After a year-long project involving community leaders, civil rights acvitists, and experts in law enforcement, counter-terrorism, and national security, the Center for American Progress and the McCain Institute for International Leadership have released “A National Policy Blueprint To End White Supremacist Violence.” The comprehensive report enumerates tactics employed by white supremacists and goes on to recommend concrete strategies to counteract them. The blueprint focuses on solutions that have broad consensus among lawmakers and affected communities in the hopes that “Congress and a willing administration can pursue [them] with the support of state, local, grassroots, and nongovernment partners.”
A panel event marking the public launch of the report featured members of Congress and experts from the national security, faith, technology policy, racial justice, immigration, and civil rights spaces.
White supremacist violence is not new, but in recent years, it has become a primary national security threat in the United States.1 Notions of racial superiority, hostility toward immigrants and minorities, and the myth of an embattled white majority defending its power have increasingly infiltrated mainstream American political and cultural discourse.2 In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published its annual threat assessment, identifying racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists, particularly white supremacist extremists, as “the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland.”
To address this issue, the Center for American Progress and the McCain Institute for International Leadership have developed a policy blueprint that outlines a comprehensive national strategy for tackling the complexity of white supremacist violence. Perpetrators of this violence employ a wide range of tactics; in turn, public officials must deploy a wide variety of policies to curb the violence and address its root causes.
Recommendations within this blueprint have been carefully vetted by a large, diverse group of stakeholders who share a common interest in preventing white supremacist violence. While lawmakers and affected communities agree that deliberate action is needed, disagreement regarding contentious solutions has in part hindered progress at the national level. This report intentionally sidesteps ideas that are the subjects of ongoing debate, such as a criminal domestic terrorism statute, and instead focuses on areas of consensus. The dozens of recommendations outlined in this blueprint are ones that Congress and a willing administration can pursue with the support of state, local, grassroots, and nongovernment partners.
