We're Not Talking About Domestic Violent Extremism & It Shows
Where Is The National Conversation On Countering Domestic Terrorism & Domestic Violent Extremism? Do We Want Our Society Or Our Government To Take It On?
A Missing National Narrative
Did you know that a government oversight body called the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on June 15 saying that federal agencies could and should be doing more coordination to better address the increasing risk of domestic terrorism & domestic violent extremism?
Did you hear that a US Senate committee released a related alarming report this Tuesday titled “Planned in Plain Sight: A Review of the Intelligence Failures in Advance of January 6th, 2021”?
Did you know that this week’s US Senate committee report is a followup to a 2021 report “Examining the US Capitol Attack: A Review of the Security, Planning, & Respose Failures on January 6” “that found while independent experts and national security officials call white supremacist and anti-government extremist violence the most significant terrorist threat facing our nation today, counterterrorism agencies like the FBI and DHS are still not taking adequate steps to effectively address this growing threat.”
In a post-9/11 environment, we would all have absolutely known that some government findings somewhere were pointing out shortfalls, vulnerabilities, and missing pieces in what went wrong on 9/11.
In the first year or two after 9/11, you could probably have asked people walking down the street about 9/11, and they would be able to speak about at least some elements of it. Everyone was talking about some aspect of what had happened. Like why didn’t the government pick up on the unusual flight school reports? Did you know some of the terrorists were here on questionable visas? How did they get legal US driver’s licenses? And so on.
In our post-January-6th environment, the general public is barely aware of what the US House’s January 6th Committee found out; let alone these three other deeply disconcerting government dysfunction reports. Worse, many in the general public are only getting deliberately false information (disinformation) and propaganda about January 6 and current domestic threats.
There is no national, shared, joint-reality conversation about January 6, 2021 — or about the related but separate far-right domestic violent extremist (DVE) and domestic terrorist risks that continue and that are increasing.
When there is no national narrative, we’re way less likely to aggressively take on problems, challenges, vulnerabilities, and risks; to collectively identify viable ways forward; and to implement at least some changes as a result.
When there’s no national conversation, it’s not clear who’s working on changing the things that make us vulnerable. If we’re not talking about what’s happening, how do we know as a society that whatever is happening is what we want?
There is no national narrative or conversation now about the domestic terror and violent extremist threat; or about the problems in government that January 6 highlighted.
We are in a more precarious national security position because we’re not addressing these issues collectively. Denial of a problem is still a decision about dealing with the problem — it allows it to persist unchallenged.
In fact it’s worse than all that because one entire, huge political party and media machine is working to deny that January 6 happened or that there is a far-right extremist/terrorist threat. In fact it’s even worse than that because many high-profile personalities in the Republican party are actively amping up anger, disinformation, bigotry, racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment, toxic masculinity, aggressiveness, and all kinds of sentiments that are anti-diversity, anti-history, anti-academia, anti-critical-thinking, anti-Democrats, anti-liberals, anti-public-health, anti-facts, anti-decency, anti-kindness, anti-child (reference the weakening of both child labor laws and health rights for girls for examples), and so on.
These behaviours are enabling, condoning, and contributing to the extremism, threats, violence, and other radicalization on the far right. Intelligence professionals have estimated that the effects of this radicalization on US stability could last for a decade or more. Deradicalization can take a generation, and we’re still watching extremism ramp up rather than de-escalate. The piece “America’s Coming Age of Instability” suggests that “American politics will likely be marked by heightened political violence… Although the United States probably isn’t headed for a second civil war, it could well experience a rise in assassinations, bombings, and other terrorist attacks; armed uprisings; mob attacks; and violent street confrontations — often tolerated and even incited by politicians. Such violence might resemble that which afflicted Spain in the early 1930s, Northern Ireland during the Troubles, or the American South during and after Reconstruction… Enduring conflict between powerful authoritarian and democratic forces could bring debilitating — and violent — regime instability for years to come.”
There has not been a consistent, continuing national narrative about January 6 or about the domestic terrorism/violent extremism risks/threats/vulnerabilities since the immediate post-January 6 conversation died down in the weeks following Trump’s second impeachment after the insurrection/coup attempt.
