Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
It is – it’s tremendous to see all of you here. Some of you know each other, I can tell, by the looks from the audience to those on the stage, and we also have many online guests tonight. So, I – it is a – it is quite an honour to be chairing this panel. I’m Leslie Vinjamuri, I’m the Director of the US and Americas Programme here at Chatham House. I think I know most of you, and I hope that you know all of us and that you are regulars. If not, please keep coming.
The title of tonight’s roundtable or panel is, “How Safe is America’s Democracy?” The occasion for having this roundtable is obviously, we’re worried about how safe America’s democracy is in an election year, having experienced January 6, but also, a rise of far-right terrorism over a considerable period of time. But the short-term reason for having this panel is the publication of a truly remarkable book, which I have to say, I’ve just recently finished reading, and I’m quite depressed. But it’s really good, and you should read it. It’s a very important book. And the two co-authors are here with us, and that is the reason for us meeting today. And Rachel Leingang, who works for The Guardian in the US, is joining us, she is an expert on social media and disinformation, so, we have a tremendous panel.
Let me say a few words about Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware. This is a really great team of Scholars, Scholar Experts, who work on terrorism and counterterrorism, and Bruce, you are a world leading Scholar and Expert on terrorism. If any of you have delved into this field, you will have read “Inside Terrorism,” which was first published in?
Bruce Hoffman
1998.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
1998, republished. It is a classic, it is a must read. You are a Professor at Georgetown University. Bruce joined just after I left, so we’ve been waiting to cross paths. We have many people in common, so this is really wonderful. Bruce is not only a Scholar at Georgetown, he is a very distinguished Senior Fellow, named Senior Fellow, at the Council on Foreign Relations, and somebody who has taken a very high level, and highly consequential level, of engagement in the policy debates on questions of terrorism and counterterrorism.
And most im – and one of the many things that you’ve done, which was obviously very important, was that you were the Lead Author in the 9/11 Review Commission, that looked at the post-9/11 response to terrorism and radicalisation. And you have continued to engage in this very difficult and very significant, question of responses to terrorism, working with the US Government, and a very wide array of not only students who then, have gone onto work in the field as Academics and as Government Officials and people influencing policy, but all of us who follow your work. So, it’s an honour to have you here.
Bruce Hoffman
Thank you.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Jacob, you are at the Council on Foreign Relations, as a Research Fellow. You are an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. You are European and American. We are just trying to figure out the identity politics, of a young man with a British accent and a British passport, but not from Britain, so this is very confusing for us. But it’s very exciting, and the book is co-authored in a very eloquent way, so I encourage you to read, and also, Jacob’s writings in “War on the Rocks,” and many other publications. So, clearly, two people to watch, at different stages of professional life.
So, the book is very interesting, and I’ll say just a few things and then, turn to you, Bruce, to tell us why you wrote it, and what you were really trying to communicate about, I guess, the longue durée of how we got to where we are. And you make the point that it’s been at least four decades building up to the far-right terrorist threat and movement that we have in the US. It’s very interesting, ‘cause it talks a lot about how the US, for so long, was fixated on international terrorism, and really, after Oklahoma City, you know, moved to – and especially after 9/11, really diverted its focus to the Global War on Terrorism to inter – it didn’t even talk about terrorism so much domestically. And then suddenly, you get the election of President Obama and a racialised, I guess, injection into a far-right movement. And it really takes on a very consequential feature of American politics, which we all saw explode in a extraordinary way, in a very polarised and divided America on January 6.
And, you know, as you well know, everybody is now concerned about, has that gone away? How consequential is it, and where is it going? And we’ll get to that part of the conversation, especially with you, Rachel. But maybe you could tell us a little bit about that trajectory, about that history, and how significant is this far-right terrorist threat in the United States?
Bruce Hoffman
No, I’d be happy to. But, firstly, let me thank you, Leslie, for presiding over this meeting, and, also, to thank the Royal Institute for International Affairs for hosting us. In the universe of international relations and foreign policy, there are two poles, Chatham House and the Council on Foreign Relations. So, we’re really tremendously honoured and delighted to be at one of the poles. And we invariably invoke Chatham House all the time at the Council on Foreign Relations, so it’s a special pleasure to be here.
So, I think actually, the best way to answer that question is really to leverage off of the title of the book, which was completely serendipitous, and actually fortuitous. It was unplanned. But the book real – the title of the book really encapsulates the fundamental argument, and the fundamental argument is that the events of January 6th 2021 were neither an aberration nor a culmination, but rather, a continuation of a trend that first emerged, or first crystalised, in the early 1980s.
Now, that is to say hate groups had always existed in the United States. Certainly, one can, you know, pinpoint the canonical instance, which was the creation of the Ku Klux Klan immediately following the American Civil War in 1865. There was also the American Nazi Party. But in the early 1980s this movement undertook, I think, an enormously consequential shift. It went from the racism and antisemitism and xenophobia to something different. It became much more militantly anti-government.
So, it’s very common nowadays to refer to Washington D.C., or at least the part of Washington D.C. inside The Beltway, ‘cause there’s a ring road that’s around Washington, as ‘the swamp’. Back then, there was an even more pejorative term, it was ZOG, Z-O-G, for Zionist Occupation Government. And some of the same intellectual currents or ideological currents we saw on January 6th 2021, were present back then. In other words, this extreme distrust of the Federal Government, this belief that the world was con – well, the United States was controlled by elitists, liberals. The word progressive wasn’t used by then. Powerful financial forces, the Jews, of course, and that this was before the word globalism, that there was a globalist intent that was going to fundamentally change the United States. So, that’s a huge shift.
And in the 1980s, leveraged off of the first word of the book, “God,” it was curiously, also a movement that had a very prominent religious dimension or element to it. There’s no mystery about that. In an era long before social media, if you wanted to get a lot of people in one place, you could go to a university, you could go to a civic group, or obviously, to the cinema, but one of them main ways that you could reach large numbers of people in the United States, and especially in the American heartland, was at churches. So, many of the leaders of the movement in the 1980s prefaced their names with titles like Reverend or Pastor, and they invoked a Christian identity movement, which is an outgrowth of Anglo-Israelism, which was a very pacifistic Christian movement in the United Kingdom in the middle of the 19th Century. And that characterised the movement.
