S8 Ep49: God, Guns, and Sedition with Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware

[00:00:01] Due to the themes of this podcast, listener discretion is advised. Bruce and I played a little, would play a game back in January and February where we would speculate and talk back and forth about from a raw terrorism standpoint, is it better

[00:00:17] to have Trump win in November or lose in November? And the conclusion we came to is that both scenarios would be bad from a terrorism standpoint. Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords. This is Secrets and Spies.

[00:00:47] Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics and intrigue. This episode is presented by Matt Fulton and produced by Chris Carr. Hello everyone and welcome back to Secrets and Spies.

[00:01:02] On today's episode I'm joined by terrorism experts Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware. Both are fellows at the Council on Foreign Relations and professors at Georgetown University. Their book, God, Guns and Sedition, Far-Right Terrorism in America examines the far-right's

[00:01:14] long embrace of political violence as a tactic, its proliferation through social media, and provides a range of policy advice to counter this movement and build a healthier, resilient and renewed, more unified democratic society. This is one I've looked forward to discussing here for a while.

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[00:01:43] and you'll also get access to our Patreon exclusive show Extra Shot, which comes out immediately following each new Espresso Martini episode. Your generosity is much appreciated and helps keep this podcast going. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy our conversation.

[00:01:58] The opinions expressed by guests on Secrets and Spies do not necessarily represent those of the producers and sponsors of this podcast. Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, welcome to Secrets and Spies. It's wonderful to be speaking with you both. Thanks very much Matt for having us. Thank you.

[00:02:31] Yeah, you know professor I think I mentioned this to Jacob in one of our emails but somewhere on the shelves over my shoulder here is a well-worn copy of your Inside Terrorism, which

[00:02:42] was actually the first book I think I read on the subject way back in, I think I was a freshman in high school so probably like 2004, 2005. So this is cool to have you on our little show now talking about this pretty heavy topic. Well it's a great honor.

[00:02:56] That was the first edition that you read. Yeah, you've been in the game for a while. So okay, so you are co-authors of a new book. It's been out for a few months now. It's titled God, Guns and Sedition and it offers an unflinching sober examination of

[00:03:10] modern American far-right terrorism. The book tracks the movement from its rebirth in the 80s to our current moment and offers policy recommendations to stop its rise. I think the title is actually pretty elegant.

[00:03:23] I don't know if this was intentional but in like three words you describe the three acts of their story over the last 40 years. Well it wasn't easy to come up with the title. I always find that's the hardest part of the book and it was completely serendipitous that

[00:03:38] we fastened on this title and that it did turn out to be such an accurate title for the book because in a nutshell those three words actually encapsulate the three eras that the book discusses and traces the historical trajectory of.

[00:03:53] So the God part was when this movement first redefined itself and began to gather momentum in the 1980s and there was a very salient theological dimension to it. In fact, many of the leaders of the movement prefaced their names with titles like Reverend

[00:04:09] and Pastor and attempted to use scripture to justify or legitimize violence. That changed and we discuss why it changed in the book but just sticking to the specificity of the title, the guns is the 1990s when like any extremist movement this one embarked on

[00:04:27] a search to broaden its constituencies and expand and seized upon what was then the emerging militia movement and also persons that at the beginning of the Clinton administration in particular became very concerned about second amendment rights and then throughout the Clinton administration became more animated by this issue.

[00:04:47] And we see the culmination in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, which was cut of many different cloths woven together but amongst them was this profound fear that the federal government was going to seize America's weapons.

[00:05:05] And then the sedition part obviously talks about the most recent era that begins with the election of the first African American president, Barack Obama and you start to see the trend that we first identify in the 1980s which was of anti-government extremism and

[00:05:25] profound mistrust of government at a time when there was arguably less justification than there is today, really taking hold and becoming part and parcel of the racism, the antisemitism, the xenophobia, the survivalism that was always at the heart of this movement.

[00:05:42] In the 1980s we argue anti-government extremism became a salient component but we really see that crystallizing in the 20 teens and of course culminating on January 6th, 2021. At the beginning of the book you define American far-right terrorism as a threat featuring

[00:05:59] an overlapping and evolving multitude of actors, movements and ideological strains ultimately united by a desire to return the United States to some long lost halcyon days defined by hierarchies dividing people by race, gender, religion and even regional identity with white

[00:06:16] masculinity reigning supreme. These actors are terrorists because of their preparedness to use lethal violence in pursuit of that mission. To start us off because I'd like to spend the bulk of our time discussing the more contemporary

[00:06:27] threats in your policy recommendations, can you give us a brief overview of the more ideological contours of the far-right? Well I think the key word in that definition is hierarchies. Most of the ideological strains

[00:06:42] can be understood as some form of hierarchy that is being protected or defended. So the hierarchy of white people over minorities, the hierarchy of native born in their eyes you know Americans over immigrants, the hierarchy of straight people against non-straight people

[00:07:04] and so forth. They defend those hierarchies in their ideologies and through acts of violence targeting those outgroups however defined. It gets more tricky when you look at some of the anti-government or almost more cultic groups such as QAnon where you don't necessarily

