Years ago, Republicans shut down talk of right-wing extremism. Now we're all at risk
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The violence and death that accompanied last year’s Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville came as a shock to most law enforcement officials. Though they had been actively gathering intelligence on the alt-right during the 20 years prior, the federal goYears ago, Republicans shut down talk of right-wing extremism. Now we're all at risk
The violence and death that accompanied last year’s Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville came as a shock to most law enforcement officials. Though they had been actively gathering intelligence on the alt-right during the 20 years prior, the federal government has spent the last 17 years largely ignoring white supremacists, instead diverting all of its counterterrorism resources to the cause of fighting Islamic extremism. While the focus remained on preventing another 9/11, right-wing extremism flourished. And it should come as no surprise to anyone that this renaissance emerged around 2007, after a black first-term senator from Illinois announced his candidacy for president of the United States. In fact, in a recent episode of “The Daily,” a podcast of the New York Times, writer Janet Reitman says that Obama was the greatest recruitment tool for the far-Right, “not just for Neo-Nazis and white supremacist racists but for a whole network of far-right types.” She says this based on her conversations with Daryl Johnson, a former analyst at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in domestic terrorism—a man who had a small team at DHS dedicated to analyzing such threats during the Bush administration. Hearing all the details, especially from Johnson’s own mouth, is truly frightening. In 2007, America’s entire national security apparatus was focused on combating violent Islamic extremism, with just a few resources looking at domestic terrorism. It wasn’t until Johnson was asked to monitor websites for extremist chatter related to Obama’s candidacy that he realized the extent of the proliferation of this movement. And as Obama got closer to the presidency, the momentum of the far-right movement grew and grew. Read more