On August 3 2019, Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old from Allen, Texas, drove roughly 11 hours across the state to El Paso, where he opened fired in a Walmart, killing 22 people and wounding dozens more. Over the course of the next few days, the motives and underlying ideology that inspired Crusius’ actions came to light. In conjunction with Crusius’ own admission to targeting Mexicans during the shooting, Crusius published an anti-immigrant manifesto that touted blatant xenophobia and white-nationalist ideology on the now-defunct un-moderated messaging board site 8chan. The over 2,000-word white nationalist rambling was not just the abhorrent thoughts of an aggrieved white-male, but rather it was the articulation of a larger white nationalist ideology that is permeating the fringes of contemporary political thought and picking up a substantial amount of interest to some of the most impressionable and alienated individuals in our society. The manifesto’s language, featuring pointed animosity towards immigrants and striking repugnance towards those “threatening” the white race, mirrors the worldview of white nationalist manifestos prior, and signifies the enormity of the threat that the white nationalist movement poses to civil society and those most vulnerable to its terror. 

From Christchurch to Pittsburgh, El Paso to Utøya, there has been a substantial and alarming increase in mass shootings and other terrorist plots perpetrated by white nationalists over the past decade. As noted by a 2018 Center for Strategic and International Studies Report on White Nationalist and Right Wing Extremism, “Between 2007 and 2011, the number of such attacks was five or less per year. They then rose to 14 in 2012; continued at a similar level between 2012 and 2016, with a mean of 11 attacks and a median of 13 attacks; and then jumped to 31 in 2017.” Many of these attacks – like the ones in Charleston and El Paso – were perpetrated by “lone wolf” actors, disconnected from a centralized entity or organized group dictating the terms of the attack. Their motivations and ideology, however, were all spawned in the same deep corners of online social media sites and messaging boards, where similar  ideas, grievances, and tactics are often spewed in un-moderated chambers, forming silos of disinformation which further fuels the radicalization process. In result, the white nationalist movement has been able to develop their organizational capabilities while simultaneously adopting a group-think that is seeped in ideological purity, a purity which has led its followers to commit over 50 murders, which constituted every extremist-linked killing in the United States in 2018, according to a report released by the Anti-Defamation League.

The problem that arises out of this all is straight-forward: the rise of white nationalism, and the subsequent terrorism it inspires, is not being characterized as the national security issue it is, and when compared to the amount of resources allocated towards counter-terrorism operations against Al Qaeda and ISIS, is being inadequately addressed by our national security institutions.

The global rise of white nationalism is no niche phenomenon, as its ideology and mechanisms of radicalization are internationalized and far-reaching, replicating the same mechanisms of radicalization of international terror organizations like ISIS and Al Qaeda. With the fragmentation of our information ecosystem, the democratization of social media, and the abundant spread of disinformation – compounded with social media algorithms that have inadvertently created information silos – the road to radicalization is easier now than ever before. This accessibility to the means of radicalization has led to the aforementioned rise in extremist inspired murders and acts of terror, and has created isolated communities of disaffected men to propagandize each other, fundamentally altering their world view and making the process of de-radicalization exponentially more difficult.

One can find an equally troublesome observation when analyzing the movements’ increasing proximity to institutional power structures and its subtle, yet observable, entry into contemporary political discourse. Over the past few years, there have been a slew of different reports establishing links between members within institutions of power and law enforcement to right-wing or white nationalist groups. While many of these occurrences can be characterized as merely anecdotal, it does show an encroachment of white-nationalism into our institutions of power, an encroachment that would not be tolerated if it were from other groups like ISIS or left-wing extremist groups. Additionally, the normalization of this increasing proximity can be found through President Trump’s former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon’s tenure in the White House. While there aren’t direct ties between Bannon and white nationalist organizations, he has time and again, both through his work as editor of Breitbart News and during his time at the White House, “worked to advance ideas and personalities that might’ve once been considered “fringe” to the center.”. 

Concurrently, the language and core political tenants of the movement have been slowly embedding itself into contemporary dialogue. While not overt, there has been a subtle, yet observable, adoption of white nationalist language by Fox News Hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who have openly discussed the fears of “white replacement” on air, a concept that has its roots in White Nationalist ideology. While Ingraham and Carlson have not explicitly espoused white nationalist ideology on their programs, the subtle adoption of their language and theories indicates a larger encroachment and normalization of white nationalist rhetoric within contemporary political discourse. Additionally, the popularity of Alt-right or Alt-right adjacent news sites like Breitbart has skyrocketed in the past few years, becoming some of the most engaged-with news publications on social media networks like Facebook.

