[Senate Hearing 117-576]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                        S. Hrg. 117-576

                     DOMESTIC EXTREMISM IN AMERICA:
               EXAMINING WHITE SUPREMACIST VIOLENCE IN 
                         THE WAKE OF RECENT ATTACKS

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                              BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
               HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS


                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                              JUNE 9, 2022

                               __________

        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov

                       Printed for the use of the
        Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
        
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                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
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       COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

                   GARY C. PETERS, Michigan, Chairman
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware           ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire         RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona              RAND PAUL, Kentucky
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada                  JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
ALEX PADILLA, California             MITT ROMNEY, Utah
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  RICK SCOTT, Florida
                                     JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri

                   David M. Weinberg, Staff Director
                    Zachary I. Schram, Chief Counsel
         Christopher J. Mulkins, Director of Homeland Security
                 Kevin G. McAloon, Senior Investigator
             Moran Banai, Senior Professional Staff Member
                        April L. Gascon, Fellow
                Pamela Thiessen, Minority Staff Director
            Sam J. Mulopulos, Minority Deputy Staff Director
      Clyde E. Hicks, Jr., Minority Director of Homeland Security
        Margaret E. Frankel, Minority Professional Staff Member
                     Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
                     Thomas J. Spino, Hearing Clerk

                            C O N T E N T S

                                 ------                                
Opening statements:
                                                                   Page
    Senator Peters...............................................     1
    Senator Portman..............................................     3
    Senator Padilla..............................................    15
    Senator Carper...............................................    20
    Senator Hawley...............................................    22
    Senator Hassan...............................................    25
    Senator Rosen................................................    27
Prepared statements:
    Senator Peters...............................................    33
    Senator Portman..............................................    36

                               WITNESSES
                         Thursday, June 9, 2022

Elizabeth Yates, Ph.D., Senior Researcher on Antisemitism, Human 
  Rights First...................................................     6
Eric K. Ward, Executive Director, Western States Center..........     8
Michael German, Fellow, Brennan Center for Justice, New York 
  University School of Law.......................................    10
Hon. Nathan A. Sales, Nonresident Senior fellow, Atlantic 
  Council, and Former Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for 
  Counterterrorism (2017-2021), U.S. Department of State.........    12

                     Alphabetical List of Witnesses

German, Michael:
    Testimony....................................................    10
    Prepared statement...........................................    64
Sales, Hon. Nathan A.:
    Testimony....................................................    12
    Prepared statement...........................................    87
Ward, Eric K.:
    Testimony....................................................     8
    Prepared statement...........................................    49
Yates, Elizabeth Ph.D.:
    Testimony....................................................     6
    Prepared statement...........................................    39

                                APPENDIX

Senator Hawley Letter to Secretary Mayorkas......................    95
Statements for the Record:
    Leadership Conference........................................   100
    Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund...............   103
    Sikh Coalition...............................................   107
Response to post-hearing questions submitted for the Record
    Ms. Yates....................................................   115
    Mr. Ward.....................................................   118
    Mr. German...................................................   121

 
                     DOMESTIC EXTREMISM IN AMERICA:
   EXAMINING WHITE SUPREMACIST VIOLENCE IN THE WAKE OF RECENT ATTACKS

                              ----------                              


                         THURSDAY, JUNE 9, 2022

                                     U.S. Senate,  
                           Committee on Homeland Security  
                                  and Governmental Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., in 
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Gary Peters, 
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Peters, Carper, Hassan, Sinema, Rosen, 
Padilla, Ossoff, Portman, Scott, and Hawley.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN PETERS\1\

    Chairman Peters. The Committee will come to order.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appears in the 
Appendix on page 33.
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    Less than a month ago, an assailant entered a supermarket 
in Buffalo, New York, intent on slaughtering Black Americans, 
killing ten people and injuring two others before he was 
eventually stopped by police.
    Tragically, since that appalling attack, our nation watched 
with horror as 19 children and two teachers were murdered in 
their classrooms in Uvalde, health care workers were killed in 
a Tulsa hospital, and frankly, too many Americans in 
communities all across the country were slain in attacks as 
they went about their daily lives.
    These attacks, and the loss of these lives, is certainly 
heartbreaking, and I appreciate the work of our Senate 
colleagues who are currently working on proposals to address 
the epidemic of gun violence in our Nation. It is long past 
time for the Senate to take action.
    Today's hearing is focused on the specific, and heinous, 
domestic terrorism threat that is posed by white supremacist 
violence.
    According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), between 2012 
and 2021, white supremacists were responsible for the majority 
of murders committed by any kind of extremist group in the 
United States. Of the 443 extremist murders during the past 
decade, 244 of them were committed by white supremacists. In 
comparison, murders committed by left-wing extremists, during 
the same time period, accounted for 18 of the 443 murders, or 
four percent of extremist killings. Even this data likely fails 
to capture the full extent of the threat.
    In 2019, I authored a provision that was signed into law 
requiring the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the 
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to report to Congress and 
the public on domestic terrorism incidents, including the exact 
number and type. As of today, they have failed to fully comply 
with this requirement.
    In the years after the September 11th attacks, our nation 
focused immense resources on combating the foreign threat from 
terrorism. There is no question those efforts were needed, and 
that they helped keep Americans safe.
    But despite clear data showing the threat posed by domestic 
extremism, particularly white supremacist and anti-government 
violence, our nation's counterterrorism agencies have not been 
as nimble or as proactive as needed to effectively track or 
address this pernicious threat.
    While I am grateful to the Biden administration for laying 
out the first national strategy to address domestic terrorism, 
there is more we must do as a nation to stop the spread of the 
hateful and insidious ideologies of white supremacy that are 
leading to real-world violence.
    In the Buffalo attack, the perpetrator allegedly posted a 
manifesto online detailing his carefully calculated attack and 
citing abhorrent ideas tied to Great Replacement Theory, a 
racist and dangerous ideology that claims Jewish people, 
immigrants, and people of color are actively attempting to 
replace the white population.
    This disgusting belief is at the center of some of the most 
horrific terrorist attacks we have seen in recent years.
    At the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, 
Virginia, neo-Nazis marched in broad daylight chanting core 
tenets of replacement theory at one of the largest and most 
violent gatherings of white supremacists in decades, before an 
attacker plowed his vehicle through a crowd of peaceful 
protestors, killing one woman and injuring 35 others.
    In 2018, an anti-Semitic terrorist committed the deadliest 
attack on the Jewish community in our nation's history, when he 
massacred 11 people and wounded six others at the Tree of Life 
Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His motive for the 
attack was rooted in replacement theory, and he claimed he 
targeted the synagogue because they were supporting refugees 
who had come to the United States.
    In 2019, a shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, posted a 
manifesto online entitled The Great Replacement, before 
livestreaming his attack on two mosques on Facebook. In the 
2019 shooting in El Paso, Texas, the deadliest attack on a 
Latino community in our nation's history, a gunman killed 22 
people and left dozens wounded. The perpetrator acted out of 
the belief of a, ``Hispanic invasion,'' in a manifesto he 
posted online that cited the Christchurch shooter.
    Once relegated to the fringes of our society, these extreme 
and abhorrent beliefs are now a constant presence in our 
nation's mainstream. Cable TV hosts push them in primetime 
nightly programs, and public leaders amplify them to their 
followers, for their own profit and political gain. These are 
public figures who should know better, and should know the 
power of their words and their influence, figures who should 
know that the spread of those conspiracy theories and lies can 
be incredibly dangerous. But between political opportunists and 
the power of social media platforms to spread memes, 
manifestos, and videos like wildfire, these repugnant 
ideologies are becoming normalized into our everyday discourse.
    No longer do extremists need to be recruited or seek out 
like-minded individuals. They can simply log on to social 
media, or turn on the television, and be presented with the 
hateful discourse that drives these violent and deadly attacks, 
attacks that not only leave traumatic scars on the victims and 
survivors and their families but terrorize entire communities, 
who will live with this threat in the back of their minds as 
they go about their daily business.
    The consequences reach far beyond our borders. These 
ideologies often spread globally by white nationalist groups 
that share ideologies and tactics in online communities, in 
chatrooms and message boards, as we saw with the Christchurch 
attack.
    Although this Committee has spent a considerable amount of 
time examining how to keep our communities safe, and I have 
been proud to work with my colleagues to boost important 
security resources like the Nonprofit Security Grant Program 
(NSGP), we cannot solve this problem by only focusing our 
efforts on hardening the likely targets or by adding more 
security measures.
    We must come together as Americans, from all walks of life, 
and from all ends of the political spectrum, to condemn these 
poisonous ideologies and the violence that they incite, if we 
are going to truly tackle this driving factor of our current 
domestic terrorist threat.
    I am very grateful to our expert witnesses who are with us 
here today, and I encourage my colleagues to join me in having 
a productive conversation about what our nation can do to turn 
back the tide on this hateful, insidious, and violent threat.
    Ranking Member Portman, you are recognized for your opening 
comments.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN\1\

