White supremacy: The real ‘homegrown’ terrorism

White supremacy: The real ‘homegrown’ terrorism August 8, 2012

The most dangerous enemy is the one who most resembles you. That is why the danger of white supremacy is so underestimated as a severe domestic terror threat. White supremacy is the true “homegrown” terrorism, dating back to the 18th century in the United States.

White supremacy is the greatest danger we as Americans face as a source of domestic terrorism, and one of the least recognized. It is difficult for law enforcement, as well as ordinary white Americans, to recognize the extraordinary threat coming from those who look like them in terms of race. That makes them all the more dangerous. The Southern Poverty Law Center had tracked the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting suspect Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old Army veteran with links to a white supremacist movement.

Indeed, not only was the SPLC the first to identify the shooter, according to an email from Morris Dees, sent to me and I presume others who support this reputable hate-watch group, but it had been doing pro-bono work on the dangers of white supremacy for law enforcement. The email stated, “Just two months ago, we [the Southern Poverty Law Center] distributed a special training video about the danger posed by racist skinheads like Page to tens of thousands of law enforcement officers – free of charge. This morning, [the morning after the Sikh Temple massacre] a number of law enforcement agencies told us that they would be urging their officers to watch it as soon as possible.”

Too little, too late? Not really. This is a kind of threat that has existed since New Testament times, and probably even earlier in human history, the threat of the one who looks like me is the most dangerous threat of all.

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