How to Stop the Next Capitol Riot
May 13, 2021 • Vol. 01 No. 04
Illustration by Meryl Breidbart (she/her)
Editor’s Note: The post-mortems about what happened on January 6, and why, have been plentiful. Actionable proposals about what must be done have been less so. In our first forum, we invited four sets of authors to offer their visions of the boldest response to right-wing extremism. Our respondents belong to the academic, policy, and religious communities, and offer their own ideas for what the path forward should look like.
Implement Lustration
By Colleen Murphy (she/her) and Monika Nalepa (she/her)
To deal with domestic radicalization on the right, we must focus on where radicalization is most dangerous: within the ranks of law enforcement. January 6 and its aftermath revealed the painful truth that white supremacists have already infiltrated police, military, and security agencies at multiple levels, and that they present an urgent threat from within.
To root out radicalized law enforcement officials, the United States should learn from the experience of countries forced to deal with similar problems: the former communist states in Central and Eastern Europe.
In the aftermath of the fall of communism, the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe inherited security forces with loyalties to the Soviet Union and ideological leanings incompatible with democratic governance. Firing the security forces en masse was not a viable option: When some countries, such as Russia and Albania, attempted to do so, they experienced massive spikes in organized crime. But at the same time, retaining all officers from the old regimes risked jeopardizing the political goals of the new democratic ones. To try to square the circle, many countries— including Poland,Hungary and the Czech Republic—chose a third option: lustration. Lustration was the state-run process whereby law enforcement officers, who had been employed by the old regime, were investigated by the new regime for their ties to extremist groups. To the extent that members of or collaborators with secret service forces of the former governments had infiltrated the ranks of police, military intelligence, and special forces of the new democratic regimes, lustration procedures uncovered those linkages and removed the “bad apples” from power.
Lustration in the United States could entail screening members of law enforcement for ties to extremist white supremacist groups. As a first step, a lustration process would seek voluntary disclosures from law enforcement officers, who would be asked to provide information about their past connections to white supremacist or far-right extremist organizations. For those who do offer such information, there would be some sanction, and at the very least those agents would be strictly limited in their future enforcement responsibilities. But mere denial would not necessarily give officers immunity. Rather, members of law enforcement who are already suspected of connections with extremist groups—but who disclose no such connections—could face further scrutiny. Their declarations would be compared with the contents of police and military files. A harsher penalty for agents caught lying about connections could entail being fired from the force.
To be sure, lustration is not a tool that is well suited to address all critiques of law enforcement. Specifically, it is not a tool that by itself will lead to the institutional reform, or indeed abolition, of law enforcement that many Black Lives Matter activists are demanding. The focus of such critiques is institutional, not individual.
Yet lustration is well positioned to tackle a second line of critique of law enforcement that has become especially prominent since January 6. That critique focuses on individuals, and specifically asks what should be done with officers who have ties to white supremacist groups. Lustration has proven effective at removing individuals who harbor racist or anti-democratic tendencies, and evidence suggests that lustration stabilizes democracy in the process. Moreover, lustration avoids the risks that stem from laying off entire security agencies at once. And finally, lustration fills information gaps. Through lustration the state learns of connections between security officers and extremist groups where it had no leads to begin with. The fact that the lustration process produces such information can ultimately increase the legitimacy of institutions that are subject to it, as citizens reward law enforcement transparency with greater trust.
Without a bold move, even one that mimics policies of transitional regimes, we will face a worsening problem of radicalization in law enforcement.
Colleen Murphy (she/her) is Roger and Stephany Joslin Professor of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project, and the author of The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice.
Monika Nalepa (she/her) is an associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the Founding Director of the Transitional Justice and Democratic Stability Lab. She is the author of Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in PostCommunist Europe and After Authoritarianism: Transitional Justice and Democratic Stability.
Repurpose Counterterrorism Tools to Counter Domestic Terrorism
In the aftermath of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Congress initiated a series of hearings across different committees with the goal of understanding what went wrong, what needs to be fixed, and how the country can confront what many experts—myself included—assess is a rising threat of domestic terrorism. But one thing is sure: we were caught off guard. To prevent other events like those of January 6, we must start by looking at what the intelligence community currently can and cannot do to generate advance warnings about domestic terrorist threats. One step forward would be to enhance the role of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and leverage its existing authorities that have been underutilized with regards to domestic terrorism since its inception more than 15 years ago.
NCTC’s precursor organization, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), originated in 2003. It was renamed the NCTC as a result of recommendations by the 9/11 Commission and codified in 2004 under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA). The TTIC was originally charged with the responsibility to “analyze and integrate all U.S. intelligence pertaining to terrorism and counterterrorism.” In addition, IRTPA included language that allows “the Center to receive intelligence pertaining exclusively to domestic counterterrorism.” Given these pre-existing responsibilities, now may be the time for NCTC to expand its focus to domestic terrorism.
The IRTPA did not narrow the definition of “domestic terrorism” or draw a distinction between domestic terrorism and international terrorism. But over the course of NCTC’s history it has focused extensively—and up until very recently, almost exclusively—on threats posed by international terrorism. If approved by Congress, the White House, and Intelligence Community leaders—especially from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—NCTC could bring value and new perspectives on domestic terrorism. This could include:
Serving as the “one-stop” hub for domestic terrorism warnings that are then disseminated broadly, both within the Intelligence Community and outside.