    Senator Portman. Thank you, Chairman Peters. I appreciate 
you holding this hearing on domestic extremism and, in 
particular, on white supremacist violence. All of us must 
condemn these hateful acts, I think you have properly said that 
we have a role in simply speaking up more and more forcefully. 
While this hearing is being held to address the threat of white 
supremacy in the wake of last month's horrific attack which 
killed ten shoppers in a grocery store in Buffalo, we also know 
that violent threats to Americans transcend any one ideology, 
and we will hear that today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Portman appears in the 
Appendix on page 36.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Tuesday night of this week, an armed man was arrested for 
the attempted murder of a Supreme Court Justice. This attempt 
is the latest example that threats to our country cannot be put 
in a single ideological box. Some threats have apparently 
nothing to do with race or ideology, as we saw last month when 
a deranged 18-year-old killed fourth-graders and their teachers 
in Uvalde, Texas. We also learned last month that an Islamic 
State operative was plotting in Columbus, Ohio, my home State, 
to smuggle other terrorists over our Southern Border to murder 
former President George W. Bush.
    In 2018, 11 Jewish Americans were murdered while practicing 
their faith at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, 
Pennsylvania. Ohio, too, has certainly felt the effects of 
extremist violence. We suffered the loss of nine Ohioans when 
an assailant with far-left extremist ideologies attacked a 
crowd of people on a busy street in Dayton, Ohio, three years 
ago.
    Unfortunately, this Committee does not have the data we 
need on this issue because the Department of Homeland Security, 
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the National 
Counterintelligence Security Center (NCSC), although required 
to do so by the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), 
have not provided domestic terrorism data annually to Congress 
and to this Committee. The first report was overdue by about a 
year, and the Committee has received no indication when we 
should receive the second annual report, which is already late.
    Today's testimony will express concerns over the lack of 
data that we have on domestic terrorism. Good data is 
statutorily required to be delivered to Congress and to the 
American people, and it is unacceptable that it is being 
withheld.
    I should also note that the most recent domestic extremism 
and terrorism data provided to Congress from the FBI revealed 
that the most lethal domestic terrorist threat in 2020 was 
posed by anti-government extremists, including anarchists. Just 
this week, DHS released a terrorist threat bulletin which 
assessed the No. 1 threat of mass violence in the United States 
comes from those motivated by a range of ideological beliefs 
and grievances. White supremacy is among them, but the 
Committee needs to be looking at all lethal terrorist threats, 
and we need the information. We need the data.
    In addition to that data, the Committee has not yet 
received the requested information or other details pertaining 
to the implementation of the Biden administration's Domestic 
Terrorism Strategy that was released a year ago.
    I also look forward to receiving more information from DHS 
and the FBI regarding reports that it took weeks to arrest a 
watch-listed terrorist who had crossed into the United States 
at the Southern Border, as well as evaluate claims made by the 
Islamic State operative arrested in Ohio, who told FBI 
informants that he smuggled members of Hezbollah into the 
country over the Southern Border. These terrorists seek to 
exploit our borders and asylum systems to gain entry to the 
United States and this Committee must examine Federal law 
enforcement's ability to stop these incidents from happening.
    Last month, as the Committee knows, the Secretary of 
Homeland Security confirmed that 42 individuals on the 
terrorist watchlists were encountered at our Southern Border in 
the last year, and we have not yet been provided the requested 
information by the Department on whether these individuals pose 
a current threat. We all know that the border is not secure, 
known terrorists are entering the country, drugs are flowing 
across the border, and all these things pose a real threat to 
our country.
    We know from law enforcement that domestic extremist 
violence makes up a large proportion of the acts of terror 
committed in the United States. These acts of violence are 
abhorrent and should be condemned to the fullest extent. These 
acts of hate go against our American values and serve as a 
reminder that domestic violent extremism (DVE) continues to 
threaten and harm our communities.
    My heart goes out to the victims' families, and I hope that 
the conversation had today will shed light on the solutions for 
actually preventing further violence. I will continue to reach 
across the aisle so we can create legislative solutions that 
help prevent this lethal violence.
    I was pleased that my bipartisan bill, the Pray Safe Act, 
which establishes a centralized clearinghouse of safety and 
security best practices for houses of worship to harden against 
acts of terrorism, passed the Senate by unanimous consent (UC). 
It was a good sign. I urge my colleagues in the House to hold a 
vote on this important legislation as soon as possible.
    I also remain committed in my support of the Nonprofit 
Security Grant Program, which we have worked to authorize and 
secure additional funding from appropriators. Senator Peters 
and I have worked hard on this over the years, and I look 
forward to working with my colleagues to fund the Nonprofit 
Security Grant Program at a level that is commensurate with 
this heightened threat environment. Again, we need the data to 
be able to back that up.
    Finally, I want to thank the witnesses for testifying 
before us today. I am especially pleased to welcome Ambassador 
Nathan Sales, a fellow Ohioan, who I had the pleasure of 
introducing at his 2017 Senate Foreign Relations Committee 
(SFRC) nomination hearing to be the State Department's 
Coordinator for Counterterrorism. Ambassador Sales did great 
work to protect the United States against threats of global 
terrorism during his time at State, and I look forward to 
hearing more of his valuable insights on the terrorist threat 
landscape during his testimony.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ranking Member Portman.
    It is the practice of the Homeland Security and Government 
Affairs Committee (HSGAC) to swear in witnesses, so if each of 
you will please stand and raise your right hand, including our 
guest on the video, please.
    Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this 
committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
the truth, so help you, God?
    Ms. Yates. I do.
    Mr. Ward. I do.
    Mr. German. I do.
    Mr. Sales. I do.
    Chairman Peters. All the witnesses have answered in the 
affirmative. You may be seated.
    Our first witness is Dr. Elizabeth Yates. Dr. Yates is a 
senior researcher on antisemitism at Human Rights First, an 
independent advocacy and action organization that works to 
ensure the U.S. Government and private companies uphold human 
rights and the rule of law.
    Prior to joining Human Rights First, Dr. Yates spent four 
years as a researcher and senior researcher on the domestic 
radicalization team at the National Consortium for the Study of 
Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of 
Maryland. In her role, she tracked trends in domestic extremism 
and hate crimes in the United States on topics including 
extremism in the U.S. military, the growth anti-Muslim 
terrorism, mass casualty hate crime attacks, and others.
    Dr. Yates, welcome to the Committee. You may proceed with 
your opening remarks.

 TESTIMONY OF ELIZABETH YATES, Ph.D.,\1\ SENIOR RESEARCHER ON 
                ANTISEMITISM, HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST

    Ms. Yates. Thank you. Is this on? OK. Thank you, Chairman 
Peters, Ranking Member Portman, esteemed Members of the 
Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this 
critical discussion on white supremacist violence in the United 
States.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Yates appears in the Appendix on 
page 39.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    My name is Elizabeth Yates. I hold a Ph.D. in sociology 
from the University of Pittsburgh, and I am currently a Senior 
Researcher on anti-Semitism at Human Rights First, and I have 
spent my career tracking trends in violent white supremacy and 
other forms of domestic extremism. I am honored to appear 
before you today.
    Data shows that extremist violence and bigotry are growing. 
According to the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) at the 
University of Maryland, there were 100 white supremacist 
attacks in the years between 2000 and 2019 in the United 
States, 80 percent of which occurred after 2009. Recently, the 
Anti-Defamation League reported that anti-Semitic incidents, 
including assault, harassment, and vandalism hit an all-time 
high in 2021.
    White supremacy is of particular concern at Human Rights 
First, as we have worked for over 40 years to advance human 
rights, especially to secure the rights and liberties of 
refugees and minority communities, the primary targets of the 
proponents of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory.
    The Great Replacement conspiracy theory is a contemporary 
combination of the racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, and 
misogynistic conspiracy theories that have driven bigotry and 
violence around the world for generations. It is the central 
driver of white supremacist terrorism in the United States, 
including the mass murder of Black Americans in Buffalo last 
month.
    The conspiracy theory centers around the idea that there is 
a cabal of malevolent elites, often depicted as Jewish people, 
whose secret goal is to disempower or otherwise eliminate white 
people by, ``replacing them,'' through non-white immigration 
and/or intermarriage, with people who they believe will be more 
amenable to malicious demands of the powerful cabal.
    The Great Replacement conspiracy theory is inherently 
racist. Proponents frequently draw on enduring stereotypes and 
disinformation to depict immigrants and non-whites as criminal 
and violent threats. By claiming this population will be more 
easily manipulated and controlled, they suggest that people of 
color are intellectually and morally less capable.
    This conspiracy theory is particularly lethal not only 
because it transmits this sense of existential threat but also 
because it translates fluidly among distinct geographic and 
social contexts. That is, this conspiracy theory has animated 
murders targeting a multitude of distinct racial, ethnic, 
religious communities all over the world in what is truly a 
transnational movement of violence.
    To name a few horrific examples, the Great Replacement 
conspiracy theory drove attacks on Jews in Pittsburgh, 
Pennsylvania, Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, Jews in 
Poway, California, and, of course, Black Americans in Buffalo, 
New York, among many others.
    To address this threat, Human Rights First has established 
our Extremism in Human Rights Program, which works to expose 
the true nature of this threat and to support the development 
of a right-centered, society-wide prevention program.
    Some examples. First, our coalition of U.S. military 
veterans and allies, Veterans for American Ideals (VFAI), 
tracks and exposes patterns in extremist recruitment in the 
military community. In other example, our Innovation Lab brings 
together technologists, advocates, and researchers to develop 
and implement tools that use artificial intelligence (AI) to 
investigate extremists and their networks.
    But of course, government must play a critical role to 
ensure a right-centered approach to extremism. We recommend 
that Federal data on domestic extremism and hate crimes 
investigations should be improved and publicized, including the 
specific numbers of arrests, charges, prosecutions, et cetera, 
and with respect to specific targeted populations and 
perpetrators.
    We also argue for a health-based, right-centered approach 
to extremism and violence prevention that must be expanded 
through congressional authorization, including enhancing 
existing Federal grants and programming that advanced evidence-
based strategies and empower communities to address extremism.
    Last, it is important to emphasize every wave of white 
supremacist violence in this country has been animated by 
racist and conspiratorial rhetoric, often mobilizing, 
amplifying, and distorting anxieties around fears of social 
change. Yet we should not accept that such as wave of terror is 
an inevitable outcome in this moment. Rather, we should 
recognize that it is driven by conspiracy theories, 
disinformation, and deliberate moves to divide society.
    Today the most violent forms of such machinations are 
evident on fringe internet platforms, but they are also 
emergent in the rhetoric of mainstream discourse. As a country, 
we must reject this framing and instead choose to advocate for 
our common humanity. Thank you.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Dr. Yates.
    Our next witness is Eric Ward. Mr. Ward currently serves as 
Executive Director of Western States Center, a public charity 
devoted to defending democracy, developing leaders, building 
movements, and shifting culture.
    Mr. Ward is a nationally recognized expert on the 
relationship between authoritarian movements, hate violence, 
and preserving inclusive democracy. He has worked with 
community groups, government and business leaders, human rights 
advocates, and philanthropy as an organizer, director, program 
officer, consultant, and board member.
    Mr. Ward is also the recipient of the 2021 Civil Courage 
Prize, the first American in the award's 21-year history.
    Mr. Ward, welcome to the Committee. You may proceed with 
your opening remarks.

