August 2012
Six worshippers killed in a shooting targeting a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, US
The dead included the temple president, Satwant Singh Kaleka. The shooter, a “frustrated neo-Nazi” who had played in white power bands, was a regular on racist websites. He had previously talked to one colleague in the US military about a “racial holy war that was coming” and told another he was a “race traitor” for dating a Latina woman.
April 2014
Three killed at Jewish centre and retirement home in Overland Park, Kansas, US
A
former Ku Klux Klan leader shot and killed three people, one of them just 14 years old. He said he believed Jews were destroying the white race, and that diversity was a kind of genocide. None of his victims were Jewish, but he said he considered two of them to be accomplices to Jewish people.
June 2015
Nine people killed during Bible study at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, US
The nine victims included elderly longtime church members at the Mother Emanuel AME church, and Clementa Pinckney, a state senator. The shooter, a self-avowed white supremacist, said he wanted to start a race war, and that he was concerned about “black-on-white crime”.
March 2017
Timothy Caughman stalked and killed by a white supremacist with a sword, New York, US
Caughman, a 66-year-old “can and bottle recycler”, had lively social media accounts full of photographs with celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey. His killer, an American military veteran, said he targeted a random black man on the street in New York City as a “practice run” for a bigger attack, and as
part of a campaign to persuade white women not to enter into interracial relationships. He
urged one female journalist who interviewed him to have children: “Good white women should have as many children as possible.”
May 2017
Two men stabbed to death after intervening in an anti-Muslim rant, Portland, Oregon, US
Two men were killed and one injured after they tried to intervene to protect young women on a public train who were being targeted with an anti-Muslim tirade. Their alleged killer shouted “Free speech or die” in the courtroom, and “Death to Antifa! You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism!”
August 2017
Heather Heyer killed and dozens injured after a car ploughed into anti-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, US
After authorities shut down a violent white supremacist and neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, one of the men who had been photographed with a white supremacist group drove his car into a crowded street full of counter-protesters. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed. Dozens more were injured, many seriously. The killer had been obsessed with Hitler as a teenager, according to a former teacher. In phone calls from jail, he was recorded criticising Heyer’s mother as a “communist” and “one of those anti-white supremacists”.
October 2018
Man attempted to enter black church before allegedly killing two black people in a supermarket in Kentucky, US
A witness said that during the attack, the alleged shooter said: “Whites don’t kill whites.” His two victims, Maurice Stallard, 69, and Vickie Lee Jones, 67, were both black. Shortly before the shooting he had attempted to enter a nearby, predominantly black church, which was locked.
November 2018
11 killed in a mass shooting targeting the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US
The alleged shooter had an active profile on an extremist social media site, where he accused Jewish people of trying to bring “evil” Muslims into the US, and wrote that a refugee aid organisation “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people”. In his online posts, Robert Bowers allegedly referenced internal debates within white supremacist groups, and egged on the harassment of an anti-fascist activist from Charlottesville. He has pleaded not guilty.