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Selected Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties addressing the “FBI efforts to combat an increasing threat of white supremacy and white extremism”
Todd Bensman Former Manager, Counterterrorism Intelligence Texas Department of Public Safety Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division testified on June 4, 2019 before
He stated that like any crime, domestic terror risk ebbs and flows over time in reaction to complex interplays of factors, morphing but never disappearing entirely. I believe the threat was in a comparative ebb tide for most of the last decade, in Texas. The United States, for instance, experienced high levels of domestic terror attacks in the 1960s, which eventually slowed under law enforcement pressure in the 1970s.
Likewise, from the 1980s and through to the period after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, dangerous militia and Christian Identity groups conducting mortal attacks proliferated, ranging from the Republic of Texas separatists and Christian Patriots to the extremist militias and Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations. Attacks and criminal activity slowed after the Oklahoma City bombing under increased law enforcement pressure (the FBI hired 570 new counterterrorism agents the next year), which put the last of the 1990s leaders in prison. The 9/11 attacks only suppressed recruitment to the militia movement, it being unfashionable to overthrow a federal government busy fighting Islamist terrorism at home and abroad.
He reported that he has seen a resurgence in attacks and plots now from not just white supremacists but domestic extremists of various kinds on the right and left. All the hallmarks of resurgence are in evidence, in arrests, foiled plots and funerals. Law enforcement is already pivoting to brace the resurgent problem because law enforcement leaders are the types that need no prompting when they see danger rising. He provided detail on several white extremist groups as follows.
The sovereign citizen movement is not an organized group but an ideology that sometimes has drawn loosely affiliated individuals into small groups throughout Texas and the United States. Sovereign ideology has some roots in white supremacy, but mostly their beliefs are rooted in the idea that governments have no legal authority over them, especially in matters of taxation and the levying of government fees. There are black sovereign citizen groups with unique ideologies, for instance. As a consequence of their rejection of most government authority, some have shot and killed police officers who have stopped them for traffic violations. Others have engaged police in violent armed standoffs. In 2010, sovereign citizen Victor White fired on DPS officers, helicopters and armored vehicles in a 22-hour standoff during which thousands of rounds of ammunition were exchanged. In 2013, a self-described member of the “Moorish Nation,” a mostly African-American sovereign movement, exchanged fire with a Colleyville Police Officer and was wounded.
Many are involved in “paper terrorism” schemes that involve harassing public officials and perceived enemies through the filing of false property liens. In 2017, nine members of a sovereign group with Texas members, called “Continental uNited States of America,” were convicted in Colorado on racketeering conspiracy crimes in an attempt to influence public servants in a legal matter related to one of its members. Members of the same group attempted prison break in New Mexico by posing as U.S. Marshals.
Atomwaffen Division (Neo-Nazis) This racist and anti-Semitic organization, which is made up of small-cell groups, endorses violence as a strategy to ignite a race war to establish national socialism in the United States. National leaders are based in Montgomery County, Texas. Some members in other states have been implicated in killing one another, plotting to murder rival supremacists.
In 2017, ProPublica published reputed outtakes from private online chats among Atomwaffen leaders in Texas that mentioned an aspirational desire that a revolution “would” work well if infrastructure were bombed and murders committed. In Florida, police found the components of a radioactive dirty bomb. Members have conducted military-style arms training in Texas.
Anti-fascist (Antifa movement) From November 2016 through the spring of 2017, a series of melees initiated by antifascist group members at the State Capitol resulted in 18 arrests for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, assault, evading arrest, interfering with police, disorderly conduct. Protest violence and arrests were continuing in Austin until I left in August 2018. Members of an armed Antifa cell in Austin known as The Red Guard have trained in military assault tactics at an East Texas ranch property. A number of Antifa adherents are on terrorism watch lists.
Antifa activists attacked state troopers and supporters of Donald Trump. No alt-right protestors were arrested and charged during this time period. Anti-gentrification activists associated with the Antifa movement have targeted a local Austin business, vandalizing it and spray painting threatening messages. Numerous Antifa followers have traveled overseas to fight with communist Kurdish separatists in Iraq and Syria. Some of the Kurdish groups are closely tied to U.S.-designated terrorist groups.
