John Lamparski/Sipa USA via AP Images
Members of the Patriot Front hold flags, shields, and a banner reading, “Strong Families Make Strong Nations,” during a demonstration in Washington, January 21, 2022.
Today’s Altercation is guest-authored by Daniel Byman, a professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. It draws on his forthcoming book, Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism (Oxford University Press, 2022). You can follow him @dbyman.
The White Supremacist Threat and Its Limits
By Daniel Byman
White supremacists pose a greater terrorism threat to the United States today than do jihadists, according to homeland security and outside experts. White supremacists’ recent track record is bloody; it includes high-profile attacks such as the El Paso Walmart and Pittsburgh synagogue shootings, which killed 23 and 11 people, respectively, as well as numerous lower-level hate crimes against a range of minorities. At the same time, however, the threat white supremacists pose is often misunderstood, and at times overstated. Important aspects of the danger they pose, such as their presence on social media, are also sources of weakness and vulnerability for the cause as a whole.
The contemporary white supremacist movement is changing in dangerous ways. Its predecessors saw themselves as defenders of the American system: The system, after all, ensured white supremacy, and they feared the civil rights movement was also a communist plot. In the 1920s, the Klan commanded hundreds of thousands of members, including many state and national political figures; they were at the heart of the American political system, and they helped pass highly restrictive anti-immigrant legislation. In the 1960s, white supremacist groups fought civil rights, often working with local government officials to defend the segregationist system.
Today, the movement is increasingly global, with attacks in Norway and New Zealand, and with “thinkers” in Europe inspiring American extremists and vice versa. Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019, published a manifesto that referenced President Trump and American gun control debates. An ocean away, one of the main ideas motivating American white supremacists, the “Great Replacement,” which contends there is a conspiracy—Jewish-organized, of course—to replace white people with Black and brown immigrants (among other sinister plots), emerged from the work of the European identitarian movement.
Social media is behind much of this change. Most obviously, it enables these global connections, allowing radicals from all around the world to exchange ideas and propose different tactics. Both online and in the real world, social media has brought together anti-government extremists, QAnon-type conspiracy theorists, and even the misogynistic “incel” movement, with their ideas shaping the white supremacist world and vice versa.
Making all this worse, their racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim rhetoric is echoed in broader political debate. Former President Donald Trump, for example, refused to condemn white supremacists when asked to do so during the 2020 presidential debates. White supremacists are holding and running for office, and important politicians often refuse to condemn the most extreme among them. Key media figures like Tucker Carlson have declared white supremacy a “hoax” and claimed the term is used by leftists as a way to smear their opponents.
Although the movement as a whole is robust, individual groups are small and weak, with relatively few skilled members: Their plots are often poorly executed, and the FBI regularly penetrates their ranks. We should not be complacent—one fanatic can kill a lot of people, as the Pittsburgh and El Paso attacks show—but it’s also easy to overstate the danger and see every arrest as indicative of a far greater threat.
Indeed, the very social media platforms that help the movement spread its message are often its nemesis, revealing the identities not only of individual plotters, but of all their friends and associates to both government investigators and concerned civil society groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center. Social media, because it allows new voices to join the overall movement with no discipline imposed from any central authority, also further fragments the movement. No one person or leadership group arranges for training, determines what the priorities are, and decides if any activity is beyond the pale. As a result, the movement suffers from constant infighting. In addition, many of its attacks and operations, while perhaps inspiring the most fanatical, trigger a counterreaction and turn people off from the cause in general.
The very social media platforms that help the movement spread its message are often its nemesis, revealing the identities not only of individual plotters, but of all their friends and associates.
In both dangerous and positive ways, the white supremacist threat is often the opposite of that posed by jihadist groups like the Islamic State. Jihadists, especially in the pre-9/11 era and its immediate aftermath, often enjoyed secure bases and strong training programs in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. There, they could transform incompetent recruits into dangerous killers, and leaders could organize and plot with little interference. Most of the 9/11 plotters were ordinary men who committed many mistakes in their attack preparations. However, in Afghanistan they received the training and indoctrination they needed to carry out this deadly plot. Online, there was a more disciplined social media presence, with jihadists often branding their content, and because the groups had a leadership and structure, they could more clearly lay out what they did, and did not, stand for.
