Counter-Terrorism Tactics Can’t Defeat the Insurgent Right

Law Enforcement and the military are not equipped for battle in an ideological war

Ken Klippenstein, my former colleague at The Nation, has a disturbing report at The Intercept on an American Navy counterterrorism training document (evidently an outgrowth of an earlier document from 2010) which “appears to conflate socialists with terrorists and lists the left-wing ideology alongside ‘neo-nazis.’” Klippenstein quotes an unnamed military official as saying, “It’s just ineffective training because whoever is directing the Navy anti-terror curriculum would rather vilify the left than actually protect anything. Despite the fact that the most prominent threat is domestic, right-wing terror.”

This report highlights a major problem with the counter-terrorism approach that the Biden administration has taken to right-wing political violence. The major institutions carrying out counter-terrorism are law enforcement and the military, neither of which have the will nor the intellectual tool-kit necessary to fight an ideological war against the right-wing groups responsible for the January 6 attack. 

Historically, institutions like the FBI and the military are staffed by conservative leaning leaders, and have been quick to use the mandate of fighting subversion to target the left, such as, for one example, throughout the Cold War. The history of the FBI and military intelligence spying on Civil Rights and anti-war activists is long. More recently, under the aegis of the Global War on Terror, the FBI has repeatedly targeted and entrapped innocent Muslim-Americans.

A counter-terrorism approach to right-wing political violence is bound to fail, not least because it empowers the institutions that can’t be trusted to wage that fight. 

Equally important is the fact that this is an ideological battle that requires fighting out in the open – not with wire-taps, informants, and agent provocateurs. 

The shocking thing about January 6 was that the insurgents didn’t plot or act covertly. They were unabashedly obvious about their plans and intent. Donald Trump called on his supporters to stop the certification of his successor. Those supporters organized in public forums on social media, they gathered in public, they listened to speeches from Trump and others, and then they stormed the Capitol. Subsequently, Trump and his allies have tried to praise these insurrectionists or minimize their wrong-doing.

This is not a hidden conspiracy. It’s a political movement that is out in the open. As such, it needs to be fought primarily with political tactics. Democrats and those Republicans who oppose the insurrectionists need to organize together to safeguard Americans against right-wing violence (and to bring any law breakers to justice). That means Democrats and those Republicans who oppose the insurrectionists need to keep organizing politically. To the extent the GOP continues to become Trumpified, this has to political issue that is taken to the voters.

Ideological threats that emerge from within the system of government cannot be neutralized through law enforcement. Law enforcement is, at best, a secondary tool for monitoring the more violent fringes of politics. But obviously an insurgent movement that includes a former president and many members of his party is something much larger than a policing matter. Making counter-terrorism your main framework for dealing with this problem won’t work and will in fact cause immense collateral damage. 

(Edited by Emily M. Keeler)

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