Supporting the White House and National Security Council staff focused on domestic terrorism issues through its already established Directorate of Strategic Operational Planning organization.
Leading Intelligence Community initiatives to assess how much existing analytic effort is currently expended on domestic terrorism to see where new resources need to be developed.
Analyzing the potential linkages between domestic terrorist actors here in the United States and malign actors abroad to further enhance the Intelligence Community’s understanding of these connections.
Working with FBI and DHS to determine the travel patterns of known subjects of existing domestic terrorism investigations.
Critics of an enhanced NCTC role in domestic terrorism—and there will be many—can point to the lack of clarity in IRTPA about the center’s role, or the fact that it would overlap with existing functions already vested with the FBI, DHS, and other parts of the Intelligence Community. In order to prevent this overlap and duplication of effort, Congress will need to study IRTPA and determine if a change in law is required at this time to allow NCTC to do more. Time will tell if things move in this new direction.
Javed Ali (he/him) is a Towsley Policymaker in Residence at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and served in senior roles at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and National Security Council.
Lean on the Church
By Rev. Gay Clark Jennings (she/her)
Much to the dismay of mainline and progressive Christians like me, the white nationalist movement that now threatens our democracy has deep Christian roots. At the U.S. Capitol on January 6, rioters carried banners and flags declaring allegiance to Jesus and Donald Trump (sometimes conflating the two) and pledging fealty to God, guns, and the United States. One group styling itself after Joshua, victor of the ancient Battle of Jericho, marched to make “the walls of corruption crumble.” Other rioters claimed that their efforts to overturn the election and save the United States from “tyranny” were inspired by God.
Christians like me, who believe that God is calling us toward a more loving and inclusive vision, cannot look the other way when the stories and symbols of our faith are put to violent use. We have a special responsibility to counter those who want to use the cultural currency of Christianity to establish a nation in which power and privilege are held exclusively by white Christians.
The Episcopal Church, in which I have been a priest since 1979, has resolved to play a role in deradicalizing our fellow Christians. We believe our network of more than 6,300 congregations across the country can offer fearful people a more generous vision of Christian community, and in January, our Executive Council asked the church’s staff to develop a plan that will guide our deradicalization efforts. We expect to take up the matter again in June. As Rebecca Blachly, director of our Office of Government Relations, wrote recently, we can offer an “off-ramp for those who have joined extremist groups, expanding the possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness.”
We know that socially isolated people are vulnerable to being radicalized. Our congregations, particularly those that emphasize service to those in need, can provide alternative communities for people who are longing for connection and are at risk of finding it in white nationalist online forums. And our clergy and lay leaders, who are often deeply involved in their communities, can be trained in the kind of patient, non-judgmental outreach that helps pull people, young and old, back from the brink of extremism. In this work, we are seeking to learn from our partner churches, particularly those in Africa and Asia, that have been supporting deradicalization efforts for many years.
January 6 was not the first time that Christianity has been used for violent and exclusionary ends. Those of us who understand that Jesus called us to be peacemakers must offer a different vision of our faith. If we will not tell the world that white nationalism is not Christianity, who will?
The Rev. Gay Clark Jennings (she/her) is president of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church, one house of the church’s bicameral governing body.
Pursue Holistic Justice
Holistic justice is a national security framework that addresses the full scope of white nationalist terrorism by advancing equity. To implement holistic justice, the current injustices of the U.S. national security apparatus (which has too often criminalized Americans of color and Muslim Americans, while ignoring the threat of white nationalism) must be redressed; both the K-12 and higher-education systems must facilitate empathy in and out of the classroom; and an anti-oppression movement of activists and grassroots organizations whose respective missions center on challenging the white nationalist worldview must be empowered.
The path forward begins in Congress, which should disassemble the USA Patriot Act and prompt our national securities agencies to reorient their priorities, so they can monitor, investigate, and prosecute white nationalists. The White House must also establish an interagency task force to address white nationalism within the federal workforce and the U.S. Armed Forces. Simultaneously, the Department of Justice should shift the focus of the Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which are federally coordinated networks of federal, state, and local law enforcement, to work collaboratively with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the DHS to monitor online hate and disinformation that occurs through social media and on the Dark Web.
The federal response will only be as potent as statewide and local efforts. State education systems must teach students about the political construct of race and the reality of racism. At the curricular level, students should learn about how the communities with which they identify—and those with which they do not—have uniquely struggled with prejudice, discrimination, and systemic oppression, including on the grounds of ability, gender identity, sexual orientation, skin color, religion, and nationality. Furthermore, a successful holistic justice education will also encompass experiential learning in order to facilitate conversations between students and community members across these identities.
These state-led efforts must also be enacted concurrently with an anti-oppression movement that combats specific, and local, forms of white nationalist hate. Empowered at the grassroots level and comprised of people of all colors and creeds, the purpose of this anti-oppression movement is to cultivate solidarity between historically marginalized people across the spectrum. It will be mobilized through faith groups and organizers, as well as public and nonprofit organizations.
White nationalist terrorism is a complex, transnational threat. Holistic justice is an equally dynamic and comprehensive response.
Dr. Sara Kamali (she/her) is the author of Homegrown Hate: Why White Nationalists and Militant Islamists Are Waging War against the United States. She is also Senior Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right in the UK and an expert with the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society.
Edited by Linda Kinstler (she/her) and Samuel Breidbart (he/him)
