Rich Lowry: The FBI should crush violent white supremacists
They are domestic subversives and terrorists, and deserve to be treated as such.
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They are domestic subversives and terrorists, and deserve to be treated as such.
If there was any doubt that the country has a white nationalist problem, the shocking attack on an El Paso Walmart should remove it. These self-radicalizing freaks, who are a subset of the broader mass-shooting phenomenon, take inspiration from prior acts of vicious mayhem and cheer high body counts on internet message boards. They are domestic subversives and terrorists, and deserve to be treated as such.
There is no doubt that if we suffered a string of massacres on our soil carried out by Islamic radicals, we’d do everything in our power to diminish and hopefully eradicate the danger — indeed, we have. The national response to the racist extremists in our midst should show the same alacrity and resolve, while acknowledging that they represent a different, more-difficult-to-counter threat than the old Klan did.
The bureau should take an intelligence-based approach. It should monitor sewer internet boards such as 8chan, the preferred white supremacist forum for propagandizing for mass murder. Posters who cross over from First Amendment–protected speech to incitement should be prosecuted. The FBI should interview anyone expressing sympathy with terrorism — just as it does with suspected Islamic extremists — and surveil such persons as appropriate and permitted under the law.
El Paso was an outrage, and surely not the last. We need to react accordingly.
