Why is it so difficult to call out what's going on now? I'm not blaming the president for recent violence, although I wish he would knock off the incendiary rhetoric about immigrants. Everyone should tone down the hysterics and anger, which only motivates the nutcases among us.
But the president and some of his supporters have a blind spot about white-nationalist terror, just as the former president had a blind spot about Islamic radicalism. The president's recent talk was more presidential than usual, as he condemned "racism, bigotry and white supremacy," but then he undermined his points with subsequent Twitter tirades.
There's clearly an energized group of self-radicalized white nationalists who "take inspiration from prior acts of vicious mayhem and cheer high body counts on Internet message boards," wrote National Review's Rich Lowry. He called on the FBI to treat these "domestic terrorists and subversives" in the way that they crushed what was once America's most notorious hate group, the Ku Klux Klan.
Using existing laws to stamp out potentially violent extremists is a better starting point than passing new laws that mostly target law-abiding citizens. That means acknowledging that people who kill people with guns often are motivated by twisted ideologies. It's time to confront those ideologies, whether they emanate from the white-nationalist right, Islamic radical movements or any other fever swamp.
https://reason.com/2019/08/16/yes-america-faces-a-threat-from-white-nationalists/
But the president and some of his supporters have a blind spot about white-nationalist terror, just as the former president had a blind spot about Islamic radicalism. The president's recent talk was more presidential than usual, as he condemned "racism, bigotry and white supremacy," but then he undermined his points with subsequent Twitter tirades.
There's clearly an energized group of self-radicalized white nationalists who "take inspiration from prior acts of vicious mayhem and cheer high body counts on Internet message boards," wrote National Review's Rich Lowry. He called on the FBI to treat these "domestic terrorists and subversives" in the way that they crushed what was once America's most notorious hate group, the Ku Klux Klan.
Using existing laws to stamp out potentially violent extremists is a better starting point than passing new laws that mostly target law-abiding citizens. That means acknowledging that people who kill people with guns often are motivated by twisted ideologies. It's time to confront those ideologies, whether they emanate from the white-nationalist right, Islamic radical movements or any other fever swamp.
https://reason.com/2019/08/16/yes-america-faces-a-threat-from-white-nationalists/