And then in 1988, there’s a seminal event. 14 white supremacists were indicted on charges of seditious conspiracy, the most serious criminal charge in the United States. Also, one that’s enormously difficult to prove, and that’s why the 22 members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who were just recently convicted in Federal Court in Washington D.C. of seditious conspiracy, and this was a huge accomplishment for the Department of Justice, because in 1988 all 14 white supremacists were acquitted. And that ensured the movement would survive, but they stepped back, and like many terrorist movements, kind of, thought, what do we do to ensure our longevity? And they feared that had everyone been convicted the movement would have been decapitated.
So, it went off in two different directions. One was to embrace the strategy of leaderless resistance, which had been articulated in 1983 or 1984, but then became much more prominent again. We know that strategy today as lone wolf or lone actor terrorism. And, also, like every terrorist movement, they sought to appeal to an ever widening or a broader constituency, and that was what was just emerging at that time, the American militia movement. And they also very much began to advocate for Second Amendment rights, right for American citizens to bear arms.
And that leads into the 1990s, and the “Guns” part of the title, and that, of course, converges in April – on April 19th 1995 in Oklahoma City, until September 11th 2001, the most lethal terrorist act in the United States, the blowing up of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Office Building, in which 168 persons perish. The perpetrator of that completely conformed to the leaderless resistance model. It was a US Army veteran named Timothy McVeigh. He did not belong to a terrorist group. He was not following anyone’s orders. He certainly circulated within the ideological milieu of gun ownership extremism, this belief that especially with President Bill Clinton having been elected, that the Federal Government was going to seize Americans’ firearms.
He certainly was motivated for vengeance, for sieges at Ruby Ridge in Idaho and certainly, at Waco, at The Branch Davidian compound in Texas, where seven – over 70 persons were killed in an assault by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the FBI. And he was completely fixated on a dystopian novel that had been published in 1978, “The Turner Diaries,” that basically, is a blueprint for revolution in the United States. And in fact, when Timothy McVeigh was arrested, about an hour after the bombing, by a very alert Oklahoma State Trooper, on the passenger seat next to him was a folder, and among other things in the folder were pages from “The Turner Diaries” that had been excised and highlighted and annotated.
So, this happens. The FBI, obviously, cracks down very heavily. There’s a brief spasm of activity the following year at the Atlanta Olympic Games, where a bomb explodes just outside the venue in Centennial Park. Subseq – the same person bombs a lesbian nightclub in Alabama and also, several abortion clinics. And then, as you pointed out, September 11th happens, and everyone’s attention is wrenched in the direction of the Middle East and South Asia and Salafi-Jihadi terrorism, and this movement fades into obscurity. And then, as you also point out, 2008, a series of seminal developments, a very severe economic crisis, which generates a lot of unease and suspicion, which often leads to, or triggers, xenophobia.
And then the credible candidacy for President, of the first viable African American candidate, Barrack Obama, who actually is given Secret Service protection far in advance of any other presidential candidate, such was the volume of hatred directed against him. And, of course, if you go back to 2008, that’s also the dawn of social media. So, all of these factors then converge in the following decade, and lead to the “Sedition” part of the title, which is January 6th 2021. And one of our arguments is that if it’s a continuation, the threat to democracy did not end on that day.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
So, that’s a lot. Jacob, Bruce has just talked about a movement that in a sense, doesn’t have a leader, and many people feel, and I guess, right or wrong, or how does it change things when Donald Trump was elected, and there’s a sense in which he becomes if not a leader, a figurehead, or somebody who is speaking in code to many far-right groups? How does that change things? Or anything else you might like to add to what Bruce has said.
Jacob Ware
Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. Tt’s such an honour to be here, truly. Let me zoom out just a little bit and talk a little bit more broadly about the interaction that this movement had had with national politics, and it’s one of the big themes that comes out of our research. Bruce already mentioned in 2008 – in fact, I think if you look back at the last three new administrations, you can see that impact. So, 2008, we see a large rise in white supremacist activism, mobilisation, in response to the first Black President. We see violence over that following eight years. The deadliest attack in the West occurred in – or deadliest far-right attack in the West occurred in Oslo. 77 people were killed there by a white supremacist. Probably the most consequential incident in the United States happens at Charleston, South Carolina, in a historical Black church.
President Trump’s election in 2016, on the back of what may be characterised as a xenophobic, divisive campaign, leads to, again, a rise in mobilisation, and also, confidence in the movement. A very consequential event occurs on August 11th and 12th, 2017, at a place called Charlottesville, Virginia. Where a group of explicitly white supremacist and neo-Nazis gather for a rally called “Unite the Right,” on behalf of an explicitly white supremacist and neo-Nazi cause, which was the removal of a confederate statue. A terrorist attack occurs at that site and in the days that followed, we had this very awkward public back and forth in the media between the President and people who wanted him to denounce the violence. And that back and forth ended with eight immortal words, “There were very fine people on both sides.”
We trace in the book that people in the movement, then and now, date that as the moment when they realised they had top cover. They realised they were going to be protected, that this form of activism and the violence that accompued it – accompanied it, was legitimate, was going to be protected by the White House. We then see a string of violence, of course, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Christchurch, New Zealand, Poway, California, El Paso, Texas, ultimately then leading up to January 6th. President Biden’s election then leads to a rise in more anti-government extremism, including a vein – a new vein of election denialism, that leads us to January 6th.
