ICE, DHS, and other government-run social media channels are continuously, and explicitly, referencing white supremacist dogma, songs, imagery, and phrases. For example, last October, the Homeland Security account on X posted a single word: “remigrate.” Remigration is a white supremacist concept of forcible, mass deportation of non-whites as a tool of ethnic cleansing.
Bill Braniff, the Executive Director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL), joins Jen to explain just how troublesome the adoption of far-right rhetoric from the the United States government is. Braniff notes that the adoption of this language creates a permission structure for Neo-Nazis and extremists to act on their hateful ideology. Will America be able to curb the effects of hateful extremism? That remains to be seen.
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Bill Braniff is the Executive Director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University. Previously, he served as Director of the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START).
The following transcript has been edited for formatting.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. I am delighted to have back Bill Braniff, who is the Executive Director of PERIL. Welcome back, Bill!
Bill Braniff
Thanks for having me back.
Jen Rubin
It is wonderful to see you. We obviously have seen a resurgence of violent extremism in the United States in all its manifestations. But it would be wrong, I think, as you and your colleagues have pointed out, to make this purely an American phenomenon. It is most plainly an international phenomenon. Is that because things in the United States travel around the world thanks to social media, or is that because violent extremism is an international phenomenon that appears in virtually all Western societies?
Bill Braniff
Well, I think the latter is the correct starting place. Terrorism, violent extremism, these are human phenomena. They happen in any society in which one group of people is vilifying another or seeing them as an existential threat, and unfortunately, that is a part of the human condition. However, while this is a human phenomenon. We do see the United States as an exporter of culture, as an exporter of sort of political culture, and in this instance, also as an exporter of violent political culture. We are known as an exporter of white supremacy, specifically, and that is of increasing concern internationally.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. When we politically support other regimes that promote violent extremism, or a white nationalist ideology, for example, the Secretary of State was, praising Orban to the heights. What does that do internally in those other countries? In other words, when the United States adds its stamp of approval, what happens in those other countries? Is that then used in propaganda and outreach? Trace that out a little bit for us.
Bill Braniff
Sure, it can certainly be used for internal political consolidation of power, right? It’s really important when strong foreign powers are underline or underscoring a domestic stance on a given issue. It gives, the administration or the government the sort of, the quote-unquote moral authority to continue doing what it’s doing. So certainly that, that reputational support helps. It also, frankly, creates a permission structure.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Bill Braniff
For more of the same, right? Not just the status quo, but potentially increasing, doubling down on a given set of, policies, that might be exclusionary or white nationalist in nature.
Jen Rubin
And you have written about this and spoken about this a lot, which is, the role of governments, not just private actors, but governments in setting up these permission structures and promoting, this kind of ideology. How does that work on the intersection between government policy and rhetoric from leaders? And the phenomena we see on social media and the spread of these ideologies to young people, for example.
Bill Braniff
Alright, well, let’s just sort of be real clear, we’re talking, in essence, about terrorism or political violence, right? That’s a shorthand for terrorism. If we’re talking about political violence, it’s of course impossible to extract that or to analyze that in absence of understanding the political backdrop in which it’s occurring, right? So, of course, politics matters in the sense that it can help shape political violence in a country. Politics shapes culture. It is how we organize society, what are the norms that we’re going to be advancing rhetorically, and what are the norms we’re going to be codifying in law or policy?
And so politics is inextricably tied to political violence, and so in the United States, we’re seeing an increase in political violence, a 40% increase from the last year of the Biden administration to the first year of the Trump administration, a 150% increase in fatalities from terrorism, and a 700% increase in injuries from terrorism. Why? Why are we seeing these significant increases? On the one hand, the government controls resources, and in this case has removed resources from terrorism prevention. and from counter… traditional counterterrorism offices, and place those same resources, to deal with immigration and border security issues. And so there’s been a deprioritization, pragmatically speaking. But there’s been a real ramping up of anti-immigrant sentiment and white supremacist sentiment rhetorically from the administration.
Jen Rubin
And some of that violence is now carried out by government actors themselves. That’s what we have witnessed. How does that figure in your analysis, when the violence comes from the authorities, not from rogue actors, what kinds of Questions, and what kinds of challenges does that pose?
Bill Braniff
Sure. So, when a government uses extrajudicial violence to chill dissent, to punish dissent, to target, specific communities, by definition, those are acts of state terrorism. And so, unfortunately, we’re seeing, moments where this administration is meeting the definition of state terrorism as commonly understood. I think it’s really important to, sort of explain this from rhetoric to behavior.