[00:07:25] see those hierarchies but certainly you see divisions being drawn between in groups and outgroups in ways that are very similar to those hierarchical ideologies as well. When you go through the trajectory of acts of violence that we've seen over the course of let's say

[00:07:41] the past 10 to 15 years to look at that more modern contingent, you'll see a trajectory that runs through places like Oslo in Norway, Charleston South Carolina, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Christchurch New Zealand. Those acts of violence are of course defined by those hierarchies trying

[00:07:58] to protect white Western Christian masculinity. You quote Stanley Morris then director of the US Marshals observing in 1985 that the far-right commit illegal acts but wrap themselves in the American flag, assault the police but view themselves as religious and God-fearing and

[00:08:17] talk of freedom but support virulent racial and religious bigotry. You also read about the Ku Klux Klan's revival in 1915 alongside Griffith's The Birth of a Nation and say that the group at the time championed an idiosyncratic and exclusionist conception of patriotism with

[00:08:33] profoundly anti-elitist and anti-intellectual disdain science regarded most elected politicians and civil servants as corrupt and self-serving and thought cities incorrigible cesspits of depravity. I read those and thought no matter how much changes nothing changes huh? To a certain

[00:08:49] extent yes, I mean actually in researching the book I was kind of taken aback that there were so many points of resonance between the 19 teens in the 1920s and today. Not least you know we

[00:09:02] started writing the book in April 2020 in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and of course the 1920s was influenced and colored very much by the Spanish influenza outbreak that convulse

[00:09:16] the world. And you've kind of hit the nail on the head, that's what we see the movement to change so much in the 1980s that there always was as the quote you read described a very idiosyncratic

[00:09:30] and particularistic definition of patriotism. But it seems like the patriotism kind of went out the window in the 1980s with this commitment to sedition and this belief back then. I mean look

[00:09:43] you know we may call the federal government in Washington DC today the swamp, but in the 1980s it was called Zog, Z-O-G, the Zionist Occupied Government. Again resonances that we see from 40

[00:09:55] years ago. But what was so striking to me in the 1920s is how mainstream the Klan had become. In other words there were more members north of the Mason-Dixon line than in the south. That Ohio,

[00:10:07] Indiana and Pennsylvania, key swing states right now had the largest membership in the country. There were more members in urban areas than in rural. I mean in my own prejudices you know I always assumed that the Klan had always been a southern phenomena and always being predominantly

[00:10:22] southern. So even that I found very revealing and of course has enormous echoes in January 6th where you had many people from purple states or even northern states from suburbs or from urban areas the stereotype that many people would have expected of let's say southerners or persons

[00:10:41] from rural America, from more isolated communities who had people from highly cosmopolitan urban centers as well. So yeah things I think unfortunately don't change or if they have changed. One of the main themes of the books is how social media has empowered and hyper-weaponized

[00:11:01] the messaging of this movement to give it a greater coherence than it had ever had in the past and perhaps pose a greater threat than in the past. You mentioned that you started the book over

[00:11:14] COVID so maybe that hints at my question here but was there a particular moment over our long unwaking national nightmare of recent years where you decided it's time to do a book on this

[00:11:26] and during your research and writing did current events ever change your concept of what the book should be? Well let me answer that. Jacob I'm sure has a perspective too. I don't want to

[00:11:34] dominate the conversation but as you see also from the preface one of the reasons we started the book is that I had been the target of a very serious hate crime and like academics you know

[00:11:49] we believe the pen is mightier than the sword. I thought you know perhaps this is something we should write about and as also the preface explains when I first started as a terrorist

[00:12:00] analyst 40 years ago my first account as it were actually 43 years ago my first account was violent far-right extremism initially in Europe but then in a few years I realized that there was a problem

[00:12:12] in the United States as well. So it was in some respects returning to a subject I was familiar with but both Jacob and I were noticing literally within days of the lockdown in March 2020

[00:12:25] how this movement was attempting to exploit and take advantage of what was going on. I mean almost immediately there were anti-semitic tropes and memes blaming the Jews saying that the Jewish

[00:12:36] people had created this virus to profit off of a vaccine whenever it was found but then both of us were amazed and alarmed at how quickly it then spread to racism where persons of Asian descent

[00:12:49] whether they're Asians or Asian Americans were being demonized and targeted for having brought the illness here. Then we saw how it became racist how members of these communities not the targeted communities but of of these extremist communities were being urged in infographics and social media

[00:13:08] if you did get the COVID virus to quote unquote cough on a minority in other words to infect other people with it. That's when Jacob and I decided that this is something that's going to be

[00:13:19] emergent and will dominate the political landscape in the coming years and we should write about it. But we were literally in the middle of the book when January 6 2021 happened and of course that infused it with greater urgency and greater relevance. I would just add Bruce I think there

[00:13:36] are certain key years in the story 1978 and the publication of the Turner Diaries stands out as one. 1995 of course is Oklahoma City. 2008 is a really important year in the narrative because President Obama's elected and that provides some evidence for the far right of demographic tyranny.

