2020 Vice President ial candidate senator Kamala Harris delivers good marks at the Triumph Church near detroit. Are you willing tonight to condemn White Supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in the number of these cities as we saw in kenosha at the portland. Pres. Trump i would say almost everything i see is from the left wing, not the right wing. I am willing to do anything. I want to see peace. It. Biden say pres. Trump what would you like me to call them. Blyd boys stanback and stan stand by. Havethleen belew, you literally what the book on White Supremacy. When you heard that moment what was your reaction . Kathleen very concerning for a number of reasons. I have long since as many analysts have given up trying to understand the president s motivations. Even if he takes the most generous interpretation of trump comments, perhaps he said proud boys, perhaps you meant to say stand down, there is a large and complex White Power Movement in our country that heard the president s words as are called to military preparedness. This is a movement interested in violence against civilians, our democracy and its institutions, and even if the president did not mean to call them to arms, that is effectively what he has done. I am not sure she can unring the bell. Jillian joe biden supplied the name proud boys to him but for people who had never heard of them before. Give us a snapshot. Kathleen the proud boys are a group in a larger landscape of white power and Militia Movement activism. That is broadly french right activism interested in resisting federal government power, advocating for Second Amendment rights and gun possession, gun ownership rights, and also involve people who are outright white supremacist, meaning people who not only believe in the superiority of white people over other people but who are prepared and eager to take a violent action to ensure the continuation of white supremacist power. Jillian the proud boys explicitly disavow White Supremacy and, in fact, there are people of color who belong to the group. How should we process those pieces of information . Kathleen it is helpful to think of overlapping venn diagrams. There are two ways the proud boys are related to a broader landscape of white activism. They are effectively organized around several issues that although they include activists of color and say they are not white supremacist, they are interested in a bunch of ideas congruent with violent white power activism. This includes what the proud boys themselves call western chauvinism, the idea of meeting western cultures are superior to other cultures. ,hey are antiislam antifeminist, violent in many iterations and they work as moments ofes for white power activism. For instance, they were present in the charlottesville rally in virginia in 2017. As a defectiveup security personnel elsewhere. They are shoulder to shoulder with white power activist. Jillian in general, what do i do currents of these groups, what country do they envision and how do they realistically see getting there . That question asked us to go back and look at the history of this movement, and i would like to emphasize we are decades if not generations into this activism. The White Power Movement together klansmen, neonazis, skinheads, radical protesters and in some parts of the Militia Movement in the 1980s and 1990s, and has been at war with the federal government since the 1980s. They have advocated things like , the forced genocide of people of color, the subsequent genocide of people of color and the use of chemical and biological weapons to eradicate the entire world. The nation edit White Nationalism is not necessarily the United States. The nation and White Nationalism is often imagined as the aryan nation and has nothing to do with the u. S. But as a Transnational Group of white people. The department of Homeland Security has issued a threat assessment report that shows not only are these groups, white power extremists and Militia Movement groups the largest threat in the United States. They now outstrip not only what the president calls antifa and the left but they also far outstrip the threat of radical islamist terror in the United States. Dhs has saidnd this is the main problem in relation to terrorist violence that our nation needs to address. Jillian how are statistics on the size of groups as this reliably gathered since nobody is entering surveys . How do we know . Kathleen here is one thing to keep in mind. Since the early 1980s this movement has been using a strategy called leaderless resistance. This will sound familiar to leaders because it is effectively the same thing we are familiar with as selfstyled terrorism in the post9 11 moments. The idea is one or a few white power activists would work toward a common set of goals but without communication with other cells and communication with central leadership. Did a number of important things. It made it very difficult for us to describe and document the White Power Movement violence as it happened, because we instead see a lot of stories about lone wolves, when in fact we are seeing movement motivated violence, but it also means there is not a great correlation between a relative group size and violent activity. In other words, if you are trying to recruit 2000 people to march down main street, that is a different recruitment effort then if you are trying to get six people to detonate a bomb. Neat relationship between relative size of these groups and the frequency of violence that they carry out. Instead, what experts are interested in looking at is the momentum of activism and activity. We can see it through smaller acts of