Angry Planet - 'Homegrown Hate' and the Modern Crusades

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

For the last two decades, America has been possessed with a Global War on Terror. The threat of militant Islam has funded the security state and given the Pentagon an overarching goal. But that threat feels increasingly distant and a new specter is haunting America—that of white nationalism.Both groups are complicated, varied, and prone to in-fighting. Both groups rely on apocalyptic visions of the future to drive home their message. Both groups are waging war against the United States.With us to talk through all this is Dr. Sara Kamali. Kamali is a scholar of white nationalism, militant Islam, and systemic inequality. Her new book is Homegrown Hate: Why White Nationalists and Military Islamists Are Waging War Against the United States.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. One day, all of the facts in about 30 years' time will be published. When genocide has been carried out in this country, almost with impunity, and when it is near to completion, if people talk about intervention. You don't get freedom peaceful.

Freedom has never state-guided people. Anyone who is depriving you of freedom isn't deserving of a peaceful approach. Welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Matthew Galt. And I'm Jason Fields. For the last two decades, America has been possessed with the global war on terror.

The threat of militant Islam has funded the security state and has given the Pentagon an overarching goal. But that threat feels increasingly distant in a new specter is haunting America, that of white nationalism. Both groups are complicated, varied, and prone to infighting, and both groups rely on apocalyptic visions of the future to drive home their message. Both groups are waging war against the United States. With us to talk through all of this is Dr. Sara Kamali. Kamali is a scholar of white nationalism, militant Islam, and systemic

inequality. Her new book is Homegrown Hate, Why White Nationalists and Militant Islamists are waging war against the United States. Doctor, thank you so much for joining us. Hi, Matthew. Hi, Jason. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So one of the reasons I really want to talk to you is that I, this connection between these two groups is something that's been on top of my mind in the past few months, but I haven't seen a lot of the explicit connection being made. I mean, your book makes that connection explicit. So can you tell us just off at the top why it's important to compare these two groups? what are the similarities that demand this comparison be made?

And more than the similarities, I think it's the way that militant Islamism, specifically as an ideology, has been conveyed as well as perceived as a national security threat, whereas white nationalism has been consistently minimized. So that was the primary reason for comparison rather than have two separate books, of course, one respectively on white nationalism and the other respectively on militant Islam. But in terms of the other reasons for comparison, really what comparison offers is to highlight not only similarities, but also points of divergence. And really what comparison also does is it's a useful tool to juxtapose the security threat to the terrorist, the primary terrorist threat as has been perceived since 9-11 has been militant Islamism. And we're finding out post-January 6th, Of course, white nationalism has been very much part of the United States and a security threat all along. One central similarity between both ideologies is the narrative of victimhood.

And the being on the defense for white nationalists, that's very much being under attack by people of color as well as immigrants. And for militant Islamists, on the whole, it's the perception that U.S. foreign policy and U.S. domestic policy is attacking what they perceive to be the correct interpretation of Islam as well as sincere Muslims. So Muslims in America and Muslims in European countries in Australia, for example, are very often perceived by militant Islamists who are also citizens of the countries within those areas as being actually apostates. So many militant Islamists, regardless of their citizenship, very much identify with whomever they consider to be true Muslims. So there's some differentiation and nuance, but on the whole, it's going to be a sense of victimhood, as well as the use of beliefs to justify and to legitimize violence in the pursuit of political aims. You make this distinction early on, and I think it's important for us to make this clear right at the top, that there's a difference between violence done in the name of religion and religious violence.

That was a very striking part of the intro. Can you recap that for us and why that's important when we have this discussion? Yes, thank you. And I appreciate you bringing attention to that. Because while it seems like a nuance, it's a really important part of the conversation. While the groups, of course, militant Islamism is predicated upon a certain understanding of Islam as a religion. A white nationalism isn't specifically tied to one religion. There are many religions, and including atheistic. So many beliefs. But in terms of the difference specifically between violence in the name of religion versus religious violence, What you can see is that religious violence, that phrasing and that concept really ties the idea, the notion that there's something inherently violent within religion that provokes and incites militancy. I really state very clearly, as you kindly pointed out, that religious violence is not my preferred terminology.

