Five Years After “Unite the Right”: Reflections on Charlottesville for Today’s Threat Landscape

The CT community had spent the better part of the last two decades designing, building, and investing in a national security apparatus largely designed to combat a specific ideological manifestation of terrorism and violent extremism. That whole-of-government effort largely achieved its principal objective of preventing another large-scale terrorist attack on U.S. soil carried out by terrorists operating from a safe haven abroad.

But that approach and the accompanying institutions and tools are not fit to purpose when it comes to organizing effective strategies to counter the domestic terrorist threat we face.

For every positive step forward, though, we are confronted with a series of new challenges that will test our stamina and resolve. First, as Nick shared in his written testimony this past February, violent extremists and terrorists increasingly understand where policy red lines have been drawn by mainstream platforms and at what point policy enforcement is likely to drive them off a particular platform or cause them to lose access.

…

A second concern pertains to the continued patchwork of government designations of white supremacist extremist groups. The U.S.’s Five Eyes partners have made strides towards designating such individuals and entities: among others, Canada includes Blood & Honour and Combat 18 as terrorist organizations; the UK proscription list features National Action and Sonnenkrieg Division (SKD); New Zealand outlaws The Base and the Proud Boys; Germany banned Combat 18. While the U.S. designated the Russian Imperial Movement and three associated individuals as Specially Designated Terrorist Groups (SDTGs), it has never given a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) label to a white supremacist extremist group–a question the National Strategy raises for consideration.

….

A third challenge to progress in addressing the domestic terrorism challenge is the lack of societal consensus about the nature of the threat we face, which is simply a feature of our deeply divided politics.

They conclude:

Nevertheless, there is reason for hope that we can break down some of these entrenched binaries as we stand up a new strategy for countering this particular threat. Charlottesville’s “Summer of Hate” sent shockwaves throughout much of America, particularly white America, that had in large part grown to see skinheads, private militias, and the Klan as ever-fading remnants of a bygone American era. Due in large part to August 2017 — and intensified by other recent events — a new generation of students, public servants, technologists, and citizens have been galvanized to recognize a threat that was always there in our midst, but perhaps simmering beneath the surface of 21st century mainstream political life. Charlottesville serves as a reminder that the work of defending this pluralistic democracy of unprecedented scale from ethnocentric and autocratic forces must be reborn with each new generation. Countering [racially or ethnically violent] extremism is not a project that a limited “we” in the security space will one day wash our hands of, but instead a perennial project that we must recommit ourselves to, from the ground up, time and time again.

This work will remain hard, without easy or obvious solutions that everybody can embrace. Our only choice is to keep at it, testing the limits of multistakeholderism and pursuing innovative approaches to a defining challenge of our times in which we all have a stake.