   TESTIMONY OF ERIC K. WARD,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WESTERN 
                         STATES CENTER

    Mr. Ward. Chairman Peters, Ranking Member Portman, and the 
Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to 
speak about the danger of white nationalism as a domestic 
terrorism threat.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Ward appears in the Appendix on 
page 49.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I will highlight three points, starting also with the so-
called Great Replacement Theory. It is the conspiracy theory at 
the core of white nationalist violence in the United States and 
poses a grave threat to our democracy. In a Buffalo grocery 
store, a Charleston church, a Walmart in El Paso, a synagogue 
in Pittsburgh, the killers drew on the Great Replacement as 
their excuse for murder.
    The theory argues that conspiracy is orchestrating a master 
plan to destroy the white population, ironically by protecting 
the constitutional rights of racial and religious minorities, 
depending on the version of the conspiracy. The master plan is 
said to be run by global elites or an international cabal or 
money interests, but we know who they are really talking 
about--Jews.
    The white nationalist movement is angered by the false 
perception that white people have lost control of the country. 
Someone must be pulling the strings, they theorize, given their 
belief that people of color are intellectually inferior, and 
for white nationalists those betraying white people are Jews.
    This version of anti-Semitism is not new, but it is the 
principle behind white nationalism, and is drawn directly from 
the pages of the long-discredited anti-Semitic book, The 
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic tract 
circulated broadly across Europe, first by Russian Secret 
Police in the early 1900s, and then by Nazi Europe from the 
1920s through the 1940s.
    Over the last several years, the modern-day version of this 
age-old anti-Semitism has surged into the mainstream, finding 
increased acceptance in media culture and even political 
campaigns. The examples cited in my written testimony are but a 
small sampling of its spread.
    I want to be clear--the violent and physical harm spawned 
by the conspiracy is not a bug. It is a feature. For that 
reason this anti-Semitic belief must be denounced unequivocally 
by all levels of government and civil society.
    My second point, except for the January 6th event in the 
nation's Capitol, these horrific incidences are occurring in 
local communities, including State capitals, often ill-equipped 
to handle this kind of extremist violence without additional 
training tools and resources. It is not only minority 
communities that become the targets of white nationalist 
violence. Law enforcement, the military, elected officials, and 
health care workers have all been targeted. Left unchecked, 
this undermines national security and undermines the core 
functions of our democracy.
    A new report by the National League of Cities (NLC) finds 
harassment, threats, and violence directed at elected officials 
rising at an alarming rate. Eighty-seven percent of local 
officials surveyed observed an increase in attacks on public 
officials in recent years. It is my assessment that even under 
the best conditions no city or town in America can successfully 
meet the challenge posed by white nationalism and its Great 
Replacement Theory on its own.
    Finally, in my experience, understanding and addressing 
white nationalism as a domestic terrorism threat is not a 
partisan issue. In the 1990s, I worked alongside Republican 
Governors, community members, law enforcement, and business 
leaders to establish and support over 120 organizations 
committed to countering white nationalist violence.
    In recent years, institutions and leaders across the 
ideological spectrum have taken responsible action to reject 
the violent extremism visited upon their communities. I want to 
honor the broad coalitions of local elected leaders, civil 
servants, and community members who raise their voices and 
values. But increasingly, I must admit I am dismayed by the 
large swath of Federal elected officials who refuse to join 
them in the condemnation of this anti-Semitic conspiracy theory 
justifying violence.
    We should not stand helpless in the face of this rising 
extremist violence. The burden of responding to political 
violence cannot be limited to local government. The Federal 
Government has its own options for action, including block 
grants to local governments and supporting the expansion of 
civil litigation.
    I have dedicated my life to uniting Americans across party, 
race, and geography, and a shared commitment to a country where 
we all live, love, worship, and work free from bigotry and 
violence. I am proud to have sat at tables with Mohawk punk 
rockers, alongside Republican ranchers. We might not have 
agreed on everything but we understood bigoted violence has no 
role in solving the complex issues facing America.
    It is time for our Federal leadership to do the same. It 
can start by condemning this anti-Semitic conspiracy and the 
violence that inevitably comes in its wake. Thank you.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Ward.
    Our next witness is Michael German. Mr. German is a Fellow 
with the Brennan Center for Justice, Liberty, and National 
Security Program, a nonpartisan law and policy institute which 
seeks to ensure that the U.S. Government respects human rights 
and fundamental freedoms in conducting the fight against 
terrorism.
    In his current role, Mr. German focuses on law enforcement 
and intelligence oversight and reform. Previously, Mr. German 
served as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation, where he worked to uncover infiltration white 
supremacists and militia groups, and served as a Policy Counsel 
for national security and privacy for the American Civil 
Liberties Union's (ACLU) Washington Legislative Office.
    Mr. German, welcome to the Committee. You may proceed with 
your opening remarks.

  TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL GERMAN,\1\ FELLOW, BRENNAN CENTER FOR 
           JUSTICE, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW

    Mr. German. Chair Peters, Ranking Member Portman, and 
Members of the Committee, than you for inviting me to testify 
about white supremacist violence.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. German appears in the Appendix on 
page 64.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I have been working on this problem since 1992, when the 
FBI assigned me to infiltrate violent neo-Nazi skinhead cells 
trafficking in illegal weapons. After the Oklahoma City bombing 
I went undercover again, investigation militia groups 
manufacturing explosives and illegal firearms.
    While recent attacks have raised public attention to white 
supremacists and far-right militant violence, it is an enduring 
threat in the United States and it has been since its founding. 
Yet the law enforcement response remains deficient, despite the 
deadly results.
    We do not know if this violence is increasing, however, 
because the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security do not 
collect incident data regarding violence committed by domestic 
violent extremist groups it investigates. We do not know how 
many people white supremacists kill each year because no 
government agency is counting them.
    While most counterterrorism researchers acknowledge that 
white supremacists and far-right militants are the most 
persistent and lethal terrorist threats in the United States, 
law enforcement has a history of prioritizing lesser threats, 
particular protest movements led by people of color, civil 
rights activists, peace activists, and environmentalists.
    Failing to produce domestic terrorism incident data leaves 
the Justice Department (DOJ), FBI, and Department of Homeland 
Security free to set their priority based on these 
institutional biases.
    My cases were successful because the FBI's rules at the 
time, the Attorney General's (AG) guidelines, required a 
criminal predicate, that is, a factual basis reasonably 
indicating that a crime is occurring or may occur before 
starting operations. This required us to focus on criminal 
activity rather than ideology. In a roomful of Nazis, everyone 
was saying things that horrified me, but the requirement that I 
document evidence of criminality kept the investigations 
properly focused.
    After 9/11, however, the Attorney General guidelines 
changed, giving agents far greater leeway to investigate people 
without evidence they have done anything wrong. The 
counterterrorism agencies also adopted a flawed theory of 
terrorist radicalization, which posited that exposure to 
radical beliefs were a precursor to becoming a terrorist.
    Though it has been disproven by empirical studies of 
terrorists, these agencies still embrace it, which moves their 
attention away from the relatively smaller number of actual 
crimes to chase tens of thousands of leads, from privacy-
intrusive social media monitoring and see something, say 
something programs that mostly leads to dead ends. Instead, law 
enforcement should focus narrowly on violence committed by 
white supremacists, investigate these crimes thoroughly, and 
target the instrumentalities.
    It seems intuitive that effective social media monitoring 
and see something, say something programs might provide law 
enforcement with clues to prevent an attack. After all, white 
supremacist attacks in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and El Paso all 
expressed their hateful and violent intentions over social 
media. If somebody had reported this activity to law 
enforcement it is presumed the policy could act to prevent the 
attack.
    But threatening rhetoric is commonplace and not just on 
social media. In the Buffalo case, threats the shooter 
allegedly made in school were reported to law enforcement, 
resulting in a psychological evaluation but no follow-up. 
Perhaps it is because the broad-scale social media monitoring 
and see something, say something policies raise so many false 
alarms that it drowns out true threats, overwhelms law 
enforcement, and dulls their response. Law enforcement's 
tendency to downplay the threat of white supremacist violence 
may have also played a role.
    Congress has given Federal law enforcement all the 
authority it needs: 51 Federal crimes of terrorism, five hate 
crime statutes, organized crime, and conspiracy statutes. The 
problem is that the Justice Department, FBI, and the Department 
of Homeland Security choose not to prioritize white supremacist 
violence and they obscure the data necessary to drive reform.
    When Senator Durbin introduced the Domestic Terrorism 
Prevention Act (DTPA) in 2017, seeking data about white 
supremacists from far-right militant violence and the FBI's use 
of its domestic terrorism resources, the FBI instead shuffled 
its domestic terrorism categories to obscure this data. When 
Congress passed the domestic terrorism reporting requirement in 
the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020, the FBI and DHS 
delayed the report for almost a year, then failed to include 
all the data required.
    The Justice Department, likewise, hides data about its 
domestic terrorism prosecutions, removing docket numbers from 
prosecutive data it provides to Congress. The Brennan Center 
sued the Justice Department to get these docket numbers, but 
the Justice Department refused to provide them all, claiming 
that not all defendants and prosecutions it claims as domestic 
terrorism statistics are actually domestic terrorists.
    The true scope of the white supremacist threat must be 
measured in order to establish effective reforms. Congress 
needs better data about this violence and more transparency 
regarding how the Justice Department, FBI, and DHS use their 
terrorism resources.
    I look forward to your questions. Thank you.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. German.
    Our final witness is Ambassador Nathan Sales. He is a 
nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and founder and 
principal of Fillmore Global Strategies LLC.
    From 2017 to 2021, Ambassador Sales served at the U.S. 
Department of State as Under Secretary for Civilian Security, 
Democracy, and Human Rights in an acting capacity, where he 
oversaw nine bureaus and the mission of preventing and 
countering threats to civilian security, including terrorism, 
mass atrocities, and violations of human rights and the rule of 
law.
    He concurrently served as Ambassador-at-Large and 
Coordinator for Counterterrorism and as the Principal Advisor 
to the Secretary of State on International Counterterrorism 
Matters.
    Ambassador Sales, welcome to the Committee. You may proceed 
with your opening remarks.

  TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE NATHAN A. SALES,\1\ NONRESIDENT 
SENIOR FELLOW, ATLANTIC COUNCIL, AND FORMER AMBASSADOR-AT-LARGE 
    AND COORDINATOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM (2017-2021), U.S. 
                      DEPARTMENT OF STATE

    Mr. Sales. Chairman Peters, Ranking Member Portman, and 
Members of the Committee, it is a pleasure to be here today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Sales appears in the Appendix on 
page 87.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Last month, the world watched in horror as a white 
supremacist terrorist gunned down 10 innocent people at a 
grocery store in Buffalo, deliberately targeting them because 
they were black. His lurid, 180-page manifesto claimed that an 
influx of non-white is causing the extinction of the white 
race, and he praised the notorious 2019 attack on Muslims in 
Christchurch, New Zealand.
    Unfortunately, Buffalo is just the tip of the iceberg. 
White supremacist terrorism is a global and growing threat. To 
fight it here at home we have to fight it abroad. From 
Christchurch to Buffalo, from El Paso to Oslo, and beyond, the 
world has seen a dramatic spike in such attacks. Perpetrators 
have attacked mosques and synagogues, grocery stores, refugee 
centers, and countless other soft targets, seeking to terrorize 
religious and minority communities. They have targeted Jews, 
Muslims, and immigrants. They are motivated by a deep hatred of 
those they see as threats to their identity, and they are often 
animated by virulent anti-Semitism.
    It is clear that this threat is on the rise. From 2011 to 
2017, there were 350 such attacks in North America, Europe, and 
Australia. In 2011, there were just nine. In 2013, the number 
increased slightly to 16. In 2015, there was a dramatic jump to 
135, likely in reaction to migration from war zones in the 
Middle East to Europe. By 2017, the number had fallen somewhat 
to 88.
    Americans know this threat all too well. In El Paso, gunman 
brutally killed 23 people at a Walmart, targeting Latinos in 
response to what he called a ``Hispanic invasion.'' In Poway, 
California, a shooter opened fire at a synagogue after claiming 
the jews were carrying out, ``a meticulously planned genocide 
of the European race.'' In Pittsburgh, a gunman slaughtered 11 
worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue during Shabbat 
services.
    We see the same alarming trend overseas. In Christchurch, 
an Australian named Brenton Tarrant, gunned down 51 people in 
an attack on two mosques, a horror that was livestreamed on the 
internet for the world to see. In Hanau, Germany, nine people 
were killed in an attack on two hookah bars. A few months 
earlier, a terrorist unsuccessfully tried to attack a synagogue 
in the German town of Halle before shooting a guest at a 
Turkish cafe.
    To tackle this threat we need to understand the ideologies 
that fuel it. White supremacist ideology often glorifies Hitler 
and the Nazis. The group Blood and Honor is named after a 
Hitler youth slogan. Combat 18 takes its name from Hitler's 
initials being the first and eighth letters of the alphabet.
    Many of these figures, including the Buffalo killer, call 
themselves ecofacists. They blame non-whites for environmental 
problems, and then want to, in Tarrant's words, ``kill the 
invaders to save the environment.''
    Let us be clear. This is not merely violence nor does the 
term ``violent extremism'' seem adequate. It is terrorism, 
plain and simple. These attackers do not just want to kill 
several Hispanics, they want to terrorize all Hispanics. They 
use violence to advance their grotesque agenda. That is the 
textbook definition of terrorism.
    What can be done about it? During my time at the State 
Department I implemented a comprehensive strategy to combat the 
international aspects of white supremacist terrorism. Here are 
some of the key tools.
    First, sharing information with foreign partners to 
investigate suspects, disrupt plots, take down fundraising 
networks, and support prosecutions and courts of law.
    Second, designations to deny terrorist resources to plan 
attacks. In April 2020, the State Department sanctioned the 
Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), along with three of its 
leaders. It was the first time the United States ever imposed 
terrorism sanctions on white supremacists. It is a good start, 
but we need more.
    The Biden administration rightly has made it a priority to 
counter these groups but has yet to implement sanctions of its 
own. RIM was the first. It must not be the last.
    Third, counter messaging to delegitimize white supremacist 
ideologies. One particularly powerful tool is testimony from 
formers, people who were involved in this movement, who left, 
and who now have unique credibility to dissuade others from 
taking the same misguided path.
    Fourth, tech companies need to promptly take down terrorist 
content that violates U.S. law or their own terms of service. 
Under no circumstances should legitimate political discourse be 
subject to cancellation, but neither should graphic videos of 
massacres remain online for years, as is true of Christchurch 
to this day.
    Fifth, hardening borders against white supremacist 
terrorist traveling to recruit, raise money, or carry out 
attacks. That means adding known threats to national watch 
lists and international law enforcement databases such as 
Interpol, just as is done for Islamist groups like al-Qaeda and 
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
    Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, and Members of the 
Committee, thank you again. I look forward to your questions.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ambassador Sales.
    The man who killed 10 people and injured two others in 
Buffalo, like too many others before him, allegedly cited the 
Great Replacement Theory, that many of our witnesses have 
raised here today. But he cited in the theory in his writings.
    My question for you, Dr. Yates, is how does this theory fit 
into the history of white supremacy violence in the United 
States, and why do you think it has become so central to the 
motivation of these attackers?
    Ms. Yates. The Great Replacement conspiracy theory is in 
some ways a convergence of many of the conspiracy theories that 
draw on racism and anti-Semitism and misogyny and xenophobia 
that we have seen over generations. It is very evident in the 
last 100 years. In the 1920s, the largest Klan mobilization to 
date was animated by anti-immigrant animus and often included 
depictions of immigrants as a violent, invading threat. At that 
time there were images of the Pope coming to America and 
declaring himself emperor that could be found in newspapers and 
mainstream sources and those kinds of mediums. This is 
certainly drawing on some of those earlier forms of conspiracy 
theories.
    I think what is particularly lethal about this, about the 
Great Replacement conspiracy theory, is that it does represent 
a combination of many of these and such that it is able to be 
targeted and sort of transferred into the specific ideologies 
and hatreds of the people that have been violent in its name.
    A couple of examples that illustrate this are in the 
writings of the Buffalo killer. I believe it has been cited 
that he plagiarized some two-thirds of his writing from the 
Christchurch killer. But in some places he just merely swapped 
out the names of victims for others, and it is clear to him 
that he does not really care. They see this as an overwhelming 
threat and that this kind of violence is necessary to be 
perpetrated against a wide variety of communities.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you.
    During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, 
some of my colleagues focused on the threat of violence from 
Antifa and other left-leaning organizations. So certainly while 
we must condemn all forms of violence in America, and we have 
to do everything we can to prevent these attacks, the FBI has 
stated, for multiple years, and testified before this 
Committee, that the threat from white supremacists is the 
greatest domestic terrorism threat to Americans.
    Mr. German, this question is for you. As a former FBI agent 
and a subject matter expert, can you explain the threat from 
white supremacists and how it compares to left-leaning 
organizations?
    Mr. German. Thank you for the question. There is no doubt 
that white supremacists are engaged in the most persist, over 
time, and the most lethal kinds of violence, in the most 
organized fashion. I think that is why it is essential to have 
better data. Right now, if a white supremacist murders 
somebody, the FBI might call that an act of domestic terrorism, 
and if they do that it will be a very well-resourced 
investigation. But they might call it a hate crime if the 
victim of the crime was a member of a protected community.
    If they call it a hate crime, or even just a violent crime, 
the Justice Department policy is to defer that investigation to 
State and local police who often are not interested in picking 
up hate crime prosecutions. Only less than 15 percent of police 
agencies acknowledge that hate crimes occur within their 
jurisdictions, in Federal reporting.
    It creates a huge black hole where we are not counting the 
impact this violence has on communities across the country. I 
was warned, as an FBI undercover agent, at the whole Joint 
Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) teams that I was working with, that 
there is sympathy for white supremacy in law enforcement, and 
we had to be very careful about who we talked with about our 
operation to make sure that it would not be compromised.
    There are internal documents within the FBI that report 
this. In fact, the 2015 Counterterrorism Policy Guide warns 
agents working domestic terrorism cases against white 
supremacists and far-right militants not to put their subjects 
on the terrorism watch list in a manner that they could be 
viewed by other law enforcement agencies.
    The problem is so significant that the FBI alters the 
tactics it uses in terrorism investigations, and yet there is 
no policy on how the FBI is to protect the public from these 
racist police officers. I think that is a huge part of the 
problem here that often is not included in this discussion, 
that this is more of a whole society problem. We have to force 
the FBI and the Justice Department and Homeland Security, and I 
appreciate the efforts with the National Defense Authorization 
Act of 2020, to get that data. But as you said, they did not 
provide it.
    This data is available. They can go out and capture it. 
Congress passed the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990, 30 
years ago, and yet the Justice Department, rather than 
providing that data created a voluntary program for local 
police to report it, not acknowledging the obstacles to local 
police to investigating those crimes and reporting them.
    We do not have a clear picture of the scope of this 
violence, and I believe that if we had that clear picture we 
would see that this is far greater a problem than law 
enforcement wants to acknowledge.
    Chairman Peters. Senator Padilla, you are recognized for 
your questions.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PADILLA

