ExtremismThe Role of Local Police in Countering Domestic Terrorism

Published 6 July 2021

The Biden administration’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism lays out a multi-tiered approach to a growing threat. The White House strategy rests, in part, on increased federal-local cooperation, which remains difficult to achieve in practice. The administration’s strategy presumes local police departments have more insight into local permutations of violent extremism – and that federal agencies should have the capabilities to counter it. However, differing priorities and capabilities between local police departments will remain a significant challenge for federal agencies as they attempt to counter domestic terrorism.

The United States has long been plagued by domestic terrorismprimarily in the form of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism (RMVE) and anti-government violent extremism, as recognized by the recent report of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The Soufan Center says that with no domestic laws in the United States designating organizations like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) as domestic terrorists, the lion’s share of counterterrorism efforts has been focused on designated foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). For the past two decades, counterterrorism resources have been allocated almost exclusively to deal with groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, as well as their various regional affiliates, offshoots, and supporters.

Within the U.S., this threat had been characterized by homegrown violent extremists, whose violence has been motivated by Salafi-jihadism ideology, and in several cases, had been instigated by direct communication with the centralized leadership of international terrorist groups. “The proliferation of violent racist extremism and armed anti-government threats and violence within the U.S., which to an extent has been downplayed by high-ranking political figures reluctant to acknowledge or challenge the rhetoric close to home base, has only recently managed to shift the focus onto this long-standing domestic threat,” the Soufan Center says, noting that this shift is in large part due to the growing numbers of attacks that culminated in the attack at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. “As a priority, countering domestic terrorism is finally getting the attention and resources it deserves.”

As part of that shift in focus, the White House released its National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, the first strategy of its kind to prioritize America’s “homegrown” terrorism. In this strategy, the Biden administration focuses on “the two most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat: racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists [RMVEs] who advocate for the superiority of the white race; and anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, such as militia violent extremists.”

The strategy will need to address two major challenges from the onset if it is to have a meaningful positive impact on the domestic terrorist threat.

The first challenge, as with all government strategies focused on violent extremism, is how to safeguard civil rights while simultaneously protecting civil safety. In far too many cases, the U.S. government has failed to strike the proper balance. “It is no easy task to protect free speech, including hate speech, right up to