Transcript
ARCHIVAL (10-21-21):
PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN: Domestic terrorism from white supremacists is the most lethal terrorist threat in the homeland.
MARK POTOK (SENIOR FELLOW, CENTRE FOR ANALYSIS OF THE RADICAL RIGHT): Why is the radical right growing? Why are these ideas resurging in such a dramatic way?
ARCHIVAL (CHARLOTTESVILLE MARCH, 2017):
DEMONSTRATORS: You will not replace us!
PETE SIMI (ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY; AUTHOR, “AMERICAN SWASTIKA”): We’ve been unwilling to really grapple with our history. We have to understand where this problem has been in the past and what’s kept us from addressing it.
ARCHIVAL (1-20-09):
PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: The time has come.
MARK POTOK: When Obama appeared on the scene, there was a massive freakout on the radical right.
BRIAN MURPHY (FORMER COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL): Domestic extremism touches on the nerves of the polarization in our country. It is used to score political points.
TEXT ON SCREEN:
EXTREMISM IN AMERICA
RESURGENCE
ARCHIVAL (11-4-08):
PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: At this defining moment, change has come to America.
BISHOP BRYANT ROBINSON, JR. (MACEDONIA CHURCH OF GOD IN CHRIST): I never dreamed that I would see a person of color as the president of our nation. I never dreamed it.
ARCHIVAL (11-4-08):
PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: To put their hands on the arc of history..
ANDREW ROBINSON (MACEDONIA CHURCH OF GOD IN CHRIST): I was up following the results.
ARCHIVAL (11-4-08):
PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA:…and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
ANDREW ROBINSON: I got up and I looked out the window, and the church was ablaze.
TEXT ON SCREEN:
SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
NOVEMBER 4, 2008
BRYANT ROBINSON: My phone rang. And the words I heard was, “They are burning our church to the ground.” And what was left was rubble, charred ruins and, well, who did this?
ARCHIVAL (2008):
NEWS REPORT: Three men set a massive fire that destroyed the Macedonia Church of God in Christ.
ARCHIVAL (2008):
NEWS REPORT: Prosecutors say it was a racially motivated crime, an expression of anger that an African American was elected president.
BRYANT ROBINSON: It’s devastating. To have them to declare, we did it because it was Barack Obama was elected president, just reinforced for me the hold that racism and hatred has on this country.
NARRATION: In the years before Barack Obama’s election, many groups on the extreme right had kept a low profile. But that was about to change.
MARK POTOK: People on the extreme right understood that the percentage of white people in America was dropping every year. So when Obama appeared on the scene, there was a massive freakout on the radical right.
PETE SIMI: On election night, the largest white supremacist web forum shut down. The server crashed because they were getting so much traffic.
ARCHIVAL (2008):
NEWS REPORT: Hate crimes are on the rise. Burning crosses and Black effigies hanging from nooses have been found.
ARCHIVAL (CBS, 8-12-09):
NEWS REPORT: Fifty new militia training groups have sprung up in less than two years. Recent attacks carried out by lone wolf actors motivated by radical ideology.
DARYL JOHNSON (FORMER SENIOR ANALYST, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY): We started seeing white supremacist groups holding rallies. And in these rallies the number of participants continued to grow.
NARRATION: Daryl Johnson was part of a small team at the Department of Homeland Security that tracked domestic extremism. In early 2009, while the government was focused on the threat from overseas, he wrote a report warning that the threat at home was re-emerging.
DARYL JOHNSON: The report was a warning that you better start preparing yourselves for this shift in the threat landscape from Al-Qaeda to more homegrown violent extremism.
ARCHIVAL:
MAN: The government is our first enemy.
NARRATION: The report warned conditions in the country appeared similar to the 1990s, when a weak economy, illegal immigration and a crackdown on gun ownership helped spark a rise in extremism.
ARCHIVAL (ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4-19-08):
MAN: Nobody in America wants the illegals here. Nobody. Except for these corrupt politicians in that building back there.
NARRATION: The report was quickly leaked and Johnson found himself at the center of a political firestorm.
ARCHIVAL (4-15-09):
NEWS REPORT: Outrage tonight over an intelligence report.
ARCHIVAL (4-15-09):
NEWS REPORT: Prompted all sorts of comments and criticism online.
ARCHIVAL:
MAN: It really smeared large groups of people.
ARCHIVAL:
MAN: I would like him to be fired from the Department of Homeland Security.
DARYL JOHNSON: When I got back in the office, utter chaos had erupted. The primary accusations were the term “right wing’’ equated to conservatives. They thought it was unfairly demonizing Republicans, that we were going to be spying on all conservatives.