While the January 6th Committee hearings have put the topic(s) back on the radar occasionally since that second impeachment, the tightly controlled yet densely news-heavy January 6th Committee hearings did not facilitate an ongoing national conversation. Rather, the public January 6th Committee hearings contributed short bursts of complicated breaking news that resulted in many of the disclosed items not getting much attention. The media made coverage choices, but the committee made choices too.
The January 6th Committee’s final report came with a veritable tsunami of information during the holidays and as Congress was transitioning. The final report didn’t drive a narrative that stuck for long, either. Too much else was going on in the news for deep dives or analysis on the report’s missing pieces — like about the failures of the government itself to respond properly before and on January 6. Instead, the brazen failure of now-Speaker Kevin McCarthy to win that speakership in numerous US House elections for the role drew our morbid curiosity… like watching a slow train wreck, or like what it was: watching institutional norms in the US government be actively eroded in real time before our eyes.
The National Narrative Matters
Our national narrative is fluid and contains more than one thing at a time.
It’s what we’re all talking about together… in the media locally or nationally, or just with our people online or in-real-life (IRL). It might also be what famous personalities/influencers are talking about; what’s going viral; what’s getting attention in the private sector; and/or what government leaders or elected officials are making a fuss about — especially if several are focused on the same stuff.
The national narrative matters because it can drive the decisions we make as a society. The media’s focus has been shown to lead/correlate with the public’s focus. Today’s fast-moving news cycle in synergy with social media means that the media’s and the public’s focus are often intertwined as phenomena, attention, or pressure can build quickly. Whether or not it is fast, what the public focuses on can impact decision-making in government at any level that affects millions. For example, the combined media and public focus on countering terrorism in the post-9/11 environment led to sweeping reforms at every level of government, and huge expenditures.
Sometimes the national narrative goes wild with a hyperfocus on one topic — like what happened last week when our US media’s attention was captured by an unusual search-and-rescue effort to find the billionaire-owned submersible Titan; meant to be touring the deep-sea ruins of the Titanic instead adding to them. We now know that Titan likely imploded underwater due to intentional failures to follow deep-water safety and design standards/protocols.
The Sound of Silence
What did we not hear about last week because of the media’s hyperfocus on the missing Titan?
There were many potential stories that US media could have spent more time on last week. One of them could have been a deeper exploration on the GAO’s June 15 report “Violent Extremism and Terrorism: Agencies Can Take Additional Steps to Counter Domestic Threats,” about how US government agencies are not doing as much as they could be to help us prepare for, mitigate, and respond to domestic terrorist and violent extremist threats/activity. The US media could have totally found enough material and expertise last week to dive into extended questions surrounding that GAO report… instead of so much spectacular coverage on the Titan’s ill-fated yet predictable underwater demise.
This week the US media could easily find enough material and expertise to dig into the same stuff given the alarming US Senate committee report released Tuesday morning, called “Planned in Plain Sight: A Review of the Intelligence Failures in Advance of January 6th, 2021.” Now more than 24 hours later that story is not driving the national narrative and doesn’t seem likely to. Partly because of the Monday release of a recording of Trump bragging about violating national security laws by showing a classified document to reporters; partly because of US Supreme Court activity; and partly because of all the other things. But also because media gatekeepers make decisions about what to cover, and they don’t seem too keen on covering our readiness to handle domestic terrorism and violence.
I know the media is capable of talking about how the US government is organized (or not) to address terrorism because a whole lot of us lived that coverage for years after 9/11. The media has a great depth of institutional knowledge and video about the nine zillion changes we made as a society after 9/11 to address the threat of more terrorism. The media were there; narrating the whole thing.
We can see that the media is still capable because they did find enough content to focus on domestic terrorism and extremism after January 6, 2021 for a few weeks. They’ve shown they are capable after high-profile mass shootings; when US media magically pull specialists and pundits out of thin air to opine ceaselessly for hours about security risks, vulnerabilities, threats, and consequences related to the particular horror of the moment.
When the media chooses to focus on something, they can stretch coverage out. They can find material.