violence the tent to lead up to bigger mass casualty attacks. Jillian lets go back to the president s admonition to standby. Thatif he misspoke in instance, and at the town hall meeting key explicitly disavowed White Supremacy movements when pressed by the debate moderator, but you say groups heard what they wanted to do here there. What happened as a result of hearing those words standby . Kathleen we saw on social media at some of these groups incorporated that slogan stand back, standby as part of a these groups do not need a large signal great we are talking about a paramilitary Unit Movement that is already standing at readiness to take action. The thing experts are concerned subtext of thehe president s comments that indicate he is somehow condoning any violence that might occur in a future Movement Moment when they are called on to act and also the hint of nonprosecution. This is a movement that has not to ampeder signaling up its activity in the past. As screamed like a failed prosecution effort to promoteampaigns to additional violence. We are talking about the movement responsible for the bombing of Oklahoma City in 1995. At that action is the largest deliberate mass casualty event on may lens well between pearl harbor and 911 but we do not think of it as the work of a movement, even though Historical Archive show without a doubt it was that. Part of what we have to think about is white we as a society have not face this as a terrorist threat and what we might need to change in the way we think about these stories to change that conversation. Jillian with the election looming, you have actually been very busy over the past couple of weeks after the debate and subsequent threat against the governor of michigan and virginia. What indering about fact you and others who follow these movements are concerned about regarding election day . Standby for what . What are the scenarios if President Trump wins and loses . My concern based on the history of this movement and the ideology of the people drawn to this kind of activism, i think if there is a Biden Victory there is a real threat that these activists will not see it as if there election and out continue to seek opportunities to carry out acts of violence, and as a reminder, they are interested not just in they haveon, although done that for a century or more as part of the kkk. These are activist interested in infrastructure attacks, mass casualty attacks. Some of them have talked about attacking Nuclear Power plants in order to set off nuclear disasters. These are people interested in major scale violence, not only pull intimidation poll intimidation, and the other historical parallel that is concerning is if trump were to be elected and all these groups into some kind of validity, then we are talking about and extralegal an strike squad that has historical parallels to totalitarian regimes in latin america and elsewhere. In either case, i do not think there is a scenario where this group of people will simply put their guns down and go home. I think these people are very angry and frustrated and are tapping into very widely held frustration about society as a whole related to the pandemic and the quarantine, economic turmoil, major Racial Justice protests and changes to our democracy that i think are impacting a lot of people. These activist take that set of frustrations and seek violent outcomes. Jillian in recent weeks there has also been a great deal in the public sphere about Second Amendment constitutional guarantees for malicious. What is your response to that argument is brought up . Kathleen historians do not tear a clear line from the militias of early america to the groups that are present militias claiming legitimacy and the current moment. The reason is if you look at the history of militias, laid out in the Second Amendment as a well regulated militias and have a very specific role in the early history of our nation, those groups are all incorporated into National Guard and other state run units in the early 20th century. Those groups are all incorporated, so the entirety of legal and legitimate militia activity is run through National Guard and other official channels. All of the private activity as people who study this and have found is illegal to some capacity in every state. There is no state that allows a private militia to do order making more policing of its citizens. Some states also have additional laws prohibiting things like parading with firearms in public or a mapping and training of private armies and the reason for those laws have to do with the prior client activity in those places. That is all before these militia groups have even carried out an action like attempting to kidnap a sitting governor, which is of course illegal in several ways on top of that. The important thing here is we would not want to be sidetracked by the use of the word militia, which specialists and Law Enforcement use to describe one stripe of this broader movement. I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to be taken up with the question of the word when what we really need to be doing is looking carefully at the movement as a whole and thinking about had to confront it. We are talking about a movement posing a direct threat to our free elections, our democracy and to many of the promises of the american nation. Jillian what we are talking ,bout distillery history about 40 years ago, what gave rise to our movement this movement in our society . What was changing back into people coalesce around these ideas . Kathleen the thing that brought this Movement Together and these are activist that are quite diverse. This is a group with a