My jaw just dropped! Did you seriously just tell me that your government is not even monitoring this stuff, and has not been doing it for almost a decade?
@Rune B. Don't be shocked - complacency is the mindset of a high majority of the people in the USA; false pride in the belief that terrorists come from our many enemies - no one ever thinks that such a horror could be and is home grown. There are 2 types of citizens - those with their heads in the clouds and those with their head in the sand. Sad
Day late, dollar short by Law Enforcement.
Progressives and minorities have been sounding the alarm about this for years, and were promptly ignored.
Now, what is the Law Enforcement community going to do about it??
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@Ken if I was a betting man.. shoot more black people.
@James that's an incredibly cruel and biased remark not to mention tactlessly dishonest attempt at presuming racial attitudes of general police forces. By and large the most victims of cop shootings come from 'white' backgrounds, check your narrative.
Here is your citation, good day.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/
All homicides committed by "Right wing" extremists in the span of over a decade doesn't even come close to a slow year for murders throughout inner city Chicago.
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@Patrick Exactly. But these folks don't care about impoverished homicidal maniacs running lose in the streets, those people are considered victims of circumstance and all they want 'justice' against is the indeterminate number of self identified neo nazis and Klanners in the States who are so poverty stricken and stigmatized that they could *never* hope to make political gain, let alone bring us back to Jim Crow or something similar.
To say that law enforcement 'ignored' it is too generous; in many places, they are part and parcel of the right wing extreme.
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@rgl Right on! In some of those places they are the law, voted in place by We the People - who don't understand what they are reading, thereby voting. Sadder
Short of arresting our current president and the outlawing of the Republican Party, there is nothing “law enforcement” can do to stop the right wing movement; in a democracy the majority rules.
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And then Donald Trump deliberately courted these groups when he ran for president and secured their support, so there is no way his DHS is going to look at these groups now.
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One of the great things about being old is to be able to remember. I remember, in 1961, when I was applying for a commision in the Army and each time I had to apply for a security clearance I was given a list of organizations and asked if I were a member of any of them. The list were three columns on two 8X11 inch pages. A "yes" answer would have denied my commission and security clearances. The organizations were those who "advocated the violent overthrow of the US government." All of the organizations, with the exception of the KKK, were "left wing" organizations.
In the 70s the list disappeared (I was told because it violated individuals right of free association and speech). I now think it is interesting that those who advocate free association and speech want to deny that for other thinkers.
I think all extremes - right and left should be tracked and excoriated equally. The far left can be as tyrannical and narrow-minded as the extreme right.
Editor’s note: This comment has been anonymized in accordance with applicable law(s).
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@Sam except for the fact that "White supremacists and other far-right extremists have killed more people in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, than any other category of domestic extremist — but the country’s counterterrorism strategy has been focused elsewhere."
This is a fact. This is not denying rights for free thinkers. This is stopping violence.
I am going to assume that the 22 million folks who think this are all adults. That’s very nearly 10% of the US adult population. I can’t decide what makes me more sad and angry, the idea of one in ten US adults being so hate filled, or the total abdication of leadership at the highest levels of government and civil society. How has the right so successfully enshrined willful ignorance as a positive value in our national dialog? Deny climate change, ignore hate fueled extremists, forbid the academic study of gun violence. These are the themes promoted by conservative voices in the media and the shallow well of what passes for intellectual leadership from the right.
Notwithstanding this, shame on the left for letting this come to pass. I for one am embarrassed and guilt stricken beyond belief for my relative complacency. We must do better.
Finally, great story NY Times, but awfully late in arriving. You too owe us better
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Right wing extremism includes subjugation of non-whites as a fundamental part of its philosophy and call to action. Statistics from several sources show the legal system in general, and law enforcement officers in particular, carry a similar bias. Law enforcement didn't miss the rise of right wing extremism, law enforcement supported it from the beginning.
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If we were talking about groups of Black or Muslim people, there's no way the government and law enforcement would let this behavior go unchecked. White supremacy doesn't just exist in extremist groups; it's a part of the fabric of our institutions. Shameful.
