Efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to focus counter-extremism efforts solely on combating radical Islamist movements have drawn praise from far-right groups and criticism from many within the civil rights and law enforcement community.
Trump reportedly planned to restructure the existing “Countering Violent Extremism” federal program and rename it to either “Countering Islamic Extremism” or “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism,” according to Reuters. This comes despite the federal law enforcement having considered radical right-wing groups to be a greater threat to U.S. citizens than the danger posed by jihadist organizations such as the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, or al-Qaeda. Upon hearing the news, many right-wing groups, which have been routinely monitored and investigated by the federal government, celebrated.
The news was shared on white nationalist websites such as Stormfront and Daily Stormer where many users reacted with glee at the prospect that the federal government would no longer target groups and individuals and groups motivated by far-right, white supremacist ideologies. Many posts contained ethnic slurs toward minority communities including Jews, Muslims and African-Americans, with whom some accused Trump of being too sympathetic.
“Oh my goodness. Is this for real. Amazing my government no longer targets me as the enemy. It is up to us all to stay organized and continue the fight. This is just to [sic] good, we cant let this slip away from us again,” wrote one user on white nationalist website Stormfront. “I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face when I heard the news. If we keep having days like this, we might see the end of forced integration during the Trump Presidency,” wrote another.
“We helped get Trump get elected, and the fact of the matter is, without Alt-Right meme magick [sic], it simply wouldn’t have happened. We were there every step of the way, keeping the energy HIGH all through these tubes. The people paying attention know how much good we did, and they know how much good we can do in the future, making sure young people get on board with Trumpism,” wrote neo-Nazi political commentator Andrew Anglin on his site The Daily Stormer, which takes its name from the anti-Semitic Nazi Germany tabloid Der Sturmer.
Hundreds of groups actively promoting “white nationalist,” “neo-Nazi,” and other far-right ideologies are operating in the U.S., according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. In a June 2015 survey reported by the New York Times 79 percent of law enforcement individuals identified right-wing extremism as one of the most potent threats to their district, nearly double the number of those who chose Islamic extremism.
“Law enforcement agencies in the United States consider anti-government violent extremists, not radicalized Muslims, to be the most severe threat of political violence that they face,” Duke University’s Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security wrote in the report, based on surveys of 382 law enforcement groups and reported by Newsweek.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Trump’s changes were “profoundly misguided and will endanger Americans” and joined a number of prominent civil rights organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Anti-Defamation League in denouncing the move, according to Reuters.
Trump’s administration has been criticized in the past for catering to far-right movements including his appointment of Steve Bannon, founder of right-wing news site Breitbart, as his chief strategist and Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, whose high school yearbook listed him as the founder of a “Fascism Forever” club in an apparent joke regarding his conservative tendencies. Trump’s campaign was also endorsed by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Trump, however, has rebuked Duke’s support and publicly rejected any connection to far-right political movements.
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