Knowing he had the attention of the national security state, one Democratic lawmaker on Wednesday urged government officials to reconsider their unique focus on Islamist extremism.
“If you look at who the bad people are in this country right now, they’re not Muslims, they’re not people who identify with Islamic faith,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said during a subcommittee hearing featuring witnesses from the Department of Homeland Security.
“They’re these rightwing fanatics who go to churches, who go to other institutions and do harm to people,” he added, referring to the killings in Charleston, S.C. last month. On June 18, a white man murdered nine members of a prominent historically African American church, including South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney, in hopes of triggering a race war.
“Talk to law enforcement,” Rep. Thompson said, “law enforcement will tell you they are more concerned with the growth of rightwing radicals in his country.”
The remarks were off-topic from the hearing’s purpose, which was to critically examine how DHS is researching climate change, but Thompson claimed that “the department has not adequately afforded members of the committee with the opportunity to hear what it is doing on countering violent extremism.”
He also charged that requests to DHS to publicly testify on the issue were rebuffed by department officials, who have instead opted for classified briefings.
“Unfortunately, to date, this committee has not received testimony in an open setting from the department on what it is doing in that space,” the lawmaker said.
A DHS report published in February detailed the threat of rightwing terrorism, and highlighted the anti-government sovereign citizens movement’s violence toward police officers. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are as many as 300,000 people involved in the movement.
A similar DHS warning issued in 2009, focused on the threat of military veterans joining right-wing militias. That report, however, was withdrawn following accusations that the department was inappropriately targeting former service members.
One of the most vocal critics to DHS’s 2009 warning was Rep. Thompson himself, who was then the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
“This report appears to raise significant issues involving the privacy and civil liberties of many Americans — including war veterans,” he wrote in a letter to former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