If you look at social media channels from the Department of Labor, the Department of Homeland Security, and from ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, we are seeing explicit and repeated white supremacist content being pushed out through official government communications channels. And this isn’t sensational or hand-wringing. These are explicit references to white supremacist songs, sung by violent extremist organizations like the Proud Boys, many of whom were pardoned despite their being convicted by a jury of their American peers. for events on 6th January. These are explicit references to neo-Nazi books, like Which Way Western Man? That’s not a phrase that just rolls off the tongue, that’s a book title written by a member of the neo-Nazi movement in the United States.
We’re seeing the use of the term remigration, which is a white nationalist call to forcibly remove immigrants, or individuals who aren’t of white European descent, in mass numbers, so mass deportation campaigns. We’re seeing actual, references to Nazi, slogans, and quotes. And all of this combined, right, is not an accident, and so we’re seeing explicit calls for white supremacists, white nationalist, ideas. Referencing conspiracies like the Great Replacement Theory or White Genocide, suggesting that there’s an existential threat to white Americans. Then we’re seeing political leaders say that ICE can operate with absolute immunity as they enforce, you know, immigration policy.
In violent extremism, what happens when the in-group, in this case white Americans, are saying that the out-group, in this case immigrants, are an existential threat. if part of the in-group, part of white America, rejects that. They’re referred to as the dissenting in-group. And the dissenting in-group is a problem, because they’re undermining the narrative. And what we’re seeing in places like Minneapolis are white Americans, among others, protesting anti-immigration efforts by ICE, and being the victim of Homicide, or murder, being killed, on the streets, for dissenting, for being the dissenting in-group that’s undermining this broader white supremacist narrative. And so the rhetoric is tied to the permission structure, you know, absolute immunity tied to behaviors, and then we’re seeing lack of accountability with the state of Minnesota being unable to access some of the evidence held at the federal level from these incidents.
Jen Rubin
It’s fascinating. And what the in-group does is it then tries to portray the victims of its violence as terrorists themselves. It’s probably not incidental that they use the term terrorists to refer to the white victims of their violence. And we see that very vividly. I’m curious, when other governments, have moved in this direction. what’s been the response of civil society? How have, whether they’re, part of the in-group or not part of the in-group, how have other countries responded when this has happened to their government, as it were?
Bill Braniff
Well, it’s obviously a mixed bag. In some cases, there’s not a broad enough pushback against creeping autocracy, and we see democracies move from, you know, real democracies to competitive autocracies in which There’s the trappings of democracy, it looks like democracy, but the actual freedoms and institutions aren’t holding, and that is the direction of travel in the United States. But in some cases, there’s a broad enough pushback across society, and really, I think broad is the key word there, right? It’s not enough if there’s small corners of a population that are pushing back, but it really has to have a significant enough gravity and breadth that these, these, these efforts to undermine institutions of democracy, like the free press, like the election integrity, like civil service. If there’s enough pushback across the board, then these slides can be reversed, and democratic institutions can hold. And so it really remains to be seen, how we will do during this test.
Jen Rubin
One of the things you do so brilliantly is help kind of decode what the language and what the imagery is. We have seen these phrases from the Department of Homeland Security talk about one culture, or one America, and they have these bright, shiny images. What is that all about?
Bill Braniff
It’s such an important question. Maybe let me answer it in a slightly, surprising way, and talk a little bit about, Al-Qaeda, and Muslim extremism. This is something that we kind of got our heads around eventually. Right? Organizations like Al-Qaeda, terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda, have argued that there’s only one correct version of Islam. There’s only one way to worship Islam, worship God, there’s only one way to practice Islam, and that every other way is not just incorrect, but sinful and un-Islamic. And by having this idea of, it’s called Tawhid, that there’s only one proper way, it gives them permission to then attack all of these other Muslims for not being Muslim enough.
There’s something about, having only one right way to be an American. that creates a permission structure for attacks against anyone who doesn’t fit that singular mold. And of course, that is the antithesis of a free and open country. It’s the antithesis of freedom of speech and association, freedom of religion. It’s the antithesis Of diversity in an immigrant nation. And so the idea that there’s only one identity that is sufficiently American is very concerning in that it creates permission structures to basically violently excommunicate people who don’t fit that mold. And unfortunately, this has been codified in National Security Presidential Memo 7, that uses very subjective terms, to call anyone who engages in things like anti-traditional American values as a domestic terrorist, right? that singular identity, singular version of what America is allows you to then criminalize non-traditional American beliefs, whatever that might be.
Jen Rubin
When you’re confronted with this onslaught from a government, how do you organize civil society? How do you create those networks to push back? And how successful can we be in explaining what you just did? In other words, decoding the message they’re getting so that the population is, if not insulated, at least armed with a response, rather than have this stuff wash over them.
