Biden vows to combat ‘venom and violence’ of white supremacy
Joe Biden vowed to combat the “venom and violence” of white supremacy in America and decried Donald Trump’s reluctance to condemn the rightwing racism on display in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, which spurred Biden to run against him for the presidency.
The US president also called afresh for Congress to do more to force social media companies to address the spread of hate through their platforms.
“White supremacists will not have the last word and this venom and violence cannot be the story of our time,” Biden said on Thursday in a summit at the White House to push back on rising hate crime in the US, entitled United We Stand.
He said America had long experienced a “through line of hate” against minority groups, one that had been given “too much oxygen” by politics and the media in recent years, adding: “It’s so important that we keep hollering [and] for people to know that’s not who we are.”
The US president announced initiatives aimed at countering hate-fueled violence.
Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, delivered remarks at the summit, which was attended by lawmakers of both parties and community leaders from across the county.
Participants gave Biden a standing ovation when he said he wanted Congress to “hold social media companies accountable for spreading hate”.
“I’m calling on Congress to get rid of special immunity for social media companies and impose much stronger transparency requirements on all of them,” Biden said.
He did not go into further detail. Social media platforms are currently protected from liability as publishers of third party content by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
In his afternoon speech, Biden announced what he called “a new era” of national service to “foster stronger communities”.
He is asking Congress to raise the payment for national service through programs such as Americorps, an independent federal agency that involves millions of Americans in volunteer work for a stipend, to $15 an hour.
The president also mentioned new training on identifying and reporting hate-fueled violence for local law enforcement groups, workplaces and houses of worship.
The Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services will work with schools on programs to deter bullying, the White House said. And the Department of Homeland Security will offer $20m in grants for state, local and tribal governments, non-profits and universities to prevent hate-fueled violence.
Biden did not mention former president Trump by name, but while discussing the notorious “Unite the Right” 2017 rally in Charlottesville, he did refer to “the last guy” defending the white supremacists in the aftermath of the violence that weekend.
“When the last guy was asked, ‘What do you think?’ he said he thought there were some fine people on both sides,” Biden said.
He added: “We remain in a battle for the soul of our nation,” a theme he used in his 2020 presidential campaign and has lately revived to galvanize votes in this November’s midterm elections.
Survivors and loved ones of victims of hate-fueled violencealso participated in the gathering and spoke about horrors experienced because of racism, xenophobia and antisemitism.
The president was introduced by Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer – who was murdered in 2017 while protesting against the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, mown down in a far-right terrorist attack by a neo-Nazi sympathizer who deliberately rammed his car into counter-demonstrators.
“Across the country, hate crimes are on the rise,” Bro said. And while her daughter’s death received national and international attention, “all too often these hateful attacks are committed against people of color with unacceptably little public attention,” she added.
Biden had specifically asked Bro to introduce him at the summit.
He later tweeted: “White supremacy and all forms of hate-fueled violence have no place in America. Failure to call it out is complicity. Silence is complicity. And we cannot remain silent.”
Last year Charlottesville removed a Confederate statue that had been a focal location for the rightwing rally in 2017 from the town after a long legal battle. The state capital of Richmond not long after took similar action.
Thursday’s summit came four months after a white supremacist gunman attacked a supermarket in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo, New York, killing 10.
Similar attacks in recent years have included the 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where a gunman had published an anti-immigrant screed, the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando in 2016.
Hate crimes in the US hit a 12-year high in 2020, the last available data, the FBI said last year.
The White House earlier said more resources would be made available to schools, libraries and other community institutions to prevent hate-fueled attacks.
Major technology companies, under huge pressure to filter out rampant hateful content, have outlined steps to limit the spread of hate content on their platforms.
YouTube said it would start removing content glorifying violent acts that could inspire similar violence, even if the content creators are not linked to a designated terrorist group.
Microsoft pledged to expand its application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect and prevent violence, while Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced a partnership with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies’ Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism.
Biden signed the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act last year, addressing rising hate-related incidents against Asian Americans, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden promised to help heal “the soul of the nation”but evidence suggests that the country is more divided than it has been in decades. According to a survey last month, two in five Americans believe a civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next decade.
The survey also found that twothirds of Americans believe political divisions have worsened since Biden took office.