Confronting White Supremacy: Consequences, Response and Challenges

White supremacists today constitute the most significant threat of domestic terror in the United States, but the Federal Government lacks a comprehensive and cohesive strategy for addressing the problem. In recent years, we’ve seen white supremacists increasingly resorting to the use of violence to achieve their ideological objectives. And today, for the first time since September 11, 2001, more people have been killed in racially motivated or right-wing terrorist incidents in the United States than in attacks perpetrated by Islamic extremists. If we are to marginalize and isolate white nationalist terrorism, a whole-of-society effort is required, one that encompasses civil society and the private sector as well as government. Chapter 1 will examine the government’s efforts to collect accurate statistics on and combat white supremacist hate crimes and domestic terror. It will also discuss the impact on the communities most victimized and targeted by white supremacists. Chapter 2 will examine the efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to combat white supremacist extremist violence, including their budgets and allocations of personnel, data collection practices, and strategic plans. Chapter 3 looks at white supremacist violence as a transnational terrorist threat to national security. The domestic and global threat of white nationalist terrorism is discussed in chapter 4.