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US President Joe Biden announced Thursday that Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the attacker who drove his pickup truck into a crowd on New Orleans’s Bourbon Street, killing 15 and injuring dozens, had a remote detonator in his vehicle intended to trigger improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted in ice coolers. The FBI recovered two IEDs placed by the attacker in ice coolers at two separate locations in the French Quarter.
Biden confirmed the link between the IEDs and the vehicle attack, saying, “They’ve established that the attacker is the same person who planted the explosives in those ice coolers in two nearby locations in the French Quarter just a few hours before he rammed into the crowd with his vehicle. They assessed he had a remote detonator in his vehicle to set off those two ice chests.”
Jabbar was shot and killed after exchanging gunfire with police. The FBI has said that Jabbar was “100% inspired by Isis.” This incident has reignited focus on Biden’s earlier remarks before the attack, where he frequently stressed that white supremacy posed the greatest threat to the country, asserting that even terrorist organizations like Isis were less dangerous than white supremacists.
‘Terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat’
Biden identified white supremacy as the most dangerous terrorist threat to the United States. He made this statement twice in 2021. First, during his State of the Union address, he said, “We won’t ignore what our intelligence agencies have determined to be the most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today: White supremacy is terrorism.”
Weeks later, while commemorating the Tulsa Race Massacre centennial in June, Biden reiterated his assessment. “According to the intelligence community, terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not al Qaeda — White supremacists,” he said.
‘White supremacy … is the single most dangerous terrorist threat’
Biden had also labeled white supremacy a significant domestic terrorist threat during his 2023 commencement speech at Howard University.
“White supremacy … is the single most dangerous terrorist threat in our homeland,” Biden said. “And I’m not just saying this because I’m at a Black HBCU. I say this wherever I go.”
Attorney general’s support for Biden’s view
Biden’s past statements on white supremacy have been echoed by his administration. Attorney general Merrick Garland told the Senate Appropriations Committee in May 2021 that the FBI considers racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, particularly those who believe in white supremacy, to be the biggest domestic threat.
“In the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from ‘racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocated for the superiority of the white race,'” Garland said.
Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had also expressed concern about white supremacists in 2021. At the time, Garland and Biden administration officials contended that the January 6, 2021, Capitol breach by supporters of President-elect Trump marked the beginning of heightened concerns over domestic threats to democracy.
Garland described the Capitol attack as a grave danger to democracy. “I have not seen a more dangerous threat to democracy than the invasion of the Capitol,” he said, labeling it “an attempt to interfere with the fundamental element of our democracy, a peaceful transfer of power.”
DHS report on white supremacists
A 2020 US department of homeland security (DHS) report, “Homeland Threat Assessment,” under the Trump administration, identified white supremacists and other domestic violent extremists as the “most persistent and lethal threat” to the United States. DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that the department is taking “a new approach to addressing domestic violent extremism, both internally and externally,” compared to the Trump administration.
New Orleans incident
A man drove a truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans early New Year’s Day, killing 15 and injuring dozens. The suspect, identified as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, allegedly targeted people celebrating the holiday. An Isis flag was found in the vehicle.
The FBI is investigating the attack as an act of terrorism. The agency said that Jabbar was “inspired” by Isis, but they have found no evidence of direct orders from the group.
Jabbar’s brother, Abdur Jabbar, told The New York Times that his brother converted to Islam from Christianity. He said: “What he did does not represent Islam. This is more some type of radicalization, not religion.”
Social media users have stressed President Biden’s prior comments on white supremacy following the attack, saying that the remarks have “not aged well.”
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