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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

Social Media and White Supremacist Terrorism

A movement that's both nationalist and global, and largely
uncoordinated

Today's Altercation is guest-authored by Daniel Byman, a professor at
Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Center for Middle East
Policy at the Brookings Institution. It draws on his forthcoming book,
Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism

(Oxford University Press, 2022). You can follow him @dbyman
.

The White Supremacist Threat and Its Limits

By Daniel Byman

White supremacists pose a greater terrorism threat to the United States
today than do jihadists, according to homeland security

and outside experts
. White
supremacists' recent track record is bloody; it includes high-profile
attacks such as the El Paso Walmart

and Pittsburgh synagogue

shootings, which killed 23 and 11 people, respectively, as well as
numerous lower-level hate crimes

against a range of minorities. At the same time, however, the threat
white supremacists pose is often misunderstood, and at times overstated.
Important aspects of the danger they pose, such as their presence on
social media, are also sources of weakness and vulnerability for the
cause as a whole.

The contemporary white supremacist movement is changing in dangerous
ways. Its predecessors

saw themselves as defenders of the American system: The system, after
all, ensured white supremacy, and they feared the civil rights movement
was also a communist plot. In the 1920s, the Klan commanded hundreds of
thousands of members, including many state and national political
figures; they were at the heart of the American political system, and
they helped pass highly restrictive anti-immigrant legislation. In the
1960s, white supremacist groups fought civil rights
, often
working with local government officials to defend the segregationist
system.

Today, the movement is increasingly global, with attacks in Norway and
New Zealand, and with "thinkers" in Europe inspiring American extremists
and vice versa
.
Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people at two mosques
in New Zealand in 2019,
published a manifesto that referenced President Trump and American gun
control debates. An ocean away, one of the main ideas motivating
American white supremacists, the "Great Replacement
,"
which contends there is a conspiracy-Jewish-organized, of course-to
replace white people with Black and brown immigrants (among other
sinister plots), emerged from the work of the European identitarian
movement.

Social media is behind much of this change. Most obviously, it enables
these global connections, allowing radicals from all around the world to
exchange ideas and propose different tactics. Both online and in the
real world, social media has brought together anti-government
extremists, QAnon-type conspiracy theorists
, and even the
misogynistic "incel" movement
,
with their ideas shaping the white supremacist world and vice versa.

Making all this worse, their racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim
rhetoric is echoed in broader political debate. Former President Donald
Trump, for example, refused to condemn white supremacists

when asked to do so during the 2020 presidential debates. White
supremacists are holding and running for office
, and
important politicians often refuse to condemn the most extreme among
them. Key media figures like Tucker Carlson have declared white
supremacy a "hoax"

and claimed the term is used by leftists as a way to smear their
opponents.

Although the movement as a whole is robust, individual groups are small
and weak, with relatively few skilled members: Their plots are often
poorly executed, and the FBI regularly penetrates their ranks
.
We should not be complacent-one fanatic can kill a lot of people, as
the Pittsburgh and El Paso attacks show-but it's also easy to
overstate the danger and see every arrest as indicative of a far greater
threat.

Indeed, the very social media platforms that help the movement spread
its message are often its nemesis, revealing the identities not only of
individual plotters, but of all their friends and associates to both
government investigators

and concerned civil society groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center
. Social media, because
it allows new voices to join the overall movement with no discipline
imposed from any central authority, also further fragments the movement.
No one person or leadership group arranges for training, determines what
the priorities are, and decides if any activity is beyond the pale. As a
result, the movement suffers from constant infighting. In addition, many
of its attacks and operations, while perhaps inspiring the most
fanatical, trigger a counterreaction and turn people off from the cause
in general
.

In both dangerous and positive ways, the white supremacist threat is
often the opposite of that posed by jihadist groups like the Islamic
State. Jihadists, especially in the pre-9/11 era and its immediate
aftermath, often enjoyed secure bases and strong training programs in
places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. There, they could transform
incompetent recruits into dangerous killers, and leaders could organize
and plot with little interference. Most of the 9/11 plotters
were
ordinary men who committed many mistakes in their attack preparations.
However, in Afghanistan they received the training and indoctrination
they needed to carry out this deadly plot. Online, there was a more
disciplined social media presence, with jihadists often branding their
content, and because the groups had a leadership and structure, they
could more clearly lay out what they did, and did not, stand for.

