SPLC Letter to DOJ & DHS
J. Richard Cohen
President & CEO
President & CEO
March 5, 2013
Attorney General Eric Holder Secretary Janet Napolitano
U.S. Department of Justice Department of Homeland Security
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20530-0001 Washington, D.C. 20528
U.S. Department of Justice Department of Homeland Security
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20530-0001 Washington, D.C. 20528
Dear General Holder and Secretary Napolitano:
On
October 25, 1994, six months before the Oklahoma City bombing, we wrote
Attorney General Janet Reno about the growing threat of domestic
terrorism. Today, we write to express similar concerns. In
the last four years, we have seen a tremendous increase in the number
of conspiracy-minded, antigovernment groups as well as in the number of
domestic terrorist plots. As in
the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now also are seeing
ominous threats from those who believe that the government is poised to
take their guns. Because
of the looming dangers, we urge you to establish an interagency task
force to assess the adequacy of the resources devoted to responding to
the growing threat of non-Islamic domestic terrorism.
Today, we are releasing our latest report on the state of hate and extremism in the nation. The report documents that the number of militias and radical antigovernment groups grew from 149 in 2008 to 1,360 in 2012. This latest count exceeds the high-water mark of the 1990s by more than 500. During
that decade, the growth in the radical antigovernment movement was
fueled in large part by anger over the passage of the Brady Bill in 1993
and the enactment of the assault weapons ban in 1994. Now
that gun control is again being hotly debated, we are seeing a repeat
of that anger, and it is likely to continue to swell the ranks of
antigovernment groups.
In
January, for example, a former Tennessee police chief who conducts
weapons training for law enforcement officials threatened in a video
posted on YouTube to “start killing people” if President Obama uses his
executive power to enact gun control measures. Similarly, an antigovernment movement leader in Montana said he was “prepared to become an outlaw” over the gun issue. When U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette proposed a ban on high-capacity magazines, a well-known neo-Nazi posted her address, along with photos of her and her husband, on a racist Internet forum. Although
individuals who make incendiary public statements may not act on them,
their rhetoric is a barometer of the rage that is building in certain
quarters.
Our report also documents that hate groups remain at record highs. The expansion of hate groups began not in 2008 but in 2000 as a reaction to the country’s changing demographics. Now
that comprehensive immigration reform is poised in the view of some to
legitimize those demographic changes, the backlash that we’ve seen over
the last decade may accelerate as well. A
recent study sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, it
should be noted, found that criminal violence was associated with a
significant percentage of far-right hate groups. See Steven M. Chermak, Joshua D. Freilich, Michael Suttmoeller, The Organizational Dynamics of Far-Right Hate Groups in the United States at 2, DHS, Dec. 2011.
Our
data as well as that of independent researchers reflects that the
country has seen an increase in right-wing domestic terrorism as the
number of hate and antigovernment groups has increased in recent years. A
new study by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, for example,
found that right-wing violence in the 2000-2011 period surpassed that of
the 1990s by a factor of four. See Arie Perliger, Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right, Combating Terrorism Center, Jan. 15, 2013. A
report by the Congressional Research Service found that domestic
terrorists have orchestrated more than two-dozen incidents since 9/11. See Jerome P. Bjelopera, The Domestic Terrorist Threat: Background and Issues for Congress, CRS, May 15, 2012. The data we’ve collected reflects a significant uptick in racist crimes and terrorist plots in the last four years. See SPLC, Terror from the Right: Plots, Conspiracies and Racist Rampages since Oklahoma City (2013).
The
resources devoted to countering domestic hate and radical
antigovernment groups and those they may inspire do not appear
commensurate with the threat. A
2006-07 survey of state police agencies sponsored by the Department of
Homeland Security found that more states reported the presence of
far-right antigovernment, neo-Nazi, and racist skinhead groups than
Islamic extremists. Joshua D. Freilich, Steven M. Chermak, Joseph Simone, Jr., Surveying American State Police Agencies and Terrorism Threats, Terrorism Sources, and Terrorism Definitions, Terrorism and Political Violence 21:3 at 461-63 (2009). Since
that survey was conducted, the number of far-right antigovernment
groups has exploded and the number of neo-Nazi and racist skinhead
groups has remained at a high level. At
the same time, serious questions have been raised about the level of
resources that are now being devoted to assessing the threat of
non-Islamic terrorism. See, e.g., Hate
Crimes and the Threat of Domestic Extremism: Before the S. Subcomm. on
the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights of the S. Comm. on the
Judiciary, 112th Cong. (2012) (statement of Daryl Johnson): R. Jeffrey Smith, Homeland Security Department Curtails Home-Grown Terror Analysis, Washington Post, June 7, 2011. In
light of these questions and the disturbing trends we have described in
this letter, we believe it is time to take a fresh look at the issue.
Please feel free to contact us if we can be of any assistance.
Sincerely yours,
J. Richard Cohen
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