White supremacists lack such a haven, and many do not receive training. Although white supremacists speak of carving out territory in the Pacific Northwest or otherwise establishing large havens, when they gather and try to take political power, the locals push back against them, denying them services, supporting minorities and other targeted community members, and otherwise trying to defend the good name of their communities. And should they use small plots of land to try to resist the U.S. government or plan attacks on minorities, they are usually detected and arrested by local law enforcement and the FBI. Online, they are often a cacophony of competing voices, vying for leadership and offering little strategic direction to the movement as a whole.
Jihadists, however, have no political support for their agenda in the United States. The American Muslim community roundly rejects them, usually cooperating with the FBI to stop plots, and Americans usually unite after a jihadist attack. White supremacists’ hostility toward Muslims, immigrants, Blacks, Latinos, Jews, and other minorities, unfortunately, enjoys broader support in the United States, and polls indicate many Americans think political violence is at times justified. Their attacks exacerbate America’s already polarized politics.
As it has in the past when it devastated the Klan and neo-Nazi groups, the FBI, working with local law enforcement, needs to assign enough agents, provide funding to law enforcement partners, monitor potentially dangerous actors, and swiftly make arrests when necessary. The good news is that the Biden administration is taking important steps in this area. But the traditional playbook only goes so far. A more global effort is necessary to tackle the international dimensions of the danger, with allies playing a vital role in helping monitor and stop extremism in their countries in coordination with the United States.
Major social media companies have a particularly large responsibility: They played an important role in weakening the reach of groups like the Islamic State, and they need to deplatform leading white supremacists and otherwise reduce hateful content online. Fortunately, some of the biggest companies are more aggressive in taking on white supremacists, but this presents a far harder challenge than deplatforming jihadists, and there is a long way to go. Technologist Maura Conway points out that, unlike groups like the Islamic State, the white supremacists are decentralized and elements of their cause enjoy broader political support, which makes it harder for social media companies to act against them.
Most important, and most difficult, is to return to an era when all political leaders reject haters and denounce the legitimation of violence. At a time when America is especially polarized, the idea of coming together seems implausible, but it is necessary to ensure the political will to confront white supremacists remains strong and that their impact on politics is negligible.
Odds and Ends
I imagine many Altercation readers are unfamiliar with the music of Billy Stritch, who, like so many in the romantic but terribly-hard-to-make-a-living New York cabaret world, conjures up a past that may never have existed in real life but makes living in old screwball comedies and film noirs look like a genuinely “fun city.” One place where it lives on is the midtown jazz club Birdland (named after Charlie Parker). I’ve written up shows there by my (in the most general sense of the word) “friends,” the Atlanta pianist Joe (no relation) Alterman and the guitarist, raconteur, arranger, and honored husband of Jessica Molaskey John Pizzarelli. But in the past few months, I’ve seen Stritch there twice, each time singing standards and deep cuts from the days of yore, and like Joe and John (and Jessica), he does so both as an artist, bringing new interpretations, but also as a historian, giving the audience both personal and musical context for the songs, together with the reasons he chose them for the show. It’s nostalgic (and yes, very white, sorry) but also kind of thrilling to live in an imagined past for a couple of hours. So here’s to Birdland, to their excellent bacon cheeseburgers and surprisingly good fries, and to all the people who kept it going during the pandemic. Also check out Stritch’s oeuvre, beginning with his new album, Billy’s Place, which he recorded solo—much as Pizzarelli did with his recent tribute to Pat Metheny—during the pandemic, on Club 44 Records. You might also look up The Sunday Set, a new album Stritch did with another Birdland mainstay, Jim Caruso, recorded live at the Birdland Theater (the smaller, more intimate room downstairs; cast party here). Finally, here’s a whole show of Billy’s from 2020 on “Radio Free Birdland.”
