[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
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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
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
50-847 PDF WASHINGTON : 2023
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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
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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
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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.
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\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.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Portman appears in the
Appendix on page 36.
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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.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Yates appears in the Appendix on
page 39.
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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.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Ward appears in the Appendix on
page 49.
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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.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. German appears in the Appendix on
page 64.
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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.
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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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