[00:13:59] Social media of course emerges to the fore that year as well and provides new communications tools. I think another key year in the story is 2019. That was the year of the Christchurch shooting

[00:14:11] Poway El Paso that August and Bruce and I started working together here at the council on foreign relations that September. And I think people who had been studying the far right understood that

[00:14:23] these were longer term trajectories and they'd been growing for a while but I think the national security community really woke out of a slumber late in 2019 and realized that we had a real

[00:14:35] emergency on our hands that was only going to get worse. And I think Bruce and I starting to work together in that environment really drove the urgency that we felt to contribute to the

[00:14:47] conversation in the form of this book that tells the story of what happened that year but also contextualizes it in this longer trajectory. The book largely charts the rise of accelerationism as a motivating and strategic principle for the modern far right. What is accelerationism

[00:15:07] and how does it translate into the sort of rhetoric and tactics they use? Accelerationism is a strategy of violent extremist revolution that basically calls for sporadic chaotic acts of violence that are going to accelerate some kind of broader conflagration whether that's a race war

[00:15:29] or a civil war or what have you. A lot of the recent acts of violence that we've seen explicitly use this term. They basically say there is no political solution therefore we need these

[00:15:40] acts of violence that are going to accelerate this broader violence, this broader kind of fire in our communities. One of the things that I'm proud of in our book is that we actually trace this concept

[00:15:50] further back. I mean the Turner Diaries from 1978 is a book that calls for ideological race war, nuclear war and is a wholly accelerationist document. But it's a very powerful strategy, very powerful narrative of course for individuals in this movement that encourages them to believe

[00:16:08] that they are part of a broader story and that the small acts that they can commit might contribute to this broader historical trajectory. So it has been a very powerful force within the violent far right.

[00:16:22] Let's talk about the internet and social media and the inherently accelerationist nature of both. American far-right groups were among the earliest adopters of these decentralized virtual networks to organize and spread their ideology as your book details. You also explain

[00:16:38] how a decade ago ISIS's use of social media became something of a model for the far right. How has social media changed this ideology and the movement behind it? Well, you know the bottom line is that 40 years ago this was exactly what the foremost

[00:16:53] exponents of this movement had dreamt and hoped for. And this is something we discuss in the book at considerable length. There was an individual named Louis Beam, a Vietnam war veteran served two tours in Vietnam as a helicopter door gunner, had come back to the United States as

[00:17:09] he is later admitted with profound PTSD, but also very alienated, became the grand dragon of the Texas Ku Klux Klan. And in the early 1980s, again another historical resonance organized protests and worse against the Vietnamese boat people, against immigrants coming to this country and

[00:17:29] finding work as shrimpers and fishermen in Port Arthur and Galveston and other Texas ports. And he became a leading figure in this movement and became very concerned because firstly, the FBI either were by agents infiltrating the movement or by cultivating confidential informants

[00:17:49] within the movement were constantly shutting it down. And he therefore said, look, we can't keep doing the same thing because we're not gaining any traction. And he came up with the idea

[00:17:58] of something that we know now is lone actor or lone wolves, but back then he called leaderless resistance or autonomous phantom cells where he said individuals or small collections of individuals should band together, be more secure because there's no hierarchy or command and

[00:18:17] control communications to be intercepted or disrupted and set a series of brush fires through acts of violence that Beam hoped would come together as a gigantic conflagration that would overthrow the US government. And Timothy McVeigh was actually precisely an exemplar of this

[00:18:35] where he recruited two former army buddies, one eventually dropped out and carried out what until 9-11 was the most lethal terrorist incident in the United States. The bombing of the Murrah building on April 19th, 1995 that killed 168 persons, which he saw as being the opening salvo

[00:18:54] in this revolution. So that was one innovation, but also to connect people in this very, you know, to use a vernacular of the 21st century, flatter, more linear, more networked space, Beam came up with the idea of using something that was completely novel back then in 1983 and 84,

[00:19:14] desktop computers with modems that had 80 or 160 baud. You could not upload images, much less graphics. It was very slow, but for the same reason, he was very concerned that the federal authorities were arresting white supremacists on charges of sending hate mail through the postal

[00:19:34] service, which is a federal crime. So in other words, this is a movement that even 40 years ago aspired to have an international footprint and they were especially interested in cultivating contacts and relationships with like-minded hate mongers in Canada and West Germany.

[00:19:49] And they were being arrested when they sent their literature through the mail, so where they communicated. So Beam had this idea that would both frustrate, let's say wiretaps from the FBI of phones, but also frustrate individuals being arrested on postal fraud charges. And instead,

[00:20:04] he came up with this idea of using what we now call the internet, what was then just a bunch of connected computers to communicate. And obviously then computers were very expensive. He provided

[00:20:16] all sorts of very detailed instructions on how to set them up, but there was just limited connectivity physically. You still had isolated people in geographically disperse parts of the United States or North America that connected on only a very tangential basis. Obviously,

[00:20:35] social media has enabled now people to communicate on all different levels in real time, also completely inexpensively at very little buy-in costs. And it's knitted together, I think, a movement that has certainly global repercussions and ramifications because we see people undertaking

[00:20:56] acts of mass shootings, for example, in other countries that are aimed at an audience in the United States that also channel themes of domestic US politics into their attacks, whether it's in Christchurch or elsewhere. So this has really been like a sea change that social media has just

[00:21:17] knitted together and created a really transnational movement. Noam, historically, global far-right movements have looked to their American counterparts for inspiration. Jim Crow laws were modeled by the Nazis earlier in their push to segregate Germany.

