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Also see: Terrorism; white nationalists; ku klux klan;
Jump to: 2017; 2018; 2019; 2020;
-- 2016 --
Undated: A Teacher's Guide on the Prevention of Violent Extremism
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002446/244676e.pdf
Undated: ... the Proud Boys are self-described “western chauvinists” who adamantly deny any connection to the racist “alt-right,” insisting they are simply a fraternal group spreading an “anti-political correctness” and “anti-white guilt” agenda.
Their disavowals of bigotry are belied by their actions: rank-and-file Proud Boys and leaders regularly spout white nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists. They are known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric. Proud Boys have appeared alongside other hate groups at extremist gatherings like the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/proud-boys
July 6: Violent extremist threats come from a range of groups and individuals, including domestic terrorists and homegrown violent extremists in the United States, as well as international terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL. Lone offenders or small groups may be radicalized to commit violence at home or attempt to travel overseas to become foreign fighters. The use of the Internet and social media to recruit and radicalize individuals to violence means that conventional approaches are unlikely to identify and disrupt all terrorist plots.
Here in the United States, acts perpetrated by violent extremists can have far-reaching consequences. Terrorism Prevention Partnerships (TPP) have therefore become a key focus of DHS’s work to secure the homeland. TPP aims to address the root causes of violent extremism by providing resources to communities to build and sustain local prevention efforts and promote the use of counter-narratives to confront violent extremist messaging online. Building relationships based on trust with communities is essential to this effort.
Grant Information The Department of Homeland Security issued a notice of funding opportunity on July 6, 2016 announcing the new Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Grant Program, the first federal grant funding available to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and institutions of higher education to carry out countering violent extremism programs.
These grants will provide state, local and tribal partners and community groups—religious groups, mental health and social service providers, educators and other NGOs—with the ability to build prevention programs that address the root causes of violent extremism and deter individuals who may already be radicalizing to violence.
https://www.dhs.gov/terrorism-prevention-partnerships
September 13: What tech companies can do to counter violent extremism
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2016/09/13/what-tech-companies-can-do-to-counter-violent-extremism/
November 14: A New Comprehensive Strategy for Countering Violent Extremism
The CSIS Commission on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) was formed to develop a comprehensive and actionable blueprint on how to effectively combat the growing appeal of violent extremism within the United States and abroad. Specifically, the Commission considered what the next U.S. administration must do, in close collaboration with governmental and nongovernmental partners, to diminish the appeal of extremist ideologies and narratives.
This bipartisan Commission was composed of 23 public- and private-sector leaders from technology companies, civil society, the faith community, and academia. Since its public launch in February 2016, the Commission met six times and consulted with more than a hundred experts and practitioners throughout the United States, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
https://www.csis.org/features/turning-point
December 23: Trump Team Seeks Names of Officials Working to Counter Violent Extremism
Reuters could not determine why the Trump team asked for these names. The Trump team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-counter-terrorism-trump-transition-terrorism-violent-extremism-536006
-- 2017 --
February 2: Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly pushing to erase neo-Nazis and white supremacists from the US government’s counter-extremism programme by moving it to focus exclusively on Islamist terrorism.
American officials briefed on the proposed changes told Reuters the Countering Violent Extremism (DVE) initiative could be renamed to “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism”.
The reclassification would remove its work combating far-right attacks and mass shootings, such as the massacre of black churchgoers in Charleston, which are rarely classified as terrorism by American authorities.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-cut-white-supremacism-countering-violent-extremism-programme-neo-nazi-counter-extremism-a7558796.html
April 6: Countering Violent Extremism
Actions Needed to Define Strategy and Assess Progress of Federal Efforts
https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683984.pdf
June 23: The Trump Administration has backed out of a major grant promised to UNC-Chapel Hill [North Carolina] that would have been used to create media campaigns to undermine violent radicalism on U.S. soil.
UNC was dropped during a partial overhaul of a grant program announced Friday by the Department of Homeland Security. The UNC team wasn't given a specific reason, said Cori Dauber, a communication professor and one of two principal investigators on the grant proposal.
UNC's $900,000 grant was the largest of 31 aimed at countering things like online jihadist recruiting. The UNC team planned to hire students to develop media campaigns that would appeal to people their own age, who are a major target of extremist propaganda.
http://www.wunc.org/post/trump-administration-removes-unc-anti-extremism-program
June 23: The Trump administration on Friday slashed $400,000 in federal funding for one of the few U.S. groups that combat white extremism but denied it is now focusing only on fighting radical Islamists.
