It’s one thing to denounce white nationalism and the horrifying trail of lethal terrorism it unleashes. That’s the easy part for political candidates. The question that matters is: What are you actually going to do about it?
At least two of the Democratic presidential candidates—Pete Buttigieg and Jay Inslee—have now stepped up to the plate with detailed answers that both happen to be smart and likely effective, if incomplete.
We’ve contended for awhile now that the rise of white-nationalist hate and its attendant violence should be a major issue to be discussed and debated on the campaign trail—first by Democratic candidates in the primary, and then carried into the general election as well. The surge in mass killings inspired by the movement, not to mention the sharp spike in both hate crimes and in street violence involving far-right thugs, demands it.
Previously, the candidate who came closest to voicing policy ideas that could combat the trend was Elizabeth Warren—who brought the subject up unbidden in a CNN town hall, and later urged Donald Trump to vigorously prosecute white nationalists—while most of the field has criticized Trump for his rhetoric that condones white-nationalist sentiments.
The recent attack on Latinos in El Paso by a white nationalist seems to have ended the candidates’ hesitancy to bring the issue front and center. El Paso native Beto O’Rourke, clearly out of fucks to give, set the tone with his rant calling out the media’s reluctance to recognize Trump’s eliminationist hate talk for what it is.
Buttigieg chimed in with a strong appearance on Fox News Sunday in which he made sure the audience understood that the El Paso killings were “white nationalist terrorism ... and we have to name it as such.”
"It is very clear that the loss of life … is symptomatic of the effects of white nationalist terrorism," Buttigieg told host Chris Wallace. "There’s no question white nationalism is condoned at the highest levels of our government."
Buttigieg issued a detailed “Action Plan to Combat the National Threat Posed by Hate and the Gun Lobby,” which covers a range of fronts including gun control policy and civic action, as well as efforts to combat the spread of online hate and its attendant radicalization.
In the meantime, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee published a similarly detailed paper devoted to “Stopping the Epidemic of White Nationalist Gun Violence,” which he released on Monday to CBS News. "We need a president who will take on the twin epidemics of rising white nationalism and rising gun violence that have cost too many American lives,” Inslee said in a statement.
As Alex Ward notes at Vox, Buttigieg’s proposal is a good start, but is missing several key elements, including some recognition of the lingering issue of whether or not to make domestic terrorism a prosecutable federal crime, which it currently is not.
Inslee’s proposal, while also a decent start, is much less detailed and thorough. It completely lacks any recognition, for instance, of the online component of the radicalization driving both the growth of white nationalism and the violence that follows it. Neither plan tackles the growing problem of far-right street violence embodied by the thugs who rioted in Charlottesville, or who continue to plan violent street events in the Pacific Northwest. We’re hoping the rest of the field of candidates similarly turns its attention to the problem so that, finally, we can have a robust discourse about this problem, with or without the media’s assistance.