The reason I use violence in the name of religion is because religion is often exploited, manipulated, and expressed differently in order to legitimize. militancy in the pursuit of political aims. And so while this whole conversation may seem very academic and very specific as well and maybe even inconsequential in reality, as many of us have come to know that words have power and many of us have come to know in the wake of President Donald Trump's administration, whatever the beliefs, whatever our political stances, words can incite people to do many things. And throughout this, throughout this book, I've done my best to be very intentional. with using specific language.

You do a really great job of kind of outlining the ideological underpinnings of both of these movements, the texts that are so important to both of them. It's really striking, like, when you put things like the Turner Diaries and Side Coutib, like side by side and start talking about them, like really understanding, what am I trying to say here, how recent the ideological foundations of both of these movements are, right? They're built on stuff from the past, but like the past hundred years both have seen a lot of changes and a lot of growth, I think. Maybe tell me if I'm wrong. But can we get into some of these ideological underpinnings a little bit? So, like, for example, can you tell us

like who side Qutib is and why his work is so important when we talk about militant Islam? Thank you. Thanks again for the kind words. I wouldn't necessarily say that these ideologies are new, but I would say that they're modern. They have existed for a long time in different iterations. So while the world has come to know white nationalism in the wake of January 6th, certainly the platform of white nationalism, which we can delve into a little later, has always, not always, has existed for centuries. Certainly since the founding of the United States and is very much present within spaces, territories that the majority of people think to be white. So Australia, northern and Western Europe, for example. Militin Islamism is also, when we speak about

similarity is also has that same characteristics in that Islam as expressed as a political ideology which is Islamism has existed for a long time but certainly the figure the been more recent ideologues very much speak to the present social ills that can be remedied from their perspectives through their interpretations of the religion itself so side couldaub specifically so he's an ideologue very prominent ideologue of militant Islamism and he was a child of the British occupation of Egypt, and he was very much influenced by colonialism, and he essentially was very much influenced by what he viewed as the present-day crusades in the form of the British Empire taking over Egypt. And he was very influential, as well as prolific in terms of his,

in terms of his writings. And within the canon of militant Islamism, he has produced several influential texts. Now what makes his writing and that of other ideologues slightly more complicated, especially if we juxtapose that with the Turner Diaries, is that Muslims who are not militant who do not condone violence will look at, will read his writings and say, gee, he was pushing back against colonialism. So perhaps there is some grounding for his understanding of religion without the need to advocate violence without the need to call for arms. Whereas the Turner Diaries is very explicitly and solely focused on violence as a tool, as the sole remedy to maintain white identity as primacy, essentially.

So there are differences. And I think that's where it gets complicated because, as we've mentioned before the recording, that perhaps not many people are as familiar with side kutub in Islam as a whole. is seen as very much the other and outside of the scope of what it means to be American, what it means to be white, et cetera, when in fact it's not, again, we can talk about that later. But side-Kutub is one of the central figures of, one of the central political figures of Islamism, as well as one of the central figures of militant Islamism. And the difference there is the need for violence.

So one can very much be an Islamist, and that has a whole range of definitions, and interpretations and applications. And one can also be a militant Islamist, and both of those two different people can regard Saeed Qatub as a figure worthy of reverence. Does it make a difference that we're talking about a religion or an interpretation of a religion on one side, and we're talking about a pseudoscientific ideology on the other?

This concept of whiteness is actually fairly recent, from what I understand. And Islam is an actual ancient religion going back to 1600 years or 1500 years. How do they work together? Are they actually enough of a similarity to compare the two? So I also compare the many religions within the cosmology of white nationalism. And certainly the centrality, the focal point or the linchpin of those religions is the admonautil. advocacy of the superiority of whiteness. So all those religions, and including even the principle of the 14 words, which is not religious, but is certainly a central value, call for, advocate for, and are predicated upon the idea of white supremacy, that there is something inherently, biologically, culturally, and even divinely superior about white identity. And you are right that

whiteness is a fluid category. And certainly the construct of whiteness as supreme, as superior, is a more recent construct, whereas Muslims believe that Islam is a primordial religion and in different iterations and finalized and perfected with the last prophet of Islam, which is the Prophet Muhammad, several hundred years ago. So when I am discussing comparisons, whether that's similarities or differences, I'm looking at the aim, the aim, so whether that's a white ethno state, the political aims, I should say, whether that's a white ethno state or a caliphate, and then also looking at the tools and the politicization of religion, of beliefs to justify and legitimize violence in the pursuit of those aims. Yeah, that's one of the, another interesting part about the book is this, I think you called it the cosmology of different religious beliefs that are attached to white nationalism. There's a lot of weird stuff going on in, say, central Texas around things like Odin.

I guess the construction of new, like, pseudo-religions around this white identity. Can you talk to some of that a little bit? Yes. So, wotanism is a reconstructed or interpretation of the ancient Nordic pagan religion of Odinism. And wotinism was developed by David Lane, who was a prominent ideal. within white nationalism who was imprisoned a part of the order which ties back to the Turner Diaries which had a fictional group called the order and then the real order came about based on that so it's all quite complicated but I do lay that out in the first part of the book and when

you said pseudo religion the adherence of wotiness very much see their religion as completely valid and in a complete system of belief so perhaps they wouldn't necessarily say that it's a suitor religion. The reason I'm being, again, perhaps pickier than a stickler for words, I should say, is simply because I think a lot of times when we're discussing these ideologies, whether it's militantism and it's seen out of the realm of what it is to be American and some kind of foreign threat where it's really not. And then white nationalism is minimized and seen, well, white people, how bad can that be? Really, I think the reason why I start and end the book with empathy is because we really need to take all these beliefs and ways of view seriously if we're going to understand

and address them fully and efficiently. Sorry, just real quick, that is something I worry about when we, I'm not saying that you do this, but I'm saying this is something I see in the wider coverage, specifically of white nationalist movements, is that there is a tendency, it's very mockable, a lot of the stuff. A lot of it comes off as silly and strange and becomes like a Jerry Springer episode. And it is, that stuff can be, we have to be. real careful with the way we treat these people and the way we talk about them. Because I think you light it on something that's really lit up my brain is like when you go back and you read a lot

of that old Sayyakutab stuff, and I've been yelled at for saying this before. But a lot of it is very weirdly like joyful and like looking forward to a new, a brand new dawn, a new day. Whereas as you said earlier, this Turner Diary stuff, like a lot of the foundational text for white nationalism are about the cleansing power of violence explicitly from the get-go. Am I completely talking out of school here, or do you think I'm on to something? No, I appreciate your perspective and your point of view, and I think that nuance is very often not present and lacking to dire consequences, as we've seen with January 6th.

Part of why that happened is because even we can see just from the photos of that day, the police response, for example, exemplified how the threat has been minimized and perhaps because the white nationalist threat has been so flippantly viewed in the past. And even in the present discourse, it minimized, of course, by political far right as well as perhaps not as perhaps diminished by many centrists and on the political far left and far left as well. We're also in a place in this country where so much of this stuff is normalized. We don't see it as being completely out of character. When we think about the South and the way history of the Civil War is taught and the monuments that are only now starting to come down after they, only years after the Civil War went up, we have a very weird relationship with this stuff here in this country anyway.

It's very present for us. And it's, as you say, it's mockable, but it's also, it's just ever present. It's not mockable. It's being mocked. It shouldn't be mocked. And I think that mocking, that tool is mocking is actually a tool that has been wielded as a subtle form of normalization, such as, and that happens a lot, too, in the past, when I was in the classroom, I consider myself an educator, as I think we all are in various respects. But when I was in the classroom and I had a privilege to teach students at the time, I was teaching a class on systemic racism and how it intersects with various other forms of. oppression, including violence, including genocide. So if you look at even the tools that was used to galvanize the populations against the Tutsis and moderate Hutus, we can see that the minimization of violence was often, violence was often minimized. And even though it targeted Tutsis and moderate Hutus, you could see that the use of jokes, for example, was very often a tool. And that has

happened also against Jews in the Holocaust as well. And that's how currently we're seeing even I would say that the minimization of white nationalism has also led to its normalization. It's not the only reason, but certainly it has not been taken seriously as it has, as it should be. You had talked about the possibility. The word crusade means something, I think, to both militant Islam and to white nationalists. And it's also considered in some ways among the, Christian circles to be a good thing overall, even in very broad, very popular aspects of evangelical Christianity, they're constantly going on crusades, even if it's just to raise money.

But can you talk about how you see the role of crusade on both sides of this, both Islam and white nationalist? Yeah. So when we're going back to, when we're going back to Islamism, we can see that the concept of what is often referred to as the Crusader Zionist alliance is harkens back to the actual crusades centuries ago and is very much currently embodied within colonialism, post-colonialism, as well as what is seen as very destructive and imperialist U.S.-led foreign policy in Muslim majority countries. Then on the white nationalist side, the same type of crusaderist image,

is seen as another form of holy war that is leveraging violence in order to impose a correct belief of Christianity, but also an Anglo-Saxon worldview, that is the way that the world should be. And so, again, when we're thinking about words and the power of words, we can see that what is a crusader to one is not necessarily going to be the same type of crusader to another. But certainly there is what I also discuss as white nationals evangelicalism and also other interpretations of Christianity that lend power to that crusaders imagery. So we can see that the crusaders imagery is very often a powerful tool not only to proselytize within the respective ideologies, but also to proselytize violence against members of the respective ideology. So very often militant Islamists will use that type of imagery to say it's not necessarily against white people, but the colonial imperialist dynamic of the U.S. is leading a crusade against the Muslim majority nations.

And then white nationals will use the crusader imagery to say that, well, we have a justified war in order to perpetuate and wait and essentially engage in Islamophobia. and violence against Muslims. So it's really interesting dynamic that despite being, I guess, it's because it's so embedded within history and has so much, so much is laden within that term. And because it means so much to so many people that it's seen as justified. And it's a powerful, again, a powerful, powerful, powerful theme. To that note, can you explain the concept of the,

I'm not even sure how I would say this aloud, Rahawa? Rahawa? To the audience? Yeah, Rahawa. So Rahawa is an acronym, and that means racial, holy war. And it was actually a term that was coined by one of the founder of creativity, which is one of the religions within the ecology of white nationalism that is founded upon the idea that the white race is superior.

So in creativity, there's actually no deity specifically. Ben Classen was very much an atheist himself, but he founded this religion with the central tenet being our race is our religion to uphold very much a certain classical understanding of white cultures. So he was very much influenced by Greek culture, Roman culture, and also that whiteness itself is superior and should be worshipped. And what's interesting about racial holy war is that it actually was, I would say, influenced by the misunderstanding of jihad, which is actually from the militant Islamist group of Hezbollah, which is more of a Shi group. And within homegrown hate, I specifically focused on Sunni groups. So that's a whole other conversation. But really,

that's another point, that's another point of overlap that requires, I think, a nuanced understanding of both the ideologies, but it's still an interesting convergence. All right, Angry Planet listeners, we're going to pause there for a break. We will be right back after this. All right, Angry Planet listeners, thank you for staying with us. Now back to the show. One of the things I think is so fascinating about these groups, especially the white nationalist groups,

which honestly I know a little bit more about. Every group has its own internal mythology in a way that it talks to itself, but they all communicate, and then they kind of trade stuff. And certain things get picked up and become popular. Like I would think that Turner Diaries, for example, is pretty foundational across most of them. Anyway, that's just a comment. Another thing that I think is similar between Islam and the white nationalist threat in America is what I'll call like an angry young man problem. Can you talk about that a little bit and how it feeds both of these issues?

Okay, so just to clarify the question, the angry young man problem within white nationalism specifically, and it feeds into what other issue? No, in both groups. Like, basically, like... So how the trope and how the concept of angry white men play both, the perpetuating both ideologies essentially? Yes. I think it's an interesting, the reason I'm pausing is because... Okay. I really want to ask you both a question.

Hit me. Okay. What do you see as the role as... of the angry, angry man or angry young man or angry middle-aged man or angry older man. Because let me put some context of this question, is that the majority of the insurrectionists were not necessarily young. They were older millennials, which can be up to 40, depending on whom you're asking. But as to end, I would like to hear your perspectives, please.

I think that there is a perception in our country, especially, especially within some of these groups and with some of these, some groups that are adjacent to these groups, that men have been left behind by our society. And that one way a man can prove that he is a man is by committing an act of violence. We look specifically at January 6th, I think obviously that's an oversimplified narrative. But I think if you look at the people that are committing quote unquote lone wolf attacks, and we can even get, we'll get into, because I want to, why that's a misnover. But if you look at the people that are committing lone wolf attacks, they tend to be like younger,

Younger dudes that were looking for something to believe in grasped on us to one of these ideologies and then in the worst case scenario is pursued it through to a violent act. January 6th, it's like a whole different bagworms, because like you said, there's a lot of older millennials, like a lot of angry dudes that had been fed bullshit for the past four years, probably longer than that. And it exploded in a Titanic and weird and stupid riot or insurrection on the Capitol.

But I also think that there is, I live, I'm from Texas. I live in South Carolina now. I'm from, I'm a dude from the south. The place I'm in is economically depressed. And there's a lot of white dudes with a lot of free time that are looking for something to do. And I think that that is, you can compare that to, there's also a lot of Middle Eastern countries that have a lot of young men that don't have a lot going on that are looking for something to do. And in both sides of both sides of the ocean, they can fall prey to these groups. And that's my overall my thinking about this. And then Jason, I don't know if you wanted to add anything to that. Yeah.

Yeah, I would just add that it's younger people, men in particular who are more violent anyway. They're the ones who have the energy to get up off the couch. By the time you get to middle age, I think things have often shifted. You have more at stake in society anyway. A lot of people, even if you're not doing great economically, you have children, other things that would be deeply affected by you actually going out and committing an act of violence. So I think that's somewhat restraining. But I think that any time that we're talking about people without, they don't see opportunity, whether the opportunity might be there or might not be there. And I think there's an argument on both sides about that, that there might actually be more opportunity than people

realize. Anyway, the point being that the similarities are actually quite strong between young men, mainly white here in the United States, who can't really find jobs that they feel are worthy of them. And I think worthy of them is key. That's another big point. Yeah, their opportunities don't come with any kind of dignity attached to them and that pisses them off. Walmart's not great. Yeah. So the last thing I would just say is I see that I know from reading, in the Middle East, you have a lot of people, young men with college degrees even, who can't find jobs no matter

what. Unemployment rates are sky high. So again, people not seeing an opportunity for themselves. And that frustration, I think, bleeds over. Okay, so thank you so much for both of your thoughts. I really appreciate your thoughtful responses. It's very rare that I actually get to ask questions, so I appreciate the opportunity to do so. The reason I paused initially was because when the question was posed about angry men specifically and their predilection for violence, I was also thinking about how women have played a role within proselytizing both of these ideologies. and how central actually women are both as targets because of misogyny, and also in terms of actually waging violence and organizing and serving as essentially vessels for procreation, etc. So that's, that was actually my initial response to the question. But in terms of women,

women definitely do play a central role within both of these ideologies for all of the reasons I just mentioned. But in terms of angry men specifically, it's interesting that we're, both of you mentioned economic anxiety because when it comes to white nationalism specifically, and even if we go back to when white nationalism became more of part of the national discourse in the United States with the election of Trump. And initial reactions was like, we're really around trying to figure out the role of economic anxiety to do with President Trump's victory. What we now know is that economic anxiety was it was not the central cause for the harnessing of white nationalist values. It's actually, it's actually part of the platform, but it's really more about skin color anxiety.

So what I'm trying to say is that the trope of the white angry guy is not because he's facing less, not necessarily. because he's facing less job prospects, it's really to do with his fear of people of color and immigrants essentially who are mainly going to be of color and lower socioeconomic status, perhaps. So I think that's a really interesting concept. But certainly what we can, what we also know about white nationalism is that people who do, who are less privileged socioeconomically are more prone to take part in violence. So I think that's really interesting. Whereas with militant Islamists in the United States, that's not the case. But again, when we're talking about the, just going back to both of your comments in terms of economic anxiety and overlapping with young men and in terms of

how that combines essentially to play into violence, we can see that definitely the conflicts and the war zones and the complete devastation in many Muslim majority countries in particular are certainly going to feed directly into the militant Islamist narrative. And that's certainly why organizations such as Lakhida, such as Islamic Seder Daesh, have been able to recruit so many men and young men in particular because of that sense of disenfranchisement. So I would say that economic anxiety certainly plays a role and religion is perhaps weaponized and exploited as propaganda. or we can even say that skin color in terms of white nationalism is exploited as a propaganda tool. But I think that's certainly something that policymakers really need to take into account is how does this economic depression really factor into the algorithms for violence?

It's not the sole cause, but it certainly intersects with the larger questions about identity and the need for belonging and the perceived threats. So something I teased earlier that I was really taken with. the back half of the book is you have this bit that debunks the idea of the lone wolf, especially in terms of like where it's, and I think we mostly see that attributed to white nationalist violence here in the States, right? It's not, it's usually not something we see associated with Islamic violence. In your book, you argue that this thing is a total myth. Can you explain why that term no longer really applies and like how online, being online gives you a kind of peer group? Yes. So the lone wolf myth,

actually never really existed. That idea of leaderless resistance was actually coinciding with the coinciding with the militant Islamist concept of Nizam La Tanzanin. And essentially, the leaderless resistance paradigm was something that was also developed within white nationalism through an essay by Louis Beam, which was developed around the same time. And it really spoke to this idea that men in particular need to take it upon themselves in order to be warriors for their race. And the essay itself was called leaderless resistance. And it's really interesting to see how that dynamic played out. But the reason I'm saying that lone wolves, just to backtrack a little bit,

it was a 1983 essay by the founder of the Aryan nations called leaderless resistance. And the reason why I'm saying that the lone wolves never existed is because there have most definitely been these infrastructures of communication within white nationalism specifically. So even if we go back 100 years, for example, when the KKK, which is a very prominent white nationalist group, of course, and it was at the height of its power in the 1920s and marched down, march down one of the main avenues in Washington with the U.S. Capitol in the background near Washington, near the White House. And many people as essentially some statistics point to a quarter of politicians throughout government, local, state, and federal levels have some

relationship or affiliation with the KKK itself as an organization 100 years ago. So we can see that the idea that there is a singular individual who somehow imbibes certain elements and then the outcome is violence is actually a very false narrative that is still actually being perpetuated by counterterrorism. officials, even in the Biden administration, which is certainly focused and pivoted towards white nationalism since the election. And the reason why that it's a myth is because there have always been structures, whether that's publications, whether that's radio programs, whether that's publishing houses, there have been many types of infrastructure that, communications that

have supported the narratives and the ideologies, what you alluded to earlier, the cross-pollination of ideas as well as memberships within the ecology of white nationalism. So the idea, just the current iteration of social media, as well as the exploitation of the internet to communicate is not new by any means. No, I would say you brought up Louis Beam, who had a vision in the early 80s of using distributed digital networks to communicate white nationalist messages. Because I think he was, he had a really long car trip. And at the end of it, he was like, I've got this Commodore 64.

Why couldn't have we just had this conference? conversation over digitally. And it pioneered a lot of the way these white nationalist networks work online, or at least had a public access television program as well, where he pre, essentially that was his pulpit where he preached his ideas from. And then one of the most popular, one of the most popular online sites, Central Hub's Davy Stormer, was run by Andrew England for a very long time. The technology has certainly always been leveraged for communication.

All right. You've dipped into this at the end of your last question. Can we talk about holistic justice and what that means? Yes. So holistic justice is a national security framework. And as we've discussed various angles of both white nationalism and militant Islamism, essentially the scope is much more complex than perhaps can be seen through a media headline or through a tweet. And so really, holistic justice, takes into full account the scope of complexity in order to center empathy, the tools of empathy, as well as anti-oppression. And by no means is this some type of passive form of advancing justice. Really, holistic justice is meant to be a reconstruction or reconstruction, a reconceptualization of the current national security framework that speaks to different agencies as well as people, depending on their positionality. Number one, it's going to have to be a dismantling of the current Islamophobia, essentially within the counterterrorism paradigm. And why I'm saying that, number one,

is because there are so many resources, funds, and man people power. Focus currently on surveillance of Muslim Americans still, so much money being spent currently on specially designated terrorist groups on foreign terrorist organizations. The way that there's a division between foreign terrorism and domestic terrorism, essentially when terrorism is transnational, as I've discussed, within the last chapter, within the penultimate chapter in the book. And so when Islamophobia is recognized and taken out of the equation, then that means that there's a lot of more money and people that can actually address the full scope of white nationalism. And so when we look at what holistic justice is and how that works then, is not only calling for legislation at the federal level,

which is essentially an interagency, a network of interagency actors, providing transparent data on white nationalist organizations, et cetera, but also empathy in terms of reworking state educational curricula to understand, not to demonize whiteness, but to understand the concept of race and skin color and all these various forms of identity is how they are used for oppression as well as privilege. So to understand within the context of one's area, what's one state within one's local area, even how these concepts have played out in terms of history, past, and present.

And I think that's very interesting and necessary because if we don't understand how race has become a political construct and how racism is the violence that results out of that, then we're never going to actually be able to acknowledge and address white nationalism specifically. And then, of course, there are myriad targets of both. white nationalists and militant Islamists that intersect, whether that is the queer community, whether that is people of who are not Christian, Jews, Muslims in particular, for example. So there are a lot of communities that are disenfranchised, including women who are often targets of violence. So it's not really until we center the stories and experiences of the people who are

marginalized that we're going to understand how they have become targets of the current terrorist threat. And I think that's something that's very important. Both empathy is incredibly important in terms of understanding their stories and their experiences as well as understanding the worldviews of terrorists themselves. And then when we're looking from the grassroots level, definitely the anti-oppression movement is the purpose of an anti-oppression movement is to move beyond simply anti-racism to create, cultivate solidarity between the many historically marginalized people across the spectrums of identity. Again, across the spectrums of not only skin color, but gender identity, gender expression, religion, sexual orientation, ability, for example.

And really, there needs to be more of a network of not disparate groups such as black versus brown, etc. But really mobilization of solidarity through community activist organizers and groups, including faith groups and public and nonprofit organizations in order to, in order to understand that minorization, the experience of minorization, are not meant to be ranked, but really, they can work together based off of the shared experiences of minoritization, whilst respecting the different stories within. And just as an asterisk, there's also a lot of colorism within many communities, I think, as well. That's not necessarily picked up when we're talking about the nuances and the need for nuance and media discourse. So holistic justice really calls for each of us

to understand our histories, the histories of others, and also how this very much operates within the present and is an active concept in order to create community and uplift diversity. My last question is something I worry about when we're making these connections is that the national security state is taking the wrong lessons from the global war on terror in that I feel like there are groups within the Pentagon and the DOJ that are interested in applying the same kind of counterterrorism measures to white nationalists. And I think that that would go bad. Not that white nationalism does not need to be a focus. It absolutely does. But I'm worried about the excesses of empire coming to the home front. And I want to guard against that. But I think like your description of holistic justice is the is an answer to that. It's a completely different framework for how we would prosecute crime and look at our own history. So I feel like you already answered the question. And also redress the current inequities as well, which is also central.

control to success, advocacy, encountering terrorism. Dr. Sara Kamali, the book is Homegrown Hate, why white nationalists and militant Islamists are waging war against the United States. Thank you so much for coming on to Angry Planet and walking us through all of this. Thank you so much. It was a sincere delight to be here, and I appreciate your thoughtful questions. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for listening to Angry Planet.

As always, the show is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell. If you like the show, go to angryplanet.substack.com. Sign up for bonus episodes. You get commercial free versions of the mainline podcast and also two bonus episodes a month. Again, that's at angryplanet.substack.com. We will be back next week with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Please stay safe. Until then.