In this case, we’re talking about big reports highlighting very dangerous shortfalls in two enormous behemoths in the federal government — the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — and the sprawling labyrinth of other security, intel, law enforcement, and first responder agencies and capabilities in the federal government. Including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) within the DOJ. Including the US Intelligence Community (IC). Including the government’s biggest department ever: the US Department of Defense (DOD). Including federal coordination with state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments. Including federal coordination with the US private sector.
Every American should be fundamentally disturbed that the time, the effort, and the trillions of dollars that we’ve invested in reorganizing and revamping our government since 9/11 have not done more to help us mitigate, prevent, or be better ready for January 6 — and that it hasn’t done more to help us be ready for the ongoing domestic threats of terrorism and violent extremism.
Does not talking about these glaring vulnerabilities and failures help us collectively push government to address the issues? No.
Denial does not help us handle risk. Distraction and deflection don’t, either. Also as noted above, whole segments of our society including elected officials and media personalities are actively contributing to worsening domestic dangers by refusing to condemn political violence, and by actively endorsing and promoting it with dangerous, hateful rhetoric and stochastic terror.
There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to national security and the domestic terror and domestic violent extremism threat.
Yet we’re not talking about this stuff — together.
It’s the sound… of silence…
It’s a national awkwardness. A national uncomfortableness.
It’s the sound of fear. Of threats. Of intolerance. Of hate.
It’s the sound of people being nervous about their neighbors, and about people they come across out in public.
It’s the sound of people going to ground. It’s the sound of people planning for their safety; of putting measures in place to be safer in an increasingly threatening country. It’s the sound of figuring out what’s legal and who’s safe and who’s not and what to do about it.
It’s the sound of denial.
It’s the sound of overwhelm.
It’s the sound of limited options; in state after state where many of the most vulnerable Americans don’t have an option to flee or to hide out at home to feel safer.
It’s the sound of distrust; of lost hope; of cynicism; of a loss of faith in the institutions that are supposed to protect us.
It’s the sound of terror — doing what it’s designed to do. It’s meant to terrorize, to shock, to overwhelm, and to paralyze so that those doing it are better able to do what they want. They want us scared. It’s working.
Why aren’t we talking about all of that?
After 9/11 we were all “we’re not letting the terrorists win!” Of course it’s different now, because the terrorists might be our neighbors, because they might be heavily armed, and because they’re empowered to be aggressive and loud even as they hide history and ban books and make it hard for anyone who doesn’t look like them to thrive.
The Long 9/11 Conversation
After 9/11 we had massive, collective, long-term national conversations for years about after-action shortfalls, risks, vulnerabilities, threats, and potential consequences.
Trillions of dollars were spent, including in one related war (Afghanistan) and one unrelated war (Iraq). There was a “global war on terror” (GWOT). There were international alliances. Congress passed several wide-reaching laws to reorganize government and create new authorities to mitigate and address the risk. DHS was created to help mitigate some of the identified US government shortfalls as the main part of a government-wide reorganization of related functions. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and other interagency coordination mechanisms were created to help improve intelligence information sharing between federal agencies and in strategic ways through DHS with the private sector and with state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments. Executive orders were issued by both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration to improve national and homeland security. The executive branch created internal national strategies and actually implemented them; those strategies persisted for the most part through the Bush and Obama Administrations (the Trump Administration is a whole different story).
Some of all post-9/11 stuff was actually implemented and worked. Some of it has been partially implemented and has worked a bit. Some of it totally did not work, and some of it was ignored. It was a lot. Whether our collective post-9/11 responses, funding priorities, laws, policies, and reorganizing was effective, wise, or needed is a separate question for which there are a million answers. Much has been controversial. Some has been very wasteful. Some of the war and military action has been deeply problematic and likely created or contributed to more vulnerabilities.
The point is that as a country, we collectively looked at what happened on 9/11… and we made enormous, sweeping changes to keep that kind of terrorism from happening again. We did that for years.
We were pretty hyper focused on it all as a country from September 2001 up until the next major catastrophe drew our attention in August, 2005: Hurricane Katrina. Even after Katrina, post-9/11 threat reports and corresponding security changes like screening shoes before boarding planes and not taking most fluids aboard got lots of attention and kept at least some of the public paying attention.
