We should expect an increase in violence

The world collectively witnessed the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a mob of White supremacists loyal to Donald Trump in their attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. Though this failed coup attempt was unprecedented, it was not unexpected. Participants in the siege had been posting their plans for weeks following Trump’s encouragement that they attack the Capitol and disrupt the election results with a violent insurrection. The ideological precept driving these violent actions is unabashed White supremacy, but addressing this might prove difficult as it would mean challenging the core of United States’ national identity.

As recently as October, in its Homeland Threat Assessment, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declared White supremacist extremists as the “most persistent and lethal” domestic terror threat to the United States. The DHS and the Department of Justice similarly concluded in an earlier joint bulletin in 2017 that the “White Supremacist Extremist Movement Continues to Pose Threat of Violence to US Law Enforcement.” In 2006, the FBI published a bulletin detailing how White supremacists had infiltrated police forces to encourage recruitment of White supremacists into strategic law enforcement positions. In 2005 and 2006, extremist elements of White supremacist militia groups were also infiltrating anti-immigrant Minutemen vigilantes, as our American Friends Service Committee staff documented in Arizona.

At the top echelons of government power, Trump formalized his violent White supremacist agenda at the White House by appointing advisers who have sympathized with racist extremist groups. These included Sebastian Gorka, Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller. Miller remains a senior adviser and is credited with drafting repressive immigration policies, including banning people of the Muslim faith from entering the United States, and separating migrant children from their parents. It’s no surprise that the union for the largest and most unaccountable law enforcement agency in the country, the Border Patrol, would publicly support Trump for president, a first of its kind endorsement. The Border Patrol is itself sullied with a racist past, as initial recruits included Texas Rangers and private vigilantes who expressly and violently targeted Mexicans in borderland communities.

Trump’s sanctioning and promotion of White supremacy as an acceptable mainstream ideology has led to horrifying acts of violence, including massacres, shootings and other despicable crimes. This is consistent with Trump’s infatuation with genocidal U.S. President Andrew Jackson, whose unlawful executive decisions led to tens of thousands of Native peoples dying horrifically in the Trail of Tears.

As Trump’s tenure ends, his influence has stoked extremists into a neofascist fury. We should expect and prepare for more violence. Militia groups are threatening more actions as they remain emboldened by the narrative that they successfully stormed the Capitol.

Solutions to successfully challenging

White supremacy must include a reconfiguration of how to express power through a worldview that accounts for the suffering our communities have experienced over the course of generations, often at the hands of government enablers. This must come from Black, Brown and Indigenous people at the forefront of organizing in our communities.

Rios is director, U.S.-Mexico Border Program, American Friends Service Committee. He lives in San Diego.