Recently, we experienced a heartbreaking series of mass shootings in California, Ohio and Texas. While the details and motivations behind these tragedies are still being investigated, the carnage in El Paso, which has now been officially identified as an act of domestic terrorism, is a clear continuation of a rising trend of violent right-wing extremism, and marks the deadliest attack against the Hispanic population in the modern history of the United States.
The violence of white extremism that we continue to witness is a result of individual acts of hatred as much as the lack of domestic counter-terrorist measures, due to a systematic racial and ethnic bias in our system, and the failure to recognize the danger of domestically-grown evil ideologies.
The focus of our national security to protect citizens against acts of terrorism has been mainly on dangers coming from the outside the United States, and has disproportionately targeted immigrants and minorities. We have severely curtailed the acceptance of refugees, especially from Middle Eastern countries, and tried to close our southern border to immigrants and asylum seekers.
This has resulted in a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions. All this is despite the fact that the vast majority of jihadist terrorists (85 percent, according to the national security think tank New America) have radicalized in the United States, half of them were born here, and virtually no acts of terror have ever been committed by refugees.
Violent white supremacists tend to be almost exclusively white men born in America. Furthermore, violent acts by extremist right-wing groups or individuals have been a much more common occurrence in the United States than attacks by Islamist extremists – and they continue to rise. According to the US Extremist database, since the Sept. 11 attacks, Islamist extremists have been responsible for 26 percent of acts of domestic terrorism, while the remaining 74 percent have been perpetrated by far-right extremists.
The decline of jihadist violent acts in our country has been the result of coordinated efforts by the CIA, FBI, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other counter-terrorism agencies, who have been able to infiltrate terrorist cells, arrest suspects and prevent crimes.
This is largely thanks to the passing of the USA Patriot Act after Sept. 11, which provided government agencies with more access to data and allowed them to monitor jihadist groups, surveil internet chatrooms where jihadist propaganda is disseminated, and prevent suspects with a connection to international terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS to purchase explosives and board airplanes.
However, a similar legal framework is not available to law enforcement agencies when dealing with violent white supremacy. Racist hate speech, amplified through internet chatrooms and social media, is protected by the Constitution, as is the right of white extremists connected to well-known far-right violent groups to have unrestricted access to automatic and semi-automatic weapons.
While support for international terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS is criminalized and sympathizers may be apprehended and monitored, support and contributions to domestic groups with a violent history and known racist and anti-Semitic ideology, such as the KKK, the Aryan Nations and other neo-Nazi groups, is legal within our current system, and extremists cannot be apprehended until after they have committed an actual violent crime. This does not provide any possibility for prevention.
According to a study conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, 75 percent of perpetrators of mass shootings showed signs of imminent attack through their racist and angry statements, references to past attackers, and allusions to a possible suicidal mission. The El Paso attacker used derogatory and hateful language against Hispanics, and expressed his inspiration from the recent mass murder in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Both the FBI and Homeland Security have been asking lawmakers for the past several years to expand the budget for monitoring far-right extremist groups (which now constitutes only a fraction of what we spend on monitoring Islamic extremism) and to expand the legal framework so that these agencies can more closely monitor white supremacist behavior and take preventive measures. In July, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress that right-wing racist terrorism is currently the greatest threat to our country, and Mary McCord, a former top national security prosecutor, has drafted a proposition to criminalize domestic terrorism, including the stockpiling of weapons to be used for a domestic terrorist attack by anyone with known connections to violent hate groups. However, such laws are not in place yet.
To adjust the legal system, political representatives would have to engage in difficult discussions that touch on important constitutional rights, namely freedom of speech and the freedom to bear arms. These amendments would need to be reinterpreted in the light of technological advancements in the weapons industry, as well as new communication technologies, globalized internet culture and social media.
However, many politicians are reluctant to initiate such changes for fear of losing political support in a social climate where people are not used to associating terrorism with white American-born citizens, and where it is always easier and more popular to project violent extremist ideologies on foreigners, immigrants, and ethnic and religious minorities.
This ethnic and racial bias in our society presents an obstacle to address the problem of domestic terrorism effectively. Until we concede that evil ideologies can be the product of our own culture and society, instead of a foreign import, and that we may be just as vulnerable to violent extremism as people of different racial, ethnic and cultural origins, our national security strategies will continue to be misplaced – and we will suffer the tragic consequences.
Dr. Kamila Valenta is a member of St. Gabriel Church in Charlotte and a part-time professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she teaches courses on ethnic conflict and terrorism.