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@Carolyn Today must be our lucky day - there are commenters here who question just what does America stand for these days. Good Job
None of this is new. This is as American as apple or cherry pie. Some White people hate People of Color for who they are whereas some People of Color hate White people for what they do and what they allow.
To this end, what needs to be explored is how hate group members have infultrated the police, FBI and other groups.
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@Cheryl It's simple to figure that one out - the police, FBI and other government organizations are made up of the same people who are American as apple pie. It's generic.
Right wing extremism? You act as if Antifa doesn't exist.
Antifa exists to fight this kind of extremism. Also, they haven’t killed anyone. The Far-Right has.
@Curt, antifa certainly exists, in much smaller numbers than the alt right.
And they very not killed, as the right has.
That's because U.S. law enforcement, especially under this self proclaimed "nationalist" fake ass president, is part of the problem. Maybe the rise in gun violence in this country is, in fact, due to murders committed by police officers that are rarely, if at all, being held accountable for. The resolution starts from the top. We need to clean house if we want any semblance of change.
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@TruthBeTold We have a President who promised to 'clean the swamp'.. Cleaning house only removes the dust on the surface.Change the system that allows the country to be infested with the problem. The system that allows political parties to control the votes by gerrymandering for one, by false information for another and by keeping the general public uneducated so they cannot identify the problem.
On social media, the headline for this article is "The Rise of Right-Wing Extremism and How We Missed It," which begs the question Who, exactly, is the "We" in that sentence? Because if you listen to people of color, they didn't miss a thing. They've been telling folks all along. Maybe the problem is "we" didn't listen and "we" didn't believe them.
About time "we" should.
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You "missed it" because you decided to join the chorus of criticism of Janet Napolitano in 2009 when she issued the report, "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," said right-wing extremist groups may be using the recession and the election of the nation's first African-American president to recruit members.
The right wing polemics were immediate and effective, and the report was apologized for and effectively quashed.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/15/extremism.report/
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@Sue because of the language it used to characterize veterans, not the content itself.
Thank you for the coverage, but I think the effects of Waco and Ruby Ridge on the FBI and ATF are also worth mentioning. They both came came out of those sieges looking very bad.
There is evidence that these groups handled the Oklahoma City bombing differently because they were afraid of another Waco. Before the bombing, both groups ignored chatter about illegal behavior in Elohim City, and that people there were connected to a terrorist threat planned for April 19, 1995. An FBI agent explicitly said he stopped a planned raid of Elohim City because he didn't want another Waco. (You can find that in an article titled What Feds Knew Before Okla. Bombing).
I don't think such a raid would have directly caught McVeigh, but it seems like he had been communicating with people in Elohim City (and might have visited earlier), and they might have learned about that... As long as it didn't turn into a months long siege like Waco, and they actually got some people to talk. It's also thought that the FBI agents were told not to pursue other possible co-conspirators of the Oklahoma bombing, again, because of fear of getting into another highly publicized mess.
White separatist groups did go further under ground after the Oklahoma City bombing. Killing a bunch of children doesn't look good. But I suspect federal groups were fairly eager to stop monitoring those groups.
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Is it fair to categorize the events mentioned in the podcast as "Right-Wing Extremism?"
The podcast mentions how the gov't had to change the label because it categorizes right-wing, republican connotation, with extremism: racism, antisemitism, and bigotry. The events referenced in the podcast are undoubtedly extreme and fall under the examples above, and the people taking part in the instances mentioned may have right-wing beliefs. However, blatantly associating right-wing ideologies with racism, antisemitism, and bigotry with a group as large as the Republican party is offputting as it likely contributes to further division.
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@Harrison except for the fact that it is accurate.
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@Harrison if that’s true, where’s the pushback from the right? If people disagree with such loathsome positions they should be livid about their party being co-opted by the bigots and fighting that tooth and nail but what we actually see is consistently voting, making excuses, and otherwise supporting the same people the bigots support. The few “never Trump” voices who haven’t quietly rejoined the fold have been thoroughly marginalized and have little influence on the party’s agenda. When someone is banned for violating a company’s terms of service, we are loudly told that this is Silicon Valley suppressing conservative viewpoints — as if anyone had ever been banned for proposing a new tax structure or foreign policy framework.
