42 Time March 15/March 22, 2021
The new Commander in Chief was
launching a government-wide effort to
combat far-right extremism and wanted
to hear from the nonprofit, which for 108
years has tracked anti-Semitism, hate
speech and domestic radicalism. “We ex-
pected to be contacted,” says Ryan Greer,
a former Department of Homeland Secu-
rity (DHS) official who studies extremism
at the ADL. “We just didn’t expect it that
quickly. The change in tone and urgency
could not be more stark from prior years.”
In normal times, the top security
aides in a new Administration would
be focusing on dire foreign threats like
trans national terrorism, Chinese cyber-
espionage or North Korean nuclear pro-
liferation. This time, the gravest danger
is closer to home. Spurred by the Capi-
tol siege on Jan. 6, Biden has asked senior
advisers to do something no previous
Administration has attempted: refocus
the network of U.S. security agencies to
help combat domestic extremism.
Biden’s director of national intel-
ligence, Avril Haines, is working with
the FBI and DHS to assess the threat.
A new four-person office at the National
Security Council (NSC) has launched a
100-day push to better understand and
tackle the problem. The office is seeking
crime data and information on recruit-
ment strategies, and convening weekly
video meetings with former federal
officials, scholars and advocacy groups.
There’s talk of expanding FBI field offices
and boosting funding for programs
that rehabilitate former violent white
supremacists and neo-Nazis.
The urgency was clear long before the
Capitol insurrection. For three decades,
the U.S. has suffered escalating violence
at the hands of far-right extremists,
from Oklahoma City to Charlottesville
to El Paso. Since 9/11, right-wing ter-
rorists have been responsible for almost
three times as many attacks on American
soil as Islamist terrorists, including all
but one of the 17 domestic-terror attacks
launched in 2019.
Meanwhile, it’s easier than ever for
extremists to recruit. Social media has
put millions of Americans a click away
from radical views and unhinged con-
spiracies once circulated by pamphlet.
On Facebook and YouTube, clean-cut
figures wearing suits and ties have built
large followings by weaving racist, anti-
Semitic and violent rhetoric into political
speech. President Donald Trump’s em-
brace of his far-right supporters melded
extremist militants with the Republi-
can Party he commands; the Capitol riot
blurred the barriers that once separated
run-of-the-mill conservatives from self-
styled militia groups like the Proud Boys,
Oath Keepers and Three Percenters.
“This new phenomenon that’s
emerged is particularly dangerous: soc-
cer moms and Joe Blow citizens show-
ing up at the same rally and participat-
ing in the same activities as hardcore
white- supremacist groups and militia
extremists,” says Daryl Johnson, a for-
mer DHS senior analyst who authored a
2009 report warning of the rise of right-
wing extremism. “You’ve got the crimi-
nal, violent element blending in with the
law- abiding element under the guise of
the First Amendment.”
By January, nearly 4 in 10 Republicans
said violence may be necessary “if elected
leaders will not protect America,” accord-
ing to a survey by the conservative Ameri-
can Enterprise Institute. Threats against
politicians and local officials have grown
commonplace. And analysts who have
spent decades studying the far-right
fringe warn its ranks are set to swell fur-
ther under the Biden Administration.
It’s a daunting task for Biden’s team:
confront one of the greatest domestic
threats since the Civil War without pro-
voking a political crisis or infringing on
Americans’ civil liberties. Officials are
armed with little data, less money, few
programs to build on and no proven so-
lutions. Federal law enforcement is lim-
ited by freedom- of-speech protections
for U.S. citizens. Local police depart-
ments are often ill-equipped or unwill-
ing to determine whether perpetratorsare part of a larger far-right organization.
But Biden’s 100-day scramble to under-
stand the scope of the problem suggests
how far it has spread.
Perhaps most challenging of all is
that fighting these extremist groups may
strengthen them. Any crackdown on the
far right risks reinforcing their narra-
tive that the government is persecuting
or silencing them for political reasons,
which experts warn will further boost
their numbers. Hours after Biden prom-
ised at his Inauguration to tackle “polit-
ical extremism, white supremacy [and]
domestic terrorism,” Fox News host
Tucker Carlson warned his audience,
“ We are now in a new war on terror, but
it’s a domestic war focused inward on
the people of this country.” Pro-Trump
forums lit up with furious messages. “If
they start using bullsh-t legislation to tar-
get their political opposition,” one user
wrote, “it should get violent.”
In this context, it’s no surprise that
Biden picked an Attorney General,
Merrick Garland, who led the Justice
Department’s prosecution of the perpe-
trators of the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb-
ing, the deadliest act of homegrown ter-
rorism in U.S. history. Garland vowed to
make the prosecution of the Capitol mob
his “first priority.” FBI agents and pros-
ecutors have tracked down and charged
some 300 of the rioters. “Jan. 6 was not
an isolated event. The problem of domes-
tic terrorism has been metastasizing,” FBI
Director Christopher Wray told Congress
on March 2. He noted that the FBI is cur-
rently working on about 2,000 domestic-
terrorism cases, twice as many as it was
in September.
But if the U.S. has learned any lesson
from 30 years of failed attempts to stem
the rise of domestic extremism, it’s that
law enforcement alone cannot solve the
problem. The Biden Administration’s suc-
cess will be measured not by the num-
ber of prosecutions of domestic terror-
ists but rather by the number prevented
from crossing over into violence in the
first place.As ChristiAn PiCCiolini watched
the mob storming the Capitol from his
home in Chicago, he had one overriding
thought: They’re winning. Everything
about the crowd—the chants, the anger,
the symbols on their clothing— evoked theNation