A grant announcement by the Department of Homeland Security eliminated funding for the Chicago-based Life After Hate, which was initially awarded the money in January during the closing days of the Obama administration.
Life After Hate, run by a former skinhead, is among a handful of domestic programs dedicated to helping people leave white power groups including neo-Nazi organizations and the Ku Klux Klan, and it was the only one of the original grant recipients dedicated solely to combating white extremism.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/jun/23/trump-slashes-grant-for-group-combatting-white-ext/
July 5: Giving CVE a chance
Last week’s announcement by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of a revised list of awardees of the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Grant Program generated many headlines about whose funding was revoked. Meanwhile, the most important storyline has been ignored: CVE lives! Pragmatists within the Trump administration and Congress have for now prevailed and are allowing CVE to go forward. When understood in that light, the question should be what is now needed to help ensure progress along this front.
CVE uses “community-driven solutions” to mitigate factors associated with violent extremism and to rehabilitate those who have started down a dangerous path. These strategies are widely seen as a necessary complement to military and traditional law enforcement strategies. However, these practices are still very new, and we don’t really yet know what works though we know some of what doesn’t.
https://www.justsecurity.org/42823/giving-cve-chance/
August 14: President Trump began his Monday morning by taking to Twitter to bash the Merck CEO [Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma] who stepped down from a White House advisory panel over the president’s failure to denounce white nationalism.
Frazier, who is black, released a statement announcing his departure from a presidential panel in protest: “America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry, and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal,” he wrote, adding that he has a “responsibility to take a stand against violence and extremism.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-bashes-merck-ceo-for-quitting-wh-drug-council-over-extremism
August 15: Controversial Trump Aide Katharine Gorka Helped End Funding For Group That Fights White Supremacy
Life After Hate works to de-radicalize neo-Nazis. The Trump administration decided it wasn’t a priority.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/katharine-gorka-life-after-hate_us_59921356e4b09096429943b6
-- 2018 --
January 23: American conservatives and alt-right media outlets are not happy with a US program that aims to address the links between masculinity and violent extremism in Kenya.
The grant, proposed by the State Department’s bureau of counterterrorism on Jan. 12, aims to fund a project that looks at the “ideals of masculinity” in Kenya and how they make men vulnerable to recruitment by fundamentalist groups.
https://qz.com/africa/1186457/trump-state-dept-spends-600000-on-kenya-masculinity-extremism-project/
June 15: Federal “Countering Violent Extremism” Grants Focus on Minority Communities — Including in Schools
The United States government offers millions of dollars in grants for local and state government agencies with the stated purpose of rooting out potential terrorists, but the people receiving those grants have particular targets in mind: minorities.
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/15/cve-grants-muslim-surveillance-brennan-center/
July 3: Los Angeles officials can't decide whether to accept a $425,000 grant from the Trump administration that’s intended to deter terrorist recruitment.
Civil liberties groups argue that the "Countering Violent Extremism" program run by the Department of Homeland Security monitors and stigmatizes Muslims.
But Mayor Eric Garcetti wants to accept the funds, which his office said would go into community outreach to rein in violence among different groups, including white supremacists.
“I don’t think we can form a partnership with the Trump administration on terrorism when they are very clearly determined to racially profile in this country," ...
https://www.scpr.org/news/2018/07/03/84442/la-officials-torn-over-whether-to-take-anti-terror/
July 9: The Hate Report: Weird that this keeps happening, right?
My collection has stretched to include 61 stories. Because President Donald Trump gets plenty of attention for this already, this list excludes statements and policies coming from him.
I’ve catalogued 33 incidents of sitting GOP officials embracing white supremacists, nine cases of GOP officials spouting rhetoric echoing that of white supremacists, nine incidents of white supremacists running for elected office as Republicans and 10 cases of avowed white supremacists expressing strong support for Republican officials or the party’s agenda.
https://www.revealnews.org/hate-report/
September 16: The week before Donald Trump was inaugurated last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded a Lebanese-American group in Dearborn $500,000 as part of a government effort to counter violent extremism known as CVE. The department also gave Dearborn Police $51,000 as part of the program.
But the grants drew backlash from Arab-American and civil rights advocates who worried the money stereotyped Arab-Americans and Muslims and could be used for surveillance.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/09/16/grants-countering-extremism-muslim-concern/1292154002/
October 19: The Poisonous Allure of Right-Wing Violence
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/gavin-mcinnes-proud-boys-poisonous-violence/
October 22: Three more Proud Boys members arrested for violent Manhattan fight
Surveillance video showed an Antifa member throwing a bottle at the Proud Boys, which led to the fight.
Police are still searching for four Proud Boys members involved in the fight, as well as several Antifa supporters.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/three-more-proud-boys-members-arrested-violent-manhattan-fight-n922946
October 29: Trump Shut Programs to Counter Violent Extremism
The administration has hobbled the infrastructure designed to prevent atrocities like Pittsburgh.
Set aside the question of whether President Donald Trump’s rhetorical flirtations with white nationalism enabled Saturday’s mass shooting in Pittsburgh. What’s undeniable is that his administration has hobbled the infrastructure designed to prevent such murders.
In the waning days of Barack Obama’s administration, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a set of grants to organizations working to counter violent extremism, including among white supremacists. One of the grantees was Life After Hate, which The Hill has called “one of the only programs in the U.S. devoted to helping people leave neo-Nazi and other white supremacy groups.” Another grant went to researchers at the University of North Carolina who were helping young people develop media campaigns aimed at preventing their peers from embracing white supremacy and other violent ideologies. But soon after Trump took office, his administration canceled both of these grants. In its first budget, it requested no funding for any grants in this field.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/trump-shut-countering-violent-extremism-program/574237/
November 2: “We Are at a Turning Point”: Counterterrorism Experts Say Trump Is Inspiring a Terrifying New Era of Right-Wing Violence
“These are all extremist messages that I saw on Stormfront and other white-supremacist message boards 10 or 15 years ago,” says one former Homeland Security analyst. “Now they are being endorsed as policy by the president.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/trump-administration-tree-of-life-shooting-domestic-terrorism
November 19: FBI now classifies far-right Proud Boys as 'extremist group', documents say
Group is now designated ‘with ties to white nationalism’ according to report produced by Washington law enforcement
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/19/proud-boys-fbi-classification-extremist-group-white-nationalism-report
November 19: [An] investigation found that Deputy Sheriff Erin Willey, who worked as a probationary deputy from June 2017 to June 2018, was active with the Proud Boy Girls, “an affiliate group of women who openly support the ideology of the Proud Boys.” She was involved with the group from November 2016 to October 2017, but failed to disclose this information. Her association with the group came to light when The Columbian, a Washington daily newspaper, obtained photos of Willey wearing Proud Boy Girls apparel.
Her affiliation with the group violated two of the sheriff’s office's policies, including the non-discrimination and anti-harassment policy, and may have prevented her from passing the background check necessary to hold any law enforcement position, the report states.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/11/19/fbi-categorizes-proud-boys-extremist-documents-reveal/2063099002/
November 26: Right-Wing Extremism Has Risen Significantly Under Trump, A New Analysis Finds
https://www.bustle.com/p/right-wing-extremism-has-risen-significantly-under-trump-a-new-analysis-finds-13197445
November 27: Democrats ask Trump administration for answers on rise of white nationalism in US
Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee are gearing up to make the rise of white nationalism in the US a point of investigation when they take control of the gavel in January.
In a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and FBI Director Christopher Wray, incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler warned he wanted answers from the administration on a series of questions he has asked in the past about reports that Trump had intended to "overhaul the government Countering Violent Extremism program in a manner that would target and single out Muslim Americans" or whether additional services could be dedicated to investigate hate crimes.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/27/politics/jerry-nadler-letter-white-nationalism/index.html
November 27: The presumed incoming Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said on Tuesday he plans to investigate the drastic spike in U.S. hate crimes and whether federal investigators have wrongfully targeted racial and ethnic minorities instead of focusing on white supremacist groups.
In a letter to the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, Congressman Jerrold Nadler complained that the agencies had all failed to address prior inquiries by Democrats about hate crimes and surveillance activities when Republicans controlled the U.S. House of Representatives.
"To date, we have received little or no substantive response to any of these communications," Nadler wrote.
"In the next Congress, this Committee will likely examine the causes of racial and religious violence, assess the adequacy of federal hate crimes statutes and scrutinize targeted domestic surveillance of specific groups," he added.
https://www.investing.com/news/politics-news/top-democratic-lawmaker-to-probe-hate-crimes-and-surveillance-of-minorities-1702113
-- 2019 --
-- 2020 --
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