Month: January 2021

There Is A Way To Interrupt Domestic Extremism

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

January 23, 2021

Trump is gone. We survived the inauguration, not only unbloodied, but closer to united, which I am crediting to J. Lo. She sang a rousing rendition of “This Land is Your Land,” written by the OG Antifa Woody Guthrie. Besides Bernie’s mittens, the grand ritual was notable for one key sentence from the newly sworn in president. “And now, a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.” It was a first for an inaugural address and a focus that is desperately needed.

I’ve written much in this blog about the threat of right-wing extremism and the through-line that connects the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing to the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The 25,000 National Guardsmen and the collapse of the ludicrous QAnon prophecy helped us to deflate the threat this past week but that doesn’t mean the barbarians are not still at the gate, hoping to cripple our democracy. The election of Barack Obama (and a Democratic congress) in 2008 gave raise to the Tea Party movement. 2021 will see a post-Q antigovernment movement that, with the help of social media, will fuse all the bad actors of the past. It’s already a broad counterculture the ranges from Trump’s “suburban housewife” that still thinks Joe Biden is fronting an underground pedophile ring to the self-styled Timothy McVeigh-wannabe who plots to bring down federal office buildings to strike a blow against the “Zionist Occupation Government.”

So what do we do now?

If President Biden is sincere about confronting political extremism and white supremacy and defeating domestic terrorism, now is the time to create an organized, cohesive interagency plan to get in front of this issue, or we’re going to need a lot more than 25,000 National Guard to protect our institutions of government. As a researcher and organizer working in this field for 30 years, I’ve started sketching out what a countering violent extremism strategy might look like. Similar to the institutional shifts that occurred after 9/11, it recognizes the capacities of existing agencies, including the Department of Education, the FBI, and the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service. This initial approach contains four organizing principles; suppression, education, extraction, and vision.

Suppression: Addressing active threats

After the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, the Clinton Administration immediately pivoted to confront the threat of violence from the patriot militia movement. The reality is that, on October 25, 1994, the Southern Poverty Law Center urged Attorney General Janet Reno to alert “all federal law enforcement authorities to the growing danger posed by unauthorized militias that have recently sprung up in at least eighteen states.” While that warning may not have been heeded, after the terrorist attack the following April, Reno made the suppression of domestic terror groups a priority. The FBI broke up several plots, including those leading up to the “doomsday” prophecies connected to Y2K on January 1, 2000.

The events of 9/11 propelled President Bush to move many of those law enforcement resources to the investigation of international terrorist plots, particularly after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. The “patriot movement” didn’t go away after 9/11. It retreated to the corners of the internet. In the Obama years it scooped up many Tea Party activists and by the Trump years it was in the streets, heavily armed and promising a revolution, rebranded as the “Boogaloo.” In 1997, I interviewed several militia members in western Montana and one told me, “We’re patient men but this war will happen in our lifetimes.”

The suppression plan of the Biden Administration must include 5 important areas. 1) The interruption of ongoing plots. While we still don’t have a federal definition of “domestic terrorism,” criminal conspiracy statues have been used and must be utilized with increased use of intelligence services and investigative resources. 2) The monitoring of e-chatter of threats, including open source social media posts, the dark web, and encrypted communications. Research from the Rand Corporation has found that this chatter increases before acts of hate-motivated violence occur. 3) Turning extremists into assets. Life After Hate is a group of former extremists who now work in the field of countering violent extremism. The Prevent Program in the UK has utilized former jihadists in the working of interrupting jihadist plots. “Formers” are a vital resource available but under used. 4) Disrupting extremist prison gangs. There is a pipeline  that runs from white gangs inside prison to hate groups outside prison. A national strategy on these security threat groups would cut off a channel of extremist recruitment. 5) Monitoring foreign involvement in in-person and on-line extremism. Foreign actors, particularly from Russia, have been active in both bolstering the American white supremacist movement and spreading disinformation that increases hostility towards the American government.

Education: Confronting the issues that divide us

In this age of disinformation, we must honestly address the sins of the past while reaching out to those who are drawn into the conspiracy theories of radical right because of their lack of understanding of social and demographic changes (and how government itself works). The summer 2020 protests following the George Floyd killing highlighted the work that remains to be done to address institutional, cultural, and personal racism.