    Senator Padilla. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the 
focus of today's hearing.
    Over the years we have seen a growing reliance on the 
internet, the digital world, not exclusively but especially on 
social media, to spread racist conspiracy theories and to 
radicalize and recruit domestic terrorists.
    During a hearing on a very similar topic in Senate 
Judiciary Committee earlier this week, I had a chance to ask 
questions of Mr. German about this issue. But today I want to 
address similar questions to Ms. Yates.
    Ms. Yates, in your written testimony you highlight that 
white supremacists tend to tone down their rhetoric on social 
media as a strategy move to try to control their public image 
while gaining as many followers as they can. You even note that 
a specific group, the Groypers, I believe, has worked to build 
relationships with individual serving in public office.
    Can you spend a minute just expanding on this, because it 
seems to me common sense that if elected leaders embrace these 
groups, their ideologies, or their conspiracy theories, that it 
serves to foster the hate and division that causes tragedies 
like the recent shooting in Buffalo. What specific 
recommendations do you have for this Committee or the Senate as 
a body as we work to ensure that we try to disrupt violent 
white supremacy and domestic extremist networks?
    Ms. Yates. Thank you, Senator, for that very important 
question. There are a lot of elements to that, but I think 
anyone who has been in this space for any amount of time will 
tell you that you can go on any social media platform and very 
quickly find extremist content, especially white supremacist 
violence content. Certainly we need to be very forthright in 
demanding that social media companies enforce their own terms 
of service in order to diminish the availability of this 
content.
    Second, we certainly call on politicians and candidates and 
people in with a reach in society to condemn this bigotry and 
to avoid using the sort of mainstream, what I think maybe we 
will call ``toned-down'' version of this rhetoric.
    We see this especially in deployment of elements of this 
kind of rhetoric that stripped down the most violent, the most 
racist, the most vile, frankly, sort of tones of this and 
ideologies of this rhetoric of the Great Replacement conspiracy 
theory, but at the same time continue to portray immigrants, 
and refugees, especially, as a threat. This is a language that 
especially is dehumanizing, that portrays them as invaders, or 
that, especially in this case, somehow claims that these 
individuals, rather than refugees coming to this country to 
exercise their legal right to seek asylum, are somehow pawns in 
some nefarious conspiracy theory.
    So all of that rhetoric, I think, certainly builds to a 
sense of threat that the violent white supremacists we are here 
today to talk about have acted on.
    Senator Padilla. Trust me. I know, not as a son of refugees 
but as a son of immigrants, like so many others from around the 
world, over the course of generations that have come to the 
United States in pursuit of the American dream.
    A question on a related dynamic here. Last year, the number 
of known anti-Semitic incidents rose to an all-time high, and 
not surprisingly many of the terrorist ideologies that we are 
talking about here thrive on anti-Semitic beliefs and have 
resulted in far too many tragedies, not just last year but over 
the course of time.
    What is your perceived role of anti-Semitism in modern 
domestic terrorism, and what do recent trends in anti-Semitic 
violence suggest for this year's numbers, and I guess going 
forward?
    Ms. Yates. Yes. Absolutely. Thank you again for that 
question. Anti-Semitism is a pervasive form of discrimination 
and bigotry that permeates ideologies across the political 
spectrum and across issues, of course, but it does play a 
foundational role in white supremacism, and that is because it 
serves as a way for white supremacists to try to reconcile 
these contradictory ideas they have that white people, of 
course, in their view, are the superior beings, and, therefore, 
have a right to control and dominate society. But at the same 
time, they simultaneously insist that white people are facing 
an existential threat.
    So by identifying Jewish people as somehow sort of quasi-
white or maybe even fake white, they are able to claim that 
this population is to blame for the fact that they should be 
the dominant people but somehow are not.
    It places very a very conspiratorial role, and that has 
been an element, as I mentioned before, of conspiracy theories 
for generation. But I think what is an especially concerning 
element here is that what we see is that anti-Semitism can be a 
central driver in the radicalization process of these 
extremists because it is so conspiratorial that they tend to 
see it as an existential threat.
    Senator Padilla. Is it getting any better this year?
    Ms. Yates. I have not seen, as everyone has said here, we 
do not have perfect data on this threat, for a number of 
reasons, but I do not think that this is improving at any time 
at this moment, no.
    Senator Padilla. Thank you. In my time remaining I want to 
ask a question of Ambassador Sales. In the past few weeks I 
have listened as many of my colleagues have advocated for a 
broader, more generalized approach to addressing violence in 
our country. However, I believe that this approach minimizes 
the specific threats posed by domestic violent extremism 
carried out by white supremacists.
    We have to be able to walk and chew gum, right, as we 
address violence in America. Regardless of your political 
leanings, I believe we should heed the calls of law enforcement 
officials as well as national security officials to address the 
largest domestic threat to Americans, and that has been told to 
us specifically and repeatedly, white supremacy.
    Ambassador, in your written testimony you state that 
addressing white supremacy is complex, but one of the early 
steps should be improved coordination and information sharing. 
Could you speak to the benefits of coordinating with foreign 
partners who are facing similar threats abroad?
    Mr. Sales. Thanks for the question, Senator. This is a very 
much a global phenomenon. What happens in the United States 
influences what happens overseas, and what happens overseas 
influences attacks in the United States. These extremist 
networks are talking to one another. They are trying to 
influence one another. They are, in a sense, trying to compete 
with one another to see who can carry out the most horrific 
attacks. That is why you see things like the Buffalo shooting 
claiming inspiration from the Christchurch shooter, and why you 
see an attempted terrorist attack in Oslo, Norway, praising the 
El Paso gunman for trying to, as he put it, ``take back his 
country.''
    In order to get a handle on this here at home there has to 
be an intense focus on the international aspects of this 
problem. Part of that is policy coordination between the United 
States and our European allies and our Five Eyes allies, all of 
whom are facing the same sort of threat that we are from rising 
white supremacists terrorist attacks, and activity more 
generally.
    So coordinating policy among the transatlantic community is 
one step. Another more operational step is sharing information 
that can be used to support a variety of law enforcement and 
other government finishes--to support prosecutions, to support 
designations, to support watch listing, to keep terrorists from 
crossing borders and so on. These are the same sorts of tools 
that we have used for 20 years against Islamist threats like 
al-Qaeda and ISIS and various groups inspired by those 
organizations, and many of them are easily adaptable for the 
international aspects of white supremacist terrorism too.
    Senator Padilla. Thank you very much. I did not mean to 
ignore you, Mr. German, but I had plenty of opportunity to ask 
questions of you in the Judiciary Committee.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Padilla.
    Ranking Member Portman, you are recognized for your 
questions.
    Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are so many 
questions I have but let me start with some of the testimony I 
heard today. Ambassador Sales, you talked about your time at 
the State Department when you designated the Russian 
Imperialist Movement as a specially designated global terrorist 
(SDGT) organization. You said those kinds of designations are 
an important tool which helps U.S. combat international 
terrorists, in that case white supremacist terrorism.
    Would you say that it is more challenging to designate a 
white supremacist organization than a different international 
terrorist group?
    Mr. Sales. Thanks for the question, Senator. I think it can 
be more difficult, in part because of the way that white 
supremacist networks are organized and how those organizational 
models often differ from more traditional terrorist 
organizations, whether you are talking about Islamists like al-
Qaeda or ISIS on the one hand, radical Marxist guerilla groups 
such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 
Colombia, right-wing Jewish groups in Israel like the Kahane 
Chai. Those traditional groups typically have hierarchical 
command and control structures, where leadership of the group 
sets strategic priorities, issues directions to members and 
operatives to carry out attacks, to raise money, or to take 
various other steps as part of the overall enterprise.
    By contract, white supremacist networks, not just in the 
United States but globally, tend to follow what is called a 
leaderless resistant model. It is a loosely associated group of 
ideologically sympathetic individuals who are coming out of the 
same intellectual, if you can call it that, ecosystem, but do 
not have the same sorts of strict organizational command and 
control structures.
    Under the State Department and Treasury Department's 
sanctions authority, to designate a group, the group has to 
exist in a cohesive, coherent form, and to designate 
individuals it is often necessary to show, or it is at least 
often helpful to show that those individuals are acting at the 
behest of, or pursuant to directions issued by a group. That is 
fairly straightforward when you are talking about, the ISIS 
affiliate in Nigeria. It can be a lot more difficult when you 
are talking about white supremacist groups that may not be 
groups in the same sort of sense.
    Senator Portman. Let me ask you this. We have not seen 
additional designations of international white supremacist 
groups really since you left the State Department, I do not 
think. Is the reason for that what you just stated, that it is 
much more difficult to designate them, and if so--and give me a 
quick answer, what can we do about that?
    Mr. Sales. The quick answer is yes, I think that is right. 
It is certainly a priority for this Administration to continue 
the designations work. We have not seen that translate into 
actual designations yet, and I think that is, in part, because 
of some of the organizational and structure differences with 
these groups.
    Senator Portman. Federal law enforcement and terrorism 
experts argue the government should take an ideological, 
agnostic approach to investigating and prosecuting terrorists. 
Mr. German, your testimony alleges that the Department of 
Justice and FBI are not prioritizing investigations and 
prosecutions of white supremacists and far-right violence. 
Should the FBI prioritize investigations based on ideology or 
the risk of violence?
    Mr. German. They should prioritize investigations by the 
level of violence. That is why it was so important to get the 
data that is requested in the National Defense Authorization 
Act of 2020, because if you know that one group is responsible 
for 90 percent of State's fatalities and 98 percent of the 
violence, and there are actual murders or very serious violent 
attacks that are not being investigated by the Federal 
Government, where there is another group that might engage in 
some nonviolent civil disobedience or property crimes, and they 
are disproportionately devoting resources to those 
investigations, that is where the flaw is, if your goal is to 
stop the violence.
    You need the data about the violence, and if you do that 
you will see that you need to turn those resources toward the 
most dangerous threats and investigate those crimes thoroughly.
    Senator Portman. That is a very important point to make, is 
that we have not received the data that was required in the 
NDAA on a timely basis. We did get one report. It was late, 
over a year late, as I recall, and we still have not gotten the 
second report. We are sort of flying blind in the sense that we 
do not have the data that we need to be able to respond, in 
terms of our oversight role and even our legislative role.
    I hope that is one thing that comes out of this hearing is 
that we light a fire under the Administration to provide better 
data for all of us, including for researchers, including for 
those of you who are experts who are trying to figure out how 
you do this.
    DHS told us last week that the primary threat of mass 
casualty violence in the United States comes from lone 
offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological 
beliefs and personal grievance. That is what we have so far, 
but we want a more comprehensive look at this, because it is 
complicated.
    There is a report from the Center for Strategic and 
International Studies (CSIS), in 2021 there was an increase in 
attacks and plots from anarchists and Antifa, and the terrorist 
threats from the violent far left are now contributing a 
greater percent of all terrorist threats.
    This is complicated. There are a lot of groups out there, 
and the anti-government stuff is probably the top concern, at 
least of some of the terrorist experts in government. Do you 
have any comments on that, Mr. German, or anybody else?
    Mr. German. Sure. I think this is part of the problem with 
the way the FBI says their investigations are driven by 
criminality rather than ideology, but their domestic terrorism 
categories are established by ideology. If you create an 
ideological category, that is going to compel FBI agents and 
their supervisors to want to open investigations of people of 
that ideology who may not actually be committing the kinds of 
violence that fits the definition of domestic terrorism.
    It can be a distraction away from that, and I think 
Portland, Oregon, is a good example, where the Federal 
Government charged almost 100 people during the civil unrest 
following the murder of George Floyd. But groups from outside 
of Oregon were traveling in far-right militant groups. Like the 
Proud Boys were coming into Oregon and instigating violence, 
and committing violence on the street with very little law 
enforcement interference. I am not aware of any Federal 
prosecutions that resulted from that violence.
    That lack of law enforcement attention to that active 
violence allowed them to build networks and to promote the 
people who were most violent so that by the time January 6, 
2021, came around, they had the mechanisms and the networks and 
the logistics to get people across the country to be here, to 
organize what the government alleges was the assault on the 
Capitol.
    Senator Portman. So your point, broadly, is that the focus 
ought to be on criminality, ought to be on violence, it ought 
not to be pigeon-holed on any one ideological area but rather 
an objective look at who is creating the most violence and 
criminality.
    Mr. German. Right. To be clear, I think even the poor data 
we have right now would suggest that white supremacist violence 
is far more a persistent lethal threat than any other. I think 
that would naturally require more of an investigation of white 
supremacist criminal acts.
    Senator Portman. My time has expired. I have so many other 
questions, and I will follow up with some written questions, if 
that is all right, for the record. Thank you all for being 
here.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ranking Member Portman. Senator 
Carper, you are recognized.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER

    Senator Carper. Mr. Chairman, thanks. Thanks so much for 
recognizing me. Thanks so much for pulling us all together for 
an important hearing. I had a chance to welcome briefly our 
witnesses today. Thank you again for taking the time to come 
here today and share your thoughts and respond to our 
questions.
    I had the privilege of serving on this Committee for over 
two decades, and throughout that time I sought to focus, more 
often than not, on not just addressing the symptoms of problems 
but to also address the root causes of those problems and the 
challenges that we face. Addressing the root causes of this 
toxic and appalling white supremacist violence is critical in 
order to keep our citizens, and I think in order to keep our 
nation safe.
    Mr. Chairman, before I delve into my prepared questions for 
our witnesses I would be remiss if I did not mention another 
root cause and that is our nation's gun laws.
    As we prepared to hold this hearing following the racist 
murder of Black Americans in a Buffalo grocery store, another 
massacre occurred, and as we all know is was a fourth grade in 
Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two adults were left dead. 
It should not take the murder of children in a school, Black 
Americans in a grocery store, Jewish, Muslim, or Sikh Americans 
in a house of worship for us to realize that we need to 
reinforce our addressing the epidemic of gun violence in this 
country.
    I say that as a gun owner, as a son, grandson of gun 
owners, hunters, for many years. The only thing that the Carper 
family was noted for in West Virginia, believe it or now, was 
the Carper rifle. I am someone who actually believes in the 
Second Amendment, and I also believe, as my father would say, 
in common sense.
    My hope is that coming out of this hearing, Mr. Chairman, 
we might be able to provide some recommendations to our 
colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee or perhaps the 
bipartisan group of Senators currently discussing gun reform.
    So have said that let me turn to a couple of questions. The 
first, Dr. Yates, this would be for you. Thanks again for 
coming. In today's testimony, most of you mentioned that social 
media has changed the way and the speed at which extremist 
ideology spreads and causes people to radicalize. White 
supremacists use social media as a tool to mainstream, really 
to normalize their ideology and spread their beliefs to a wider 
audience, and do so at a faster rate.
    This is evident, I believe, in your testimony, Dr. Yates. 
You state that the average time it takes for an individual to 
adopt an extremist ideology has decreased by more than 50 
percent, from 15 months to seven months. That seems to suggest 
that the window for law enforcement to catch individuals before 
they commit acts of violence has also shortened dramatically.
    Dr. Yates, how can law enforcement and social media 
companies work together? How can they work together in order to 
address the fact that individuals are radicalizing faster 
through the use of social media?
    Ms. Yates. Yes. Thank you for your question. It certainly 
is the case that the abundance of extremist content on social 
media means that this is just a lot more rapid, and certainly 
there are fewer opportunities for interdiction in that amount 
of time.
    Before speaking to this specific law enforcement question I 
would like to suggest that because of that reality that 
everyone, pretty much, who interacts with social media will be 
exposed to this extremist content at some point, that we argue 
for a right-centered, society-wide extremist violence 
prevention approach that integrate civic education and 
community engagement so that we can work upstream from this 
effort from the violence. That is just increasingly apparent as 
a necessary tool in this moment.
    At the same time, however, we do need to increase the 
information sharing, not just among law enforcement and tech 
companies but also among tech companies themselves, and I think 
that the recent livestreaming incidents in these shootings has 
demonstrated how critical it is that tech companies work 
together to identify videos and content, and remove them before 
they cross platforms.
    We know that extremists work very hard to counter the 
policies that tech companies and law enforcement provide to 
prevent this kind of interaction, and they are adept at 
overcoming them by merely blurring an image or cropping an 
image, and thus being able to overcome the boundaries.
    I think we need much more information sharing in terms of 
between tech companies and law enforcement in terms of the 
algorithms that drive content sharing and how those algorithms 
interact with these extremist pieces of content.
    Senator Carper. All right. Thanks for that response. I have 
other hearings going on that I am trying to participate in--but 
I understand that we have another witness that is not here 
physically but has joined us virtually, and that is Mr. Ward. 
Mr. Ward, are you out there?
    Mr. Ward. I am, Senator. Thank you so much.
    Senator Carper. Hi, Mr. Ward. I am going to ask you, if you 
do not mind, to respond to this same question I just asked Dr. 
Yates, and that is how can law enforcement and social media 
companies work together to address the fact that individuals 
are radicalizing faster through the use of social media? Would 
you take a shot at that as well, please?
    Mr. Ward. Absolutely. One of the things that social media 
is able to do is to monitor in real time, but it needs to place 
more resources into monitoring in real time. That is what leads 
to prevention versus having to manage the aftermath of 
violence. More live personnel who are responding to reports 
from civil society and volunteers on the internet would allow 
us to assess dangerous situations in real time and to pass that 
information on to law enforcement.
    Often the steps placed by social media platforms to report 
threats or concerns is much too complicated for individuals, 
and often people are left frustrated rather than passing on 
critical information to social media companies. Law enforcement 
is stuck until social media is able to do a much better job of 
policing its own platforms, Senator.
    Senator Carper. Thank you, sir. A real quick question, Mr. 
German. What do you believe is the most important tactic for 
law enforcement to employ in order to stop radicalized 
individuals before they turn to violence, given that some of 
these individuals are harder to track? Just a short answer, if 
you would, Mr. German.
    Mr. German. It is understanding how the criminal element 
within this movement works by investigating those cases 
thoroughly to understand how the network works and to 
understand the instrumentalities. My cases started as focused 
on illegal weapons transactions and manufacturing, and that is 
often a precursor to the violence. There is often a lot of 
criminality before the attack that can be investigated and 
properly help prevent the attack.
    Senator Carper. All right. Thanks so much. My time has 
expired. Our thanks to all of you again for joining us today 
and for your responses.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Carper. Senator Hawley, 
you are recognized for your questions.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HAWLEY