Now, this matters because we are in an election year, a particularly fractious election year in the United States. If history is going to be a guide, which my colleague is a Historian, so I’m sure he would agree it probably will be, we should expect to see high levels of violence in the United States this year, and that is very frightening.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Okay, so, first of all, nothing is inevitable in life or in politics, and we all – and what you’ve said is – that’s a big statement and we’re all deeply concerned about it. And so, Rachel, you work on – you’re based in Minneapolis, is that correct? And you work for The Guardian, you work on disinformation, on social media, on democracy in America. What are you tracking, and is your instinct the same as what – is your not only instinct, but your analysis leading you to the same prediction that we’ve just heard? And maybe you could just say something about that, and then we can perhaps talk about a lot of things, including what could be done about that, but I don’t want to foreshadow that too much before you’ve had a chance to tell us about your work, Rachel.
Rachel Leingang
Yeah, this is an instance where I hate to agree, but yeah, it does seem that in 2024, from everything that we are tracking, that the potential for political violence is higher than ever. Surveys have shown that people’s capacity for, and tolerance for, political violence is very high. That they believe it’s justified, much more than you would hope, and that there are many efforts to cause confusion and chaos among the electorate, to undermine, you know, the pinnings of democracies, basically, how our elections happen. In – across the US, and especially rural areas, there have been a lot of efforts to seek hand counts of ballots, which are a way to, kind of, slow down the process. So, those sorts of things are going after the machinery of how we do elections.
And then there’s, sort of, the separate, related movement that uses violence toward political ends, and, sort of, stems from people’s belief that they can’t achieve their goals through the electoral process. Which as the – our esteemed authors here have noted is a longstanding issue that people have been having, and that has not gone away. Trump, his ability to, kind of, create a cult of personality around him, has really elevated a lot of these groups and what they think they can accomplish, which I think should be a little bit alarming to all of us. You know, he has called recently January 6, people who’ve been charged with crimes, calling them ‘hostages’. I think we can imagine that, you know, if he takes office, how those folks are handled is going to be much different than it is now. He, himself, facing obviously many criminal charges, that depending on the outcomes of those cases, also holds a potential for violence.
The entrance of the Fourteenth Amendment, where people were trying to keep Trump off the ballot for being an insurrectionist, that alone held the potential for violence had the court case gone the other way. I think if the US Supreme Court had decided that he couldn’t be on the ballot, we would have seen probably mayhem, honestly. So, you can envision what this will look like, and a lot of it depends on who wins and how the election goes.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
So, I guess a couple of things, to follow-up on that, for you and, also, for both of you. And one of them – the comment about, “There’s a higher level of tolerance for violence,” where does that exist? I mean, is that generalised across the electorate, or is there a higher tolerance for violence only in the Republican Party, or only in the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, or just in general? I mean, I’m assuming that there’s some, sort of, parameter on that, or is that just a across the board dissatisfaction, and violence is now deemed to be a legitimate mechanism for resolving conflict in contested elections in the United States?
Bruce Hoffman
Well, for three years running, polls taken by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland have shown that roughly a third of Americans believe in certain circumstances violence is justified against the Federal Government. Now, in and of itself, that’s astonishing, in a democracy that you have a third of electorate that believes violence is justified. But it’s interesting to note, it’s not 0% Demogra – Democrats. It’s roughly 18 to 22%, and over a third, so, let’s say 36%/38% of Republicans. So, in and of itself, that’s extraordinarily dangerous.
But as Jacob and I write in the book, and [inaudible – 23:19] called attention to recently, I mean, this isn’t just red against blue. I mean, there’s nothing that’s simple in the United States in any event, but this just is another layer of complexity. And on the cover of our book, we have a scaffold and a hangman’s noose that was erected in front of the United States capital on January 6th 2021, which is astonishing, also in its own right, that you would hang elected officials.
But that was not intended, for instance, you know, the woke Democrats, Spea – then Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, or representative Steny Hoyer and others. It was intended for a sitting Vice-President, who happened to be a Christian Evangelical as well, exactly moment of thought of that milieu. But this has become a movement that’s even fratricidal or internecine, and you now have can – Republican candidates for the Senate campaigning and wanting to issue RINO, as in Republicans in Name Only, hunting licences.
So, even though, you know, like everything, and either on social media, even – I mean, this isn’t a political advertisement, as well, you know, you can say, “Well, this is something that’s, you know, just very cheeky,” I mean, but, you know, these things have consequences. It’s not just humour. I mean, it’s basically saying that if you are not of a particular view within one party, you should be killed. That there’s, you know, open season on you, and this is really worrying. And we see now, I mean, so many Members of the House, for example, including very prominent Republicans, just not running again, not just standing for office, and there’s a reason behind that. So, I mean, this is an erosion of our democracy that’s, you know, both inter and intraparty.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
But the decision not to stand might be concern for personal risk of being subject to violence. It could also be just the fact that it’s a phenomenally dysfunctional to – dysfunctional Congress, and it’s, kind of, hard to stake your career on it if you have ambitions beyond the next four and a bit years. But maybe I can ask all of you, and maybe I’ll come to you first, Rachel, it’s – 2022 was, as you said, Bruce, it was, surprisingly – the mid-term elections were surprisingly violence free, despite what you’ve talked about with such rigour in the book, despite what we’ve just heard from all of you. So, why was that okay, and how can we seek to replicate it in the next – in the presidential election?
Rachel Leingang
Well, Trump wasn’t on the ballot. I mean, I – like I had mentioned, he has a really unique ability here to rile people up. The other thing I would note is, I mean, I live in Minnesota now, but I lived in Arizona in 2022, I lived there for a decade, and in Arizona this sentiment did not go away. You know, it was very much favoured by the State Republican Party. The candidates there embraced election denialism. They lost. It didn’t make anybody reconsider their positions. That, you know, fervour has continued. It’s not been tamped down. I think you can actually see that, you know, because of the vindictiveness of Trump and many of his supporters, you know, like had been mentioned, people aren’t running again, or if they do speak out against the Party, they face a wave of threats. When those threats become violence is really just a question of time.
And I think you see it a lot of – in a lot of people who run elections now, too, that they’re leaving their posts. They don’t want to, you know, be involved in these misinformation campaigns that often lead to death threats. The US Government has been prosecuting some of them, but many of them, you know, kind of, because of speech concerns or because they’re not as explicit, kind of, fall through the legal cracks. You know, having read, via, public records requests, having read what Elections Officials are receiving, it’s heinous, truly, the daily basis of what they’re facing. So, while violence itself may not have resulted in 2022, these threats of violence were certainly there and have never gone away. And once they become something more, you know, Trump being on the ballot plays a big role in that, but really, it’s just a matter of time.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Would you like to add to that?
Jacob Ware
I would. I would like to push back on the question a little bit, if that’s okay.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Please, no, please, by all means.
Jacob Ware
Because – so, I actually think the notion around, or the narrative around the 22 election is actually a sign of a deeper cancer. I was one of Scholars who wrote in the lead-up to the 2022 election that we might have violence, and afterwards, there was this postmortem about why that didn’t happen, and I said, “There was violence.” We had, in the weeks before the election, an assassination attempt on the Speaker of the House, that involved somebody breaking into her home and seriously injuring her husband. So, it’s not whether there was violence or not. It was that we determined as a country that that was an appropriate level of violence to be successful. That’s the level we’re talking about here. So, assassination attempt against the third in line to the US presidency is acceptable, it’s appropriate, it’s good enough, that is frightening.
Earlier that year, by the way, we had a far-left assassination attempt on a Conservative Supreme Court Justice, that also resulted in somebody breaking in, all the way to the – to his front door, before calling the Police on himself. So, that is the scale we’re talking about here. So, yes, we didn’t have a tax on polling places, as far as I know, but that is a really frightening thought, that we can have a narrative that that was okay, when that’s the kind of issues we’re facing. That’s how far things have fallen.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Yeah, that was a very – I don’t think people thought it was okay, but you’re right, that there was a discounting, relative to the fact that the election itself didn’t immediately generate a consequence. I want to come to – ‘cause you have a lot in the book, and I know you’re working on this, Rachel, on, what do we do? And you mentioned, you know, “What if the Supreme Court had supported Colorado’s decision and taken Trump off the ballot.” And, you know, he’d come off in other places, “What would that have inspired?” And we can think of a lot of what ifs in that, kind of, line of thinking, that could produce a backlash and perhaps violence. What if the Supreme Court decides that the President is not immune? Which seems, I hope, likely and plausible, and certainly how it should go. But you talk about, sort of, short-term solutions and you talk about longer term solutions, and maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you say and what you think on that.
Bruce Hoffman
Sure. Well, we actually offer three sets of solutions. That’s how many are needed. Basically, well, the longest chapter in the book is the one on policy recommendations, and we group them in three categories. Things that perhaps in a different Congress, that was not so sclerotic, perhaps also wasn’t an election year, could be done immediately, that would strengthen the social regulatory framework, and that’s to say, legislation. I mean, we particularly point to the need for domestic terrorism legislation, which, of course, exists in the United Kingdom, but does not exist in the United States. People have to be tried under criminal statutes. Some offences, if they are grouped under hate crime statutes, the – a Judge is empowered to extend the length of the sentence up to three times, which is very important.
But we think there needs to be domestic terrorism legislation, for a variety of reasons, but one of the main ones is to bring some equity in sentencing. Because what we find is that, in the United States, if you’re a certain colour and a certain religion, and you support a foreign terrorist group, on average, you’re sentenced to 13.5 years in prison. And we see too often members of far-right violence extremist organisations, in some cases getting three-year sentences, that Judges exercise their subjectivity and invoke terrorism enhancement statutes, but they don’t necessarily have to. So, it’s to achieve sentencing equity.
We then talk about measures that would have an impact in the intermediate term, over the next five to ten years. And those are designed to strengthen national – well, strengthen the social cohesion of the United States. And here we talk about the need for things like, or initiatives, such as digital and media literacy, especially in an era when more people are getting their news from social influencers, or news from Facebook or TikTok that’s driven by opinion and entertainment, not so much the facts.
And we’ve been very heartened, actually, in giving these talks. I came across – I had the great pleasure of meeting the Police Chief of Elizabeth, New Jersey, just outside of New York City, a place that most people haven’t heard of. And they have a Police athletic league that, basically, takes children and after s – provides after school care, but usually it’s playing basketball or baseball, depending on the season. He actually has started a digital and media literacy programme for these kids, ‘cause he says it’s not happening in the schools, and he’s concerned about recruiting a new generation of Police Officers that don’t get their information and don’t get – have a very different version of truth, which he feels would undermine the social order.
And we also talk about things like bringing broadband to rural America. I think one of the dirty secrets of the United States is that although only about 1.5% of the urban populus lacks access to broadband, to Wi-Fi, it’s about 25% of rural America. And this is one of the things that fed the second revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the 19-teens and 1920s, because they sensed there was an America that, basically, catered to both coasts, and forgot about everything in the middle, and that, of course, is an enormous theme nowadays.
And, frankly, too, when I was teaching, you know, at a university in Washington D.C., we thought, okay, we’ll teach – when I was teaching during COVID, I should say, well, we’ll teach remotely and students will just jump on, you know, Zoom or on Teams. Well, I had students in Tennessee that had to drive 40 miles to go to a Starbucks to get on Wi-Fi, and then, they were doing it on their handhelds, which is no way to attend a two and a half hour lecture, or to be able to participate. So, we also talk about the importance – again, this equity levelling off, because so much of what’s driving the polarisation in politics today is this profound sense of inequity in the United States.
And then, sorry, and then, the third category is things that would achieve national unity. Hoping that the short-term measures, the intermediate measures, will all come together and break this cycle of hatred that has been sustained for decades now and bring America to its senses, as it were.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Rachel, do you want to add to that? Do you have – I know you’re working as a Journalist. You’re, sort of, tracking trends. You’re looking specifically at the disinformation part of this. Do you have solutions that are actually achievable in any timely way, or do you see the problem as, you know, beyond us?
Rachel Leingang
I’m not completely, you know, lacking in hope that eventually things get better, but it’s certainly a very long-term process. One thing that various experts have told me is part of that is enacting consequences, right? So, for Lawyers bringing cases that really are underpinned by a lack of facts, in order to undermine elections, getting sanctioned by their state bars or the Courts, people who participate in these violent acts or incite them being charged criminally for it. People who are threatening Elections Officials being charged. Those sorts of things help show people that there are consequences, and doing these things are not – you know, doing these sorts of things is not going to just be let off the hook, basically.
But at the same time, those sorts of consequences come with a backlash, and that backlash, you know, can perhaps cause further distrust in the system. Right now, you have, you know, Trump repeatedly saying that all of these attempts to hold him accountable are ‘election interference’. So, there’s just, kind of, a double-edged sword with all of this, which is not to say that there should not be attempts to hold people accountable, but that’s part of what people hope to see to get out of this, and it doesn’t always have that effect. You know, it can further underline some of that anti-government sentiment.
Another thing people have mentioned is bipartisan statements of support for certain things, or against political violence, but in this political climate, bipartisan anything is very hard to achieve, especially on the right. Republicans are very hostile toward, you know, perceptions of who is a RINO. Anybody who speaks out against Trump, those sorts of things, take political risk and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of appetite for that anymore. So, all of these potential solutions, I don’t know, it’s hard to see how in a short-term way, they can alleviate just this extreme level of polarisation and tolerance of violence that we have right now.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
There’s also a legal context, which is difficult, and you’ve alluded to this and you talk about it in the book, and it’s a very different legal context than exists in the UK and elsewhere. And it’s, you know, that – you talk about the importance of platforms and self-regulation and governing the space, but it’s different, it’s harder. The, you know, the freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, and it is a significant issue in this space. Can you say a little bit more about that, and maybe, comparatively, I don’t know how much you follow these issues in the UK?
Bruce Hoffman
Well, in the conclusion, actually, we cite and praise the 2019 Online Harms White Paper that the Home Office, together with the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Digital Media, released, which talked not only about political extremism, but also harassment, bullying, shaming, child tra – paedophilia, child trafficking, and so on. But laid out very clearly an agenda, and it triggered a discussion, of, “What are the responsibilities that governments owe their citizens in a democracy in the digital age?” And, of course, that was enacted as the Online Safety Act, just this past October.
We’re not even close to that point in the United States. I think one of the core arguments of the book is that the law has not kept pace with technology. We – very different situation in the United States with the Constitution, with the First Amendment, guaranteeing free speech, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not room for amendment and adjustment. And one of the initiatives that we very strongly advocate is reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This was passed in 1995, a completely different time, when the overwhelming majority of people in the United States got their news from traditional print, and television and radio media. When the internet was just emerging and the Big Tech companies in Silicon Valley were becoming stronger, and there was a desire to facilitate their growth, and therefore, to indemnify them from content online.
So, in other words, traditional media in the United States to this day is held responsible for the content on its platforms, as it were, but completely exempts the tech industry, the internet and social media. And we argue that’s clearly outlived its relevance. That there has to be a balance in any democracy, between the rights of the individual to spre – free speech, but also, to concerns about public safety, and, also, about the rights of individual to be protected, and to be free of harassment and especially online harassment.
And this is an enormously contentious issue. I mean, just this – in an apolitical environment, just this past April, I believe, in Colorado, there was a case of a woman who was being stalked. The Supreme Court decided that, basically, the harasser had First Amendment rights, and that she only had limited protection. And that’s – you know, again, in a pre-internet, pre-social media era, that may have made sense, but now, when you can find all kinds of details, home addresses, social security number, cell phone number, basically, by paying 99 cents to information consolidators, obviously there’s been a tipping point that has to be righted or corrected.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Did you want to add to that? And then we’re going to come to all of you in the audience and also, online, ‘cause we have a lot of questions building up, but…
Jacob Ware
Just – I would just add, Bruce spoke about digital literacy earlier. We have had such issues in the United States trying to push back against the supply of extremist material. Really, the two things that we need is content moderation and algorithm reform, and those two things are not just extremism and terrorism problems or solutions. They, also, as Bruce said, it’s part of child sexual abuse material, body disorders, things like that, so it’s much broader. Now, the social media companies are not engaging on that, at all, so that’s why we call for Section 230 reform. But still, that’s on the supply side of that material, and we also need to think about the demand side, why people are seeking out this content, why people are seeking out these nefarious, you know, ideologies. That’s why we talk about digital literacy. That’s why we talk about trying to educate people, or just rebuild faith and trust in the system and in the press. Those are those long-term measures that we think about and that we appreciate is, unfortunately, very optimistic right now.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
And we’re do – we actually just ran a very interesting event on all of these issues, and as we all know, they’re getting much more challenging with AI. And in an election year, where half the world’s populations, in one form or another, are going to the polls, the question of election interference, social media, deep fakes, robocalls, all of it is just deeply, deeply troubling. But, you know, the freedom of speech question, and the balance, as we know, isn’t only a social media question. We’re watching this debate really come to the fore surrounding the War in the Middle East on America’s – some of America’s college campuses, but it – but you’ve put it in wonderful context.
Let’s turn to the audience. Please say who you are and state your question. We’ll start with the woman in the back.
Dr Christin Nadeau
Hi there, I’m Dr Christin Nadeau, a member of Chatham House, Consultant with the US Air Force. Had a little experience with the Michigan militia. I’m always glad those guys aren’t Rocket Scientists. There’s been a lot of talk about the niche media, you know, promoting and uniting extremist groups, but the reality is, with the mainstream media and Publishers, Donald Trump sells. He brings in revenue. Mainstream news organisations have been covering him non-stop over many more important stories, ever since he left office, which maintains his relevancy for his constituents. And so, that’s what they’re looking for, is relevancy. So, what, in your opinion, is the role of mainstream media in this constant coverage of Donald Trump? Now, he’s – you know, in the early days – why – what do you think that role is in terms of keeping this movement alive?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Maybe we’ll come to Rachel first, since you work in the media. Rachel, sorry to put it all on you, but please.