ARCHIVAL (4-16-09):
RUSH LIMBAUGH: This is nothing but a partisan hit job filled with lies and innuendo that portrays any conservatism as right-wing extremism.
NARRATION: The section that prompted the most outrage was a warning that extremists would try to recruit military veterans.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 4-22-09):
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN CARTER (R-TX): They served their nation, and they have left their military service, and they’ve been good citizens of this congressional district, and yet they’re lumped in with Timothy McVeigh.
ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 4-22-09):
REPRESENTATIVE MICHELE BACHMANN (R-MN): Is this America? Is this what we’re used to? We are normal God-fearing people who love this country. And now we’re the threat?
THOMAS O’CONNOR (FORMER SPECIAL AGENT, F.B.I.): Politically you can’t say that the military is being recruited by extremist groups. People working domestic extremism, we all knew that that report was accurate.
ARCHIVAL (CNN):
JANET NAPOLITANO (SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY, 2009-2013): This is very consistent with other reports issued before Obama was president. They’re being issued now.
THOMAS O’CONNOR: The recruitment of active and retired military was a goal for groups such as the National Alliance in the ’80s and ’90s and 2000s. It always has been.
NARRATION: Under pressure, the Obama administration apologized to veterans…
ARCHIVAL (5-12-09):
JANET NAPOLITANO: I’ve apologized for that report. It was not authorized to be distributed.
NARRATION: … withdrew the report and restructured Johnson’s unit.
DARYL JOHNSON: We got rid of the domestic terrorism focus and they reassigned those in my former unit to look at Al-Qaeda and critical infrastructure threats.
NARRATION: The Department of Homeland Security, which was also facing accusations of downplaying the threat from Islamic extremism, has defended its handling of the report, calling it thinly sourced and overly broad. And both Homeland Security and the F.B.I. say they did continue to gather intelligence on domestic terrorism. But 13 years later, the report has been called an example of how politics undercut the fight against extremism.
PETE SIMI: It quashes this window of an opportunity we have to recognize this problem because it sends the message that this is an issue that we can’t really have a discussion about.
THOMAS O’CONNOR: The mere fact that the report got pulled back really said, is the government completely behind this effort to, to fight domestic terrorism?
MARK POTOK: There was a great reluctance among many officials to say what was obvious, which was, the radical right was growing, and it was becoming more lethal, more dangerous by the day.
(END)
Extremism in America: Missed Warnings
In the years before Barack Obama was elected, many groups on the extreme right kept a relatively low profile. With the election of a Black president, that changed. This is the third episode of a five-part series produced in collaboration with The WNET Group’s reporting initiative Exploring Hate.
This installment of our series examining the rise of white supremacy and domestic terrorism in the United States looks at the white supremacist movement’s reaction to the election of a Black president and explores how a focus on terrorist threats from abroad allowed a homegrown threat to fester.
The night Barack Obama won his first presidential election, the Macedonia Church of God in Christ, a Black church in Springfield, Mass., was burned, exposing the nation’s deep racial divisions.
Bishop Bryant Robinson Jr., the church’s pastor, had been sound asleep. “My phone rang,” he told Retro Report. “And the words I heard was – They are burning our church to the ground. What was left was charred ruins. And, well, who did this?”
In the years before Obama’s election, groups on the extreme right had kept a low profile. Many Americans saw the outcome as a sign that racial tensions might be easing. But Obama’s victory became a rallying point for extremists.
“People on the extreme right understood that the percentage of white people in America was dropping every year,” Mark Potok, a leading expert on extremism, told us. “So when Obama appeared on the scene, there was a massive freakout on the radical right.”
But when counterterrorism officials tried to warn that white nationalists posed a threat to public safety, they were often ignored. In 2009, while the government was focused on the threat from overseas, Daryl Johnson, part of a small team at the Department of Homeland Security that tracked domestic extremism, wrote a report warning that the threat at home was re-emerging. The report was leaked, and Johnson found himself at the center of a political firestorm.
This is the third episode of a five-part series produced in collaboration with The WNET Group’s reporting initiative Exploring Hate, on the roots and rise of hate in America and across the globe. Leadership support for Exploring Hate is provided by the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Antisemitism. To learn more about Exploring Hate and for a full list of funders, visitpbs.org/exploringhate.
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Transcript in Spanish.
- Series Senior Producer and Writer: Scott Michels
- Series Supervising Editor: Brian Kamerzel
- Editor: Heru Muharrar
- Editor: Anne Checler