[00:21:30] The Brazilian far-right cited January 6th in their effort to illegally keep Jair Bolsonaro in office. You mentioned Christchurch. Is it fair to say this ideology is an American cultural export? Are we effectively like a think tank, a proving ground for the rest of the world here?

[00:21:45] I think that would be fair to say. You used a word there that Bruce and I have used in an article we wrote in Foreign Affairs Magazine, the exports. I do think the US has emerged as an exporter of

[00:21:57] these ideas, sometimes with more domestic nuances to them. So QAnon, for example, is one movement that has definitely jumped across borders and oceans but obviously has more localized narratives. I'm not sure we've seen tactical connections as much. So the ideology is definitely spreading.

[00:22:18] I'm not quite sure yet that we've seen direct links between movements. That might be the next generation of development across social media here that you start to see transnational groups as opposed to networks. But certainly, the ideology is jumping across borders in ways that are very

[00:22:35] damaging for US foreign policy, very damaging for US soft power. You know, when you look and think about it, I mean, the US is viewed as a leader throughout the world for entirely positive reasons. But this is an example where others overseas seek to emulate

[00:22:50] and even imitate what's going on in the United States. I mean, there have been, for instance, violent manifestations of anti-immigrant sentiment in Ireland and Dublin, the burning of immigration centers that have been inspired at least or influenced by ideological currents

[00:23:10] and also outright exhortations to violence over social media. So yeah, Jacob is absolutely right. There's not the coordination that, and I don't want to imply that, but certainly the United States has... And this goes back 40 years, is deliberately... I mean, the movement of the violent

[00:23:30] far-right extremist movement in the United States deliberately positioned itself to export its ideology. That's why I cite the example of Louis Beam with desktop computers and modems, as this was exactly the goal of the movement then as it is now.

[00:23:44] Many of the characters discussed in the book, the disaffected young men behind these bursts of extremist violence, have a military background. Across generations, their service all played a critical role somewhere on their journey to radicalization. You mentioned how in the 90s,

[00:23:58] Fort Bragg, the home of US Special Forces, was a hotbed of neo-Nazi belief. Some soldiers hung swastikas in their barracks, which is crazy to me when I read that. You also cite data from an FBI assessment of 52 lone offender terrorists in the US between 1972 and 2015 that concluded over

[00:24:15] a third had served in the military. To put that number in context, it's estimated that only 7% of living Americans have served in the military. So what's going on here? Do these men enter the

[00:24:25] service predisposed or does something happen to them on the inside? And is this still a significant concern for the DOD? Well, there are three categories here, actually. There are individuals, white supremacists and neo-Nazis who seek to enter the military for training, tactical expertise,

[00:24:40] expertise in insurgency and counterinsurgency, communications expertise. Then you have the second category that you described, people who radicalize inside the service. And then you have a third category of veterans who are radicalizing sometimes decades after their service, where you

[00:24:54] can perhaps trace something that occurred within their time in the military. We find that overwhelmingly veterans are most common within this community. So people whose first signs of radicalization might emerge long after their time in the military, they seem to be the ones who are

[00:25:12] appearing most frequently in our data set. On January 6th, for example, I think there were well over 100 members of the military community who participated in that attack, but the vast majority, like 95 plus percent were veterans. You can hypothesize about why that is, whether it's

[00:25:30] combat trauma or lack of a fraternity or a feeling that your service is undervalued. But certainly, we find that it's probably more of a question of a veterans affairs issue than a DOD issue.

[00:25:44] Now the DOD has been quite active on this since the Biden administration came into office, largely in response to January 6th. There was, for example, a military-wide stand down issued by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who of course had been involved at Fort Bragg during the era

[00:26:01] that we describe. We find that individuals radicalizing inside the military is less common, at least in our data set. But certainly this is an important issue. It's quite controversial. People get quite uncomfortable when you speak about it, but we do find it's a theme throughout our study.

[00:26:17] Yeah. Well, I think it's important then to be clear and you are clear in the book that this isn't like even a common thing among people in the military or veterans, but it is statistically

[00:26:27] higher than the rest of the population. So that warrants a question of like, what's going on here? And these people do have training and authorities and stuff that you would not want someone with these beliefs exposed to, right?

[00:26:39] We quote an army criminal investigator as saying that the best way to describe extremists in the military is like a drop of cyanide in your drink. It can be very small, but they can do a lot of damage. It cannot happen. And of course, as we are entering

[00:26:55] possibly a more heated era of strategic competition where our military might again be asked to serve, you really do not want a situation where you have extremists, whether they're white supremacists or anti-government extremists within the ranks as you are trying to prosecute that fight.

[00:27:10] Yeah. Let me add one important thing. Why this is so vitally important to the military, though it is an infinitesimal percent of people in the armed forces is don't forget the US military, especially the US Army is one of the most successfully integrated institutions

[00:27:27] in the United States and prides itself on being the most respected and valued. Even at a time when popular opinion constantly invades against Congress or the presidency or even the judiciary now, the military still ranks in public trust very high. And in part, it's I think a reflection

[00:27:46] of the diversity and of its achievements in integrating the force. So this is a direct threat not only to its efficiency in operations, but to its recruitment and to its standing amongst Americans, which is why I think the military takes this threat so seriously.