If we are going to have a national conversation about race, it needs two very important audiences. The first audience is people of color who need an honest acknowledgment of the generations of trauma that racism has cause. We’ve never really dealt with the impact of slavery on contemporary psyche. It’s not like anti-black racism magically disappeared in 1865 at the close of the Civil War. Similarly, we also haven’t confronted the trauma caused by Japanese internment, the Bracero Program, or separating migrant children from their parents at the border. The second audience must be white people, especially white people who have been economically dislocated by globalization and economic shifts. Lecturing about white privilege is a hard sell to a coal minor who has lost his job in the push for “renewable energy.” We don’t reduce the normalization of white supremacist thinking that pushes white people into thinking “their” country is disappearing if we don’t help white people see the value of inclusion and the futility of extremism.

Education must revolve around four key agendas. 1) Racial reconciliation. As Germany did after WW II and South Africa did after apartheid, we need a healthy dose of truth and reconciliation that links the dark past to the problems of the present. This work is hard but must be done. 2) Diversity, equity, and inclusion training and celebration. The Biden team doesn’t have to give America a long HR diversity training, but there are some valuable skills that can be taught widely, including the understanding of implicit bias. This work can also be a lot of fun as we come together, not to melt into a national pot, but celebrate the diverse ingredients of our national gumbo. 3) Community healing and dialogue. Much of this work must be done locally, recognizing the intersectionality of different communities. “Asian-Americans” are not one monolithic group. 4) Outreach to dislocated populations. Equity requires actively bringing people to the table. We must recognize that many of those marginalized communities are white. They are better served at a table with their non-white neighbors than in a basement plotting attacks on their own government.

Extraction: Dealing with the internal threat

Nearly one in five of the participants in the Capitol attack were members of the U.S. military. There is a long list of police officers who have had ties to white supremacist groups. There is an alleged group of prison guards who work to support racist gangs, like the Aryan Brotherhood. The infiltration of groups sworn to protect us by extremists is the worst kept secret in America. Timothy McVeigh was a Gulf War vet who handed out copies of The Turner Diaries, the racist revolution handbook, to the white members of his platoon.

Addressing this problem is vital to this strategy for two reasons. The first is the utilization of the military for training by right wing extremists. Additionally, having people on the inside (cops, prison guards, National Guard, Air Force officers with access to nuclear weapons, etc.) makes waging a civil war at lot easier. While I was undercover with a group of racist skinheads in Orlando, Florida in 1989, four Stinger missiles disappeared from the armory of a nearby Army base and were recovered from the Aryan Nations compound in Idaho. And if you’ve got a Josh Hawley who can open the doors for you, all the easier.

The second is all about perception. The belief that police and the military reinforce white supremacy didn’t die with Bull Conner and is central to the protests for racial justice. We can’t move forward until we’ve proven this important work is incompatible with organized racism.

So this plank of the strategy must both respect government workers’ first amendment rights while managing extremist infiltrations in three areas; 1) the United States military, 2) municipal, county, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, and 3) correctional officers in local jails, and state and federal prisons.

Vision: Who are we as a nation?

If the “America Century” began at the end of World War I, the century is ending. Will there be a second American century that is different? Or will it just be a high tech version of Jim Crow and people begging for black lives to matter. For the last four years there has been a massive vacuum of leadership. All we heard was a call to make America 1950 again, a time when millions of Americans were institutionally disenfranchised. We need a clear message about what America is going to look like. The hard fact is that demographic trends don’t lie. The country is becoming less white, less Anglo-Saxon, and less Protestant. Will we sink into an endless battle between WASPs and everyone else? A clear articulation of what the other path looks like is desperately needed. It seems like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are willing to formulate that vision.

We need our national leaders to think about four central agendas in this “re-visioning.” 1) A clear articulation of our values. What does mean to be an American? We are a nation of people of deep empathy, willing to confront our demons and work together on meaningful solutions. If the military reminds us “you are only as strong as your weakest link,” we can do the work to lift all those in our country to “be best” (Sorry, Melania.) 2) Addressing intersections. These issues are complex and overlap with other important issues. For example, global warming is pushing environmental refugees into extremist groups around the globe and is having real impact on the American farming community. 3) Addressing the truth and pain of the past. Donald Trump tried to erase the past with his 1776 Project. We must confront it head on and that will include some sincere acknowledge of harm done. President Reagan’s 1988 apology to Japanese-Americans for the mass internment in the 1940s went a long way to heal the wounding that was done to so many families who had their lives ripped away because of racist war hysteria.  4) Envisioning the path forward. What will a “less white” America look like? Our president can guide to a stable, diverse, beautiful pluralist view of the future that won’t doom us to endless division and extremist violence.

