Five Things To Know About White Supremacist Terror
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
NUTS AND BOLTS:
Last Saturday, a white gunman shot 13 people, 11 of whom were Black, at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, after posting a manifesto filled with anti-Black rhetoric and researching the demographics of the neighborhood to — as he put it — “kill as many blacks as possible.”
This kind of domestic terrorism is nothing new in a country whose origin story is replete with racist dehumanization and exploitation of Black and Indigenous communities. In recent years, there has been a rise in domestic terrorism by white supremacists — such as the murder of Heather Heyer at the 2017 racist and antisemitic “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville and the 2019 El Paso massacre that killed mostly Latinos — to levels not seen in a quarter-century.
According to a Washington Post analysis of data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the number of domestic terrorism incidents peaked in 2020. Moreover, since 2015, right-wing extremists have played a role in 267 plots or attacks, resulting in 91 fatalities.
FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
#1: The Government Has Not Taken The Threat Seriously
Despite the ever-present threat of domestic terrorism, the U.S. government has failed to respond accordingly — and has even buried efforts to sound the alarm long before the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In a 2009 report, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FBI warned of growing right-wing extremism. The prescient analysis noted the “economic hardship and global trade on demographic groups susceptible to recruitment, the danger of domestic terror groups recruiting members of the armed forces, and the burgeoning role of social media being used for indoctrination and propaganda.”
The report was rescinded — and the agency unit that produced it was all but disbanded — after GOP lawmakers and right-wing media spun a narrative that federal officials had disrespected the military by insinuating that returning veterans could be radicalized. But in truth, in 2006 the Pentagon had already released findings showing that thousands of active-duty service members had likely joined white supremacist organizations, and the FBI has reported that many law enforcement officials have active links to right-wing extremist groups.
As Facing South wrote, “Blinded by raw politics, Congress failed to do its job, and the U.S. was deprived of an important moment to address the longstanding dangers of rightwing extremist violence.”
#2: Trump Made It Worse, And Biden Is Trying To Course Correct — Sort Of
President Donald Trump made matters worse by deploying racist and xenophobic rhetoric. He launched his presidential bid by deriding Mexicans as “rapists,” fanning the flames of a burgeoning culture war. In the aftermath of the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Trump declared there were “very fine people on both sides.” And he helped incite a riot at the Capitol, constituted in part by white supremacist militias, to help overturn the 2020 election results and keep himself in power.
The former president also worked to halt the federal government’s ability to crack down on violent right-wing extremism. When Trump took office, his administration nixed grants to combat white nationalist radicalization — one of which was the only domestic program dedicated to helping people leave neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. He also slashed the funding and staff for the office that administered the grants. In 2020, Elizabeth Neumann — a longtime Republican and Trump voter — left her three-year DHS stint as assistant secretary of counterterrorism and threat prevention, claiming the administration was downplaying the threat of white supremacy and “creating the conditions for domestic extremism to flourish in the United States.”
President Biden’s approach has proved to be a departure from his predecessor.
In his first State of the Union address to Congress, he said, “White supremacy is terrorism,” and noted that domestic terrorists posed a larger threat than foreign actors. Last year, Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland, pushed for increased funding in part to combat domestic terrorism. And Biden’s homeland security department has a new team dedicated to the problem.
Biden also pledged on his campaign website to “work for a domestic terrorism law that respects free speech and civil liberties.” Unfortunately, knowing Congress, doing so would likely lead to expanded tracking, surveillance, and harassment of law-abiding protestors, environmental activists, and people of color.
#3: Fox News And GOP Lawmakers Are Part Of The Problem
Right-wing media and conservative lawmakers play an outsized role in boosting domestic terrorism.
In recent years, conservatives’ have worked to demonize critical race theory (CRT), a field of academic study that examines systemic racism. From school boards to state legislatures, Republicans have been working to ban curricula about America’s racist history. Meanwhile, since March, CRT has dominated Fox News coverage, the term being mentioned on the network nearly 1,300 times.
Similarly, Republican politicians like Reps. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) and Matt Gaetz (Fla.) as well as conservative pundits such as Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Ann Coulter have been promoting the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims there is a plot to replace white people with people of color and immigrants.
These ideas are leading to violence. Last fall, the Justice Department and FBI were ordered to protect school staff from increased physical threats and violence against them, stemming in part from propaganda about the inclusion of CRT in curricula. And in the Buffalo shooter’s alleged 180-page manifesto, he invoked replacement theory by labeling immigrants and Black people as “replacers” of white people.
#4: Tech Platforms Are Amplifying White Supremacy
Many bad-faith conservative operatives and talking heads are quick to claim their critics want blanket censorship. This obscures a far more insidious truth: Several streaming and social media companies actively amplify hate speech, creating “algorithmic radicalization” through the content they recommend. This topic is covered at length in the podcast Rabbit Hole, and begs the question: As our lives move online, what effect is that having on us?
A report released last summer found that YouTube's recommended videos algorithm promotes conspiracy theories, misinformation, and extremist content — a problem compounded by the fact that by design, we know next to nothing about how these algorithms work. On Saturday, Twitch, a social video-streaming platform, quickly took down a video the Buffalo shooter posted of his rampage video, but not before it was disseminated far beyond the app.
YouTube could do a far better job discouraging far-right extremism — starting with following in the footsteps of Reddit and Gab, and stopping recommending extremist content. But doing so could decrease engagement and that would hurt profits. Facebook, for example, ignored warnings about the adverse impacts their algorithms could have on an already divided society, instead exploiting them to “gain user attention and increase time on the platform.” In the meantime, it would be helpful if the public had access to data on how sites like TikTok promote and moderate certain activity — transparency that Congress could require.
#5: Guns Are Everywhere, But Little Is Being Done
America has a gun problem — one exacerbated by the National Rifle Association. In 2020, firearm homicides and suicides killed more than 45,000 Americans — more than any other year on record. And mass shootings — most recently in Buffalo and at a Korean-owned hair salon in Dallas — seem to be a fixture in U.S. society. Despite skyrocketing gun deaths and injuries, domestic support for stricter gun laws in 2020 dropped to the lowest level since 2014.
There are policy actions that could be taken to prevent gun violence. “Red flag” laws, which allow for the temporary removal of firearms from those who may be a risk to themselves or others, have gained traction in some Democratic-run legislatures — although the laws have struggled to make headway in red states, some progressives point out that such laws are more likely to target Black people, and in the case of the Buffalo supermarket attack and other mass shootings, they haven’t seem to have worked.
At the federal level, reinstating a nationwide assault rifle ban would likely have a major impact. One study found that when the federal ban was in place from 1994 to 2004, it likely prevented up to 11 mass shootings. Had the ban continued, concluded the authors, an additional 30 mass shootings could have been avoided.The Supreme Court is set to hand down a ruling on a major gun case in June that could drastically change the rules around guns that can be carried in New York. A decision that hobbles the state’s rigorous gun permit process could have disastrous consequences — indeed, the Buffalo supermarket shooter claimed the state’s gun laws made his devastating mission harder to pull off.