[00:28:02] Yeah, absolutely. It's a readiness issue. The leaderless resistance strategy of the American far right that Lewis Beam or William Pierce advocated in the 80s and 90s seems to have shifted somewhat. By that, I mean its supporters now at least have a spiritual leader with real

[00:28:17] political power and support from 35 to 45 percent of the country, although not everyone in that percentage is far right. How, if at all, does this shift affect the movement's operational and structural nature?

[00:28:30] Well, I think one of the big changes we're going to see is that there's going to be a doubling down of the leaderless resistance or lone wolf or lone actor phenomena for the simple reason that you have the tremendously successful prosecution by the Department of Justice of

[00:28:45] nearly two dozen persons who were convicted on seditious conspiracy charges. I mean, the most serious criminal charges in the United States. And part of the lesson from January 6th is you don't record yourself. You don't take selfies. You don't post things on social media.

[00:29:00] You don't wear accoutrements that identify the group or the movement that you belong to. You don't wave flags that identify your political leadings. In other words, to avoid prosecution in the future, if you are intent on repeating what happened on January 6th, in other words, if you

[00:29:17] are that inimicable and that imposed to the United States government, you're going to burrow deeper underground and you're going to really revert to a strategy of leaderless resistance precisely as we saw in the plot to kidnap and then try in a kangaroo court, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

[00:29:35] by a handful of people, some of whom were veterans, but a handful of people who met via social media or operating completely independently, had no connection to any organization or actual group, were not following anyone's orders, but were very much framing their

[00:29:53] act of violence within the context of the enabling ideology encouraging it. And that's what I worry we'll see more of in the future. And of course, for law enforcement, this is far more difficult to track and to monitor when you've got an actual group and you can

[00:30:08] identify the leader and then prosecute them in court. You would at least know your enemy as it were. When you're dealing with far more subterranean elements that are only very remotely connected, and if the connection is an overarching ideology and really nothing more,

[00:30:26] it becomes much more challenging and I think far more dangerous. And Timothy McVeigh, as we discussed earlier, is precisely an exemplar of this. He didn't belong to any organization. He wasn't following anyone's orders, but he clearly carried out this act, which he deliberately

[00:30:44] situated within the movement's overarching ideology. And of course, as I said, until 9-11, that was the most lethal terrorist incident in the United States. So that's why we have to be very fearful of a trend now, very much in response to January 6th, that is less organizationally

[00:31:00] driven and more individually driven, but has the same fervor, if not even, as assumed, an even more feverish dimension because of the trials that have gone on, because of what people see as an

[00:31:12] inherently unfair, regardless of whether it is or isn't in fact, but what they nonetheless regard as an inherently unfair system that has to be taken down. I think I would agree with that, Bruce. To offer one potentially frightening counter-argument,

[00:31:28] leaderless resistance, I think is a sign of strength in the government and weakness in the movement. And that equation might reverse in the case of a Trump victory, for example, in which case the people who would be lone actors would be leaderless resistance actors,

[00:31:44] in fact, might be empowered in different ways by a government that is more supportive of their activities. So that is, I think, what a lot of people are quite worried about. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with more.

[00:32:13] So almost two weeks ago, as folks surely know, Donald Trump was convicted by a jury of his peers in New York on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and will be sentenced next month.

[00:32:23] None of the three remaining cases are likely to get to a trial before November. Within seconds of the verdict, the chorus from not just the far right, but the right, broadly speaking, was nearly universal in attacking the jury, spreading doubt in the judicial system,

[00:32:37] public institutions and a full-throated defense of these authoritarian threats for retribution. To throw the whole enemies list in prison, etc. It's kind of like this psychology and abusive partner uses, you know, like now you're really going to make me hurt you.

[00:32:51] And these were by no means just fringe nobodies diving in here. We're five months out from the election. What is your survey of the threat matrix leading to November? Does this post-conviction moment feel different? And looking beyond that, what should we expect if Trump loses?

[00:33:08] I think the court process writ large is an X factor for domestic terrorism this year. I mean, a lot of terrorism scholars have warned that we're in a heightened threat environment before the election, during the election, after the election for various factors that we saw

[00:33:23] in 2020 as well. A movement and a leader that is claiming that the election is stolen before it's already happened, existential language targeting political opponents and minority groups. The court cases are of course an additional complexity on top of that. Now,

[00:33:40] you're quite right to note that almost immediately after the verdict was handed down, you saw a very a very heated reaction, plenty of violent threats on plenty of services. It doesn't appear that

[00:33:54] anybody has acted on that yet. Although of course the court case process has previously resulted in violence, most notably at the FBI headquarters in Cincinnati a couple of years ago. I think the threat environment in 2024 is relatively high. Far-right actors as noted are mobilized by the

[00:34:10] same grievances as last time. I think an additional factor this time is we're facing a rise as well in far-left militancy that is further destabilizing the order and might risk being another aggravating

