U.S. Law Enforcement Failed to See the Threat of White Nationalism. Now They Don't Know How to Stop

[demmiblue]

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.

Before that August, Stout, a 24-year veteran of the Gainesville police force, had never heard of Richard Spencer and knew next to nothing about his self-declared alt-right movement, or of their “anti-fascist” archnemesis known as Antifa. Then, on the Monday after deadly violence in Charlottesville, in which a protester was killed when a driver plowed his car into the crowd, Stout learned to his horror that Spencer was planning a speech at the University of Florida. He spent weeks frantically trying to get up to speed, scouring far-right and anti-fascist websites and videos, each click driving him further into despair. Aside from the few white nationalists who had been identified by the media or on Twitter, Stout had no clue who most of these people were, and neither, it seemed, did anyone else in law enforcement.

There were no current intelligence reports he could find on the alt-right, the sometimes-violent fringe movement that embraces white nationalism and a range of racist positions. The state police couldn’t offer much insight. Things were equally bleak at the federal level. Whatever the F.B.I. knew (which wasn’t a lot, Stout suspected), they weren’t sharing. The Department of Homeland Security, which produced regular intelligence and threat assessments for local law enforcement, had only scant material on white supremacists, all of it vague and ultimately not much help. Local politicians, including the governor, were also in the dark. This is like a Bermuda Triangle of intelligence, Stout thought, incredulous. He reached out to their state partners. “So you’re telling us that there’s nothing? No names we can plug into the automatic license-plate readers? No players with a propensity for violence? No one you have in the system? Nothing?’’

One of those coming to Gainesville was William Fears, a 31-year-old from Houston. Fears, who online went by variations of the handle Antagonizer, was one of the most dedicated foot soldiers of the alt-right. Countless YouTube videos had captured his progress over the past year as he made his way from protest to protest across several states, flinging Nazi salutes, setting off smoke bombs and, from time to time, attacking people. Fears was also a felon. He had spent six years in prison for aggravated kidnapping in a case involving his ex-girlfriend, and now he had an active warrant for his arrest, after his new girlfriend accused him of assault less than two weeks earlier. On Oct. 18, the night before the event, Fears and a few others from Houston’s white-nationalist scene got in Fears’s silver Jeep Patriot for the 14-hour drive. Fears’s friend Tyler TenBrink, who pleaded guilty to assault in 2014, posted video from their trip on his Facebook page. There were four men, two of them felons, and two nine-millimeter handguns. “Texans always carry,” Fears said later.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/magazine/FBI-charlottesville-white-nationalism-far-right.html

[beachbum bob]

1. totally untrue. Law enforcment has known but not acted, so we must ask how

badly has law enforcement been infiltrated??

[dalton99a]

2. +1

[AJT]

3. I vaguely remember under Obama a report came out by the department of homeland security that

reported the rise in numbers and violence of right-wing groups. The Republicans in Congress ranted and railed over the report saying Obama was trying to demonized conservative groups and the results were ignored by the federal government.

[djg21]

8. Read the article.

This is discussed at length.

[osmium]

4. This is not new..

Some of those that wear forces
Are the same that burn crosses.

Those who died; are justified
For wearing the badge, they're the chosen Whites
You justify; those that died
By wearing the badge, they're the chosen Whites......

I can hear de la Rocha's anger as I type.

Killing In The Name is my favorite fuck-you-to-those-in-authority anthem.

Shorter: They knew, but were in on the con.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

5. One of my favorites by Rage Against the Machine

Is "Testify"

"Who controls the past now controls the future.
Who controls the present now controls the past.
Who controls the past now controls the future.
Who controls the present now ?

Now testify."

[Haggis for Breakfast]

6. Too bad Lt. Stout didn't contact the SPLC

The Southern Poverty Law Center has been tracking these hate/Aryan Nation/White supremacist groups for decades. When the FBI wants real and current intel, this is where they go for it. Nobody keeps these groups in the spotlight like they do.

The SPLC publishes newsletters and four times a year, they put out a report on hate groups. They also have a program called "Teach Tolerance," which they supply to schools and law enforcement.

[SharonAnn]

7. They didn't "fail to see it". They chose not to act on it.

They thought the white nationalists were their friends.