should not treat it as an excuse simply to target the political opponents of whatever administration is in power, Republican or Democrat,” Cruz said. “But instead, violent crime should be prosecuted vigorously across the board to keep people safe.”
jasper.scherer@chron.com
