PerspectiveCOVID-19 and America’s Counter-Terrorism Response
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. foreign policy, national security, and law enforcement have been dominated by counter-terrorism considerations, even while a number of counter-terrorism experts have cautioned against overemphasizing the terrorist threat. Lydia Khalil writes that, at the same time, for various reasons, U.S. law enforcement has found it more challenging to deal with the more serious threat of terrorism the United States is facing – far-right domestic terrorism – a threat which now eclipses the threat posed by foreign Islamist jihadists, and which is only going to grow. If anything could ever shake the United States out of its counter-terrorism fixation it would be a crisis of even greater magnitude than 9/11. It seemed like that moment finally came with the COVID-19 pandemic, “[y]et what we have seen so far is the opposite. Instead of reorienting toward other paradigms and reexamining its strategic priorities, the United States continues to reflexively overextend its counter-terrorism tools to deal with some of the more problematic aspects of the virus’ spread,” she writes.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. foreign policy, national security, and law enforcement have been dominated by counter-terrorism considerations, even while a number of counter-terrorism experts have cautioned against overemphasizing the terrorist threat. Lydia Khalil writes in War on the Rocksthat, at the same time, for various reasons, U.S. law enforcement has found it more challenging to deal with the more serious threat of terrorism the United States is facing – far-right domestic terrorism – a threat which now eclipses the threat posed by foreign Islamist jihadists, and which is only going to grow.
Khalid writes:
The COVID-19 pandemic, like many crises and emergencies in the past, has been exploited by extremist actors.
Even a cursory scroll through neo-Nazi forums and white supremacist Telegram channels shows how right-wing extremists are pushing disinformation and conspiracy theories to stoke extremist narratives and encourage mobilization.
In the United States, right-wing extremism has accounted for 70 percent of extremist-related killings in the past 10 years; in 2018, right-wing extremists killed more people than in 1995, which was the year of the Oklahoma City bombing.
The COVID-19 pandemic is affording right-wing violent extremists more opportunities to radicalize and mobilize. Federal Protective Services within the Department of Homeland Security highlighted in a leaked memo that white supremacists and neo-Nazis are advocating the “obligation” of infected members to spread the virus to law enforcement and minority communities. Civil society groups, like the Anti-Defamation League, that are tracking right-wing extremism have identified memes on right-wing forums like “What to Do if You Get Corona 19,” that say, “visit your local mosque, visit your local synagogue, spend the day on public transport, spend time in your local diverse neighborhood.”
She notes that if anything could ever shake the United States out of its counter-terrorism fixation it would be a crisis of even greater magnitude than 9/11. It seemed like that moment finally came with the COVID-19 pandemic, as the death toll in New York alone has been greater than the 9/11 attacks. “Yet what we have seen so far is the opposite. Instead of reorienting toward other paradigms and reexamining its strategic priorities, the United States continues to reflexively overextend its counter-terrorism tools to deal with some of the more problematic aspects of the virus’ spread,” as evidenced by a 24 March Department of Justice memo outlines how federal terrorism charges could be brought against individuals who have threatened to spread the virus deliberately. The Department of Justice’s prosecutorial advice is thus an overextension of counter-terrorism legislation and definitions. “Instead of being used to prosecute COVID-19-related violence or threats committed on behalf of political or ideological causes, it is being used to address more common law-and-order issues during this pandemic.”
Khalid concludes:
Instead of continuing to squeeze the United States’ pandemic response through the narrow backdoor of the counter-terrorism edifice it has steadily built since 9/11, this crisis should help dismantle some of its excess and revise it to meet emerging terrorism threats and challenges. By treating common criminal threats and assaults absent political motivation as terrorism and not charging domestic extremists with domestic terrorism because there are no statutes, it is confusing and blurring our normative understanding of terrorism — while leaving unaddressed the real threat of right-wing domestic terrorism.