I would welcome an healthy and diverse range of right-wing voices but all of the people I know who fit that description have left the party after realizing it had no place for them any more.
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"We" didn't miss the rise of right-wing extremism. You did.
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@Michael Dann Actually, Neo-Nazis are far LEFT in their ideology. Remember that Nazis ARE SOCIALISTS!
@Steve Really? Because when they marched, they were doing so to unite the RIGHT.
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@Steve You should be embarrassed by publicly displaying your ignorance of the difference between "socialism" and Nazism (or "National Socialism").
A post like yours that is so incredibly wrong it makes me wonder if you aren't actively engaged in creating confusion in the United States by attempting to spread fake news.
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As we see in Portland OR and other places, law enforcement hasn't missed the rise of Fascism. They are collaborating with it and attacking Antifascists.
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@Linda that actually perfectly demonstrates the issue for exactly the opposite reason. If you punch a neo nazi you are turning them into a victim. You also play directly into the narrative of them being under attack by the "leftists." The police can't look the other way because they dislike someone's politics.
My strong suspicion on these "movements" is that they are being paid to go out and protest.
And yes, there are very wealthy trump supporters who can afford to literally give away money to people willing to show up.
How did they all of a sudden seemingly appear from nowhere?
The tiki torchers esp., how was it that they all carried the same kind of tiki torch? Were they each told to only buy a tiki torch or were the torches passed out to the protesters by some organization that had planned that ridiculous protest in Virginia.
That suggests the gathering lots of money and planning for these so-called organizations to motivate dumb people with too much time on their hands.
And all brought attention to themselves as trump declared his candidacy for president. The church shootings in Charleston, SC happened the very next day after trump made his announcement to run.
This is why trump immediately went after the FBI to try and keep it from investigating anything like this that might be related to trump's run for the presidency.
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@duroneptx
People have always accused the protesters of being paid rather than asking how they came to their positions. A lot of them believe exactly what they are saying, others don't actually understand what they are saying and what it means.
@duroneptx These groups didn't come out of nowhere. They have been around in varying strengths for decades. Trump gave them the inspiration to protest visibly, and the Internet gave them the means of easily organizing it. There had been other rallies organized by the same people earlier that summer, they just did not result in violence and so did not receive as much national news attention.
Sure, it's possible one guy bought the tiki torches out of his own pocket, and told everyone "meet me at X location to pick up your torch" - I don't honestly know if it was a "Bring Your Own Tiki Torch" event. But that's a far cry from paying people to be there.
Neo-Nazi groups, the KKK, other white nationalist groups - they don't need to pay people to be part of them. They have been around for a long time, whether we were paying attention or not. I think it's important that we as a nation face that fact.
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The ONLY people that missed this and didnt realize there was a rise. Are the people it DOESN'T EFFECT. Many people of color talk about this DAILY, but no ones cares. It takes acts of violence like this for something to budge. An when on modern day tv, video footage and a 2018 mindset. We still hear, omg really that happend, I would have never, and I don't understand they are mad
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It isn't a matter of ignoring it as a threat. The same issues that were faced with ISIS attacks are at play. There is the ideology which superficially most people are aware of and then there are the people carrying out the attacks who tend to have had limited if any contact with law enforcement.
Not to mention that the alt right and the radical right types tend to goad others into the fights which makes them the ones being assaulted.
Don't get me wrong I don't support them or what they stand for, they're not interested in a free or open society and they are a problem for society overall, just not necessarily one to be dealt with by law enforcement in most cases, it has to be a reestablishing of civic responsibility and common goals.
It isn't illegal to hold fundamentalist religious views, Islamic or otherwise so the FBI or police can't simply go after someone for holding them. The same thing with the militia movement, the neo Nazis, even the KKK, it isn't illegal to be a member or share their views. Until they actively plot to carry out a criminal act there is not a lot to be done by law enforcement. It isn't fair to say that the feds and police ignored this.
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@Tom
I agree. To quote Pogo,"we have met the enemy, and the enemy is us." Bigoted ideology has always been apart of our nation, a large part of it. It is only US that have to have the sense to contain it. Too many of my Jewish cohorts voted for a the man that can’t say nazis are bad. Obama is concise when he says,.How hard is it.
