White nationalist terrorism is the gravest security threat facing America and Americans today. It also afflicts Europe, Oceania and the world at large. It is a global movement that relies mostly on the internet to radicalize young white men to believe they are engaging in an apocalyptic war against some racial or religious “invasion” whose goal is either “race mixing” or outright subjugation. It fuels and draws inspiration from recent “nationalist” movements everywhere that provide rhetorical cover. It is stochastic in application, occurring “randomly” without direct orders but through repeated and intentional rhetorical inspiration for “lone wolves” to carry out. In many ways, it is very similar to radical Islamist jihadist terrorism – especially ISIS – which used the internet to spur random people to “self-radicalize” and carry out acts of mass murder against a “modern” world threatening the “purity” of “Islamic” civilization.

Avoid the temptation to reduce white nationalist terrorism to one singular cause or element. There are multiple factors at work in each case – availability of guns, untreated mental illness, online messaging boards that openly egg people on, copycat manifestos/methods that provide performative templates for terrorists, social media atomization, cultural ignorance, vulnerable “soft targets”, and atrociously irresponsible political leadership that lends rhetorical legitimacy to white nationalist terrorism by using genocidal words like “invaders” and “infestation.” Underneath all of this is a deeper history of racist maldistribution of resources. When that racist structure is threatened, white nationalist terrorism usually rises to the surface. There is never “one” cause behind each incident.

But just because there are multiple causative factors doesn’t mean we are powerless to fight this scourge. In fact, we need an “all of the above” approach: sensible gun laws, proper funding for mental health treatment, law enforcement infiltration of known terrorist messaging boards like 4chan/pol and 8chan, avoiding turning terror videos and manifestos into a kind of violence pornography, better off-line social activities for at-risk youth, better education about the history of racism, better security at public places.

Above all, we need political leadership that treats white nationalism as a cancerous menace to be confronted and destroyed.
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