Rachel Leingang
Well, today, we’re going to solve how the media covers Donald Trump, it’s a very difficult question. But yeah, this is a constant, I mean, it’s a constant thing that newsrooms are struggling with, I would say. At this point, Trump is a candidate, he deserves the coverage of a candidate, right? You need to cover him seriously, with scrutiny, and I think that’s what many media organisations have come to at this point. And I think the criticisms of him when he was first running for office, definitely those are valid. How you cover him is – it’s certainly something that’s evolving. I don’t think that anyone has quite solved how you manage someone who the way that they rally people uses media attention.
It’s just a very difficult question, and if anyone has great advice on that, I think people take it to heart. In every newsroom I’ve worked in, there’s been ongoing discussion on this issue of, “How do you cover this?” Right now, it seems a lot of voters have, kind of, forgotten what the Trump years are about, right? Like, how do you confront that, sort of, what’s been called ‘Trump amnesia’, and remind people that what Trump did as President, and what he said on the campaign trail, those sorts of things are relevant to voters. Ignoring him at this point is certainly not going to help anything, but how you cover him, I think, is, you know, worthy of scrutiny.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
I don’t – I mean, I have to injec – and I thought what you said was tremendous, I don’t think that anybody is blaming the media, or even suggesting that the media has anywhere close to ignoring Donald Trump. In fact, I can’t remember the hours of free media time that he was given in the 2016 election. And sometimes that’s part of, I think, the pushback the media is getting, which is that there’s almost gratuitous coverage, sometimes, because of exactly what you said, that it sells. It’s, sort of, entertaining, and, you know, there’s a lot of connectivity there. But it – you know, it is – sometimes, this is more of the television media, but there’s – broadcast media, there is free coverage beyond and above what might be considered to be, you know, balanced or fair. Did you want to address this…
Jacob Ware
Yeah, just…
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
…as well?
Jacob Ware
…one quick point. One of the things I love about studying counterterrorism is when a question about politics comes up, I can, kind of, bypass it and say, “It’s not my area.” But what I will say, I’m very concerned about the media on one side’s coverage of the immigration issue, which is going to be the number one issue in the US election cycle this year. I did a study a little while ago comparing the language being used by certain media figures, prominent media figures, on one side of the aisle, with manifestos linked to white supremacist terrorist attacks, particularly the one that occurred in El Paso, Texas, in 2019, which was an anti-immigrant terrorist attack. And they are mimicking the language. So, words like ‘invasion’, words like ‘importing’, words like “one party state, defend, men of Texas,” that are being used by Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk, I think are incredibly dangerous.
In a year where that’s going to be the main issue, and in which we’re portraying this immigrant, you know, ‘invasion’, to use their word, against, you know, really white Americans, I think that creates a very combustible situation and puts a lot of people in, frankly, mortal danger. And that is – you know, we largely talk about, in these contexts, about anti-government violence, like we saw on January 6th, but most far-right violence today comes from white supremacists. And they are still active, and they are being fed this diet of conspiracy theories, that they love and that feeds exactly what they want to hear, and that’s very, very dangerous.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
No, okay, we had a lot of hands. Right over here on the…
Uigar
Hi, Uigar, I’m a Chatham House member. My question is about AI generated content, deep fake, and any other things, how it will inp – influence people and can people will be – can people identify that’s a fake AI generated, or they will just believe whatever they see and they hear? Thanks.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Rachel.
Rachel Leingang
Sure. I’ve been writing a bit about this lately, because, you know, the New Hampshire Primary immediately showcased what AI can do. There was a deep fake call of Joe Biden, directed at democratic voters, telling them to stay home. It sounded just like him. I actually made a quiz recently where I made fake clips myself, just to see how easy it was, compared to real ones, to see, kind of, if people could differentiate, and it’s stunningly easy to create these clips. Audio, in particular, you lose the dimension of video. Where, like, in video, I think the technology’s not quite there yet, you usually have all these context clues that something’s not quite right, but in audio, it’s so crisp. It’s so easy to fake people’s voices, that the potential for trickery there is much higher.
I think the technology, like we mentioned before, the technology here is just far beyond the regulatory capability at this point, the ability of Congress to act quickly. This was certainly a foreseeable problem, yet as of right now, you know, there’s not meaningful regulation on how AI can be used in politics. Even simply labelling when something is AI generated on a political ad goes a long way for how people contextualise it, as a voter. If I’m told something is AI, then I, kind of, take it, you know, with the level of serious that that would require.
People do, and will, fall for these sorts of things. There are plenty of examples around the world at this point. And then, basically, just the sheer number of elections this year means that our attention is very dispersed. I particularly worry about this on the local level in the US, because there are so many fewer Journalists than there used to be. Nationally, things, if – are – if they’re fake usually get, kind of, flagged pretty quickly, but locally, that’s not the same, and I think that’s something that really, people should be concerned about. And then, also, just this – if there’s a lot of fake things injected into elections, you start to think everything could be fake. And when people, you know, get caught doing something that they actually did do, they could easily just say, “It’s fake.” You know, it, kind of – the dynamic of what’s real and what’s fake becomes very muddy for all of us.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Right back here, please.
Andrew Bruce
Andrew Bruce, member of Chatham House. In recent years, there’s been two very serious examples of very bad election violence, in Kenya in 19 – in 2007, and in Nigeria in 2011. And looking back at both of them, it’s quite clear that the risk of violence was not taken seriously enough, and there were concrete things that could have been done by the electoral authorities, by the – by media, by civil society, etc., to have reduced the potential for the violence to have occurred. Now, in this case, it’s quite clear that the risks have been identified, and you’ve identified a number of longer term steps that could be taken. Are there any really concrete shorter term steps that you think could make a difference that organisations such as these could take in the coming months?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
I’m going to take one more alongside that, from the woman right here.
Ling
[Pause] Thank you. I’m Ling, I’m a member of Chatham House, and also a graduate student at the LSE. So, my question is – and I wanted to return to your point about individual rights versus public safety, and I wanted to bring up the topic of gun rights and gun violence. What do you think is the role of gun rights in the protection or in damaging democracy, and whether there will be any change in the future, near or far, or it will stay in the status quo? Thank you.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Great questions. Let me come to you, Bruce.
