Little-known fact: Fascist, far-right terror attacks on refugees and ethnic minorities are increasing across Europe, but all European Union member states (excluding the Netherlands) do not officially consider these to be terrorist attacks and thus do not include them in official reports on terrorism.

Professional war hawk Anthony Cordesman noted this in passing in his August 2017 report “Trends in European Terrorism: 1970-2016” for the notoriously pro-war think tank the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS).

Reviewing Europol/EU data, Cordesman wrote:

An increasing stream of violent assaults by right-wing extremist individuals and groups was noted across Europe, in particular over the past two years, targeting asylum seekers and ethnic minorities in general. These assaults however do not generally qualify as terrorism and are therefore not included in the numbers of terrorist attacks being reported by Member States, with only one exception in 2016, reported by the Netherlands.

Fascist, far-right terror attacks on refugees and ethnic minorities are increasing across Europe, but almost all EU member states do not officially consider these to be terrorist attacks.https://t.co/8xIvr6XGOb pic.twitter.com/RBbljEK6oR — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 4, 2017



This outrageous double standard was highlighted in Alain Gabon’s Middle East Eye September article “How the EU conceals far-right acts of terrorism against Muslims.”

Gabon wrote: