Consider This from NPR - Old Tactics Are Being Used To Find New Extremists

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

Before he took office, President Joe Biden said stopping domestic extremism would be a priority for him. His administration has now created the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships to stop radicalization before it starts. But critics say it's a repackaging of failed strategies and inadequate. NPR correspondent Odette Yousef has been reporting on the efforts of this new program built on old strategies. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In the last 20 years, the U.S. counterterrorism community has seen two opposite trends. On the one hand, the government has succeeded in preventing another attack on the scale of 9-11. But on the other hand, the threat of homegrown violent extremism has been steadily on the rise. While we had prevented another mass attack like 9-11, we couldn't really say that we were winning the war. And we needed to look at other tools. Elizabeth Newman worked at the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration. And those other tools she's talking about, she doesn't mean just tools that would help prevent a violent attack. What she's talking about are tools that would help authorities stop someone from even wanting to plan a violent attack.

Trying to move further upstream and preventing individuals from radicalizing in the first place and mobilizing to violence. So how do you stop radicalization in its tracks? The Biden administration says it has a plan and a new agency that's tasked with carrying it out. But that plan relies on communities playing a much bigger role. It's an approach Newman came to believe in during her time in government. It really is much more about how can we help you be healthy, and often that work is best done by people that is not the government,

but rather private practitioners or churches or other non-profit groups who can help people that might not be in that safe space. Consider this. In the United States, domestic extremism is an evolving threat, one that government counterterrorism agencies are trying to keep up with. Outside observers are asking if they're doing enough. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Monday, January 31st. Others are asking if they're doing enough. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Monday, January 31st.

Support comes from our 2022 lead sponsor of Consider This, the new Venture X card from Capital One. Earn 10x miles on hotels and rental cars and 5x miles on flights when you book through Capital One Travel. Capital One. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details. Support for this NPR podcast and the following message come from BetterHelp, online counseling by licensed professional counselors specializing in isolation, depression, stress, and anxiety. Visit BetterHelp.com slash consider to learn more and get 10% off your first month. It's Consider This from NPR. Part of what makes combating domestic extremism such a challenge

is the fact that Americans disagree about who these extremists are. If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6th fairly. That's former President Trump speaking at a rally in Texas over the weekend. And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly. Contrast what Trump says with how President Biden talked about those same people shortly before he took office last year. These are a bunch of thugs, thugs, and they're terrorists, domestic terrorists.

Biden has said that preventing another attack like January 6th is a priority for his administration. And part of his arsenal in stopping the spread of extremism is the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, known as CP3. NPR correspondent Odette Youssef has been keeping track of that center and whether it's keeping up with growing threats. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas calls CP3 a response to the most pressing threat in the United States right now, domestic violent extremism. He says it's a sea change for his department, a new way to confront a threat that is constantly changing. We are deeply concerned about false narratives, ideologies of hate that are fueled by conversations and messages on online platforms and other social media.

Mayorkas says CP3 takes a new approach to preventing homegrown violent extremism, one that relies on behavioral indicators to spot when someone's on a path toward violence and that leans on local communities to respond. Regional offices will coordinate with on-the-ground organizations to understand local dynamics, strengthen community resources, and formulate interventions. Gone are the days of prevention efforts orchestrated from D.C. Mayorkas says the key here is that it's people helping people they know. It is the family member, the friend, the school teacher, the neighbor,

the clergy leader who can see someone descending into a realm of antisocial behavior and hopefully intervene to help. If you go to dhs.gov slash cve, it just redirects you to the CP3 page. When Fatima Ahmed talks about CP3, she reverts to the acronym of an Obama-era program called CVE for Countering Violent Extremism. She says a lot of what she's hearing about CP3 sounds like echoes from the past. Like, it's the exact same website and everything. They just keep changing the name. Ahmed leads the Muslim Justice League, a nonprofit in Boston, which was one of the cities where CVE was piloted several years ago.

At the time, the focus was heavily on Muslims and concern over homegrown terrorists joining groups like ISIS. But even the Department of Homeland Security acknowledges the program had what it calls unintended consequences. Civil rights advocates said it resulted in religious profiling and unwarranted surveillance of Muslim communities. In fact, when he was on the campaign trail, Joe Biden promised to shut the program down. Ahmed says the administration is right to identify violent

white supremacy and extremist militias as the greatest domestic security threat today, but she still thinks the approach is wrong. It's promoting this idea that you can spot someone in your community who is supposedly, you know, going to become a quote-unquote extremist. But what does that even mean to be extreme in this country, right? Like, it's not actually extreme to be racist here, right? Like, that's pretty normal. DHS officials say they're not in the business of policing beliefs. Instead, they're working with community partners who can identify specific behavioral signs that someone may be on a path toward violence.

And when they do, to direct them to resources that would, quote, call them back in. That is, get them help to address their grievances, like mental health support, rather than put them in the hands of law enforcement. But there's disagreement over whether DHS is the right agency to do this. The Department of Homeland Security is now investigating this incident where Border Patrol agents on horseback are seen intimidating Haitian migrants at the southern border. Ahmed says DHS has recently contributed to the hardening of American attitudes toward immigrants and people of color. Mary McCord of Georgetown University agrees that past DHS policies may complicate its efforts. She says in recent years, the department has been responsible

for some of the most cruel and inhumane treatment of people in the United States. You know, caging of children and separating children from their parents at the southwest border, that was DHS. Well, that same agency is basically also responsible for saying, trust us to protect you in the homeland. McCord says some communities simply won't trust DHS when it says it wants to partner with them to address violent white extremism. Cynthia Miller Idris of American University says she's encouraged to see language like public health and whole of society in descriptions of how CP3 is thinking about violence prevention now. But she says a true approach along those lines would be much bigger and radically different. When other

countries do this, they have nine, 12 or more agencies involved in setting up their national strategies to counter domestic violent extremism. Here, Miller-Idris says that would include the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor. But instead, the United States still largely frames extremism as a national security challenge at DHS. And the stakes couldn't be any higher, she says. In the wake of the January 6th attack on the Capitol last year, it's clear that lies, misinformation, and hate aren't just drivers of

targeted violence or terrorist attacks. They're also contributing to the corrosion of America's democracy itself. Idris Miller says throwing $20 million in grants to local partner organizations in certain selected communities, as CP3 did last year, isn't nearly enough to offset that. Germany just made a $1 billion investment, and it's a country that's a quarter of our size. New Zealand is standing up an entire new agency and a whole national center on prevention in the wake of Christchurch. I mean, they're doing massive investments. And we have done those levels of investments before when we faced national security crises. Crises such as the terrorist attacks on 9-11, which prompted, about a year later, the creation of a whole new federal agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

That's NPR's domestic extremism correspondent, Odette Youssef. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.