The slow infiltration of this fringe ideology into contemporary political discourse has increased the propensity of violent action to occur during important political junctures. As reported in The Guardian “Many of these “senseless” attacks have been carried out during key moments of mainstream political debates over immigration and refugee policy”. Examples of this could be seen in the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shootings, in which the shooter specifically stated his animosity towards the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, and its own proximity to the 2018 Midterm Elections – an election cycle that was heavily defined by the promotion of the artificially crafted and illusory “migrant caravan”. Additionally, there has largely been an abdication from outwardly denouncing White Nationalism by the Trump Administration, and while the FBI and the DHS have both recently took substantial steps in signaling the threats they create, President Trump’s failure to vocalize denunciation of these groups through his statements touting false-equivalencies, general negligence in acknowledging the motives of attacks, or outwardly endorsing violence against immigrants only further emboldens the movement and signifies some of the larger inadequacies in addressing such a pressing national security issue. 

Much of the failings of combating right-wing and white nationalist extremism can be dated back to the political backlash, and subsequent rescinding, of a 2009 Department of Homeland Security Report on Right Wing Extremism. Within the report, the DHS concluded that the “combination of environmental factors that echo the 1990s, including heightened interest in legislation for tighter firearms restrictions and returning military veterans, as well as several new trends, including an uncertain economy and a perceived rising influence of other countries, may be invigorating right wing extremist activity, specifically the white supremacist and militia movements. To the extent that these factors persist, right wing extremism is likely to grow in strength.” While the report was solely for the consumption of law enforcement agencies, conservative media outlets leaked it out just a few days after its internal release. What then ensued was intense criticism by Republican Lawmakers like, then House Minority Leader, John Boehner, and Conservative groups like the American Legion, both of which called for the immediate redaction and apology by DHS.

The backlash and subsequent redaction of the report indicated an ambivalence to outright un-palatability for even a faint discussion on the topic of right-wing extremism moving forward, and has lasting impacts today. That political un-palatability established an environment which constrained Federal, State, and Local governments from conducting counter-terrorism operations against domestic terror threats. The extent of the backlash was so relentless that “by 2010, there were no intelligence analysts at DHS working [on] domestic terrorism threats.” Additionally, in the months that followed, the fear of additional backlash led to the Department reducing coordination with state and local law enforcement, withholding other reports on domestic-terrorism, and de-funding law enforcement counter-terrorism training, all according to the Washington Post. While the Department was able to eventually gain back some of the programs they had to abandon come the end of the Obama era, much of what was left was immediately reduced to nothing upon the Inauguration of Donald Trump. Within his first years in office, the Trump Administration rescinded funding from programs designed to counter Violent Extremism, disbanded entire DHS Intelligence Units focusing on domestic terrorist, and shifted virtually all counter-terrorism activities to focus on Islamic Extremism.

The directives of the Trump Administration to have our national security institutions abdicate responsibility in countering white nationalist extremism has constrained the ability for state and local law enforcement agencies to do the same as well. This significantly deters meaningful work from being done, as in many cases, state and local law enforcement agencies “are best-placed to identify individuals vulnerable to extremist propaganda.” Building key relationships with these departments and other local stakeholders narrows the efforts to combat “lone wolf” actors and others who are at risk of engaging in white nationalist violence, and cutting the mechanisms of engagement and funding for these activities will only add extra teeth to such a prominent threat. Additionally, there has been a general ambivalence for social media companies like Facebook and Twitter to properly constrain and eradicate extremist right-wing ideologues. While that ambivalence comes from “defaulting to government designations” on who and what accounts constitute affiliation with extremist networks, it has only hampered the efforts of local government and civil society to properly combat right wing extremism – as these companies do have substantial autonomy and power to establish new norms.

While the groundwork towards properly combating the threat has been largely dismantled, there are still pathways and policy solutions available to alleviate the threats posed by white nationalist-inspired terrorism. As aforementioned, domestic terrorism has to be approached and treated with the same level of relative tenacity that has been given to international terror groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda. While this does not mean adopting militaristic tactics to bring down these individuals and organizations, there has to be a substantial increase in resource allocation, inter-governmental coordination, and community-led initiatives to localize and deter members of white nationalist organizations and even lone wolves, from further radicalizing and committing acts of terror. The United States can take the cues and tactics of other countries as well, such as the establishment of de-radicalization and counter-extremist programs that exist in Denmark and Sweden. However, in order to put in place any of the aforementioned policy initiatives, there has to be a fundamental change in our contemporary polity in how we characterize and prioritize these threats, as the lack of political capital and will has been the biggest detriment in the pursuit to combat white nationalist violence.