Extreme Home Makeover

Government announces plan to curb violent extremism within the United States.

The Obama administration has released an eight-page dossier outlining its efforts to engage local community groups to help prevent the recruitment of young, impressionable or disenfranchised Americans into violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida, neo-Nazi organizations or other dangerous factions. The plan is in response to the changing nature of terrorist attacks in post-9/11 America and is the result of more than a year of research and consultations with anti-terrorism officials.

The premise of the new strategy is that those who seek to murder innocent American citizens are no longer exclusively foreign nationals who enter the country undetected to carry out their crimes. Instead, terrorist leaders are working with sympathetic elements already in the United States to recruit and train vulnerable Americans to carry out the heinous acts on their behalf. In his introduction to the plan outline, President Obama specifically cited the shootings at Ft. Hood in 2009 as an example of an American citizen, himself an Army officer, committing terrorist acts after being radicalized by anti-American propaganda.

The president is quick to point out, however, that Islamic religious extremism is far from the only concern or the only target of the new anti-terrorism strategy. The paper explains radicalization can come from any religious group who turns away from the peaceful tenets of its faith, and political and social angst can be a precursor to violence as well when taken to an extreme. The recent shootings and bombing in Oslo, Norway, is an example of domestic terrorism unrelated to religion.

To combat at-home extremism of all types, the president intends to take a three-pronged approach to community outreach:

•Work with local community groups to quell gang activity, criminal
  behavior that can quickly lead to anti-American extremism.

•The federal government will partner with local law enforcement to
  help build trust among different cultural groups in the community
  and train officers to distinguish between innocent cultural behavior
  and possible criminal activity.

•Schools will be involved in the campaign to create safe havens free
  of extremist rhetoric and give those facing recruitment a place to
  escape the temptation.

While the Department of Justice and the FBI will be central players in these efforts, other federal agencies like the Department of Education, the Labor Department and the Department of Energy will be engaged as well to make the strategy as distributed and locally focused as possible.

Studies of terrorist behavior since 9/11 have demonstrated the process of recruitment and radicalization tends to be eerily similar regardless of the particular ideology involved. From Islamic extremists to white supremacists, the emotional and psychological forces at work are often the same, and the president’s plan hopes to address those radicalizing factors at the earliest possible stages before they can evolve into violent action.

Source: White House report: “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States”