    Senator Hawley. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thanks 
for holding this hearing. I would hope that as we discuss 
violent extremism that one thing that we could all agree on is 
that it is wrong and dangerous for any political actor, and any 
executive administration, to try to leverage the threat of 
violent extremism, to mislead Congress, to go after political 
opponents, or to threaten the speech and First Amendment rights 
of law-abiding citizens.
    But unfortunately that is exactly what the Biden 
administration has done, and we have new insight into that 
today because of the actions of a patriotic whistleblower who 
contacted my office, along with Senator Grassley, a short time 
ago and provided to us documents from the Department of 
Homeland Security relating to that agency's Disinformation 
Board, that Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified about, 
sitting right there, just a few weeks ago. But according to the 
documents that I have in my hand here that Senator Grassley and 
I have now made public, the testimony that Secretary Mayorkas 
gave to this Committee--under oath, I might add--was, in many 
respects, deeply misleading. Deeply misleading. The information 
we have now learned about the Administration's efforts to track 
and censor American speech is deeply shocking, and I would like 
to take a moment to go through with this whistleblower, who I 
thank, for that person's patriotism, to go through what these 
documents disclose.
    Secretary Mayorkas said that the efforts of the Department 
with the Disinformation Board were new. In response to my 
questions about whether there were documents, meetings, meeting 
minutes, other documents related to the Disinformation Board, 
he suggested that there were not any because the board had not 
met.
    In fact, we now know that the Department of Homeland 
Security began working on standing up this board as early as 
last year. In a memorandum dated September 13, 2021, the Under 
Secretary of DHS writes to the Secretary, to Mayorkas, about 
the need for the Disinformation Board, and here is the 
interesting thing. They explicitly cite domestic violent 
extremism as a reason to stand up this censorship board, but it 
quickly goes far beyond that.
    In the same paragraph they talk about the need for this 
Disinformation Board to monitor and to counter so-called 
disinformation about the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) 
vaccine, about people who are raising questions about the 
efficacy of masks, about people who are raising questions about 
the origins of COVID.
    In other words, the Department of Homeland Security is 
contemplating a Disinformation Board that will track the speech 
of Americans and classify it as disinformation if you raise a 
question about the COVID vaccine, about the origins of COVID, 
about the efficacy of masks, which, by the way, this 
Administration has reversed itself on numerous times.
    The documents go on. The Disinformation Board is necessary, 
this memorandum says, because of those who question election 
integrity, because of those who have questions about January 
6th.
    Now we get to the nub of it. We see that, in fact, this 
Disinformation Board, from the beginning, was meant to track 
and go after political speech that this Administration did not 
favor. For an Executive department to do that, and frankly, to 
mislead this Committee about it, is deeply disturbing, and it 
is wrong. I mean, it is just plain wrong.
    As we look through the documents you see that what the 
Secretary told the Committee about the Disinformation Board's 
operation is just not true. He repeatedly told this Committee 
that the Disinformation Board would be a working group. That is 
not what the documents say.
    There is a charter, a proposed charter, that the Secretary 
himself signed, personally, on February 24, 2022, that describe 
the disinformation board as having the authority to set up 
guidelines. It has governance authority over how the Department 
will classify what is disinformation over what the response to 
disinformation should be, over how is doing what in terms of 
countering disinformation, which, remember, includes questions 
about COVID or questions about election integrity or questions 
about masks.
    The idea that this is just a working group is, frankly, 
completely contradicted by the documents at the whistleblower 
turned over to us and that the Secretary himself signed.
    Can I just say again, for the Secretary to sit in that 
chair and tell me that he was not really aware of any documents 
related to the Disinformation Board, when he has personally 
signed charters, when he has personally reviewed memoranda 
dating back months, is misleading, at best.
    There is also information in these documents about 
attempted coordination, planned coordination by the 
Disinformation Board, with the Big Tech monopolies. There are 
meeting notes here, proposed plans of actions for members of 
the Disinformation Board, members of the Administration, to 
meet with Big Tech executives to discuss sharing information 
about disinformation and tracking analytics of American 
citizens who are using the Big Tech companies' platforms and 
engaging in so-called misinformation. This is a Big Tech-
Administration alliance to track speech. It is here in the 
documents.
    Now I asked Secretary Mayorkas if there had been any 
contact with the Big Tech companies. He said he was not aware 
of any. I sent a letter following his testimony to Secretary 
Mayorkas, putting this question to him directly, and 
interestingly, the Department's draft response to my letter are 
also in these documents.
    I will say for the record, the Department has not yet 
officially responded, but their draft responses are here in the 
whistleblower documents, and they continue the misleading, 
half-truths. They continue, in those documents, to characterize 
this as a working group. False. I say, ``Has the DHS conferred 
with any private social media company in the operation of this 
board?'' They repeat the idea that the board is merely an 
internal working group. Then they say the creation of the board 
was not discussed with any external entities. That is because 
we now know that they were discussing the operation of the 
board with Big Tech companies. They were seeking to partner and 
get analytics on law-abiding Americans.
    Mr. Chairman, my time has nearly expired. I would ask 
unanimous consent that my letter with Senator Grassley, along 
with the attachments, be entered into the record.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The letter referenced by Senator Hawley appears in the Appendix 
on page 95.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Peters. Without objection. We have not reviewed 
any of those documents, but without objection.
    Senator Hawley. This is startling information. This 
Committee needs to hold a hearing to follow up on the testimony 
that the Secretary gave on the inconsistencies that we now find 
in these documents, and frankly, on this Administration's 
concerted efforts to mislead the American public about its own 
attempts to track and censor and, frankly, punish American 
speech, which is deeply antithetical to the First Amendment, 
deeply antithetical to our constitutional principles, and 
deeply wrong.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Senator Hassan, you are recognized for 
your questions.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HASSAN

    Senator Hassan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank 
you and the Ranking Member for holding this hearing. My heart 
goes out, as the hearts of Granite Staters and Americans 
everywhere, to the families and friends who lost loved ones 
during the heinous domestic terrorist attack in Buffalo, and I 
want to thank the witnesses for being here to discuss that 
topic.
    I want to start with a question to you, Ms. Yates. 
Terrorist actors, including violent white supremacists have 
used the internet to livestream their attacks. These videos are 
then shared online, glorifying the attacks, and potentially 
inspiring copycat attacks.
    Can you discuss trends in how these videos are shared 
online, how creators may get around restrictions, and how these 
videos may inspire future attacks?
    Ms. Yates. Yes. Thank you, Senator Hassan. The 
livestreaming of white supremacist terrorist attacks is 
certainly an increasing tactic among this movement. It is 
popular, I think, not only because it is a way for them to 
emphasize their message but also because it is a tool for them 
to gain notoriety for themselves. They are in this ecosystem. 
They are talking to each other. They are trying to become 
sainted in this community, as they see it. It is really a very 
self-focused tactic here.
    It has been facilitated by their ability to overcome the 
bans and the various elements of technology that are used to 
challenge them. I mentioned this previously in my last question 
but I will just speak in a little bit more detail.
    Right now the primary mechanism for preventing the spread 
of video in this way is through the Global Internet Forum to 
Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), where tech companies basically share 
identification information that identifies these specific 
images, and, of course, they are easily able to change that by 
modifying it barely. These especially are often Gen Z or 
younger individuals who the medium of video is their primary 
medium of interaction, and so this is entirely consistent with 
the youth subculture in which they operate.
    But in terms of improving our ability to track that and to 
remove it and to counter that specific tactic, I think that we 
need to encourage tech companies to move beyond sharing of 
these identification (ID) numbers and hashes but also to share 
the technology that are developing independently. Because, of 
course, this is proprietary and they are in competition, but we 
know that they are investing enormous resources in the 
algorithms and the AI to drive content consumption. The more 
that they share with each other, the better they are able to 
coordinate so that these images are not able to cross platforms 
and spread.
    Senator Hassan. They have more work that they could do in 
order to prevent these workarounds and to prevent this kind of 
livestreaming?
    Ms. Yates. Absolutely. We would like to see much more. 
Thank you.
    Senator Hassan. All right. We would love to follow up with 
you on that.
    I want to get to another topic, again a question to you, 
Ms. Yates. White supremacist ideology is often linked to Nazis 
and neo-Nazis. In recent years, we have seen a related rise in 
anti-Semitic incidents. The attacks on the Tree of Life 
Synagogue in Pittsburgh and Congregation Beth Israel in 
Colleyville, Texas, elevated national attention on the issue. 
The Anti-Defamation League reported more than 2,700 anti-
Semitic incidents in 2021, which is a 34 percent increase over 
the previous year.
    How would you describe the role of anti-Semitism in modern 
domestic terrorism, and what do the latest trends in anti-
Semitic violence suggest we can expect in the coming years?
    Ms. Yates. Yes, absolutely. So anti-Semitism is an 
absolutely critical component of white supremacism. There is 
really important research findings in this area that suggest 
that white supremacists, when they first sort of enter into 
this ecosystem, when they are first recruited, they may have 
sort of a lot of racism. They may have a lot of bigotry, 
misogyny, and those kinds of ideas, but they have to learn the 
specific anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that drive, I think, 
the most violent actions.
    It becomes this sort of final element of radicalization, in 
some cases, where they see this conspiracy as posing this 
ultimate threat. It has a really radicalizing dimension in that 
context.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you, and thank you for your work.
    I want to turn to you, Mr. German. Last week the Department 
of Homeland Security began collecting information across its 
component agencies as part of an urgent review of the 
Department's efforts to counter targeted violence and domestic 
violent extremism. You have discussed the importance of 
counterterrorism data transparency at the Department of Justice 
and FBI.
    The Department of Homeland Security also needs to be 
transparent with Congress and the American people about which 
resources the Department is dedicating to combating both 
international and domestic terrorism. In your opinion, what 
information should DHS provide to Congress and the American 
public to ensure that it is adequately allocating resources to 
the current terrorism threats?
    Mr. German. Thank you for the question. There is a lot DHS 
can do. Obviously, the FBI has the investigative jurisdiction 
so they have the most direct access to actual criminal 
investigations. But part of the problem that we have seen with 
the intelligence products put out by the Department of Homeland 
Security through Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) is 
that they overtly politicized, on the one hand, but also spread 
disinformation.
    We see that repeatedly, where disinformation, often taken 
directly out of the right-wing social media, is put on an 
official law enforcement intelligence document and put out. 
There needs to be much more transparency and oversight of the 
intelligence products, and particularly because it becomes an 
echo chamber. DHS sends it out. It goes to the fusion centers. 
They repackage it and send it out, and all of a sudden some 
piece of disinformation becomes a large thing that resources 
have to be devoted to.
    I remember the anti-fascist setting fires during the 
wildfires in the West. That kind of disinformation is harmful 
to security because it misdirects law enforcement resources.
    Senator Hassan. OK. Thank you.
    One last quick question to Mr. Ward. Mr. Ward, parents, 
family members, and mentors play an important role in combating 
misinformation that their loved ones may be consuming online. 
What third-party tools are available for parents to learn how 
to talk to their children and loved ones about malicious 
conspiracy theories and extremist propaganda?
    Mr. Ward. Thank you. Western States center has developed a 
Confronting White Nationalism in Schools toolkit. It was 
released in 2019, and so far more than 60,000 educators have 
accessed this toolkit through trainings and through accessing 
it on the website. It is but one of many resources out there to 
help support educators and parents, understanding how their 
children are being targeted by conspiracies.
    Of course, I think much stronger coordination with the 
Department of Education, with public schools at the local and 
State level, will be quite helpful. We should understand that 
children and educators' days are already hard, and the threat 
of violence and the infiltration and the targeting of students 
makes their days harder.
    There are sufficient resources out there that challenges 
providing access to educators and teachers and parents, and 
that is the role of the Department of Education right now, we 
believe.
    Senator Hassan. OK. Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr. 
Chair, and I apologize for going over.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Hassan.
    Senator Rosen, you are recognized for your questions.

               OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN

    Senator Rosen. Thank you, Chair Peters, and thank you to 
all of our witnesses here today.
    I want to build a little bit on what Senator Hassan was 
talking about, on anti-Semitism, but I want to move over to the 
Great Replacement Theory and how that plays into it.
    We know we have to combat white supremacists. Extremism has 
reared its ugly head in communities across our Nation. I do not 
have to tell anybody here about that. But we have to fully 
understand the so-called Great Replacement conspiracy theory we 
are discussing today. It was once relegated to the margins of 
the internet, and according to the Associated Press (AP), 1 in 
3--I want to repeat that--1 in 3 Americans now subscribe to 
this hateful theory.
    I want to focus my question on the anti-Semitic roots and 
manifestations of this racist ideology, which believes that 
there is an intentional effort, led by Jews, to promote 
policies that lead to the extinction of the white race. Slogans 
like ``Jews will not replace us,'' were chanted in 
Charlottesville, mass murders in Poway and Pittsburgh, 
motivated by the Great Replacement Theory, and in Buffalo the 
terrorist wrote, in his screed that ``for our self-
presentation''--I am quoting here--``the Jews must be removed 
from our Western civilizations in any way possible.''
    Dr. Yates, can you speak a little bit about Great 
Replacement Theory and how it is helping--now we are seeing it 
ravaging our communities across the United States?
    Ms. Yates. Certainly. Thank you for your question. Yes, 
anti-Semitism is an integral opponent. You do see it more 
strongly and more obvious, in some cases, but even where you do 
not see it explicitly referenced or repeatedly referenced over 
and over again, like you did in some of the writing, for 
example, in Poway, it is certainly there and it is an element 
that these white supremacists emphasize to one another.
    This kind of anti-Semitism is often something that, in 
their attempts to mainstream and to portray a more palatable 
view to public audiences, that white supremacist groups will 
try to avoid. So it is not always evident in the public-facing 
materials of a lot of these white supremacist groups, but they 
will use coded language to reference Jews and the threats that 
they see. That is an ongoing trend that we are continuing to be 
concerned about.
    As I said, this conspiracy theory, the Great Replacement 
conspiracy theory, builds on a lot of existing conspiracy 
theories that have circulated in the United States for a long 
time and actually in Europe also. Unfortunately, they draw on 
the same stereotypes and the same bigotry that animated the 
Klan and anti-Semitic and violent attacks in multiple 
generations, and I think we really have to recognize that this 
is another wave of the same kind of terrorist violence.
    Senator Rosen. Thank you. That is going to lead into my 
next question. Before I mention that, though, Mr. German, you 
talked about the spread of disinformation, even on our law 
enforcement, different agencies, how it gets spread. That is on 
us, and we have to be sure that our agencies are doing a better 
job of verifying information before they put that back up.
    We have to have the accurate information going up because 
of the spread of that, and that leads me to transnational 
connections, because the violent white extremists, they are 
increasingly interconnected, increasingly international. They 
transcend the boundaries. They exploit the same technologies 
that ISIS used to create a decentralized, global network of 
terror. The Russian Imperial Movement, which was designated by 
the State Department in 2020, as a terrorist group is motivated 
by neo-Nazi beliefs, and it trains foreign fighters from around 
the world.
    Ambassador Sales, what more could the U.S. Government be 
doing to gather intelligence and share information with 
international partners on the global nature of the white 
supremacist terrorist threat, as we have been hearing here, as 
well?
    Mr. Sales. Thanks for the question, Senator Rosen. I think 
you are exactly right. There is no question that this is a 
global phenomenon. Terrorist in the United States are motivated 
by terrorists who commit atrocities overseas, whether it is in 
Germany or Norway or in New Zealand.
    One of the key aspects of our campaign to counter this 
threat has to involve coordinating with foreign partners and 
sharing information with foreign partners. Partly that means 
making sure that our policies in place are aligned so that the 
United States and the Europeans and the Canadians and the 
Australians and so many others have the same tools in the 
toolkit that can be used to counter the international aspects 
of this threat. But it also is important to coordinate at a 
more tactical and operational level, to allow for the sharing 
of information.
    The more information we can share with each other, the 
greater the chances are that we will be able to, for example, 
support additional designations and sanctions of individuals 
and groups, to harden our borders against people who might be 
trying to come here.
    Senator, you mentioned RIM. After the Charlottesville 
rally, several leaders of RIM came to the United States. There 
is actually a photograph of one of them posing in front of the 
White House with a Russian Imperial flag. It is a nauseating 
photo. That can never be allowed to happen again. We can never 
allow, whether it is ISIS, AQ, RIM, or other leaders of these 
groups, access to our homeland. The more information we can 
share, the easier it will be for us to harden our borders 
against that kind of travel.
    Senator Rosen. Thank you, and you have really led right 
into my third question, because information-sharing is key for 
us as countries in order to battle and fight against this, but 
it also is how things are really spreading on the other side. 
The online threats. At every hearing, all we hear about is how 
the internet facilitates domestic terrorists' ability to 
radicalize globally--globally, as you have alluded to. Hateful 
words. They morph into deadly actions. It is just a vicious 
cycle.
    I have just a few seconds left, but Dr. Yates, the internet 
allows individuals to disseminate hate messaging to the 
American public with the algorithms on social media. What would 
you suggest platforms should do to combat this kind of 
spreading the hateful content? How can they best use their 
algorithms?
    Ms. Yates. Thank you. I would first echo Mr. Ward's comment 
that they need to invest in increased resources in this effort, 
to track this content on their platforms. That is their 
responsibility, and certainly we would like to see more in 
that.
    But at the same time, we need a lot more information about 
what these algorithms are and what they are doing, so 
transparency in these algorithms so that we can understand and 
have a better idea of what kinds of content is still in 
existence there, to what extent they are removing content when 
it is flagged, and what populations of people or communities 
are more or less likely to have discriminatory information 
about them banned.
    Those are all questions that we receive bits and pieces of 
information about, for example, when reports are made public, 
but we do not have a really good idea of how exactly that 
works. Without that kind of transparency from tech companies it 
is going to be very difficult to continue to address this.
    Senator Rosen. We need to foster some partnerships, because 
we know that extremists are using technologies to radicalize, 
to recruit, and to fundraise. We have to have those tools in 
our toolbox to combat that.
    Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Rosen.
    On June 15th of last year, the Biden administration laid 
out the first national strategy to address the threat of 
domestic terrorism. This is the first time that any 
administration has acknowledged the threat from domestic 
terrorism, and it actually articulated a whole-of-government 
plan to protect Americans from it. This week, the Department of 
Homeland Security began its own internal review of what more it 
can do to address domestic terrorism and targeted violence.
    Mr. Ward, this question is for you. Part of the national 
strategy, pillar four, is about confronting the long-term 
contributors to domestic terrorism. My question for you, Mr. 
Ward, is what do you think the Federal Government should be 
doing to support pillar four?
    Mr. Ward. In support of pillar four we should understand, 
and the Federal Government should understand, local governments 
are on the front lines of the growing attack on our republic 
and its practice of democracy. It is probably one of the most 
important places to counter this bigoted political violence, 
and I believe it is vital for the Federal Government and civil 
society to come to the aid of these local governments and the 
communities they serve.
    One example is Western States Center has made available our 
guide, ``Strengthening Local Government Against Bigoted and 
Anti-Democratic Movements,'' and this resource is designed to 
provide a starting point for local government officials.
    I believe your question is deserving of a much fuller 
response, and I look forward to following up with the 
Committee, and particularly staff, to highlight recommendations 
in our guide in more detail.
    But I would be bereft if I do not say one more thing. We 
should not accept the false notion that federally elected 
representatives are powerless in this moment. There is always 
one step that can and must be taken, and I believe it is a step 
that can be taken without new rules, laws, or regulations, and 
it has proven its effectiveness each time it has been deployed.
    The step is simple: publicly denounce white nationalist 
violence and the anti-Semitic conspiracy that drives it. The 
Brookings Institute documents and a range of research suggests 
that incendiary rhetoric of political leaders can make 
political violence more likely.
    But the opposite is true as well. When elected officials 
join and publicly condemn violent bigotry, the potential for 
violence ebbs. We need to move with pillar four, but we also 
need the moral voice of our Federal leadership in this moment.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ward.
    In closing here I want to say I am very grateful for all of 
our witnesses for contributing to this very serious and urgent 
discussion. I want to thank Ranking Member Portman for holding 
this hearing with me.
    I look forward to building on what we have learned from 
today's testimony. I think this has given this Committee some 
critical information and further insights to combat our 
nation's most pressing domestic terrorism threat, and these 
white supremacist ideologies and the violence they incite 
remain shocking. They are outrageous and unthinkable in the 
hearts and minds of Americans. But every tragic attack that is 
rooted in these ideologies is a sobering reminder that domestic 
violent extremism continues to threaten communities all across 
our country.
    I appreciate the approach that the Biden administration has 
taken to address these evolving threats, and I look forward to 
working with them as they implement their national strategy for 
combating domestic terrorism, including pillar four, which Mr. 
Ward just discussed, which confronts long-term contributing 
factors to domestic violence.
    However, I am frustrated that despite passing a reporting 
requirement into law, both DHS and the FBI are still failing to 
provide essential information on domestic terrorism. We cannot 
effectively tackle this problem if our law enforcement and 
counterterrorism agencies are not effectively tracking these 
crimes. I have asked the FBI and DHS to explain their failure 
to fully comply with the reporting now required by law, and I 
hope my colleagues will join me as we continue to press for 
answers.
    We also have to address the ways in which white supremacist 
ideologies are spread and allowed to creep into the mainstream. 
I will continue to investigate the role that social media 
platforms play in amplifying these abhorrent and extremist 
ideologies, and will be holding additional hearings on this 
topic in the coming months.
    There are concrete steps that we can take to address the 
threat of white supremacist violence, first and foremost by 
continuing to call out and to condemn the hateful conspiracy 
theories that lie and unpin these threats.
    I appreciate my colleagues for engaging in today's very 
important conversation. I look forward to continuing working 
together with all of them to address the grave national 
security threat that domestic terrorism poses to our Nation.
    The record for this hearing will remain open for 15 days, 
until 5 p.m. on June 24, 2022, for the submission of statements 
for the record.
    This hearing is now adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:54 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                            A P P E N D I X

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