White-Supremacist Violence Is Terrorism
As commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, I fought America’s enemies abroad. Now we must fight violent, hateful ideologies at home.
I combatted the threat of foreign terrorism for much of my career, fighting organizations that are grounded in virulent, hateful ideologies, and in many cases operate in a network of independent, loosely connected cells. Violent white-supremacist organizations operate in a similar fashion. Our failure to address these domestic groups and their networks, or to take them as seriously as their foreign counterparts, is costing us lives, diminishing our shared and cherished values, and compromising our credibility and unity as a people.
This is happening now, not in some bygone era, and we have to act immediately if we’re to safeguard our republic.
Last month, I
testified before the House Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism about one element of the threat that white-supremacists pose: the risks of anti-Semitic violence and the ongoing threats facing our faith-based communities. Yet as we celebrate Black History Month and reflect on all that it represents, we should recognize the deep roots of racism and prejudice in America.
Slavery is America’s original sin, and this “genetic birth defect,” as
Representative Hakeem Jeffries recently called it, did not resolve itself with the end of the Civil War, nor with the heroic efforts of the civil-rights movement. The resurgence of white-nationalist ideologies and organizations is rooted in this legacy.
For much of the past 50 years, white-supremacist groups were largely relegated to the fringes of American society, where they continued to survive, if not thrive, as a shameful artifact of history. Yet today they are finding a
geopolitical landscape that has grown permissive, or
even supportive, of their rhetoric and activities—and we need to do more to combat them. The recent decision of the FBI to
elevate racially motivated violent extremism to a “national threat priority” is a strong start. These malign actors are terrorists, and that’s what we should call them. What’s more, we need a comprehensive
domestic-terrorism law, one that would help bring the full weight of our laws and resources against the unaddressed and violent manifestations of racism that still persist in American culture today.
More:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/white-supremacist-violence-terrorism/606964