[00:34:23] factor for the far-right as well. Well, if I can add something, we're really in an unprecedented situation in many respects. In that, just as Jacob described, there's threat from far-left extremists as well. And in the wake of the campus protests over the Gaza War, there's calls for

[00:34:42] escalation and for even more disruption, and just to generate disorder. And what I think has fascinated both Jacob and I is that accelerationism isn't monopolistically owned by one extreme and not by the other. In fact, there's a commonality that both extremes, far-left and

[00:35:00] far-right, believe that in the core values or principles of acceleration and that the system is so rotted it cannot be reformed, it cannot be repaired. And this is part of the message that we hear as we're ramping up through all the 2024 presidential election campaign, that the system

[00:35:16] has to... it's beyond reform. But in the extremist viewpoint, it's got to be pulled down. And that's, fortunately, that hasn't become a mainstream political cause at all. But the idea is that accelerationism is embraced by both extremes and therefore both extremes see advantage in feeding

[00:35:33] off of one another to foment even more disorder and more chaos. So I think in addition to the terrorism that Jacob and I have written about, a situation can be envisioned where we have more events like Charlottesville in 2017, like the disorders that have roiled Portland, Oregon,

[00:35:50] for example, for at least as long, but especially after the 2020, you know, the killing of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matters protests, and that have never quite abated. But you could see disorders on a much more national magnitude that where the right and left deliberately are egging

[00:36:08] one another on because they each believe that they can gain more standing, greater status, a larger number of adherence as well. Aaron Are you comfortable speculating a bit on what the fallout may be if Trump loses? I mean,

[00:36:21] rhetorically, emotionally, logically, I don't see where else they go but violence at this point. Iain Bruce and I played a little... would play a game back in January and February where we would

[00:36:31] speculate and talk back and forth about from a raw terrorism standpoint, is it better to have Trump win in November or lose in November? And the conclusion we came to is that both scenarios would be bad from a terrorism standpoint. Both scenarios are likely to lead to violence.

[00:36:49] Certainly, I think the number one warning sign for violence in 2024 and then therefore the number one counter-terrorism recommendation you would make both relate to rhetoric. It would be great if the former president announced that he was going to accept election results whichever way

[00:37:03] they went. That's not going to happen and because of that, there is no other narrative other than a militant rejection of those election results. We saw it in 2020 and 2021 and I think we'd see it

[00:37:14] again in 2024. I think what worries me the most is having seen some of this before. I mean, an interesting thing about writing a book with someone when you're 41 years apart is that, you know, at least my historical memory goes back just because I've seen it all unfold in

[00:37:28] real life in real time. I remember thinking how enormously dangerous and unstable the early 1990s were when you had this distrust of government, when you had talked that the federal government has no legitimacy, when there were profound fears of government and of what was

[00:37:44] seen as corruption. And compared to today, all that is just small beer. It's just, you know, completely infinitesimal. And that environment in the 1990s was sufficient to produce an abiding tragedy like the Oklahoma City bombing. It makes me very scared and very concerned about this fall

[00:38:01] in the United States that much as four years ago we saw the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer of Michigan just before the election, that we could see plots like that, another Oklahoma City, certainly the targeting of elected officials of both parties. I mean, we've already seen this

[00:38:18] manifesting itself where violence has been directed against appointed officials like Supreme Court justices, elected officials who are members of Congress, and even volunteers who are serving on election boards, election workers. And this, unfortunately, I think can only intensify

[00:38:36] as we approach what is already a very contentious and febrile election period. CWOE 3. Every so often I'll finish a book on a difficult topic like this and the conclusion is essentially we're doomed the end. And I never know what the author expects readers to do with

[00:38:54] that, but this book doesn't do that. The final chapter offers a comprehensive range of policy, educational and cultural recommendations to stem the tide, including on the issue of media literacy, which has been a huge growing concern of mine. And I think everything you have here is really

[00:39:10] pragmatic and helpful. Walk us through some, please. Well, let me first describe the broad approach. Actually, thanks very much for noticing that, Matt, because in fact, the policy recommendations I think is one of the strengths of the book,

[00:39:24] because there is a tendency to write these things and then throw up one's hands. And, you know, we really do believe that there has to be a renewal of America and a return to our core

[00:39:33] values. And in fact, that's the largest chapter of the book, which is, I think, interesting as well. And we want it to be realistic and practical, which meant we tried to frame these in a way that

[00:39:46] would have as much of a nonpartisan appeal as possible. And it's very difficult to achieve in this heavily divided Congress. We have been able to meet with Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress and discuss some of these recommendations. The way we approached it was

[00:40:02] in to divide them into three broad categories, things we could do now that would strengthen the regulatory framework that would have an immediate impact. It assumes a different Congress. You know, last year, Congress, I believe, brought roughly two dozen bills to the president for signature

[00:40:18] in a typical year. It's well over 100. So we're not talking about at least historically normal circumstances. But if we were in those, these would be things to strengthen the regulatory framework. We advocate quite energetically and somewhat controversially domestic terrorism

[00:40:35] legislation. We have foreign terrorism legislation. We're not talking about designating terrorist groups in the United States. We think that would be a nonstarter, would completely be a partisan divide. But what we are talking about is equity in sentencing because we find a huge

