People protesting against US President Donald Trump wait near the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [Brendan Smialowski/AFP]
New York Times: U.S. Law Enforcement Failed to See the Threat of White Nationalism.
Now They Don’t Know How to Stop It.
For two decades, domestic counterterrorism strategy has ignored the rising danger of far-right extremism. In the atmosphere of willful indifference, a virulent movement has grown and metastasized.
The first indication to Lt. Dan Stout that law enforcement’s handling of white supremacy was broken came in September 2017, as he was sitting in an emergency-operations center in Gainesville, Fla., preparing for the onslaught of Hurricane Irma and watching what felt like his thousandth YouTube video of the recent violence in Charlottesville, Va. Jesus Christ, he thought, studying the footage in which crowds of angry men, who had gathered to attend or protest the Unite the Right rally, set upon one another with sticks and flagpole spears and flame throwers and God knows what else. A black man held an aerosol can, igniting the spray, and in retaliation, a white man picked up his gun, pointed it toward the black man and fired it at the ground. The Virginia state troopers, inexplicably, stood by and watched. Stout fixated on this image, wondering what kind of organizational failure had led to the debacle. He had one month to ensure that the same thing didn’t happen in Gainesville.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: Nationalism and extremism is a historical and global condition. I am old enough and I have traveled enough to see extremist nationalism throughout the world, and it comes in many forms. Tribal/ethnic nationalism like the Hutu extermination of the Tutsis in Rwanda. The historical ethnic and religious nationalist conflicts in Europe .... a sentiment of hate that is still there and far more prevalent than what is being reported. And of course Asia and the Middle East .... two regions of the world that are soaked with blood from thousands of years of conflicts that had as it root a tribal/religious/political/and ethnic religious nationalistic component that still exists today among many. Even in the province of Quebec where I live .... Quebec French nationalism is alive and well, and sometimes it becomes violent such as last year when a Quebec City mosque was targeted and a number of worshipers were massacred.
So does the U.S. have a "White nationalism" problem that sometimes manifests itself into violent actions .... of course it does. But they are not alone. The U.S. is made up of different cultures and ethnic groups who feel wrong, and sometimes one of their members become violent. From five Dallas police officers being gunned down by a black shooter enraged over the killing of blacks by police officers to the many cases of lone white men killing individuals that they hate because of their ethnicity .... I can spend a lifetime just making a list of people who have died because of race and nationalism. Extreme and ethnic and cultural nationalism is .... to put it sadly .... a component of the human condition. It can be triggered quickly and violently on any pretext. The only thing that one can do is enforce the laws against those who commit crimes, to punish them in the courts, and to call out those who support these extremist groups.
Hat tip to Fred for this link.