Bruce Hoffman
Well, I’ll try to answer both briefly, and then Rachel and Jacob can also weigh in. January 6th wasn’t an intelligence failure. I mean, I’m not terribly adept technologically, but I was seeing plenty of traffic on both the dark web and also, openly, that was talking about converging on Washington D.C. January 6th, and actually overthrowing the Government. I mean, none of this should have come as a surprise.
I think the federal authorities then were walking a really, you know, fine tightrope between, you know, obviously, there had been examples where the Trump administration – Elizabeth Neumann, who was a – is a Republican, who has a book actually coming out next book, an excellent book, I had – I saw an early copy of it, had resigned from the Department of Homeland Security, because she said that there was – that there – the threat of far-right violence, and she was, again, a Republican who had come to Washington to work in the Trump administration, was not being taken seriously. So, I doubt that mistake is going to happen again, and I think I can say with complete confidence, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security are extremely concerned about this.
But, as we saw on January 6th, things can very easily spiral out of control, which gets to your question, the reason that they can so easily spiral out of control, more so in the United States as a Northern Hemisphere Western country, is because of the unprecedented number of firearms legally in citizens’ hands. In 2022 alone, 17 million firearms were legally sold. The United States has more legally held firearms than the next 25 countries combined, so this is an enormous problem. It means that the means and methods of engaging in terrorism, insurrection, civil war, whatever you want to call it, is within people’s grasp.
That said, I mean, in framing our policy recommendations in the book, we tried to be as practical as possible. And one of the fulminates of anti-government extremism in the 1990s, as I said, Timothy McVeigh, was what was perceived as an attempt to seize all legally held firearms. I mean, in the United States, not to be too colloquial, you can’t, you know, walk the cat back in that respect. I mean, gun ownership, putting aside both coasts, major metropolitan areas, is in the American psyche. I mean, it’s part of the whole frontier mythology of how the West was tamed, for example. And, also, this idea, harkening back to 1776, or even Concord and Lexington the year before, it’s no accident that Timothy McVeigh carried out that attack on April 19th. It’s this whole idea of a citizens’ militia.
So, one has to be prudent. I mean, what we argue in the book is that the existing laws have to be enforced, because they’re not. I mean, that’s part of the reality, and that’s why people gain access to firearms who shouldn’t have them. Straw purchases should be better monitored. Certain types of ammunition, certain types of weapons, should also be subject to much more stringent regulation.
But, I mean, any notion that the United States could follow the example of Australia, after the terrible tragedy at Tasmania when – some years ago, which had nothing to do with politics, or New Zealand, where Brenton Tarrant, an Australian, killed 51 persons at two mosques, or for that matter even, Dunblane in the 1990s, where – resulted in serious changes in the United Kingdom’s gun regulation, it’s not going to happen in the United States. And it could precisely trigger the kind of violence we want to avoid, so it’s – we have – you have to, in the US context, culturally, historically, politically, you have to walk a very fine line, but you also have to admit that this is a huge problem.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Did you want to add to that?
Jacob Ware
Yeah, I actually think that is a effective answer to the question on elections, too. I’m actually – I’ve done some work on this this year, a lot of work on this this year, at my organisation back in D.C., the Council, trying to think about preventing election violence. And to be honest, I couldn’t really think of anything the Government could do, for the reason Bruce is saying.
So, one example of something that you could institute is a variant of Britain’s Operation Temperer, which allows, in particularly heightened threat environments, allows the military to basically, be mobilised to protect – to serve law enforcement roles, protecting sites, so that Police resources can be freed up. So, you could, for example, have the National Guard protect the US capital, polling places, Politicians, over the next eight months, but that would feed the narrative of “The election is stolen,” and, “The Government is out to get true patriots,” and all of this, and then you just feed that cycle again.
So, the place I came down on is, listen, we have a trust deficit in our country, and the agents – the institutions that you would usually think of to rebuild trust, like – or to build trust, like Government, the media, universities, they are not trusted institutions. So, we have to think who the trusted institutions still are that could bring that kind of message of non-violence. I thought of church, labour unions, professional sports teams, maybe state and local Officials. But I don’t think there’s anything the Federal Government can do to walk this back, because they don’t have legitimacy among the people we’re trying to deter, at all.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Rachel, would you like to add to this?
Rachel Leingang
Yeah, I think those are all great points, and then, also, you know, the presence of law enforcement at polling places deters people from voting, it simply does. So, you really can’t militarise the voting process without having, you know, disastrous effects on people who simply want to cast ballots.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
I mean, somebody said in a session that I was in, I guess it was our session on disinformation and all these questions about what you do with the information space and AI and elections and electoral interference, they said, you know, “The one thing” – you know, “the one” – I mean, I keep looking for bright spots, gentlemen and ladies, and, you know, a couple of bright spots. So, one is that when this election takes place, for several weeks afterwards, barring an unforeseen event, Joe Biden will be President and not Donald Trump, until at least, you know, the transition, were he not to win. And that does mean that the orders that would come from the White House on how to respond to any violence, were it to take place, would be different, right, than what we did or didn’t see on January – so there’s – there are contextual differences.
The other thing if, of course, that it – you know, I – and you talk about this really effectively in the book, both of you, about the pandemic, and the whole narrative that it built up and the pent-up frustration and the mobilisation around the fact that those governments that – those national – those state-level governments that shut down the economy and schools and all the rest of it, were on the wrong side of things. And that just fuelled the whole narrative and fodder for violence, which, that doesn’t exist right now. We’re in a different – we are in a different, sort of, socio – social and economic climate. People have other spaces to expend their energy. I mean, okay, I know – I can see you think I’m grabbing at straws, but it is different, right? Having Biden as President, not Trump, having – you know, Trump has to campaign, as well as mobilise. And it – and, you know, he was – I guess he was doing many things leading up to January 6.
