The Mainstreaming of Extremism in America

By Rachael Drew-Kinuthia

There was a time when the focus of media organizations and of national security entities was on the Muslim world when it came to terrorism. After 9/11, it became a dominant narrative. The Islamist threat, the far threat, the overseas threat, the potential for groups like ISIS and al-Qaida to come to the United States and launch attacks became our nation’s obsessive fear. On the contrary, the FBI for many years now have said that the far-right domestic threat is the deadliest and most active. It certainly had an uptick in mainstreaming when we watched a sitting president refusing to denounce hate, and spreading violent ideologies, misinformation, and conspiracy theories until he had to be deplatformed from social media. That says it all about where our country was headed. You know that line between mainstream and fringe had vanished. Many of us took notice of the comfort with which these hateful groups touted their beliefs and showed up in public spaces to harass others.

According to Southern Poverty Law Center, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi, racist skinhead and Christian Identity groups—can all be described as “white nationalists.” Mainstreaming was allowing Americans sympathetic to white nationalist groups to act upon populist and anti-immigration sentiment then embrace the white nationalist’s usual myths of Black criminality, scientific racism, and antisemitism. On January 6, 2021, thousands of pro-Trump rioters launched a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol, intent on stopping the certification of Biden’s victory. Having thousands show up—many for their first time in life to do anything like this, was just one example of extremism going towards the mainstream. Mixed into the crowd were many “chaos agents” as SPLC appropriately calls the active supporters of white nationalist groups.

What did most think about this threat on January 6, 2021? Some tried to call it anything other than what it was—namely an insurrection plot. It could also rightly be named domestic terrorism and seditious conspiracy. Trump routinely paints those insurrectionists as martyrs and his supporters continue downplaying their involvement in domestic terrorism. The Republican Party is now calling it legitimate political discourse. Maybe this is why they are especially quiet regarding news you may heard and seen of Nazi groups waving flags on streets and highway overpasses in Florida and shouting at passersby. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has yet to denounce them, instead trying to claim they are part of some political game to trip him up. There were incidences with Nazis in front of a Boston hospital too. It was videorecorded and there were signs held up and flyers passed out with pictures of two particular doctors, claiming the two promoted “anti-white genocidal policy.” Where are the strong denunciations from Republican politicians?

All of these things are so similar to Trump’s own words at a rally weeks ago during the month of January when he said, “If you’re white, you don’t get the vaccine or if you’re white, you don’t get therapeutics.” One can easily connect a line from these extremists, these white supremacist groups, taking Trump’s fear mongering inaccurate remarks and running with it! These kinds of comments are fuel for them in the recruitment of others. The statements of Trump, first of all, are lies meant to stir up fear and hate in his extremist base. Then it also begs the question of when did it cease being shameful for such things to be said at a large public meeting? There isn’t even an effort to try to hide it or skirt around it. I write on this subject not to show pessimism, but emphasize why we have to push back! The good news is that we can see a difference from the first year of Biden being in office. According to statistics from New America Foundation, 2021 saw zero deaths in the United States from right-wing terrorist attacks. The unwelcome news is that the violent rhetoric and threats are still becoming normalized in the political sphere.

One of the targeted doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Dr. Bram Wispelwey said, “The fact that you have an avowed white nationalist neo-Nazi group show up at a hospital really speaks to the work that still remains to be done.”

We have also witnessed or heard the news of the bomb threats at over a dozen HBCUs and—adding insult to injury, they started up on the first day of Black History Month. The suspects being held now are all juveniles and this should worry and anger us. Why? These young people have been taught this hatred and heard our former president refer to the hate groups, such as those marching in Charlottesville during August 2017, as including “some very fine people.” He also, while president, expressed sympathy for their demonstration against the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Younger ones are unfortunately ready to embrace openly violent messages, advocate for more intimidation, and they’re continuing to get recruited on college campuses and Universities all over our nation.

Now we can’t miraculously eradicate hatred, and I can’t believe we will ever stop some people from feeling superior to others, but it should not be comfortable for them to publicly air their philosophies and act out against fellow citizens they hate. The ideals of white supremacists and white nationalists should not be in our nation’s mainstream spaces. The speech and acts of violence powered by bigotry were shockingly accepted, and perhaps best exemplified, by the embrace of Kyle Rittenhouse. Increasingly violent language is common within the movement’s rhetoric and anti-democratic ideas seep further into politics. These influencers must be put in their place and shut down in order to create a benevolent circle that would include empowering people over special interests and equal opportunity for all. The idea of creating a safer America for us all needs to stay in the mainstream!