[00:40:49] disparity between persons sentenced for offenses that in a foreign context are labeled terrorism, but in a domestic one aren't. And the disparities are often twice as long or even three times as long

[00:41:02] sentences in one context and not in the other. So we believe there should be equity in that sense. We believe that that would send a powerful message against the use of proclivity to any use of

[00:41:14] violence in the United States. Jacob and I found it astonishing that successive polls conducted by the University of Maryland and The Washington Post show that roughly a third of Americans believe in certain circumstances, violence could be justified against the federal government,

[00:41:29] which to us is completely abhorrent because we live in a democracy where you change laws by vote, not by violence. And the fact that it's in the 30th percentile for people who self-identify as

[00:41:40] Republicans and is in the high teens and low 20th percentile for Democrats shows that this is not specific to one party, but to both. So that's very alarming. We also talk about reforming section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which basically exempts social media from the same responsibilities

[00:42:00] that traditional established media function legally under. Now section 230, which was enacted in 1996 made sense when the internet was at a very nascent period of its formulation. When most people then got their news from the nightly news broadcasts of the three major channels, CBS, NBC and ABC at 630

[00:42:21] or 7 at night, or else read newspapers. Obviously we know now most people get their news from social media or at least from online sources, some of dubious veracity. So those are the immediate things.

[00:42:32] We also have a category of things that could be done now that would have an impact in the next to five years, and that is strengthening civil society. And that's where things that you just

[00:42:43] pointed out, digital literacy is so important. I mean, starting these programs as parts of social studies or civics educations in junior high and high school that enable students to understand what's opinion and what's fact, how to fact check the information they receive, how to understand

[00:43:00] why someone isn't an acknowledged expert as opposed to someone that's just offering their subjective take on things. We also talk about this period of extending broadband throughout the country so that everybody is equally connected. And there isn't a disparity that actually drove a

[00:43:16] lot of the resentment of the 1920s, where the Klan channeled a lot of frustration that everything that happened in the United States was for the benefit of either coast, east or west coast, ignoring the south coast, for example. So we believe that bringing connectivity, this is the

[00:43:32] fact that you often have better cell coverage overseas in remote and rural areas than you do in many parts of the United States, even suburban areas. So that's another thing that we believe could strengthen, help build civil society in the medium term. And then we talk about the

[00:43:46] generational change that would rebuild national unity and that both strengthening the social regulatory framework and building or rebuilding civil society would produce a sense of national unity that we could perhaps find ourselves once again at what Jacob and I regard as a critical

[00:44:05] juncture in the history of the United States. And that was on the evening of September 11th, 2001, when both Republican and Democratic members of Congress joined arms on the steps of the Capitol and saying, God bless America. I mean, one can't even picture something like that happening

[00:44:20] now. But we have to remember how enormously reassuring that was to the United States and to the citizens of this country that had undergone a trauma of unparalleled intensity earlier in that day, but felt reassured that as a country united, we are strong and we can work together

[00:44:38] to better the United States for everyone. So we hope that these in the long term, that this generational change will return us to that point. CW2 Something that I think is really helpful in your recommendations is that you don't frame it as

[00:44:54] just a solution for the far right, but for extremism across the board. It's just for like a healthy society in general, we should do these best practices. DS Well, one of the important conclusions from our work, not necessarily just in the book,

[00:45:06] but broader is there are similarities between some of these movements now. Certainly social media radicalization is being manipulated by every extremist movement, lone actor radicalization, they're all gathering in that space. We see similar targets, tactics being used. And so

[00:45:26] to an extent, you would think that some of the counterterrorism recommendations that we make, especially around social media, such as Section 230 or digital literacy, countering violent extremism, those should have applicability across ideologies. And so as we work

[00:45:39] to counter the far right extreme with these measures, I think they'll also have benefits for, for example, countering the Islamic State, let's say. CW3 For my last question, this one has bugged me on a personal level, and I'd hope to get your

[00:45:52] takes. Reading your book and others, I've noticed a recurring driver for many far right figures, and that's that they just want to be left alone, like Randy Weaver, who's refusal to inform for

[00:46:03] the FBI ultimately led to the Ruby Ridge standoff, or the Bundy clan in Nevada who believe they shouldn't have to pay taxes. The common refrain is that they just want to be free to live off

[00:46:13] their land according to their values and their interpretation of their faith. Which taxes aside, people in this country have a First Amendment right to do. You have a right to be a white supremacist, an anti-Semite, a Christian fundamentalist, so long as you don't use those

[00:46:26] beliefs to justify harming others. And everyone else has a First Amendment right to find those beliefs abhorrent and choose not to associate with or employ you because of it. But the kernel

[00:46:36] of their argument to me is that in America, you should be free to live as your true authentic self according to your values without interference or harassment. So why can't they accept that me and my boyfriend have that same inalienable right? Why can't they accept that black Americans'

[00:46:52] grocery shopping in Buffalo have it, or Jewish Americans worshipping at their synagogue in Pittsburgh have it? Well, I think, you know, when we started this discussion, you read an excerpt book that we described, you know, this extremist movement as, you know, harkening back to what they

[00:47:07] see as a halcyon imagined period in the United States history when it was completely ethnically monochromatic, where there was only one religion, where everybody had those, you know, inalienable American rights because there was only one type of person in this country. But that's never been

[00:47:24] the case. I mean, that's historically inaccurate. So they're channeling a false narrative that immediately locks them into confrontation and locks them into dispute with the authorities that are here to preserve those fundamental constitutional freedoms that you describe.

