See what you learn from listening to NPR?
Of course, Terry Gross goads him into it with her trademark left-wing ugliness, smears and lies. Read it and weep:
GROSS: You focus on terrorism, you've investigated al-Qaida for years. Are you worried about anti-Islam extremists in the U.S. and in Europe now? I mean it was an anti-Muslim extremist, a Christian anti-Muslim extremist, who killed I don't remember how many tens of people in Norway. And there is a wave of anti-Islamic sentiment in the United States...
(all provably false, of course, but when has honesty ever been a hallmark of the Left?)
Mr. BERGEN: I mean Sharia law is not coming to the United States and is not a problem for the United States. And it's just - it's sort of a nonsensical. And the guy you mentioned in Norway, of course, is reading some of these U.S. hysterical anti-Islam folks like Robert Spencer and others and he was clearly influenced by them.
I'm not saying, of course, there's a direct correlation, but there are people who are writing on this issue who just, they've lost all sense of perspective and it's - I think it is dangerous...
(Gotcha - right-wing blogs are dangerous because they make Norwegians kill people. When do we start the the IP purge?)
... One is that there have been 17 Americans who have been killed domestically in the United States by jihadi terrorist attacks since 9/11, which more Americans die in their bathtubs every year. You know, this is, you know, we need a little bit of perspective here.
"Perspective": Peter Bergen gets some from his pal, the late Osama bin Laden
.... And then also on other forms of political violence. And it turns out that, you know, people motivated by right wing ideas of - are much more likely to have tried to, you know, produce a radiological bomb in the United States, a so-called dirty bomb since 9/11. And we'll be releasing the results after, you know, around the time of the anniversary.
(Interesting. So to muddy the waters on 9/11, your group is going to release data showing conservatives are more dangerous than al-Qaeda? Good to know...)
But the fact is, is that something like 75 people have died in hate crimes since 9/11, according to the FBI, versus the 17 Americans who've died in jihadi terrorist attacks. So we just have to understand that political violence is not something - and I'm sure most people listening to this program will understand that political violence can come from a lot of different directions. And Islamic extremists don't have any special monopoly on it.
(left unsaid is who committed the "hate crimes"; but since Berger winks at the audience by saying that they know where the real hate is coming from, he spares himself from lying and puts that onus onto the listener. Hey, did NPR follow at all the attempt to overthrow democracy in Wisconsin? Just asking...)
And how does our brave interviewer respond to this allegation that domestic conservators are more dangerous that Islamic radicals?
GROSS: Okay. Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.
Mr. BERGEN: Thank you very much.
Give what they want, I suppose, and leave them wanting more.
But as Ayn Rand would say, it's one thing to serve me up for dinner, but it is quite another thing to ask me to pick up the tab as well...