Joseph Robinette Biden, our only president, just provided us with a classic example of postmodern wordplay. In a recent speech to graduating seniors at Howard University, the octogenarian pol described “white supremacy” as the “most dangerous terrorist threat” — at least on the domestic front — to the United States. That’s arguably true, but it’s worth unpacking what exactly this means, and why Uncle Joe was so eager to announce it.

It is actually accurate that, largely because riot and “common crime” deaths do not count toward terror-death totals (“terrorism,” roughly, is the use of paramilitary force against civilian populations to achieve a political aim), right-wing domestic terrorists do kill more U.S. citizens per year than do left-wing domestic terrorists. However, according to the centrist and well-respected Center for Strategic and International Studies, the average number of annual deaths caused by all American-based terrorists between 2014 and 2021 was 31.

Even this represents a jump from the period between 1995’s Oklahoma City bombing and 2013, during which the domestic terror toll topped eight only twice. Saying that white supremacists are the biggest “home front” threat means in practice that all of them combined kill perhaps 20 American citizens annually, versus a toll of maybe ten for antifa/black bloc, the “Not F***ing Around Coalition,” and the like. CSIS records 38 white-supremacist and “like-minded” terror attacks in the fairly typical year of 2021, versus 31 for “anarchists” and so-called anti-fascists.