On Wednesday during NBC’s special rolling coverage of the Islamic terror attack in New Orleans, correspondent intelligence community tool Ken Dilanian chose not once or twice, but three times to tie Islamic extremism to “extremist ideologies” like “far-right extremism.”
The most notable came during NBC Nightly News and anchor Lester Holt — who was the only network evening newscast anchor working a rare holiday — asking a simple question: “What does this tell us about the state of ISIS as we launch into 2025?”
Sure, Dilanian started by saying “the FBI director and others, Lester, have saying for some time that the threat from ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks is greater than it’s been for a long time, particular post-October 7 in light of the war in Gaza.”
But he shortly thereafter lumped the boogeymen on the “far-right” in with the Islamists:
You also have a situation where political violence in the United States is increasingly a risk and more and more people are turning to extremist ideologies whether does ISIS or whether it’s people who don’t like healthcare executives or whether it’s far right extremism, so you have a confluence of risk factors here, but what counterterrorism officials are saying is they are very concerned.
Dilanian refocused to ISIS with the reality that while “the threat from Islamic-inspired terrorism had greatly diminished” as “they defeated the ISIS caliphate in the Middle East, but the movement is not dead” and instead “online.”
The “they” was, of course, the first Trump administration, but he couldn’t dare say that!
Bacin the 3:00 p.m. Eastern hour and Dilanian had a similar shtick. He told NBC News Daily co-host Kate Snow that the New Orleans attack was “one of the most significant if not the most significant Islamic-inspired terrorists attacks, if that’s what it was given the ISIS flag, since 9/11 in years...going back to San Bernadino” from December 2, 2015.
Sure enough, he threw away the astute perspective by touting the concerns from his buddies about “right-wing or domestic terrorism”:
I mean, there was a period, you know, a few years ago, where officials were saying the threat from Islamic-inspired terrorism is diminished. We’re not — we’re much more concerned now about right-wing or domestic terrorism and, in fact, most of the “terrorist attacks,” mass casualty, ideological attacks that we’ve seen in recent years were not this — were not ISIS inspired, but so — it’s a really disturbing turn of events here that we’ve got this situation where somebody — an American-born person carried this attack out perhaps with help from others, flying an ISIS flag.
Fast-forward to roughly 5:09 p.m. Eastern, Dilianian had this back and forth with MSNBC’s Yasmin Vossoughian about “the climate of hate and extremism” that includes the “far right” (click “expand”):
VOSSOUGHIAN: You mentioned — right — 2014 when ISIS was at its peak, when we were looking at Twitter, for instance, and seeing flags not unlike the one that we saw on the back of that white pickup truck on the back of vehicles overseas, on the back of other vehicles. The one, for instance, that mowed down individuals here in New York City on the west side of — of Manhattan. What does this say to you about maybe the resurgence of the ideology that fuels organizations like ISIS?
DILANIAN: Yeah, I mean, I’d like to do some more reporting on this, but it says a couple of things. One, it says, as you well know, Yasmin, the climate of hate and extremism in this country is on the rise. I mean, we’ve seen extremism at all levels increase over the last five or 10 years, so we’ve got threats to public officials, a more tolerance for political violence and so, you know, it doesn’t take much for a — for a disturbed individual to glom on to an ideology, whether it’s ISIS or whether it’s somebody who hates a health care executive or whether it’s far right, extremism —
VOSSOUGHIAN: Right.
DILANIAN: — or Antifa or whatever, right? So there’s that climate. But then there’s also the war in Gaza and the — and the situation, you know, overseas that may be inflaming tensions and — and provoking people who have a tendency to have these extremist beliefs, so you’ve got that combination of factors here. And — and also, you know, like ISIS, there’s, as you know, there are a number of ISIS fighters in — in prison camps, in — in Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria. They’ve been there for years. That organization is not dead. It is around. It’s in Africa and it’s online, certainly. And so, counterterrorism officials have their work cut out for them. Once again, it looks like in trying to deter and thwart these kinds of lone wolf attacks in the west.
Thankfully for Dilanian, he wasn’t alone due to an assist from a old frequent flier longtime NewsBusters readers might remember.
On NBC’s free news platform NBC News NOW, contributor Evan Kohlmann compared the online pull lone wolfs feel between ISIS and “extreme right wing ideologies” seeing as how “everyone wants to be a hero” and so lone wolfs “see the opportunity...to become famous...by carrying out this crusade that they see on the internet” that “other people” will be “appaluding[.]”
“[U]nfortunately, it’s really the same thing, whether you look at extreme right wing ideologies or if you look extreme Islamic ideologies, it’s the same thing. People are getting on there and they’re pushing each other to carry out this stuff,” he added.
To see the relevant NBC transcripts from January 1, click here, here, and here.