[00:47:40] And I think that's the mistake, is that they're channeling or summoning a history of the United States that's just divorced from reality and unfortunately then gets racked into conspiracy theories that specifically seek to demonize and blame someone else for the problems they're

[00:47:58] experiencing. So I think the core virtues of the United States is exactly, Matt, what you've described as what I would perhaps a little bit reductionistly say is a frontier mentality. I mean,

[00:48:09] we want to go out on our own, we want to live independently, and we want to exercise our constitutional rights. And that's what in our policy recommendations we completely advocate and support. What concerns us, and this was a book as we described the genesis of it,

[00:48:23] was when we had the COVID lockdown, all of a sudden these conspiracy theories began to surface not only about the federal government, but about various other peoples or ethnic or religious groups that had some interest in creating this terrible problem and therefore blaming them

[00:48:39] for it. And then we saw very quickly this transition to actually advocating and encouraging violence. And that's what we want to avoid. So I think the message is that, yes, you can have

[00:48:51] those freedoms and you can be left alone, but all of us in a functioning democracy and republic, it's incumbent upon us to respect the law and respect the rights of others to have their beliefs and to exist without interfering with you. And that's what's being lost, unfortunately,

[00:49:07] is that there's this... And that's social media means that every problem is everyone's problem, right? And it seeks to bandwagon and to get everyone stirred up about issues that they might not have paid any attention to or might not have ever thought affected them, but now

[00:49:23] affects them in a very indirect way and becomes their problem. And we have to somehow reverse that and recognize the corrosive impact that social media has had. I'll give you a first-hand example. Three months ago, I attended a sentencing hearing in the United Kingdom of

[00:49:43] someone who had become in essence a white supremacist, neo-Nazi terrorist. And what was so clear in both the prosecution and the defense's presentation of the arguments for sentencing is that if social media had existed, this person, the police had described him as living in a hamlet,

[00:50:01] not a village, not a town, a small community that was completely homogeneous, only Caucasian people, only white Christians lived there, only English people lived there. And yet this individual had descended into such a dark place where he was demonizing. He was

[00:50:16] talking about not only bombing synagogues, but burning churches to the ground, attacking Hindu temples, attacking LBGTQ gathering places and nightclubs, attacking Roman encampments. I mean, his hatred almost had no boundaries. And it was precisely because of social media that he was

[00:50:34] exposed to this. So it's a way of getting back to this mutual respect that will preserve our country and preserve our fundamental legal and constitutional values and rights and privileges. IAN Matt, that's such an important question,

[00:50:46] and I'm not sure I have a perfect answer for you. Because this has been one of my frustrations in my work looking at the violent far right is that they have very effectively weaponized the

[00:50:56] first moment and hidden behind it, whether in the real world or on social media, they claim that their hatred is first moment protected. But as you rightly point out, being Jewish or Muslim

[00:51:09] also a first moment protected freedom of religion. And the black community's right to go shopping in their preferred supermarket in Buffalo is also a first moment protected freedom of assembly. But we kind of devalue those and we make the first moment purely about speech as opposed to people's

[00:51:29] freedom to be safe in their religion or in their assembly from violent, hateful speech. Our current understanding of these laws, whether legally or culturally, or our current understanding of this amendment is protecting the hater over the hated. And I think

[00:51:46] that is really difficult to build a thriving multicultural, multi-ethnic society upon. So I'm not sure how that argument would hold up in court. I'm not a lawyer, but I think we need to find a way to kind of rethink how we've interpreted that amendment.

[00:52:03] Yeah. I think back to your quote from the book that I offered at the top of the show, describing how the Klan felt about the country a century ago and how it's like identical to what

[00:52:13] the far right feels now and realize that at no point was there ever in America they might've been born into and not hate. They've cursed themselves to live that way, but we don't have

[00:52:24] to join them down there. Is there anything else you'd like to cover or add before we wrap up today? I think we've covered everything. It was a great set of questions. Just thanking you, Matt, for your leadership on this issue and for your willingness to have us to

[00:52:36] talk about. And thanks for the great, great podcast. It's excellent. Thank you so much. Where can listeners find more about you and your work? Bruce and I are both active on Twitter and Blue Sky, and we post our articles on cfr.org as well.

[00:52:52] So feel free to check us out there. Links to all of that will be in the show notes. One more time, the book is God, Guns, and Sedition, Far-Right Terrorism in America. I'd hold up the cover, but this is not a visual medium.

[00:53:04] I can't say it's a fun or relaxing read. It'll keep you up at night for sure, but it's interesting, important, and timely on a subject to which I think many Americans too often will themselves blind. Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, thanks for joining us on Secrets

[00:53:20] and Spies and being so generous with your time. Thank you very much for having us. We're very grateful. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is Secrets and Spies.