Black Nationalism/Separatism In 2015 and 2016, individuals associated with extremist black nationalist groups, and triggered over perceived unlawful police shootings of black men, killed or wounded 25 police officers, in Dallas (5 dead), Houston (1 dead), and Baton Rouge (3 dead) beginning in 2016 and continuing. These attacks raised concern for the first time in years that black nationalist ideology may be in resurgence. At least five other attacks against police officers are documented. In 2017, A Dallas man linked to black separatist groups killed his roommate, injured a neighbor, and shot at police before committing suicide. In 2015, two black nationalist extremists were convicted in a plot to murder the police chief of Ferguson, Missouri and to bomb the Gateway Arch.
Anti-government/anti-federalist militias Texas individuals have been linked with anti-federalists individuals who carried out the 2014 Bundy Ranch standoff In Nevada and, in 2016, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge standoff in Oregon. Separately, a Texas militia group protesting the Islamic Society of North America conference in Houston clashed with protestors, including members of the New Black Panther Party, injuring one. In January 2017, a Texas-based individual involved in an online militia group burned a Victoria Texas mosque to send a message to the Muslim community. Mark Vincent Perez was found guilty in July 2018 of a hate crime. His social media pages contained hate messages about Muslims.
In a Statement Before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in Washington, D.C. on June 4, 2019 entitled Confronting White Supremacy Michael C. McGarrity, Assistant Director, Counterterrorism Division and Calvin A. Shivers Deputy Assistant Director, Criminal Investigative Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) they testified that the FBI applies the expertise, passion, and resources of both the Counterterrorism and Criminal Investigative Divisions to these overlapping threats, working to prevent the threats on the horizon and provide justice to the victims of hate crimes. Because individual incidents may be investigated as both domestic terrorism and as a hate crime, we bring the force of the FBI to bear against any event that may fall into these categories, investigating crimes through the lenses of both divisions unless or until one avenue is foreclosed or eliminated.
The FBI’s counterterrorism mission is dedicated to the disruption of terrorist actors and the prevention of terrorist attacks in the homeland. The FBI’s hate crimes mission is to enforce federal civil rights statutes and ensure the protected rights of all persons are preserved. In furtherance of these intersecting missions, our Counterterrorism and Criminal Investigative Divisions are often focused on prevention and enforcement, respectively. While the Counterterrorism Division tends to be more prevention driven, focusing on identifying, disrupting, and dismantling terrorists before they act, our teams devoted to hate crimes concentrate on the victims of attacks and ensuring they are provided the justice they deserve. We would like to take the opportunity to discuss both of these complementary missions with you in further detail, and to explain how we believe each division serves as a force multiplier for the other.
He contended that while the threat posed by terrorism has evolved significantly since 9/11, preventing terrorist attacks from foreign and domestic actors remains the FBI’s top priority. We face persistent threats to the homeland and to U.S. interests abroad from foreign terrorist organizations (FTO), homegrown violent extremists (HVE), and domestic terrorists, also referred to as domestic violent extremists. The threat posed to the United States has expanded from sophisticated, externally directed plots to attacks conducted by self-radicalized lone actors who mobilize to violence based on international and domestic violent ideologies.
He explained that the FBI categorizes terrorism investigations into two main programs: international terrorism and domestic terrorism. International terrorism includes cases in which subjects are members of designated FTOs, state sponsors of terrorism, and HVEs. The latter are individuals inside the United States who are inspired by international terrorism who have been radicalized to violence primarily in the United States, and who are not receiving individualized direction from FTOs. Domestic terrorists are individuals who commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as racial bias and anti-government sentiment.
He also reported that the operational tempo has risen significantly in the last few years and remains high. Still, the FBI along with our law enforcement partners, face significant challenges in identifying and disrupting HVEs and domestic terrorists who seek to perform terrorist attacks within the United States. This is due, in part, to the ease of online self-radicalization to violence and the corresponding lack of direct connections between known terrorists or FTOs and unknown radicalized violent extremists, which shortens the window of opportunity for our investigative teams to identify and disrupt an individual before that individual decides to act.
He explained that domestic terrorism is defined by statute as any act dangerous to human life that violates U.S. criminal laws and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping. The act in question must occur primarily within the jurisdiction of the United States. We assess domestic terrorists pose a persistent and evolving threat of violence and economic harm to the United States; in fact, there have been more domestic terrorism subjects disrupted by arrest and more deaths caused by domestic terrorists than international terrorists in recent years. We are most concerned about lone offenders, primarily using firearms, as these lone offenders represent the dominant trend for lethal domestic terrorists. Frequently, these individuals act without a clear group affiliation or guidance, making them challenging to identify, investigate, and disrupt but also said that no FBI investigation can be opened solely on the basis of First Amendment-protected activity. Rather, domestic terrorism investigations on individuals are opened on the basis of information concerning the occurrence or threat of violent criminal actions by the individual in furtherance of an ideology.
