The violence and death that accompanied last year’s Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville came as a shock to most law enforcement officials. Though they had been actively gathering intelligence on the alt-right during the 20 years prior, the federal government has spent the last 17 years largely ignoring white supremacists, instead diverting all of its counterterrorism resources to the cause of fighting Islamic extremism.
While the focus remained on preventing another 9/11, right-wing extremism flourished. And it should come as no surprise to anyone that this renaissance emerged around 2007, after a black first-term senator from Illinois announced his candidacy for president of the United States. In fact, in a recent episode of “The Daily,” a podcast of the New York Times, writer Janet Reitman says that Obama was the greatest recruitment tool for the far-Right, “not just for Neo-Nazis and white supremacist racists but for a whole network of far-right types.” She says this based on her conversations with Daryl Johnson, a former analyst at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in domestic terrorism—a man who had a small team at DHS dedicated to analyzing such threats during the Bush administration.
Hearing all the details, especially from Johnson’s own mouth, is truly frightening. In 2007, America’s entire national security apparatus was focused on combating violent Islamic extremism, with just a few resources looking at domestic terrorism. It wasn’t until Johnson was asked to monitor websites for extremist chatter related to Obama’s candidacy that he realized the extent of the proliferation of this movement. And as Obama got closer to the presidency, the momentum of the far-right movement grew and grew.
Of course, his election threw them into a frenzy. And soon after that, the membership of white supremacist websites like Stormfront increased dramatically. When asked to brief then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about the threat, Johnson identified several factors that created an opportunity for recruitment for the alt-right: Obama’s election, the recession, and the disillusionment of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. But here’s where things get interesting. Conservative media outlets began to report on the briefing, reframing it as the government spying on conservatives who just simply politically disagreed with Obama. Thus the actual threats of real right-wing violent extremists were painted as an issue of infringement on the right to privacy, free speech, and political preference held by those with conservative views. The backlash soon reached Congress. And Republicans couldn’t wait to blame the Obama administration for trying to crack down on the opposition and spy on them. And it was no coincidence that all of this happened in 2009, when Democrats controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House.
Republicans weaponized the report. And, amid all the controversy, DHS got all cowardly and rescinded it. Johnson’s team got reassigned to “other work” (because, apparently, what we needed was yet another team to investigate al-Qaida), and within a year’s time, Johnson left DHS altogether. Want to take a guess at how many analysts are currently at DHS working on issues of right-wing extremism? None. That’s right. There is not a single person employed at the Department of Homeland Security whose job is to understand what is happening with white supremacists.
This is maddening. It is downright frightening. And most of all, it is incredibly dangerous and puts all of us at risk.
Flash forward to Charlottesville 2017. Why didn't anyone from local law enforcement prepare adequately for Richard Spencer and his gang of violent, killer thugs? Because conservative media and Republicans did a great job of shutting down conversation about right-wing extremism nearly a decade ago, and they bullied the Obama administration into seeing it as a political hot potato that it wanted no part of. It’s only grown larger and more dangerous since. Meanwhile, the Trump administration knows that right-wing extremists are the bread and butter of their base so, of course, there is no interest nor investment in studying them, analyzing their habits, and stopping the movement from growing.
But this is even bigger than Charlottesville. Because of the complete failure to address right-wing extremism over the last ten years, there’s virtually no intelligence to be shared at local, state, or federal levels about its movement members, their motivations (though we can all accurately guess what they are), or their behaviors. This has forced local law enforcement officers to grasp at straws when it comes to preparing for white-supremacist rallies and events. It is a “black hole.” What’s worse (if we can imagine that) is that these kinds of views are becoming more common and more extreme. Hate crimes rose 17 percent in 2017, and we can now rattle off the names of places where mass shootings and violent crimes have occurred at the hands of white supremacists—Charleston, Pittsburgh, possibly Parkland, and the recent cross-country rampage by a bomber who sent threatening packages to prominent Democrats and the media, and on and on.
But let’s be clear. Republicans continue to try and convince us on a daily basis that right-wing extremists are not a problem. This makes total sense, since their president is one who incites violence daily. In fact, he thinks some right-wing extremists are "good people.” They refused to listen to Johnson, who warned the government nine years ago. And they also refused to listen to people of color who have been saying the rise of white supremacy has been a thing that has been happening for decades.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Right-wing extremism is escalating and is responsible for the majority of extremist-related killings in the U.S. since 2008. These folks pose a grave threat to us all—regardless of our race, ethnicity, gender, or geographic location. And the folks in power, the ones who stand to benefit the most from their actions, have little desire or reason to stop them.
To listen to the entire podcast interview with Daryl Johnson, click here.