Let me ask you the question and come to you, ‘cause you’ve had a question, but my question, and then we’ll come to you and we’ll take them both at the same time, is, what’s happ – the prosecutions, the trials, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the January 6 insurrectionists who are – who have been charged, does it matter? Has – is this contain – is this doing – is – you know, do trials matter? Does accountability matter? That would be one of my questions.
Please, you’ve had your hand up for a little while. And I will say, we have many good online questions, but they are the same as the questions that have been asked. And then there are a few others, about the TikTok ban, about the, sort of, social media and how, you know, Donald Trump is being credited with bringing inflation down, and not Joe Biden, I think they’re really important questions, but maybe a little bit to the side of the centre of this conversation.
Samuel Gusta
Samuel Gusta, I’m a member of Chatham House. What I heard this evening, for the Land of the Free, makes me feel very pessimistic. It seems to me, whatever happens at the election, whether Biden wins or Trump, America, or United State, is disintegrated into chaos, or will be disintegrated into chaos. That’s what I see. And probably, it seems to me, you know, at this stage might go into civil war, as it did in the past, and probably the United States will be disintegrated into states. What do you think about that?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Okay, so you’ve got the civil war question in the very last minute, and we know that you – Barb Walter, who is well-known to all of us, wrote a book on the pross – possibility of civil war in the United States. You talk about it in your book. I’m going to give each of you a – I’m going to end with you, Bruce, on that question, and I’m going to give each of you your final words now, since we’re right at time. Let’s go, Rachel, and – to answer those, and any final words you might want to say, and then to the – to each of you. Rachel?
Rachel Leingang
I definitely – to your question, yes, I do think accountability matters, but it’s not without backlash, like I’ve mentioned before. And that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen, but it is something to pay attention to, that these accountability measures are not clean. And then, in terms of civil war, I mean, there’s been a weird amount of Reconstruction era laws being invoked recently, which is not – I mean, it’s not something that’s comforting, I wouldn’t say. But I would love to hear from a Historian on whether we devolve into civil war. Certainly, as someone who lives here, I’m hoping not. You know, I got my fingers crossed.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Okay, Jacob?
Jacob Ware
You wanted good news.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
I mean, you know, I’m str…
Jacob Ware
I’ve got some.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
…I’m clutching for straws at the moment.
Jacob Ware
So, civil war is actually the opening framing of our book, because it is, kind of, the defining question in US politics and security. We come down on the side of, no, the US is not heading into civil war, and the biggest reason for that is geographic, right? We don’t have a North/South split. This violence is really divided urban/rural, and so you just don’t have that, kind of – that momentum to really build separatist movements. What would a separatist MAGA movement look like in the United States? It would be all over. That’s why we see that a more likely situation is something like The Troubles in Northern Ireland, where you have widespread, sustained violence, organised against – both organised and disorganised, but against both the Government and civilians.
I don’t know if that’s good news, because obviously, that can be very damaging, but it’s not civil war, and I think that’s important. There’s a lot of scenarios up to civil war that are quite damaging, so even if we avoid that, which sounds amazing, right, even if we do avoid civil war in the United States, there’s a lot of – there’s a – the path to our salvation is paved with blood, anyway.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Gosh. Okay, Bruce?
Bruce Hoffman
Well, I’ll end, I hope, on an optimistic note and say, I mean, the United States has come through many crises before, and it’s often, though, taken some bigger crisis or some tragedy that brings the US to its senses, and then results in some form of national unity. So, I don’t think it’s the disintegration or the end of the United States. You know, the horrible debacle that attended the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 had one bright spot in it, and I think Americans really need to remember this, ‘cause they forget about it, sometimes in their own self-absorption, is, you know, the horrible videos or visuals of Afghans clinging to the wheel wells of US jets trying to get in – get to the United States. I mean, people don’t hang onto the wheels to go to North Korea or to Iran or to Russia or to China. I don’t think they do. They want to live in a free country, and the United States’ ideals still can be reclaimed, I believe. That if January 6th wasn’t an aberration, one has to hope that some of the trends in politics. And there are profound divisions, I mean, the civil war slowly unfolded over 20 years, and there were numerous attempts to avoid it, that just didn’t succeed.
But then, there was one single issue that divided the country. I mean, that’s one of the benefits right now, there isn’t one single issue, there’s a multiplicity of issues. The United States in the 1930s faced an unprecedented time of divisions over foreign policy, especially a very strong isolationist and anti-war movement, strong divisions over what path the economy should take in terms of emerging from the Great Depression. So, I think that it’s within the American character to re-find its way and to rebuild itself.
I mean, on the pessimistic side, I firmly believe it’s going to take some profound crisis or tragedy to do that. But, you know, I think in my own personal case, my grandfather was a lowly Corporal in the Habsburg Army, and suffered terribly from antisemitism in the 1890s and the early 1900s, and he wanted a better life and came to America. And he’s been dead now for 60 years, but I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t have wanted exactly the life that he thinks that his grandson found as a Professor at a leading university in the United States. And that’s part of the American Dream, that still exists for many migrants to the country, but that’s also, I think, one of the big challenges. And if the United States can solve the immigration crisis that is polarising both ends, that would be a great start at rebuilding the country and re-establishing national unity.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
That is a challenge and a good note. We had recently – we’re running a Conservative, Future of a Conservative Foreign Policy series, to try and understand better a lot of the thinking and it’s a diverse range of thinking. And one of our recent speakers was Kori Schake, who I’m sure you know well, who was in London for a few years before she returned to the US. She’s at the American Enterprise Institute, a Republican, never Trumper Republican. And she regaled us with – you know, when people said, you know, “How can America look like this?” And she regaled us with the history of how divided, just – you know, a version of what you just said. All the things that America has come through, it’s not having the discord and the division and sometimes the violence. It’s whether you come through it, and that, I guess, is the open question, and it’s not inevitable where we land.
So, thank you, Rachel, for working on this. Thank you, Rachel, Jacob and Bruce for speaking with us. Thank you for your tremendous questions, and it’s not over until it’s over. So, join me in thanking our speakers [applause].