The current racially motivated violent extremist threat is decentralized and primarily characterized by lone actors. These actors tend to be radicalized online and target minorities and soft targets using easily accessible weapons. Violent extremists are increasingly using social media for the distribution of propaganda, recruitment, target selection, and incitement to violence. Through the Internet, violent extremists around the world have access to our local communities to target and recruit like-minded individuals and spread their messages of hate on a global scale. The recent attack at the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in Poway, California, not only highlights the enduring threat of violence posed by domestic terrorists, but also demonstrates the danger presented by the propagation of these violent acts on the Internet. The attacker in Poway referenced the recent mosque attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, and we remain concerned that online sharing of livestreamed attack footage could amplify viewer reaction to attacks and provide ideological and tactical inspiration to other domestic terrorists in the homeland.
He said that the FBI takes very seriously the threat of domestic terrorism, and we have aligned our resources to reflect this. Every FBI field office has at least one counterterrorism squad, and some offices have a squad solely dedicated to domestic terrorism investigations. At FBI Headquarters, we have an entire section of agents and analysts dedicated to support and enable field investigations, in addition to intelligence units which provide critical information to decision makers and help the FBI think strategically about the domestic terrorism threat.
As the threat to harm the United States and U.S. interests evolves, we are adapting to and confronting these challenges. In April 2019, the FBI established the Domestic Terrorism-Hate Crimes Fusion Cell to address the intersection of the complementary FBI missions to combat domestic terrorism and provide justice to those who are victims of hate crimes. Comprised of subject matter experts from both the Criminal Investigative and Counterterrorism Divisions, the cell offers program coordination from FBI Headquarters. This fusion cell helps ensure seamless information sharing across divisions and augments investigative resources to combat the domestic terrorism threat, ensuring we are not solely focusing on the current threat or most recent attack, but also looking to the future to prevent the next one.
He said that due to the devastating impact hate crimes have on individuals, families, and communities, these crimes are a priority for the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. The FBI investigates hundreds of cases every year and works to detect and deter further incidents through law enforcement training, public outreach, and partnerships with community groups. Historically, the FBI’s investigation of hate crimes focused on crimes in which the perpetrators acted based on a bias against the victim’s race, color, religion, or national origin. Investigations were restricted to those where the victim was engaged in a federally protected activity. With the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, the FBI was authorized to also investigate crimes committed against a person or property motivated by bias against race, religion, ethnicity/national origin, disability, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity.
The FBI is the lead investigative agency for criminal violations of federal civil rights statutes, and we work closely with our local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement partners around the country in many of these cases, even when federal charges are not brought. FBI investigative resources such as experts in handling electronic devices or data, or forensic expertise from the Evidence Response Team and FBI Laboratory, and agents experienced in identification and proof of bias motivations often provide an invaluable complement to local law enforcement. Many cases are also prosecuted under state statutes such as murder, arson, or state hate crime laws.
The FBI forwards results of completed investigations to local U.S. Attorneys Offices and the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, which decide whether a federal prosecution is warranted. Many cases are also prosecuted under state statutes such as murder, arson, or more recent local ethnic intimidation laws. Once the state prosecution begins, the Department of Justice follows the proceedings to ensure that the federal interest is vindicated and the law is applied equally among the 94 U.S. Judicial Districts. To be clear, state and federal prosecutions are not mutually exclusive.
In October 2018, the FBI, along with the Civil Rights Division, the Office of Justice Programs, the Community Oriented Policing Service, the Executive Office of United States Attorneys, and the Community Relations Service launched a website as a centralized portal for all of its hate crimes resources for law enforcement, media, researchers, victims, advocacy groups, and other related organizations and individuals. The website aims to educate the public on hate crimes and encourage hate crime reporting.
