Hate groups have been hoping to use the coronavirus pandemic to further their agendas. In late March, a man suspected of planning to bomb a hospital treating coronavirus patients in Missouri died after a shootout with the FBI. The suspect, who had been under surveillance for several months for his potentially violent racist and extremist religious views, allegedly considered a range of targets before settling on the hospital because of the current coronavirus pandemic.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, far-right extremists believe the intense uncertainty surrounding the outbreak of COVID-19 will aid their ability to recruit new members. A faction of the white nationalist and neo-Nazi movement, referring to themselves as “accelerationists,” believes that through acts of violence they will accelerate the system’s downfall that will allow them to build an ethnonationalist society in its place.
Anti-lockdown protests that have been organized in state capitals across the U.S. have attracted activists from an array of conservative, anti-government, anti-science and white supremacist hate groups — some brandishing semi-automatic weapons and hoisting Confederate and Nazi flags. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Kevin Grisham, assistant director of research and associate professor of Global Studies at the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, California. Here, he discusses the ways in which extremist and white supremacist groups have exploited the coronavirus crisis to spread their message of hate, and how federal officials have responded.
KEVIN GRISHAM: From what we do know of these groups, these groups are a very interesting mismatch of groups of people who may share on the very surface, some common ideology in particular as it relates to the lockdown. But once you kind of get below that surface, some of the groups that we tend to study of course — and that I spend a lot of my time studying the last 20- something years — are using this as a way to really sort of propagate their agendas and what they believe. And then, of course, the other groups — which I believe is probably a little bit bigger than the groups that are neo-Nazi white supremacist groups — are the ones that are just anti-lockdown protesters. Some of those of course are anti-government, that have no white supremacist sort of connections, but sadly enough white supremacist, violent white supremacy organizations in particular, have been using sort of this shade of these protests to sort of propagate their agendas.
SCOTT HARRIS: Do you have a sense of the goals here? It’s certainly not just about opposing the lockdown and I’m certain some of the folks behind the organizing efforts and providing the funding are probably keeping their own families safe from what I think we all view as a threat from this virus. But do you have a sense of any of the greater goals that these groups might have?
KEVIN GRISHAM: Sadly enough, even before COVID-19, some of these groups had sort of an agenda of the belief that the U.S. government had some sort of “Deep State” that was trying to work against President Trump and his administration.
And so when you listen to some of the rhetoric of the protesters that’s been broadcast on various news outlets, you hear some of the same rhetoric. Again, this sort of idea that “We’re trying to overthrow the Deep State” and in some ways sort of suggesting that they are the greatest Patriots that they’re trying to send their government. So it tends to be very much, a lot of the protests probably relate back to sort of anti-government, but government has defined it as a specific way. Whereas in the past, anti-government might’ve been the established government of the presidency or the Congress, whoever. I think these groups are protesting as specific entities because many of the lockdowns have been put in place by public health officials with the support of governors and mayors and many of cities throughout the U.S. It’s obviously targeted some of that rhetoric at them as well in them doing their jobs.
What we’re seeing is that white supremacists’ sort of rhetoric has in some states actually grown as the lockdowns increased right after Charlottesville. A lot of these organizations kind of were in tatters because of what had happened at Charlottesville. And yet what we’re seeing today is kind of a re-solidification of some of these violent white supremacy groups in the COVID-19 environment. I think a large part of that has to do with the echo chambers that are being created and people are being sucked into those echo chambers in this environment.
SCOTT HARRIS: Earlier in the Trump administration, the president and his Cabinet moved to dismantle parts of the government and its monitoring of white supremacist, extremist and domestic terrorist groups. What do we know now about the Trump administration’s response here under the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security responding to this threat of an escalation during this coronavirus pandemic and the renewed activity of these extremist groups?
KEVIN GRISHAM: It is absolutely true that shortly after the Trump administration took office, that there was a sizeable decrease in those experts that worked in homeland security. The Department of Homeland Security as well as other divisions were incredibly downsized. And in fact, at one point what had been called CV or countering violent extremism, was eventually termed countering Islamic violent extremism, as if to suggest that there wasn’t this other threat. And it’s only really been due to the sad events at Tree of Life and in Poway and all these other incidences — and in El Paso that the administration had to go back and say, “Well, now we’re going to focus back on white supremacy.” How much they’re doing that is still, I think for many of us who are in the field, is still somewhat questionable.
I do have faith that the law enforcement colleagues of ours who work on the issues do it with due diligence, trying to do the best they can, but they can only do so much if they don’t have the resources. So it is definitely something that we’ll have to, as voters and as citizens, really keep track of our governments to make sure that they’re actually providing those kinds of resources so that we can counter the potential for another El Paso or another Poway or another Tree of Life.
For more information, visit the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino at csusb.edu/hate-