In post-9/11 America, our collective response was tightly focused on enemies outside. Whether or not we made good decisions together is a different question… but we were actively facing the problem. We took action.
Since January 6, 2021, we’ve dropped the ball. Where is our collective response? Where is the national narrative driving a collective response?
Why aren’t we figuring out how we can de-escalate, diffuse, and de-fuse the threat instead of watching it escalate and intensify?
Why Aren’t We Talking About The Domestic Threat?
Why aren’t we talking about our domestic terrorism threat more? Or our domestic violent extremism threat?
Is the problem that it’s too awkward to talk about a problem that involves Americans endangering other Americans?
It’s a huge, gaping, awkward question.
What do we do when the threat is coming from inside?
We’re doing it now: not much.
Why is it that the national media have skipped this huge, glaring story?
No doubt it’s partly because the uncomfortableness of the threats we’re seeing is part of how those threats persist; as part of the greater arc of white supremacy worldwide; as part of how colonialism persists to reinforce the status quo. Very old social mores keep powerful, monied white men in power — they include the social pressure of awkwardness when anyone who’s not a white male asks for an equal place; or rights; or justice; or freedom from fear, threats, inequality, and oppression.
It’s probably also because we’re years into the persistent shock and overwhelm that comes with an authoritarian movement that confuses people, actively divides people, spreads distrust of institutions, pushes despair, and keeps people hiding out and not connecting with each other. A cowed populace is less likely to push back as freedoms and rights are removed, and as power is seized.
The media’s both-sides-ism is part of the problem, too — as they continue to normalize far-right extremism and the hostility it brings in their attempt to portray “both sides” as equal.
The complexity of government might explain part of the missing focus except that the media was capable of covering some government complexity after 9/11. Yet the missing national security narrative is also a cultural problem. Neither the media nor the culture itself are great at being self-reflective about what’s gone funky up in that culture; even as the media are part of reflecting and shaping the culture; even as 40 years of aggressive culture wars driven by right-wing media have been in plain site (and sound) on the air on TV and radio for decades as this threat has transpired, evolved, and matured.
What we have here is a wicked problem — a superpower of a country with a dream of a functional, thriving multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy run by its own diverse cadre of citizens… facing an incredible backlash with corresponding threats from those people in the status quo. People who hang “F*** Your Feelings” flags, or have bumper stickers showing kid peeing on an image of the US President and/or Vice President. Or who hang black flags in their neighborhood to signal “no quarter shall be given.” And so on. The entire Republican party and corresponding media ecosphere is now kow-towing to this “base,” rather than leading it. They’ve made a choice.
We can, too.
We Have Options — We’re Not Powerless
We can push back on all this. We can push back on the threats of domestic terrorism and domestic violent extremism and hate and bigotry and “anti-wokeness.”
We can push back hard.
This whole entire post is frustration that we’re not having a national conversation about the very serious threats we’re facing from our own fellow Americans.
So let’s talk about it. Let’s push the issue. Let’s take it on head-on.
Let’s drive a movement to push these violent extremists, terrorists, and insurrectionists back to their hidey-holes. Let’s make it uncool to be hateful and intolerant. Let’s show how awesome it is to be inclusive, and to embrace humans. Let’s have fun. Let’s advocate fiercely together. Let’s leverage the power of the majority of Americans. Let’s leverage the power of the moral high ground. Let’s leverage our buying power, and our ability to bring social media pressure.
We can push the media. We can encourage, cajole, cheerlead, and request that our own Democractic party leaders at every level help lead more aggressively and with more media coverage. We can pressure the private sector.
We can get out front and drive media coverage ourselves.
We can create enough fuss and ruckus and buzz that we drive the national narrative ourselves about what’s acceptable and important. We can drive local narratives, too, about what’s acceptable and important. We can push a values shift — a moral shift. We can loudly declare who should have rights (all of us) and who should be free (all of us) and who should get to vote (all of us)… and so on.
We can get out front and counter the terrorism threat ourselves — by talking about it, by calling attention to it, and by asking that government at every level be aggressive in dealing with it.
Why do people think it’s okay to threaten others with political violence?
Like let’s get loud about this stuff. Everywhere.