We have the ability to achieve this. We can both prevent domestic terrorism and bring disaffected Americans back into our wonderful, diverse family. The second American century can be spectacular, not just for few, but for all. There is a heavy load to be lifted by the Biden Administration, but it will be made lighter if we all help carry it.

The Barbarians at the Gate: Confronting MAGA Terrorists Post Trump

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

January 12, 2021

I’m not one to say I told you so, but I told you so. Since 2015,  I’ve been writing and talking about how Donald Trump was leading a cult of personality that wanted to bring fascism to America. But I’m not here to take credit. I’m here to urge action.

History tells us that failed coup attempts are followed by successful coup attempts. The 1/6 siege on the Capitol Building was not the last gasp of the Trump base. It was first attack by so-called “patriots” who have been arming and training for their revolution to overthrow our duly elected government. It won’t end on Inauguration Day. In fact, January 20th could be one of the bloodiest days of American history. Trump has spent 5 years emboldening (God, I’ve used that word way too many times since 2015) his rabid right-wing base with veiled (and not-so-veiled) racist declarations, and calls to attack the media and anyone who is not 100% loyal to him (including former members of his administration). He took something that was a fringe political movement of “Wackos from Waco” to a mainstream social movement of self-imagined 1776 revolutionaries. He’s done his work and now can stand back and stand by while the chaos destroys America. His father/fatherland didn’t love him, so he’s going to burn it down.

It’s not a matter of when Trump’s civil war will start. The fact that his troops were roaming the halls of the U.S. Capitol with zip ties, chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” while the vice president was certifying Biden’s victory, is evidence that we’re at least in “soft” civil war that’s about to get very hard. So what do we do to save the country from sliding from democracy into totalitarianism, as so many nations have before?

Recognize the threat

There is a straight line that runs from the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing to Wednesday’s insurgence. To the outside viewer, Wednesday’s mob might have seemed like a crowd of sub-moronic good ‘ol boys who just got caught up in their angst that their “manly man” (lol) lost the election. But there was a method to their madness.

A small band of similarly minded “patriots,” guided by the blueprint provided in a racist novel called The Turner Diaries, intended to start a civil war to rid the government of “Zionist” control. It was their conspiracy-fueled version of the “deep state.” In one moment on April 19, 1995, 168 people were killed, including 19 children. Timothy McVeigh and his cohorts were the product of the patriot militia movement. Twenty-five years ago it was a fringe underground that was largely squashed by public rejection and federal policing. Now it’s a massive overground, fueled by internet, right-wing news outlets, QAnon, and the President of the United States. But the end goal is the same, a right-wing revolution to purge America of any vestige of liberalism, multiculturalism, feminism, and religious tolerance. And it probably includes somebody in your family.

It’s not surprising that several white supremacist groups were involved in Wednesday’s attack, including the Oath Keepers, the Rise Above Movement, and, of course, the Proud Boys. The Proud Boys, Trump’s shock troops, have shed any pretense of not being a racist gang. The Oregon Capitol has been besieged by right-wing extremists, including one Proud Boy with a notorious past. Apparently, Kyle Brewster has been engaged in the actions in Salem. Brewster, besides an avowed Trump supporter, was one of the racist skinheads convicted of beating an Ethiopian man to death with a baseball bat in Portland in 1988. The white supremacist scene has rebranded itself as a “Western chauvinist movement” and invited a few men of color along to prove it’s not your grandfather’s Klavern.

I’ve written plenty in this blog about the “militia funnel” and the real threat of civil war. Just understand this. Some of these people are nut jobs. I mean the “Q Shaman”? Brother, please. But there is a core in the center of several concentric circles of anti-government fury that is heavily armed and has been training since the day they saw Timothy McVeigh take down a federal office building in Oklahoma.

This threat is domestic in nature but don’t think there is no foreign involvement. Numerous adversaries stand to benefit by pushing America into great discord, even if this soft civil war doesn’t go full Gettysburg. This includes Trump’s buddies (and creditors), the Russians. Don’t be surprised if we see Russian actors involved in the call for Trump loyalists to come to D.C. on January 6th, if not actually breaching the security at the capitol.

Now that the White House, and both houses of Congress will be in Democratic control, expect extremists to use Wednesday’s attack as a recruiting call for a national uprising. They know they have sympathizers on the inside who will open the doors for them. And we thought 2021 was going to be so chill.

