Terrorism kills far fewer Americans annually than mundane causes like cars and bicycles.

Evidence

The reality, however, flies in the face of this rhetoric, as the last chapter showed. Interestingly, even the Rand Corporation, a right-wing institution, admitted that the danger posed to Americans by “terrorism” is limited. In the Los Angeles Times, Gregory Treverton noted that in “the five years after 2001, the number of Americans killed per year in terrorist attacks worldwide was never more than a hundred, and the toll some years was barely in double figures. Compare that with an average of 63 by tornadoes, 692 in bicycle accidents and 41,616 in motor-vehicle-related accidents.” Indeed. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 507

Categorization

• SEED: The specific comparison (terrorism vs tornadoes/bicycles/cars) is a vivid, quotable statistic for an essay on manufactured fear vs statistical reality.
• XREF: Connects to Kumar’s broader dismantling of the terrorism threat narrative; links to Grosfoguel’s skepticism about state threat construction. — connects to: Foreign terrorism kills vanishingly few Americans relative to other risks; Jihadi terrorism kills far fewer Americans than gun deaths or the war on terror — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 92; Jihadi terrorism killed only 107 Americans from 2001 to 2020. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 92