How Governments are Responding to the Security Threat Posed by Alt-Right Terrorism
By Emily Wilson
This article was written in collaboration with The Observer. The Observer is the magazine of the Queen’s International Affairs Association. As part of this collaboration, you can read how far right extremism spreads here at The Observer!
As the threat of alt-right extremism and terrorism has grown over the past few years, government and security organizations have had to engage with a danger that appears to grow from thin air. In reality, these attacks don’t ‘come out of nowhere,’ and are actually the result of weeks or months of discrete online planning. The ease with which members of extremist movements can hold discussions and drum up support in online spaces poses an acute challenge to protecting national and international security.
The 2019 Christchurch attack is often cited as the pivotal moment that changed how organizations approach alt-right extremism. Dr. Amarnath Amarasingam, professor at the School of Religion at Queen’s University, echoed this in an interview for The Observer. He mentioned that Charlottesville, while important in getting governments talking about policy and security, never really took off past the initial shock. He placed emphasis on Christchurch instead: “Where it actually turned was the New Zealand shooting. From then on, it has been more openly talked about: there’s funding streams, research projects, policy debates, workshops being had.”
Dr. Amarasingam noted that the United Nations and the Five Eyes Network are also getting involved in discussions and in tracking the terror threat transnationally. A New York Times article found that “at least a third of white extremist killers since 2011 were inspired by others who perpetrated similar attacks,” spanning from Norway, to Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, the US, and more. Dr. Amarasingam noted that, “With the Trump campaign it really kind of ramped up. Not necessarily in numbers [of organizations] but more so in how emboldened they were, how open they were in talking about racist principles.” The borderless nature of the internet has fostered this threat into the international security risk that governments and transnational organizations must deal with today. Dr. Amarasingam noted that he thinks many governments are “waking up to the fact that this is actually a real threat, and these guys aren’t just talking in fringe forums online, they’re actually mobilizing and planning attacks.”
In fact, the 2018 Public Report on the Terrorism Threat to Canada includes mention of right-wing extremism in its first section on the current threat environment. It describes the way in which the alt-right uses online chat forums and networks to foster fear and hatred, and makes examples of the 2014 shooting of RCMP officers by Justin Bourque and the 2017 shooting of Muslim worshippers by Alexandre Bissonette. The Government of Canada has also established funding to strengthen understanding of alt-right extremism as well as to conduct a study in the hopes of combatting online hate speech and radicalization.
Elsewhere in the world, national and transnational governments like the European Union are also paying close attention to this evolving danger. Dr. Amarasingam identified Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, as someone who is leading the international response to alt-right terrorism. In May 2019, she held the Christchurch Call to Action Summit, calling for governments and tech sector leaders to commit to “eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.” A joint-approach is clearly the necessary route for combatting alt-right terrorism, but it will be a long and difficult process of cooperation.
Dr. Amarasingam has found that governments have had a harder time listing these organizations as terrorist entities because the threshold for the evidence they need to gather before taking action is much higher in comparison to the relative ease social media companies have in kicking alt-right extremists off their platforms. There needs to be active evidence of terrorist plotting, terrorist attacks, engagement in some kind of activity. He continued, noting the lone actor problem: “Even if every white supremacist organization in the world was a listed terrorist entity, the Christchurch shooter wasn’t on a list, Charlottesville guy wasn’t on a list.” Both Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch shooter, and James Alex Fields Jr., the man who drove his car into counter-protestors at Charlottesville, may have been inspired by the rhetoric and actions of these groups, but were not themselves members.
Another difficulty Dr. Amarasingam noted was that of combatting and calling-out racism, misogyny, and alt-right thought when it comes from the top-down. It’s one thing to call-out sub-movements and organizations under the alt-right umbrella like the Proud Boys or Blood & Honour (a hate group currently included on Canada’s list of terrorist organizations); it’s a whole other feat when it’s coming from people in positions of power, like Donald Trump. “There’s always a supply, and we just have to keep an eye on the demand,” He said of alt-right, hateful rhetoric.
It is clear that combatting this security issue will take a lot more than just domestic governments and the technology sector’s cooperation. Intelligence sharing networks like the Five Eyes, and transnational organizations like the UN will become increasingly important in gathering information and tracking data on alt-right extremism and terrorism, but so will grassroots organizing in combatting the growth of the movement. Deplatforming of alt-right icons is already an important tactic in reigning in the echo-chambers that hate and fear are bred in. For governments and transnational organizations, it will be a long and continuous process of learning and adapting to the threat, but engaging now and with dedication is integral to international security in the long run.
Emily is a third year Political Studies major and Film and Media Studies minor at Queen’s University. She has a passion for exploring the intersections between her fields of study and convincing her family and friends that the two aren’t as disparate as they seem. This year, she is a member of The Observer’s 2019–2020 team.