Recognize the roots of the threat

Once we’ve come to terms with the threat level, it’s worth understanding the roots that got us here. Complex problems have complex causes, but Wednesday’s white riot has three factors (+1) that led to the destruction and death that occurred in the halls of Congress.

First is the massive social change that America has experienced in the last 50 years. The “natural” authority of the straight, white, cisgendered, Christian men is no longer assumed. Civil right movements to make equity a real thing have challenged (but not eliminated) their social position. Feminism, black lives matter, inclusion officers, and the rest has threatened their (male) God-given right. So Trump, a “macho” (stop) man, appears and says he’s going to make America “great again, ” speaking directly to their insecurity. Let’s make America 1950 again, before all this civil rights business. And quickest way that men gain authority is through violence. Just ask that “bitch who opened her mouth one too many times.”

This upsetting of white male power has occurred in the context of globalization. The manly factory jobs have all moved to non-white countries. In their place are low wage service sector jobs, with no union card and no benefits. Before COVID hit, there were actually more women working in America than men, and they were mostly working at Walmart, not at the plant. So what does the king of his castle do when the HR lady fires him for sexually harassing a co-worker? And then his job is sent to China?

The third factor is the coronavirus. It’s both turned everything upside down and magnified the race to the bottom. On the one hand, the virus has caused economic devastation, pushing formerly “king of the hill” white men further down into desperation. All this being blamed on, as Trump calls it, the China virus. On the other hand, the lockdown (and layoffs) has plopped people in front of their computers, looking for information and ending up in less than legitimate news sites like Newsmax, OANN, and Epoch Times, who traffic in endless conspiracy theories about the “stolen” election. (I can’t believe I’m going to put Fox News in the “legitimate” column.) And then here comes the web fad QAnon to tell you that the deep state is “communist” and controlled by baby-eating Democrats. Desperate people will believe pretty much anything that gives them a leg up on the uncertainty.

The fourth “bonus” factor is Trump. In a crisis like this, a leader would take on the task of bringing the nation together and steering those at risk away from the radical fringes. Instead, he has pushed these sad souls right into the militia rabbit hole because it suits his need for ego feeding. A bunch of yahoos who would never be let inside Mar-a-Lago are worthy props. They’ll be mowed down by the National Guard waving their stupid Trump flags, but it all serves substitute for the love he never got from his parents.

Neutralize the threat

What we do about this is a much larger discussion. The first order of business is to shut down the immediate threat. After the bombing in Oklahoma City in 1995, Attorney General Janet Reno got in front of the militia threat and moved FBI resources to go after it. The bureau had its hands full shutting down terrorist plots, especially leading up to Y2K. (Ask your granddad about that one.) I don’t doubt that the Biden Administration, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, will take this issue seriously. The Trump Administration essentially ignored it, allowing it to fester. When members of the militia movement in Michigan plotted to kidnap and execute Governor Whitemer, AG Bill Barr acted like he had no knowledge of any of it. The difference between 1995 and 2021 is the anti-government threat is now massive. All 50 state capitals are facing assaults by right-wing extremists. Several Democratic governors have had armed extremists on the grounds of their homes. Shutting down these barbarians, who think they are on the brink of their promised white revolution, is going to take a well planned coordination between Homeland Security, local law enforcement agencies, and community groups.

The other strategy has nothing to with police and everything to addressing to the root causes of this wind that has blown so many Americans over the right-wing cliff. We’re probably not going to recreate a massive manufacturing sector to get men back into GM factories, but we can help those men learn to manage the social changes instead of freaking the F out. One of the best resources here are people who have actually been through the grinder and come out the other side. Groups like Life After Hate have created a place for former extremists to share their journey into the dark side and help pull other racists and extremists off the ledge. 

Rebuild the middle

America needs to have several hard conversations that deal with trauma and reconciliation. If we want to “smash the binary,” we can include the pointless division between red and blue. This isn’t 1861. We’re all shades of purple. There’s such a need for leadership to guide us to unity. That leadership can come from the White House or it came from the liberal who reaches out to Trump supporters and invites them over for dinner (when that’s safe again).

The first civil war didn’t really end in 1865. We remained divided, especially on the issue of race. Jim Crow and the electoral college were the South’s revenge. But we’ve learned a few things in the years since then. We are on the edge of something that will turn this county into ash (and delight Mr. Putin and Mr. Jinping). But we also have the capacity to create a second, better American century. This is the moment for bold, if not a bit desperate, action.