We can push back on this movement against so many of the things that we need as a society to thrive and flourish — including our humanity. How can we be globally competitive if we’re weakening our schools? How will we innovate to address the huge challenges in front of us if we’re focused instead on our threatening neighbors? Because what’s another huge big threat that’s missing a national conversation? The threat of climate change.
We can do and be so much more. We can fight for and create a better future for ourselves and for those who come after us.
Help us. Join our online events, bring your friends to them, share posts like this, send money through the website or ActBlue, get a paid subscription to this Substack, and show up to help us get this shift going. We need people. We need you.
We can take on these terrorists. We do it together. Any movement starts with a few dedicated folks willing to persist. Let’s do it.
Join a Zoom
Team Call for Volunteers — June 29, afternoon. All are welcome. Working call to get into ongoing projects, to brainstorm, & to work through new ideas.
The Power of Stories to Bring Widespread Pressure — July 5, Wednesday, evening.
Team Call for Volunteers — July 9, Sunday, evening. All are welcome. Working call to get into ongoing projects, to brainstorm, & to work through new ideas.
The Power of Stories to Bring Widespread Pressure — July 11, Tuesday, evening.
A Personal Postscript
After 9/11, I left my career in wildland fire management to do post-9/11 work in Washington, DC. I was in it for about a decade. It was time away from my relatives in the Midwest, and time in the city away from a start in a land management and wildfire career I had loved. I was an outlier in a sea of bureaucracy, Washington insiders, and ex-military folks. Yet I did some good.
The work I went to Washington to do didn’t quite work in DHS, but we did move it forward. We did some good — I worked with hundreds of amazing colleagues in DHS, in the US Department of the Interior (DOI), and in the National Capital Region (NCR). We helped make this country more resilient and more secure.
It’s less resilient and less secure, now. Republicans and the Republican “base” are weakening these United States.
I get nauseous when I think about it. I got nauseous writing this. I get nauseous when I watch Republicans blow off a coup attempt and an insurrection… and make threats for more. I worked on protecting the continuity of Constitutional US government (COG) — which was threatened on January 6. I worked on securing Government Facilities and also National Monuments & Icons as part of early critical infrastructure and key resources work at DHS. I worked with DHS Intelligence & Analysis (I&A) the entire time I was in the department on soooooooooo much intelligence information sharing — both with state and local governments, and with the private sector. I worked on first responder and military preparedness and coordination for domestic disasters.
I gave up so much of my time and my life to help make this country more secure — only to watch an entire political party weaken everything we spent years building.
It’s personal.
We all have different stories, but I know I’m not the only one who has invested years in making this country better… only to watch a bunch of resentful, racist yahoos actively tear it apart.
I don’t intend to watch it go down. I never once made an oath to these United States without being dead serious about my commitment.
I know I’m not alone.
Join in on our work here. We need good people. We need to help each other forward. We can.
Why aren't we talking about it...? Because frankly, I believe there is a substantial subset of the population who truly don't care. That may be because they are too tired, too beaten down, feel like nobody cares about them so why should they give a rip about "that stuff." Many of them are supported in all that negativity by the news sources they follow...if they follow any at all. And then there is the role of the so-called "mainstream media." Long ago they succumbed to the "if it bleeds it leads" mentality. Sure, there is some excellent in depth reporting and analysis in the NYT, the WaPo and many reputable online sources. But on a day-to-day basis, they are following "what's hot" at the moment--get those clicks. Understanding the importance of the reports you cited is critical to understanding the areas where our government has fallen down in the past--but more crucially, where we need to make changes so we don't do so again. But when news organizations are focused on "eyeballs," they tend not to prioritize stories that don't deliver them (you know, boring reports about what went wrong on January 6) when they can focus on trump's latest escapades. They'll get to the "important stuff"--just don't expect it in realtime; after all, if they put an investigative team on it, maybe they can win a Pulitzer! That was cynical, but I don't think very far from the truth. And broadcast news is even worse... So...now what? I guess we need to organize the nerds! The people who connect the dots and actually care about this stuff. We're out here, too. We just need to figure out how to exercise our collective power to bring the real stories to the forefront, to begin to address the problems and issues that seem abstract to many but are foundational to saving our democracy. Things like the threat of domestic terrorism.