It is no secret that far-right, white supremacist, neo-Nazi groups have been active on the internet, spreading propaganda, recruiting new members, and organizing people to take street actions (such as disrupting Black Lives Matter and other demonstrations) in order to spread their message. Many of these groups operate in secret. Their goal seems to be to provoke enough confrontations with their perceived opponents and the government so as to trigger a civil war. They seem to believe that if the conditions are right, a huge mass of like-minded gun-owning people will rise up to take back ‘their country’ from the usurpers who are threatening to take it away from the white Christians they see as the rightful owners. Given the massive size and strength of the US military, the idea of provoking an armed confrontation with the aim of taking over the government seems delusional but they may think that there are people in the military who will defect to their side.
Police forces, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI are aware of these efforts but are limited in how they can respond. This is because the FBI in particular has had an ugly history of infiltrating and illegally disrupting groups that were legitimately organizing for civil rights, gay rights, anti-war, and other left-wing causes. Republicans in Congress have repeatedly made the charge that there is a ‘Deep State’ that is targeting conservative groups and this has made law enforcement wary of doing anything that might give credence to that view. As a result, they now walk a fine line to show that they are are not surveilling groups based purely on their ideology but because thy pose an imminent threat of violence.
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