The major terrorism threat in the US currently is the one emanating from the political divide, abundant weaponry, and radicalization. Moreover, other aspects have merged with the strength of online platforms and social networks to create an intricate and distinct terrorism threat that surpasses existing ideologies and is highly detached from convention depiction of terrorist organizations. Rose and Soufan (2020) affirm that white supremacists are uniting in a comparable way with jihadist terror groups, such as Al Qaeda. Such formations extend beyond national boundaries with enrolment and propagation of misinformation. In a similar manner as jihadists contributed to the warfare in Afghanistan and Syria, the white supremacists are employing conflicts in Ukraine as breeding and training bases. Nonetheless, irrespective of the great resemblances, American law has not exhaustively addressed the rising threat. Global white supremacist organizations do not pose as foreign radical groups, which signifies that law enforcers and intelligence units cannot obtain sufficient information and tools to counter such networks.
White supremacist radicals have become the most lethal domestic terrorist threat to the US. The main point of the article by Rose and Soufan (2020) is that most groups appearing as local terrorism organizations are certainly not domestic. White supremacists carry out more deadly attacks in the United States than other local extremist groups, which shows a longstanding aim of targeting religious and ethnic minorities, people affiliated with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer community, politicians, and individuals who believed to propagate multi-culturalism and internationalization. White supremacist groups will probably identify white genocide as validation for violence against some religious organizations being the best alternative to protect the white race. The failure by the US government to effectively combat white supremacist extremists and their associates, or deal with them as sternly as their foreign equivalents, is leading to the loss of lives. Additionally, it is weakening collective and cherished values besides compromising integrity and unity.
Most of the contemporary white supremacist organizations have embarked on unrestrained practices of rebranding themselves as a proportion of the modern political mainstream while underlining inheritance and pseudoscience to conceal their real, violent intents. Classification and prosecution of white supremacist groups for the terrorist factions that they are would deny them the status and narrative that they strongly seek. White supremacists exploit ambiguities in the existing laws as a way of enhancing their capacity to cause harm (Rose & Soufan, 2020). For example, they know that an American citizen who drives a truck through a crowd or stubs a person with a knife may not be prosecuted as being a terrorist according to the present United States law. Nevertheless, if such a person were affiliated with a foreign terrorist organization that is connected to a conventional terror network, then the US law against terrorism might be used against the individual and the associated faction.
It is high time that the American government ensured constancy in the legal measures concerning terrorism. Many white supremacist extremists cause a serious security threat, one that gainsays, and possibly obscures, the danger of foreign terror groups. Rose and Soufan (2020) maintain that classifying white supremacist organizations together with foreign terrorist groups can give law enforcement officers and intelligence agencies an important advantage, such as the one that they have when addressing jihadists. Terrorism should be dealt with mercilessly regardless of how its perpetrators attempt to justify it. The US government should harden its resolve to curb terrorism by effectively combating white supremacists.
Reference
Rose, M., & Soufan, A. H. (2020). The white supremacist threat is real. The New York Times. Web.