Selected Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Committee on Oversight and Reform on June 4, 2019 Confronting White Supremacy (Part II): Adequacy of the Federal Response
Lecia Brooks is a member of the senior leadership team at the Southern Poverty Law Center which is a civil rights organization founded in 1971 and based in Montgomery, Alabama, with offices in five Southern states. For more than three decades, the SPLC been monitoring, issuing reports about, and training law enforcement officials on far-right extremist activity in the United States. Each year since 1990, they have conducted a census of hate groups operating across America, a list that is used extensively by journalists, law enforcement agencies and scholars, among others. She spoke directly to the topic saying she would like to make three main points:
First, we are witnessing a surging white nationalist movement in the United States that is part of a larger, global movement linked by the idea that white people are being displaced, in part by migrants, in countries they believe should belong to them. This extremist movement represents a global terrorist threat and should be treated as such, though there is no such focus by our international intelligence agencies. Unfortunately, the words and actions of our president have energized and emboldened the white nationalist movement in the United States.
Second, this movement is rooted in a toxic, anti-democratic white supremacist ideology that is metastasizing on social media networks and other websites that traffic in hate. These networks are not only radicalizing people but are, in effect, incubating new terrorists – typically young white men who are motivated to act by what they call “white genocide.”
Third, the federal government has for many years, and particularly under the current administration, neglected to commit the resources needed to adequately combat this threat.
She declared that The White Nationalist Movement Represents a Global Terrorism Threat and Has Been Energized, Emboldened in the United States by the Current Administration.
She reminded everybody that on March 15 of this year, President Trump reacted to the massacre of 50 Muslim worshipers at two mosques that same day in Christchurch, New Zealand, by a white supremacist terrorist who livestreamed one of the attacks on Facebook. On the killer’s weapon was written the white supremacist slogan known as the 14 words – “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” – and coined by the infamous neo-Nazi terrorist David Lane. The Christchurch killer also left a manifesto that bore the unmistakable fingerprints of the so-called alt-right, both in tone and reference. It celebrated the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik as well Charleston terrorist Dylann Roof. It spoke of “invaders” who “replace” white people – the same kind of language used by Roof and other white supremacist terrorists.
When asked after the Christchurch massacre if he believed white nationalists were a growing threat, the president said, “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. It’s certainly a terrible thing.” The president is wrong to dismiss the significant threat of violence represented by this movement. In fact, as we have seen in recent months, one terrorist inspires another to act.
On April 27, five weeks after Christchurch, a gunman walked into the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California and opened fire. A 60-year-old woman observing Passover was killed. Many more might have been slaughtered if the gunman’s assault rifle had not jammed. The man accused of the murder, John Earnest, posted an “open letter” littered with the same racist and antisemitic tropes that other white nationalist terrorists wrote before him. He praised Brenton Tarrant, the man charged in Christchurch, writing that Tarrant “was a catalyst” for him. “He showed me that it could be done. It needed to be done.”
The Poway shooting occurred exactly six months after 11 Jews were massacred at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh by a man who reportedly shouted “All Jews need to die” before he opened fire.
The “small group of people” that President Trump referenced has now spawned the likes of Dylann Roof, killer of nine African-American worshipers in Charleston; Anders Breivik, killer of 77 people in Norway; Robert Bowers, the accused Pittsburgh shooter; Wade Michael Page, murderer of six Sikhs at a Wisconsin temple; and James Alex Fields, killer of anti-racist protester Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia. Many other white nationalists in recent years – far too many to list – have also committed hate-inspired violence or been arrested before they could launch terror attacks.
She reported that according to the SPLC’s analysis, at least 81 people in the United States and Canada have been killed in attacks committed by extremists linked to the white supremacist movement – or alt-right – since 2014. All of the 17 men responsible for these attacks were radicalized online. In our view, the most important factor driving this movement and its violence is the fear and resentment over the nation’s changing demographics. The U.S. Census has projected that sometime in the 2040s white people will no longer be a majority in the United States.
She stated that this nativist fear is not new. We began to see sharp increases in the number of U.S.-based hate groups around the turn of the century, following a decade in which the unauthorized immigrant population doubled, rising from 3.5 million to 7 million. In 1999, we counted 457 hate groups. That number more than doubled – to 1,018 – by 2011, two years into the Obama administration. But, after that peak, the number began to decline steadily, to a low 784 by 2014.
Then Donald Trump began his campaign for president with a speech at Trump Tower in which he claimed that immigrants from Mexico were bringing drugs and crime, and were “rapists.” Since that day, he has continued to use dehumanizing language to refer to immigrants from Mexico and Central America. He has vilified them “criminals,” “animals,” and “bad hombres” who “infest our country.” He has claimed that immigrant gang members “take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15 and others and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die.” Along the border, he has claimed without any evidence at all, “[w]omen are tied up, with duct tape on their faces, put in the backs of vans.”