White supremacists lack such a haven, and many do not receive training.
Although white supremacists speak of carving out territory in the
Pacific Northwest

or otherwise establishing large havens, when they gather and try to take
political power, the locals push back

against them, denying them services, supporting minorities and other
targeted community members, and otherwise trying to defend the good name
of their communities. And should they use small plots of land to try to
resist the U.S. government or plan attacks on minorities, they are
usually detected and arrested by local law enforcement and the FBI.
Online, they are often a cacophony of competing voices, vying for
leadership and offering little strategic direction to the movement as a
whole.

Jihadists, however, have no political support for their agenda in the
United States. The American Muslim community roundly rejects them,
usually cooperating with the FBI to stop plots
,
and Americans usually unite after a jihadist attack. White
supremacists' hostility toward Muslims, immigrants, Blacks, Latinos,
Jews, and other minorities, unfortunately, enjoys broader support in the
United States, and polls indicate

many Americans think political violence is at times justified. Their
attacks exacerbate America's already polarized politics.

As it has in the past when it devastated the Klan and neo-Nazi groups
, the FBI, working with local
law enforcement, needs to assign enough agents, provide funding to law
enforcement partners, monitor potentially dangerous actors, and swiftly
make arrests when necessary. The good news is that the Biden
administration

is taking important steps in this area. But the traditional playbook
only goes so far. A more global effort is necessary to tackle the
international dimensions of the danger, with allies playing a vital role
in helping monitor and stop extremism in their countries in coordination
with the United States.

Major social media companies have a particularly large responsibility:
They played an important role in weakening the reach of groups like the
Islamic State
,
and they need to deplatform leading white supremacists and otherwise
reduce hateful content online. Fortunately, some of the biggest
companies are more aggressive in taking on white supremacists, but this
presents a far harder challenge than deplatforming jihadists, and there
is a long way to go. Technologist Maura Conway points out

that, unlike groups like the Islamic State, the white supremacists are
decentralized and elements of their cause enjoy broader political
support, which makes it harder for social media companies to act against
them.

Most important, and most difficult, is to return to an era when all
political leaders reject haters and denounce the legitimation of
violence. At a time when America is especially polarized
,
the idea of coming togetherseems implausible, but it is necessary to
ensure the political will to confront white supremacists remains strong
and that their impact on politics is negligible.

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Odds and Ends

I imagine many Altercation readers are unfamiliar with the music of
Billy Stritch , who, like so many in the
romantic but terribly-hard-to-make-a-living New York cabaret world,
conjures up a past that may never have existed in real life but makes
living in old screwball comedies and film noirs look like a genuinely
"fun city." One place where it lives on is the midtown jazz club
Birdland (named after Charlie Parker).
I've written up shows there by my (in the most general sense of the
word) "friends," the Atlanta pianist Joe (no relation) Alterman
and the guitarist, raconteur, arranger,
and honored husband of Jessica Molaskey
John Pizzarelli . But in the past few
months, I've seen Stritch there twice, each time singing standards and
deep cuts from the days of yore, and like Joe and John (and Jessica), he
does so both as an artist, bringing new interpretations, but also as a
historian, giving the audience both personal and musical context for the
songs, together with the reasons he chose them for the show. It's
nostalgic (and yes, very white, sorry) but also kind of thrilling to
live in an imagined past for a couple of hours. So here's to Birdland,
to their excellent bacon cheeseburgers and surprisingly good fries, and
to all the people who kept it going during the pandemic. Also check out
Stritch's oeuvre, beginning with his new album, Billy's Place, which
he recorded solo-much as Pizzarelli did with his recent tribute to Pat
Metheny -during the pandemic, on Club 44
Records . You might also look up The Sunday
Set, a new album Stritch did with another Birdland mainstay, Jim Caruso,
recorded live at the Birdland Theater (the smaller, more intimate room
downstairs; cast party here ). Finally,
here
's
a whole show of Billy's from 2020 on "Radio Free Birdland."

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

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