klansman, and skinheads, radical tax resistors, people in white supremacist religions. They are all areas of the nation. This includes men, women, and children, religious leaders, people with advanced degrees and high school dropouts, civilians, veterans, activeduty troops. The thing that allows that big swell of people to come together was a common story about the aftermath of the vietnam war. This feeling of being betrayed by the state and a sense of imminent apocalyptic threat to the white race. They understood the sense of state betrayal as interlinked with a bunch of issues i think people probably usually think of as tacitly conservative, but this movement opposed immigration, abortion, lgbtq rights and more not because of their conservative belief system but because these activists saw all of those things as a right to the white birthright and experienced a soft moment of demographic change people have been talking about what america would no longer be majority white. They see that tantamount to racial apocalypse. These activists are really working with a feeling that the government as betrayed them and a tangible state of emergency that really pushes them toward violent action through the 1980s and 1990s and has been a platform for social networking and organizing over several decades at this point. Jillian demographers estimate that 2042, 22 years hence when white americans will become the minority in this country. What i am hearing you say is that this election is really not the focus . Donald trump is not the focus, but that date which will continue to loom large to endurance best this election is the challenge for them. Kathleen i think that is a lot of what they experience as a threat, right . Also veryent is opportunistic and will capitalize on all of the other tensions in our society as it is able to, but that state of emergency, it is hard to overstate the feeling of emergency and that pressing moment of what they really feel is the racial apocalypse. The other thing to keep in mind when we think about the comparison between white power activism on the one hand and what some people have tried to establish as a leftist comparative example, i think it is very important to keep in mind the comparative casualty amount and depth and breadth of organization. What we see and the White Power Movement is generations of complex social network activity, many groups all reaches of the country bound together by deep social relationships. We are talking about activists who provide childcare to each other, pick each other up to the airport, go to church and White Current churches, get marital counsel from each other. A deeply integrated web of people and this prepares them to lunch violent activity which is completely unmatched by the left. Theian you talked about 1995 Oklahoma City bombing as the most prominent example of what the White Power Movement. Many people thought it was lone wolf Timothy Mcveigh. I am wondering when Something Like this catastrophic actually happens, Timothy Mcveigh was successful in his operation, what does that do to other adherence . Mcveigh weimothy know it was immediately inspirational to a bunch of other people. Leadership activity did not drop off after the Oklahoma City bombing, which is what would happen if people were horrified of that event. Activity spiked after the bombing. We also know that activists in the present moment are doing things like hanging pictures of Timothy Mcveigh in their rooms. We know they are talking about him as a saint and martyr of the movement. He is somebody somebody else up as an example of terrorism and people are seeking that out in a very deliberate way. A clip i want to play of recent testimony to congress by fbi director Christopher Wray talking about the size and scope and threat of the movement. [video clip] within the domestic terrorism bucket, racially motivated violent extremism is i think the biggest bucket within that larger group, and within the racially motivated extremist bucket, people ascribing to some kind of white supremacist ideology is certainly the biggest chunk of that. I would also add to that racially motivated violent extremists over recent years and have been responsible for the most lethal activity in the u. S. This year, the lethal attacks, domestic terrorism attacks have all fit into the category of antigovernment, antiauthority, which covers everything from anarchist violent extremists militias militia types. Jillian since that testimony we learned about the plot against Governor Whitmer. Absent people understand the scope and size of dot plot against two sitting governors. The most important people can do when you begin news about the White Power Movement and militia groups is to do the very hard work, and i understand this is an almost impossible thing to ask in this moment where we see this barrage of news stories and information all the time, but we have to do the work of putting the stories together. If you read the Governor Whitmer story on its own, it is just a few people with one plot. It can seem farfetched. They were apprehended. An fbi agent was able to circumvent their plans that ended up that is the best evenme we can hope for though it was a serious plot and i would call peoples attention to the discussion of exposes and the phrase removing her for trial, which elsewhere in the Movement Means a trial by hanging as a treasonous official. Connecting that incident to the larger landscape of what is happening, not because it is very simple to see , it is easy to falsely imagine the witmer story is different from the boogaloo story, the proud boys story, but there are many places where we see this activity bub