Bill Braniff
It’s very easy to fall into sort of an apathy here. It feels like, you know, this is too big of an issue, and what I would encourage people to do is pick one area of our democracy that they have the ability to positively affect, one institution of our democracy to support, and really lean in there. And if everyone leans into different institutions of our democracy, we can… we can bolster those, and I think that’s really important. So, I’m a former national security executive. I led a department, or an office at the Department of Homeland Security, and I’m one of about 400 former national security professionals who’ve joined a group called the Steady State. This is a nonpartisan group, or it involves individuals of both major political affiliations in the United States, who are trying to reinforce the integrity of our national security apparatus. They just published a second iteration of an assessment. Former intelligence officers assessed the U.S. against the same report card that they used to assess foreign countries and their slides to autocracy, and have found that, you know, the dashboard is blinking red here in the United States using those same standards, and then publishing that so others can sort of decode this slide to autocracy, or understand it.
I’ve engaged heavily with, you know, as many excellent journalistic organizations as I can. It’s really important that we incentivize people to get their news from organizations that practice good journalistic standards. Our information environment is poisonous right now, it’s toxic, and good journalistic standards is a way to help clear the air. And so, you know, find those institutions that you can support, serve as a poll worker for the midterms to help make sure we have free and fair elections, in which individuals have access to their polling place. These are all tractable things that individuals can do, and it’s really important that we have a broad strategy.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. If you would just reflect on a personal level, since you did work at the Department of Homeland Security and worked on some of these very issues, in terms of civil rights and preserving, democratic values, what How do you react to what’s going on now when you see this, and you see kind of your life’s work, frankly, turned on its head?
Bill Braniff
It’s incredibly demoralizing. to be very honest, public service is kind of a faith for me, right? I believe in public service, I believe in civic service. Not to say that I believe that our institutions are perfect. Like, you know, in contrast, our institutions are fallible, and they always have been, but they’ve also included formal mechanisms to identify shortcomings, create accountability mechanisms and get better over time.
And I just love that pursuit of progress, of getting better over time, of better serving all Americans. And, you know, that has been a kind of faith for me. And so to see public service vilified. To see the institutions of public service hollowed out of its civil servants, purged of its professionals. And then, you know, in the case of my office, actually dismantled entirely, and all the people, all my friends that I’ve… that I’ve shared this passion project with, you know, be terminated and now, you know, struggling to make ends meet and find new employment. I mean, it’s… it’s been quite difficult this year to see all of those levels of harm.
Jen Rubin
Yes, absolutely. Let me, in our last minutes, fast forward to the, end of the Trump regime, and there will be an end. It will come to an end. How do com… how do countries recover from this? In other words, we have seen societies that have gone through terrible periods of tyranny, bigotry, extremism, whether it was South Africa, communist regimes, World War II in Germany. How do you put it back together? What’s the process of, kind of, learning from these lessons, rebuilding institutions, and rebuilding a civil society that is more resilient going forward?
Bill Braniff
I think there’s a few ingredients that we’ve seen in other places, all of which will be very difficult for us to bring to bear here in the United States. There’s often a demilitarization of those countries and governments, a real focus on civil governance. Sort of a reduction in the, The bureaucracies of, you know, military or law enforcement, or interior police, these kinds of things. so that the government can win back trust of its own population. There’s also typically been public education around the mistakes that the government has made. And then thirdly, sometimes, you know, laws passed to criminalize the kinds of behaviors that led that country down that pathway.
We have the largest military budget in the world, and a role as the, you know, the world’s policeman. It would be very hard for us to, I think, defang our military and law enforcement bureaucracies. We don’t have a great history of Public education in terms of learning from the mistakes, in our, in our history, around issues like slavery, for example. And, we, you know, enshrine freedom of speech and freedom of association as a sacred value, and so the idea of criminalizing some of the speech, like we’ve seen in post-Nazi Germany, happen is, you know, not in the cards here. So I think we will have a very difficult time, doing this, and so really what that means, Jen, is that We have to stop it from getting that bad in the first place. We have to prevent this slide, and the best way to do that is using your voice, using your freedoms. Now, it’s much less costly to push back today than it will be tomorrow or next week.
Jen Rubin
Bill, it’s been a fascinating conversation, as are they always with you and with peril. If people want to get more information about Peril, or ways in which they can kind of get into the fight for pluralism, democracy, where should they go?
Bill Braniff
So, our violence prevention and harm prevention work is available at perilresearch.com, that’s one word, perilresearch.com. But there are lots of other great organizations, really working in the, in the pro-democracy space. I would encourage, viewers to look at Bedrock. Bedrock.us is a hub for 66 organizations across the United States that are working to preserve American democracy, push back against hate and extremism, support civil rights and civil, liberties. And so it’s a great constellation of 66 organizations who are all very much in the good fight, and, supporting those organizations is a great way to support our democracy.
Jen Rubin
Thanks so much, Bill. Always a pleasure, and we will look forward to speaking to you soon. Take care.
Bill Braniff
Thank you, Jen.
