The final two weeks before the U.S. midterm elections were marked by multiple incidents of violence perpetrated by far-right extremists. Two black senior citizens were murdered on October 25 by a white supremacist in Louisville, Kentucky. Then a radicalized Trump supporter mailed at least fourteen pipe bombs to prominent progressives across the country. On October 30, a gunman, who had previously targeted Jews online, entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing eleven people—the deadliest anti-semitic attack in America’s history.
These incidents capped an election cycle in which President Donald Trump made numerous comments that seemed to encourage and even glorify violence, including telling Christian leaders “there would be violence” if his party lost the election.
The Washington Post reported this week that “violence by white supremacists and other far-right attackers has been on the rise since Barack Obama’s presidency—and has surged since President Trump took office.” Per the Post’s data analysis, “over the past decade, attackers motivated by right-wing political ideologies have committed dozens of shootings, bombings and other acts of violence, far more than any other category of domestic extremist.”
Violence by white supremacists and other far-right attackers has surged since President Trump took office.
Author David Neiwert, who has covered far-right violence for decades, recently recounted many of these incidents in a Twitter thread. “For some reason, folks on the right have extremely short memories when it comes to acts of rightwing political violence,” Neiwert wrote. “This is especially the case when they are in the middle of a propaganda campaign to make ‘the left’ look violent.”
To understand far-right violence, we need to take a step back and view the American right wing as a whole. White supremacy is a feature of this movement—not a bug. This is why Trump rarely bothers to denounce rightwing violence, and why his Administration’s strategy is to pretend it’s not a problem.
Groups on the extreme right routinely dehumanize anyone who doesn’t support their worldview. We see this online with Facebook pages promoting violence against immigrants and race baiting, YouTube influencers radicalize viewers of mainstream conservative content by exposing them over time to white supremacist messaging. We see it in the viral NPC meme that plays on a common video game trope to paint progressives not as human beings but as “non-playable characters” ripe for abuse. And we certainly see it in the near-daily dehumanization of political opponents on President Trump’s own Twitter account.
Unfortunately, media organizations covering the far right often manage to both amplify these groups’ hateful rhetoric and soften their image. NBC News recently gave the white nationalist group Identity Evropa a free five-minute infomercial packaged as an interview on the Today Show. That afternoon, NBC’s Left Field re-released an infomercial packaged as a short documentary on the Proud Boys, a designated hate group.
And last month, The Washington Post ran an article with quotes from far-right figures that were simply copied and pasted from the hate groups’ own platforms. The New York Times ran a profile of Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes referring to him as a “Brooklyn Hipster.” The dehumanizing language and routine calls for violence from these people and groups received hardly any attention in these pieces.
We need to expect far-right violence to become more common, more strategic, and more organized. Vice News recently reported on “The Base,” a social network dedicated to moving online fascists up a ladder of engagement from online “shitposting” to participating in paramilitary trainings for a supposed forthcoming “race war.” After years of recruiting foot soldiers and priming them for violence, the far right is now developing the infrastructure needed to mobilize and deploy them.
We need to expect far-right violence to become more common, more strategic, and more organized.
The good news is that the days of the far-right being largely ignored by the federal government may be over. Next year, the House of Representatives will have a Democratic majority and Democratic committee chairs have already promised to bring greater scrutiny to these insidious and dangerous networks—and to hold the Trump Administration accountable.
Incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairperson Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, is off to a running start. On November 27, he sent a letter to the Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, Director of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, and FBI Director Christopher Wray demanding answers on the Trump Administration’s handling of “matters related to domestic terrorism, countering violent extremism, domestic surveillance, and the unfair profiling of racial, religious, and ethnic minority groups.”
“The warning signs have been with us for some time,” Nadler’s letter states. “[B]ut Congress remains largely in the dark as to any concrete steps you may have taken to monitor, track, and prevent this hate-based, homegrown violence.” The letter notes that the Trump Administration has worked to diminish programs aimed to help communities counter the influence of extremist ideology, and has cancelled grants for organizations that help de-radicalize white supremacists and for researchers who develop media campaigns aimed at diminishing the online influence of hate groups.
This is a step in the right direction. But far-right extremism is a systemic problem that requires all hands on deck to fix. Media platforms must fight online radicalization and focus on protecting the civil rights of users who are victimized. Media outlets need to stop being duped into amplifying hateful rhetoric. And in lieu of moral leadership from our President, Americans must send a unified message to all of the above institutions: violence from the far right will no longer be tolerated.