Violent White supremacy seen as ‘persistent and lethal threat’

Last month’s report from the Department of Homeland Security, stating in part that White supremacist violence is “the most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland through 2021,” was both surprising and unsurprising. Surprising that, under this current administration, a government agency would affirm the threat and actions of violence being perpetrated against marginalized groups. Unsurprising to Black, indigenous and other people of color because this specific form of violence has been a threat to us for centuries.

“By (allegedly) downplaying, if not censoring, information regarding the threat of White supremacy, the Trump administration puts the country at risk for potential violence from a range of White extremist groups who thrive on racism, bigotry, White nationalism, and vigilante violence,” said Henry Giroux, chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and cultural studies department at Mcmaster University in Ontario, Canada. (A whistleblower complaint accused the agency’s leadership of deliberately downplaying the threat in political deference to President Trump and his rhetoric regarding white supremacist groups.)

“Too often, we see White supremacist terror attacks, especially when the attack is committed by a lone actor, as isolated events disconnected from any kind of larger cause,” said Pete Simi, professor of sociology and criminology at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. “This is a mistake we have been making for far too long.”

Giroux’s work focuses on racism, education, cultural studies and democracy, and he’s written a number of books, including “Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis.” Simi has been monitoring and studying farright extremism, including the White supremacist movement and anti-government militias for nearly 25 years. He’s also consulted as an expert witness in criminal and civil cases related to domestic terrorism and hate crimes, as well as working with Life After Hate, a nonprofit founded by a former White supremacist that helps people leave violent, far-right extremism. Both men took some time to discuss White supremacist extremist groups and activities, their views on what’s contributed to this growing threat. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. )

Q:

What do you think has contributed to the normalizing and escalating of White supremacist rhetoric and actions that would lead to this assessment from the Department of Homeland Security’s recent report?

Giroux: The United States has a long history of systemic racial violence that it has refused to acknowledge or deal with, and in many ways, it has nurtured this legacy both in terms of a range of racist policies that extend from the housing sector and workplace, to discriminatory policies that shape public goods, such as public and higher education. The culture of racial violence is embedded in reactionary cultural traditions, such as right-wing talk radio, militarized borders, police culture, the rise of mass racial incarceration, a blatant double standard in the justice system, and a rabid nationalism. Racism has become an open political strategy for the Republican Party, and under the Trump administration has become solidified; prior to Trump’s election, was directed largely against (Barack) Obama, the first African-american president.

Simi: Social media has been one of the primary mechanisms that has helped normalize White supremacy, but having someone like Trump in the White House has had an incredible emboldening effect.

Q:

Can you talk a bit about what you’ve learned in your work about how White supremacy functions? How, in your opinion, it’s linked to fascism? And what’s necessary for it to continue functioning, particularly in the violent ways outlined in the DHS report?

Giroux: White supremacy functions most dangerously when it is supported and embraced by people in positions of power. The danger here is that when the discourse of hatred, bigotry and racial purity works its ways through major political institutions, cultural apparatuses such as Fox News, and is repeated rather than criticized in the mainstream press, it becomes normalized, taken for granted, and gains more power. As one form of racism, White supremacy echoes a dangerous rhetoric of walls, segregation and dehumanization that we have seen in the horrors of fascist regimes in the 1930s. Couple this rhetoric of hate and dehumanizing policies with a culture of fear and an economic system built around massive inequality with the expansion of powerlessness among large segments of the public, and a politics begins to take root that closely resembles the dangers of a fascist past. When a government undermines, defunds and privatizes those institutions that educate people as critical citizens, while increasing its apparatuses of surveillance, punishment and state propaganda, it creates the pedagogical conditions that ferment a culture of hate, bigotry and fascism.

Simi: Fascism is broader than White supremacy, in that you can have a fascist system without White supremacy, but you can’t have White supremacy without fascism. The ideas and systems that constitute White supremacy are defined by a fascist logic where there is little or no tolerance for ambiguity, authoritarian impulses underscore racial ideas regarding cultural and biological superiority, and the idea of a special class of people who should “govern”/rule society is perceived as “natural.”