[ After the January 6 attack, federal surveillance programs
expanded to counter white supremacist violence have made Black and
brown communities their main target.]
[[link removed]]

THE SURVEILLANCE STATE CAN’T SOLVE WHITE SUPREMACY  
[[link removed]]


 

Azadeh Shahshahani, Fatema Ahmad
September 6, 2022
The Progressive Magazine
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ After the January 6 attack, federal surveillance programs expanded
to counter white supremacist violence have made Black and brown
communities their main target. _

Image credit: Michael Fleshman via Flickr / Creative Commons,

 

As the January 6 hearings continue, legislators have rushed to show
that they are doing something, anything, about white supremacist
violence. This includes a failed attempt
[[link removed]] to
pass the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act after the racist murder of
ten Black people in Buffalo, New York. But expanding the
counterterrorism complex is not the answer to white supremacist
violence—in fact, these measures often wind up reinforcing systemic
white supremacy.

After the January 6 attack, the Department of Homeland Security and
the FBI added new units
[[link removed]] and social
media monitoring initiatives
[[link removed]] to
supposedly tackle domestic terrorism. These agencies and initiatives
refuse to name white supremacy; rather, they use broad categories
like racially motivated violent extremism
[[link removed]] and
abortion-related violent extremism, giving cover to them to
investigate any ideologies in that range. 

The broad, sweeping discretion of counterterrorism programs, in turn,
has allowed law enforcement agencies to single out Black, Muslim, and
immigrant communities. COINTELPRO, the FBI’s political surveillance
program that targeted
[[link removed]] anti-war
and Black Power movements among others during the civil rights era, is
one of the most well-known historic examples of this. 

After every recent incident of white supremacist violence, DHS has
touted its Countering Violent Extremism programming, known as CVE, as
a solution.

U.S. counterterrorism measures proliferated in the early days of the
War on Terror, an era which kicked off the widespread surveillance and
detention of Muslims and Muslim Americans. More recently, the Trump
Administration used the FBI’s counterterrorism apparatus to target
[[link removed]] Black
protesters during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. 

After every recent incident of white supremacist violence, DHS has
touted its Countering Violent Extremism
[[link removed]] (CVE)
programming as a solution. CVE is the latest trend in
counterterrorism, deputizing individuals to report on their own
community using behavioral policing. As evidenced by the daily
policing of Black and brown people, encouraging more profiling will
only continue to harm communities of color first and foremost.

At the Muslim Justice League, we have organized against the CVE model
locally in Massachusetts and supported grassroots campaigns against
these programs across the country. In Boston, we successfully ended
[[link removed]] a program that
characterized Somali youth as prone to “violent extremism” and put
them through after-school training with the Boston Police
Department. 

Muslim opposition to the counter-extremism model has been loud and
clear since the start, with local wins in cities across the country
such as in Minneapolis
[[link removed]] and Los
Angeles
[[link removed]].
These communities and others targeted
[[link removed]] by
increased state surveillance have responded by organizing at the
grassroots level: Project South
[[link removed]],
a social justice organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, has worked
with local mosques and Muslim community spaces in Southern states.
This approach has provided communities with the tools to stand
together and challenge anti-Muslim surveillance, discrimination, and
targeting by the government.

Although President Joe Biden promised to end CVE programs during his
campaign, his administration has done the opposite by expanding them
[[link removed]] to
supposedly tackle white supremacist violence. While many reported that
the Center for Prevention Partnerships and Programs (CP3) was launched
in response to January 6, it simply renames the CVE department that
was launched by Obama in 2015, which was already renamed as Targeted
Violence and Terrorism Prevention in 2020. 

To address white supremacist and white nationalist violence, we have
to simultaneously dismantle these systems while working to build up
genuine community safety. That means not only opposing expansion of
law enforcement powers and the counterterrorism complex, but also
creating alternatives on the ground to support real community needs. 

Amid abolitionist organizing in Boston, there have been a number of
innovative efforts, including community safety teams which are trained
in de-escalation and can provide an alternative to police intervention
under some circumstances. Activists have also organized community
opposition to white nationalist mobilizations, such as
counter-protests, pro-actively showing up for events that may be
targeted, and conducting local research
[[link removed]] on their formations. 

The expansion of the government’s surveillance powers in the name of
counterterrorism has had devastating impacts on communities of color.
Broad-based mobilization, safety, and accountability mechanisms that
don’t rely on incarceration as the solution are necessary to counter
white supremacy and seek justice for Black, Muslim, immigrant, and
other communities that have been harmed. 

_[AZADEH SHAHSHAHANI is legal & advocacy director at Project South
[[link removed]], and a past president of the National
Lawyers Guild. _

_FATEMA AHMAD is executive director of Muslim Justice League
[[link removed]] and tweets @fatemaaaahmad
[[link removed]].]_

_Thanks to the authors for sending their article to xxxxxx._

* racial profiling
[[link removed]]
* Racism
[[link removed]]
* Islamaphobia
[[link removed]]
* white supremacy
[[link removed]]
* white terrorism
[[link removed]]
* Jan. 06
[[link removed]]
* MAGA
[[link removed]]
* GOP
[[link removed]]
* Republican Party
[[link removed]]
* Domestic Terrorism
[[link removed]]
* Counterterrorism
[[link removed]]
* Justice Deparment
[[link removed]]
* FBI
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]