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@william phillips you gotta look at Trump as the extension of Ross Perot. Then it starts making sense.
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@Tom
All right-wing extremist groups have engaged in a variety of intolerable behaviors (frightful harassment, property destruction, beatings, non-lethal attacks with weapons, and murders of all forms) since the late 1800s up to the present... with higher and lower periods of frequency over the decades.
For much of this time, there wasn't anything called a "hate crime" -- that took the deaths of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd in the 1990s. In fact, for many decades, much of this violence was considered humorous by many white, Christian Americans, with colloquial sayings such as "lynching bees" and "Negro Barbeques" (to name only two).
When does this violence become "enough"? Nobody is JUST talking about individuals holding extreme views. We're talking about extremist views activated with increasing violence.
"While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger." -- John Rawls
Knowing what it was like before and still after civil rights, voting rights, and hate crimes legislation, one can critically assess our current situation as threatening the security of the tolerant and the institutions of liberty. The right-wing extremist groups must be restricted; they've earned it by their actions.
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Are we really that surprised that this country does not track white supremacists? Come on man...#thisisAmerica
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I'd say that you have to change the title of this episode.
First, the word "rise" can connote the beginning of a phenomena. We know that right-wing extremism has been alive in the USA for over a century (generously speaking, if one doesn't include slavery and the treatment of indigenous populations). The KKK began shortly after the Civil War, and American Nazis have been around since at least the 1930s.
Second, US law enforcement didn't "miss" right-wing extremism; they were pressured by Republicans to ignore it.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have studied and reported on hate groups and anti-government militias for many decades. I, professionally, studied hate/anti-government groups for more than 2 decades and taught a course on diversity and at-risk groups, which included a significant section on hate/anti-government groups, for 16 years.
The fact, that federal officers from 2007-08 could identify right-wing extremist groups rather easily. attests to the availability of this information. The report was prepared, and options for addressing the issue were proposed... then, Republicans interfered because they didn't want to upset their die-hard base (much of the same people who supported Trump early in his campaign, whether David Duke's endorsement or chants of "Hail Trump!").
Therefore, a more appropriate title would be "The Increase of Right-Wing Extremism, and How Republicans Pressured U.S. Law Enforcement to Ignore It."
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Media and journalism in the US is overwhelmingly made up of people who are white and of an upper middle class background. Privileged people, in other words. People for whom the status quo has been beneficial, and naturally, people who benefit from the continuation of such.
The sort of people who did not pay attention over the past decade as America racism became bolder and more brazen. The sort of people who either dismissed or ignored reports by groups such as the SPLC that white nationalism was on the rise and a clear danger (SPLC has been saying this for years). The sort of people who dismissed articles by writers of color pointing this out as shrill or overwrought. The sort of people who are surprised that American law enforcement counts a shockingly large number of people within its ranks who, at the very least, sympathize with white nationalists.
The tweet that led me to this article is headlined as "how could we have missed the rise of white nationalism?" The "we" is doing a lot of work there. I'd posit that if newsrooms were more diverse in terms of race and class, you wouldn't have missed it.
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Good lord. You may have missed it, but the rest of us have been watching with horror as it crawled out from under the rock.
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Back in the 1990s I kept reading about right-wing militias training to overthrow the government. Then I stopped hearing of them altogether, with no explanation of where they went. I even wondered if they were a hoax to frighten people into voting Democrat. So now we are told that they still existed, just underground.
Who was making these journalistic decisions?
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The rise of the rightwing extremism wasn't "missed." As this excellent podcast reveals, the DHS spotted it; reported it to Janet Napoletano; and was then told to step down by the Obama administration, which simply did not have the spine to investigate the domestic terrorist threat for fear of upsetting white folks. Incredible but true. And of course they got upset anyway and turned the map red.
The next Democratic president must understand that he must take on the extreme right very squarely; and that this means taking on most of the GOP.
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@JPR O'Connor the criticism of that report was in relation to how it characterized veterans. Many mainstream groups like the American Legion, AMVETS, the VFW, and others criticized the language. The content of it would still be available to law enforcement.
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@JPR O'Connor
Or She
@JPR O'Connor He or she, if we're lucky.