Trump decides to stop funding Obama-era program to counter far-right extremism
Just a few days after
the nation was rocked by a Trump supporter’s attempted bombing
spree and an anti-Semitic shooter killing 11 people in
a Pittsburgh synagogue, the Trump administration has reportedly decided to end
an Obama-era program dedicated to countering domestic terror.
The move, as
NBC reported, deals specifically with the U.S.’s Countering Violent Extremism
Grant Program.
Launched in 2016 and overseen by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the initiative was the first of its kind: a federal grant program dedicated solely to combating the right-wing extremist groups and ideologies that have grown in prominence over the past few years.
Launched in 2016 and overseen by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the initiative was the first of its kind: a federal grant program dedicated solely to combating the right-wing extremist groups and ideologies that have grown in prominence over the past few years.
All told, the program
was allocated $10 million to disburse, with recipients ranging from
police departments to former white supremacists. More than two dozen
organizations received funds.
Now, though, the Trump
administration has apparently elected not to renew the program, meaning funding
will cease after next July.
One of those groups affected is Life After Hate, a group dedicated specifically to working with white supremacists to leave their ideology behind. Other recipients included academic projects aimed at deterring younger Americans from gravitating toward white supremacy.
The move “doesn’t
surprise me at all,” Christian Picciolini, one of the co-founders of Life After
Hate, told ThinkProgress. “[The administration’s] focus has always been on
foreign terrorism from Islamic State-inspired attacks, not domestic extremism.
It’s a complete failure of the administration to acknowledge that a domestic
‘white supremacist’ terrorist threat is already fertile within our borders.”
The cuts stem… from two
biases. First, in keeping with their law-and-order mentality, Trump officials
would rather empower the police to arrest suspected terrorists than work with
local communities to prevent people from becoming terrorists in the first
place, as the Office of Community Partnerships did. Second, they believe the
primary terrorist threat to Americans is jihadism, not white supremacy.
The administration’s
reported decision comes on the heels of a spate of domestic terror across the
country. Even the lawyers for a violent right-wing extremist in Kansas — a
Trump fan who had planned to bomb Somali immigrants — claimed this week that
their client was specifically motivated by Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric.
It also follows two
years of notable increase in any number of metrics pertaining to white
supremacist violence. A report earlier this year from
the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that white supremacist murders had “far
surpass[ed]” deaths attributable to Islamist extremists. A separate ADL
report noted that,
from 2016 to 2017, anti-Semitic violence had spiked some 60 percent in the U.S.
— “the largest single-year increase on record and the second highest number
reported since ADL started tracking such data in 1979.”
A 2017 report from the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) summed up the problem: “Of the 85
violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001,
far right wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent)
while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27
percent).”
And that’s not all. As
The Daily Beast reported this week,
the FBI has also placed less of an emphasis on combating far-right terror under
the Trump administration, with one FBI retiree saying the agency currently
gives far-right terror threats “the lowest priority.”
Of course, any move
toward snuffing out domestic terror ideologies would risk catching Trump
supporters in their midst. From Charlottesville, Virginia, to last
week’s bombs mailed to Democratic leadership, several violent right-wing
extremists have espoused their
fervent support for Trump.
With the 2020 campaign officially kicking off shortly, there’s little reason to think that will change — and the administration will provide even fewer resources now to help combat the threat.
With the 2020 campaign officially kicking off shortly, there’s little reason to think that will change — and the administration will provide even fewer resources now to help combat the threat.