She contends that white nationalists were electrified by Trump’s campaign. Eleven days after Trump’s election, white nationalist leader Richard Spencer spoke to a conference of the alt-right in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the White House. He told his audience that “America was until this past generation a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity.” He added, “It is our creation. It is our inheritance. And it belongs to us.” Spencer punctuated his speech with these words: “Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!” Members of the audience stood and gave Spencer the Nazi salute.
Since the campaign she said Trump has continued to energize the white nationalist movement through both his words and his policies. For example, he famously insisted there were “very fine people” among the hundreds of neo-Nazis and other white supremacists who marched in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, shouting slogans like “Jews will not replace us.” In 2018, he called Haiti and majority-black countries in Africa “shithole countries.” He has also implemented draconian policies at the U.S.-Mexico border, separating migrant children from their families, imprisoning tens of thousands of immigrants, and virtually shutting down the asylum system.
In some cases, violent acts by extremists appear to have been motivated by Trump’s words or by support for him. In March, Cesar Sayoc, a Trump supporter, pleaded guilty to charges related to a mail bomb campaign in which he sent devices to Democratic politicians, media figures, and other prominent critics of the president last October, just before the midterm elections. At the time, Trump was raging about the so-called caravan that was bringing an “invasion” of migrants to the United States. Sayoc’s targets included George Soros, a Jewish billionaire who funds progressive causes. Soros was the subject of a false alt-right conspiracy theory – spread on social media and even parroted by mainstream politicians – that claimed he was orchestrating and funding the caravan. The theory dovetailed with white nationalist notions that Jews, more generally, are working to facilitate immigration. Similarly, a study released in March 2018 found that President Trump’s tweets on Islam-related subjects were highly correlated with anti-Muslim hate crimes and that a rise in anti-Muslim hate crime since Trump’s campaign was concentrated in counties with a high Twitter usage.
White supremacists hoping to disseminate their propaganda have been helped immeasurably by social media companies that are, in some cases, unwilling to moderate hateful or extremist content. Twitter, for example, allows some of the most prominent leaders of the white nationalist movement – including David Duke and Richard Spencer – to maintain accounts. YouTube is one of the most efficient radicalizing forces on the internet, one that white nationalists frequently credit with first introducing them to ethnonationalist ideas. Its algorithm serves up increasingly extreme content to users, because it keeps them on the site longer and, in turn, increases the company’s ad revenue. YouTube is, in other words, profiting off of far-right radicalization.
When tech companies do decide to act against hate, it is often only after a violent attack has occurred. They need to proactively address the problem of extremist content on their platforms rather than simply react after people have been killed.
She continued stating that most people who associate with the white nationalist movement do not belong to a formal hate group but act as part of loosely organized communities of extremists who congregate around online propaganda hubs. The neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, for instance, has cultivated a massive following of readers who daily consume content that tells them that the Holocaust was a hoax, that Jews are committing a genocide against white people, and that there is an impending race war in the United States. The site often presents this content under layers of humor that are designed to desensitize readers to grossly racist content and ease them into the world of hate. This is part of its strategy to recruit impressionable young people. Andrew Anglin, who runs the Daily Stormer, has said that his site is “mainly designed to target children.”
Social media and sites like the Daily Stormer have helped to cultivate an enormous online white nationalist movement – one that is now actively embracing violence as a solution to “white genocide.” Though many extremists see Trump as a fellow traveler – or even as a champion of their movement – they are frustrated with the pace of political change and, therefore, increasingly believe that they can bring about their ethnonationalist vision only through acts of violence.
Violent attacks by far-right extremists are growing in frequency and becoming more deadly. In a recent report, the Anti-Defamation League found that domestic extremists killed 50 people in 2018 – up from 37 in 2017 – and that “every single extremist killing – from Pittsburgh to Parkland – had a link to right-wing extremism.” Violence in the name of white supremacy encourages others to carry out similar attacks. A recent analysis by The New York Times showed that “at least a third of white extremist killers since 2011 were inspired by others who perpetrated similar attacks, professed a reverence for them or showed an interest in their tactics.”
As Lecia Brooks was wrapping up her testimony she pointed out that there are entire online spaces – including the forum Fascist Forge, threads on the social media sites Gab and Telegram, and podcasts on the site Radio Wehrwolf, among many others – that exist solely to provide training and advice about how to carry out acts