If the United States’ failure to anticipate the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, was one of imagination, missing the terrorist attack of January 6, 2021, was a failure of perception — a persistent refusal at the highest levels of our government to acknowledge the empirical reality of the threat posed by right-wing terrorists.

Terrorism in the United States is overwhelmingly domestic and motivated by far-right ideologies, often racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant.