Directing the Moderate Rebels: Syria as a Digital Age Crucible for Information and Propaganda Warfare

By Ben Arthur Thomason

A decade into Syria’s catastrophe as one of the deadliest wars of the 21st century, we can take greater stock of its effects not just on geopolitics and Syria itself, but on imperial management strategies, information warfare, and popular culture, particularly when considering the interventions by the West and its regional allies. A key pillar of Western imperialist projects next to the hard power of bombs and economic sanctions is the soft power of diplomatic maneuvering, media and cultural imperialism, manufacturing public consent for war, and inventing realities to maintain ideological hegemony. The complementary dialectic between hard and soft power in the US led imperial project in Syria built on historical ventures in Muslim majority countries and evolved propaganda and civil society hybrid warfare strategies that may become foundational for 21st century warfare.

Complementing hard and soft power: the UK FCO media and civil society consortium

Early in the Syrian conflict, through a scheme code-named Operation Timber Sycamore, the CIA partnered with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar to flood Syria with weapons, many of which ended up on the black market or in the hands of extremist groups. In an echo of the CIA’s Operation Cyclone, where Mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan were supplied with billions of dollars in arms including Raytheon manufactured anti-aircraft guided Stinger Missiles, the US and its allies supplied Syrian rebels, including Salafist groups like the Harakat Nur al-Din al-Zenki Movement, with Raytheon produced anti-tank guided BGM TOW missiles.

Supplementing the hard-power pressures of sanctions and lethal aid to militants was a soft power strategy that combined diplomatic pressure, propaganda, and civil society programs. Western governments and NGOs funded, supplied, and trained pro-opposition Syrian journalists, newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV stations. Pro-rebel outlets that sprung from this support were needed because Western journalists largely stayed out of reporting from rebel-held Syria for risk of being kidnapped or killed, despite the purported moderation of the Western backed Free Syrian Army and attempts to downplay the strength of extremist forces in Western media. Perhaps the most important organization, at least that we have significant documentation of right now, was a consultancy firm, Analysis Research Knowledge (ARK), and their search and rescue and media production group, Syria Civil Defence (British spelling), popularly known as the White Helmets.

Figure 1- An example of ARK’s “rebranding” projects for armed militias to sell the “moderate rebels” image (CPG01737 ARK 1.3.1, n.d.: 1)

ARK’s modern form was established as ARK FZC in 2011 and is based in Dubai, though its roots go back at least to 2009 when it was formed in Beirut, Lebanon as ARK Group or ARK Lebanon. The United Arab Emirates avoided full involvement in the arming and support of Syrian militants, instead opting to become an important partner in diplomatic and civil society efforts against the Assad government. ARK was started by former British Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) employee Alistair Harris, who got his start serving in the Yugoslav Wars. Contracting under the UK FCO, ARK first established a program for collecting and documenting alleged war crimes and set up an opposition media program called Basma Syria (Basma meaning smile in Arabic). In 2012 ARK, led by employee James Le Mesurier, a former UK military intelligence officer who also got his start in the Balkans during the Yugoslav Wars, established the search and rescue teams that would become the White Helmets. The group sold itself as a grassroots citizen activist humanitarian group and became media darlings in the West. 

The White Helmets were the bridge between the civil society and propaganda aspects of these soft-power pro-rebel operations. Not only did they provide services such as search and rescue, medical transport, fire suppression, and post-battle clean-ups and reconstruction, they filmed and photographed themselves doing all these things. They were often first on the scene reporting on bombings, skirmishes, and alleged chemical weapons attacks. The most famous accusations against the White Helmets, lobbed by Russian and alternative Western media, were that they collaborated with terrorist groups and staged fake attacks and/or rescue missions. Yet perhaps the more interesting and revealing thing about the White Helmets that can be confirmed is that they were a key part of a wider propaganda and civil society operation to support anti-Assad forces in Syria and justify and encourage foreign intervention led by corporate contractors working under the UK FCO.  

As the military war dragged on, Western backed militias needed to administer the areas they conquered as well as fight an information war. Since these rebel-held spaces were too dangerous for Western journalists, Western states raised a local media infrastructure through local proxies. US and European NGOs and governments funded, trained, and supplied outlets like Aleppo Media Center while ARK and its fellow UK FCO contractors set up their own media outlets like Basma, Moubader, and Syriagraph, establishing TV, radio, and magazine production for themselves or partner organizations. Other FCO contractors like Albany Associates Ltd identified and trained select spokespeople from and developed communication strategies for violent sectarian Salafi militias like Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam. One prominent ostensibly grassroots media outlet for the Battle of Aleppo, Revolutionary Forces of Syria, was directly run by an FCO consortium member that partnered closely with ARK, The Global Strategy Network (TGSN), directed by Richard Barrett, former director of counterterrorism at MI6. These outlets then fed propaganda to their “well-established contacts with numerous key media organisations [sic] including Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, Orient, Sky News Arabic, CNN, BBC, BBC Arabic, The Times, The Guardian, FT [Financial Times], NYT [New York Times], Reuters and others.”

Figure 2- One of several maps of Syria showcasing ARK’s media and civil society operations in Syria. “ICSP Beneficiaries” refer to local Free Syrian Police units while “Media Stringers” refer to freelance journalists trained and or employed by ARK (ITT Lot C – Technical Response)  

UK FCO contractors like Adam Smith International and ARK tried to create civil society infrastructure to provide essential services that could compete with Syrian state services. They set up a Free Syrian Police (FSP) as well as municipal governance, education, and sanitation services, while the White Helmets provided emergency fire, transportation, and rubble clean-up services. The FSP alone received hundreds of millions of dollars through US and European funding and had its own scandals of corruption and connections with terrorist groups. The White Helmets alongside media outlets set up with extensive help from Western governments and NGOs like Aleppo Media Center, or media outlets directly run by Western government contractors like Revolutionary Forces of Syria, audio-visually recorded and disseminated these services from local Arabic speaking audiences to global, particularly Western Anglophone audiences. For ARK, their civil society services and “media products” were one and the same. The US and European states spent over $1 billion on these media and civil society initiatives refined through constant polling, focus groups, data analysis, and target audience segmentation to maximize their media and public opinion impact.

Figure 3- ARK “Project Schematic” showing how civil society initiatives immediately became propaganda for local and Western audiences. The events for September-November were planned by ARK to both provide rebel governance and turn their services into pro-rebel, anti-regime propaganda. (ARK 1.2.1 Methodology, c2017)

Target Audiences: The Home Front

The White Helmets became the star group of this initiative not just because they provided local services and produced propaganda at the same time; they also gave the opposition to Assad a singular humanitarian face that could shroud the sectarian and theocratic violence that characterized the bulk of the Western backed armed opposition that eventually coalesced into ISIS. Among Western media and celebrities, that’s exactly what the White Helmets became. 

The program of influence peddling and manufacturing public consent for intervention in Syria made it to the highest levels of Western entertainment with the 2016 Oscar winning documentary The White Helmets, profiling the ARK created group. The documentary created a narrative of Russian and Assad military devils bombing helpless civilians who relied on angelic White Helmets as their only line of defense, scrubbing all rebel militias from the conflict except ISIS. It was made possible by the cheap labor of the White Helmet workers, with whom ARK had previously produced several Arabic-language documentaries, the money and government connections of oil and industrial interests through philanthropies like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the enthusiastic endorsements of US and UK media. The organization that led the impact campaign for the documentary and the White Helmets targeting celebrities and the media as well as Western halls of power was The Syria Campaign (TSC). TSC was started and heavily funded by a Syrian expat, US educated billionaire oil CEO and major UK Tory party donor, Ayman Asfari, whose company was convicted and fined in 2021 by a UK court for paying millions of dollars in bribes to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE for oil contracts. Even before the Syrian Civil War started Asfari had his hands in dirty influence peddling with the UK who led the propaganda and civil society war against Syria, the UAE, who served as a regional conduit for those efforts, and the Saudis, who helped lead the hard power militia war against Syria.

While The White Helmets documentary tugged at viewers’ heartstrings over the brutality of Syrian and Russian air power, the Syria Campaign and the White Helmets pushed for the US and its allies to establish a no-fly zone over Syria. This was the same kind of intervention that was instrumental in lynching Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and throwing that country into chaos and strife it still has not emerged from. Despite the risk of inciting a hot war with Russia that a no-fly zone in Syria implied, this policy was pushed by powerful political leaders, including the 2016 Democratic party presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Cynical weaponization of real and alleged atrocity stories to justify intervention and create easy good vs. evil stories for the benefit of US backed rebel factions in Muslim countries is not new. Journalist Joel Whitney (2016) showed that the weaponization of refugees and training pro-rebel activists to encourage and film atrocities has historical precedent in Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan. The resumes and CVs from leaked UK Foreign Commonwealth Office documents also point to these programs repeating and building off each other through history, particularly in the destabilized Muslim majority regions of the world in the past 30 years. Several prominent employees with leadership roles in these government contractors in Syria have long resumes before joining ARK and other FCO contractors. Their employee profiles demonstrate a pattern of receiving military, media, civil society, and government transition positions in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, sometimes in that order and often including several sub-Saharan African countries like Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, Mali, and Nigeria as well. These ventures have occurred before and will continue.

Many details of the Western propaganda and interference schemes in Syria are still unknown, locked in classified internal government and corporate documents. Yet the few leaks and investigative reports we have reveal an extensive, well-funded, years-long propaganda and disinformation warfare campaign waged first against the Syrian government but perhaps more intensely against Western publics. Through groups like the White Helmets and the media they produced, Western governments and corporations backed up their multi-billion-dollar effort to flood Syria with weapons and fighters with propaganda and civil society campaigns worth about a billion dollars. These facilitated rebel administrations on the ground and helped sell a simplified whitewashed narrative of the Syrian Civil War and build war fervor for Western intervention. This built off historical precedents, committed by the same people who engaged in similar campaigns in other Muslim majority countries. 

It must be said that these efforts failed in important ways. While nearly all Western mainstream corporate media and politicians fell in line behind the White Helmets and the consortium’s pro-intervention narratives, war weary Western publics, particularly in the US and UK, were skeptical and unconvinced. Outlets like the Syria Campaign, the Guardian, and the BBC were quite troubled by the popular pushback they got which, despite their best efforts, could not be smeared as all Moscow agents or their useful idiots spreading disinformation. Russia and Syria did have their own propaganda strategy to counter Western media, and this is an inevitable reality of modern warfare. Their tactics included accusations against the White Helmets that, while containing important grains of truth, were overly simplistic and designed to paper over the brutal acts they engaged in as belligerents in a generally brutal war. Yet it is striking that, after so many criminal imperialist adventures in the region, public skepticism and disillusionment toward institutional narratives pushing humanitarian intervention in another Muslim country would be dismissed by political and media professionals with such pious Cold War style deflection and finger-pointing. These went so far as to include a sting operation and media smear campaign led by yet another organization created by ARK against academics investigating Western intervention in Syria. This ideological disciplining of public discourse is particularly outrageous when critical investigations into what Western states and their allies were doing in Syria without substantial, if any, public consent or knowledge reveal disturbing patterns of violence, manipulation, and good-old fashioned corruption and self-aggrandizement.

Socialism's Increasing Popularity Doesn't Bring Media Out of McCarthy Era

By Joshua Cho

Republished from FAIR.

Ever since the Great Recession in 2008, and accelerating with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run, there has been a resurgence of popularity and interest in socialism in the US, and an increasing skepticism of capitalism. A 2019 Pew poll (6/25/19) reported that 42% of respondents had a favorable view of socialism, with particular sympathy shown among people who are Black (65%), Latino (52%), have family incomes below $30,000 (50%) or are between the ages of 18-29 (50%). In a 2019 Gallup survey (12/18/19), 38% saw socialism positively—more than the 34% who identify as conservatives (Gallup, 7/27/20). Gallup (11/25/19) noted that Millennials were especially attracted to socialism, with slightly more viewing socialism positively than capitalism.

Democrats across the country view socialism more positively than capitalism, with a large majority willing to vote for a socialist as president. Despite questions of what the term “socialism” means to Americans, this growing interest has provoked articles decrying the “problem” that socialism doesn’t freak out Democratic voters the way it does other Americans (Slate, 2/24/20). The Columbia Journalism Review (5/8/18) noticed that while “the radical left in the U.S. has felt invigorated in recent years,” it still hasn’t “earned left-wing voices column inches in most mainstream outlets,” with coverage limited to being “about those voices, rather than by them.”

Looking at the representation of socialism among the hundreds of pundits in corporate media, one can be forgiven for almost thinking socialist pundits don’t exist.

The New York Times opinion writer Elizabeth Bruenig appears to be the only pundit employed by corporate media who both explicitly identifies as a “socialist” and makes arguments for some form of socialism in the U.S. (Washington Post, 3/6/18).

Laurence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s Last Word, identifies as a “practical European socialist,” and argues that “we’re all socialists now,” because even Bill O’Reilly is in favor of “socialist programs” like Social Security and Medicare. The MSNBC host claims to “embrace” the label in order to “counterbalance” the excessive influence of McCarthyism in the U.S. (LA Times, 3/16/13), but it’s difficult to discern a distinctly socialist perspective in his commentary.

Straightforward advocacy of socialism is something you very rarely see in corporate media (Washington Post, 3/6/18).

The Hill’s Krystal Ball (2/17/19), cohost of the show Rising, criticized Trump’s remarks claiming that “America will never be a socialist country” for presenting the false dichotomy of “smash-and-grab capitalism” or “what’s happening in Venezuela.” The class-conscious commentator described Sanders and other democratic socialists like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as “messengers for a compelling message with an actual vision.” Although she seems not to explicitly embrace the “socialist” label like Bruenig or O’Donnell, it may be fair to describe her as a democratic socialist pundit, because she often speaks favorably of the ideology, and provides a friendly platform to socialists on her show.

It appears corporate media give some degree of space for pundits to call for replacing capitalism with a new system, so long as they don’t identify themselves or that new system as “socialist.” Times columnist Michelle Alexander hasn’t explicitly identified as a socialist, but has argued (6/8/20) that “transforming our economic systems” is necessary to achieve “racial justice” and a “secure and thriving democracy,” while approvingly citing figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, Albert Einstein, Hellen Keller and Paul Robeson, all of whom argued that the U.S. “must move toward some form of socialism.” The Post’s Katrina Vanden Heuvel also hasn’t called herself a socialist, but has argued (12/10/19) that “capitalism is broken,” and that we need a “new system to better serve the common good,” without describing this new system as “socialism.”

Although CNN’s Van Jones was involved in the early 1990s with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a defunct Maoist Bay Area group, since 2000 or so, he’s identified with the “green capitalist” movement instead (Green America, Fall/2007).

“Socialism” itself is a very contested term, and many self-described socialists may not consider some or all of these pundits to be genuine socialists. Conservatism is also a broad range of ideologies, not all of which are consistent with each other, which also has self-identified conservatives who denounce others as unworthy or inconsistent with the label (New York Times, 1/14/15; The Hill, 12/16/19). Conservative audiences are not expected to approve of all pundits who identify as conservatives, or who speak favorably of conservatism. Likewise, while some socialists may be unsatisfied with these figures, it is still significant that there are pundits who embrace being labeled a “socialist” and explicitly call for alternatives to capitalism within the US.

Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaidó has remarked that “socialist” figures like Ocasio-Cortez would be considered social democrats in his own country (New Yorker, 6/10/20). The Times’ Paul Krugman (2/13/20) is no socialist, but he has criticized Bernie Sanders for presenting himself as a “socialist,” rather than a “social democrat,” making himself “an easy target for right-wing smears.”

It’s more common to see criticism of capitalism (New York Times, 12/4/17)—but still not very common.

One can find criticisms of capitalism in corporate media, but that is ideologically consistent with liberals or progressives who call for government intervention to deal with market failures. Columnists like the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg (12/4/17), who noted that “capitalism looks like the god that failed” to young people because of the “increasingly oligarchic nature of our economy,” and the Times’ Nicholas Kristof (5/23/20), who condemned “dog-eat-dog capitalism for struggling workers and socialism for the rich,” are critics of capitalism in corporate media who aren’t necessarily calling for socialism.

Other pundits have normalized socialism by claiming it already exists in a limited form, because they conflate all government spending on social programs with socialism—not advocating for socialism so much as claiming that it already exists in the US. Thus the Times’ Roger Cohen (3/8/19) and the Post’s Catherine Rampell (3/21/19) argue that “Europe” demonstrates how “socialism and the free market are compatible,” and dismiss the capitalist/socialist dichotomy as not being a “meaningful binary,” because “all modern countries have elements of capitalism and socialism.” These pundits make arguments similar to O’Donnell’s, defending a socialism that’s hard to distinguish from liberalism, though without identifying with the label as O’Donnell does.

A few other commentators have praised socialism and defended figures who identify as socialists. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes defended Bernie Sanders from McCarthyite criticisms, and praised the Democratic Socialists of America. MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle has made remarks on-air that appear to defend democratic socialism, in addition to explaining why it is a more desirable alternative to communism (NBC News, 2/27/20). The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson has written several columns urging Democrats to embrace the party’s more progressive base (7/2/18, 7/1/19), and described “democratic socialism” as something that is “perfectly appropriate” for Ocasio-Cortez’s district, in addition to endorsing (1/15/15) Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for “economic equality”—which King suggested could be called “democratic socialism” (In These Times, 1/15/18).

Like Hayes and Ruhle, Times’ columnists like Jamelle Bouie and Farhad Manjoo have published numerous columns that appear to praise socialism or policies associated with socialists, but that appears to be the farthest they can go, as neither of them have ever embraced the label (New York Times, 2/6/19, 2/14/19, 10/22/19, 3/11/20).

“Open advocacy of socialism is now a normal part of our political discourse,” writes the Washington Post‘s E.J. Dionne (2/10/19)—but it’s still not a normal part of our media conversation.

When socialism or socialists are discussed favorably, or at least not adversely, it’s often in opposition to revolutionary socialist ideologies like Marxism-Leninism (the official ideology of around 20% of the world’s population, and of the US’s greatest geopolitical rival). Democratic socialism is often contrasted with socialist states of the Global South, whether Communist countries like China or Vietnam, or multi-party systems like Venezuela or Nicaragua, which are frequently presented by even the left-most pundits as justifiable targets of imperialism. Instead, wealthy, predominantly white Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Norway are often upheld as the preferable socialist ideal (New York Times, 4/27/19).

Although the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. (2/10/19) argued that Trump and the Republican Party’s attempts to tar all Democrats as “socialist” and antithetical to “American values” will fail because “open advocacy of socialism is now a normal part of our political discourse,” it’s quite clear that McCarthyism is still constricting political discourse in the US. While socialism is being discussed more often, there’s a huge disparity between its acceptance among the U.S. population and the representation of socialists among pundits at the biggest news outlets in the country. There are almost no pundits employed in corporate media who feel comfortable openly identifying as a socialist and calling for socialism as an alternative to capitalism.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that corporate media outlets owned by oligarchs and the investor class are hostile to socialism, but when socialist pundits are virtually nonexistent at these agenda-setting outlets, despite 76% of Democrats being willing to vote for a socialist, it’s clear that these institutions are intended to propagandize the U.S. population into accepting the status quo. Even when politicians and policies often described as “socialist” are presented in a positive light, the fact that these journalists are uncomfortable embracing the label is evidence that McCarthyism still exercises a formidable restraint on the U.S. political imagination and discourse.

Fake News: It's Ideology, Stupid

By David I. Backer

Glenn Greenwald recently skewered Ben Jacobs at The Guardian for "summarizing" an interview Stefania Maurizzi did with Julian Assange. The essay shows how Jacobs cherry-picked ideas from the interview to portray Assange as being pro-Russia and pro-Trump, but goes on to a more general meditation on the phenomenon of "fake news":

If one really wants to battle Fake News and deceitful journalism that misleads others, one cannot selectively denounce some Fake News accounts while cheering and spreading those that promote one's own political agenda or smear those (such as Assange) whom one most hates.

While Greenwald is absolutely correct, there is a much easier way to say this, one that's largely absent in the debate on fake news.

Simply put, this "fake news" thing is just ideology. Plain and simple. And the sooner we integrate this concept into our toolbox for interpreting media, the better.

The philosopher Louis Althusser revolutionized how we think about ideology in the 1970s. His definition is the most helpful one in this case. He defines ideology as "imagined relations to real conditions of existence."

There's a difference between real conditions and someone or some group's imagined relation to those conditions. Generally speaking, real conditions are extremely complex, while people's imagined relations to that complexity are simplified versions that vindicate their agendas.

As Greenwald points out, it's in Jacobs' interest to portray Assange the way he portrayed him. Jacobs was a Clinton insider, and the Clinton faction's position on the 2016 election places inordinate blame on outside forces like WikiLeaks, Russia, and hackers.

The real conditions of Clinton's loss are complex, and obviously include the leaking of DNC emails, which we know came through WikiLeaks. But the Clinton campaign also failed in various ways that had nothing to do with leaking or Russia.

The Clintonite ideology is an imagined relation to real conditions which attempts to vindicate Clinton's position by casting WikiLeaks and Assange in a certain way. Ben Jacobs' "summary" is a paradigm case of this particular ideology, which is the ideology of the centrist faction of the Democratic Party and some moderate Republicans.

The beauty of Althusser's definition of ideology is that no one is exempt from ideological speech. Everyone must imagine their own relation to real conditions.

And it's not a matter of truth and falsity. Each speech act, to some degree, is limited by the speaker's imagination. The real conditions are always more complex.

This is why Althusser wrote that ideology is allusion, not illusion. Everyone, particularly in the public sphere, is always alluding to this or that part of complex social conditions. Why? To push their agenda.

In this sense, all news is "fake" news. People speak in the public sphere in order to vindicate their positions as much as (and sometimes more than) representing real conditions' complexity.

When they do this, they cherry pick aspects of real conditions accordingly, speaking from their imagined relation to it via their agenda. Sometimes this is intentional and flagrant (like the Pizzagate fiasco), but most times it is unconscious and subtle (like most "objective" reporting).

The term "fake news" itself is a masterpiece of ideological speech. Calling reports "fake news" is a desperate attempt to communicate that one's own report is "real news." But making this claim is clearly a power play just as much as it is an attempt to refer to something in the world.

If Democrats call Republican reports "fake news" then it benefits Democrats because it makes it look like Republicans are trying to pull the wool over society's eyes. Republicans do it to Democrats too and get the same benefit.

But the thing is: every report comes from a perspective. Even "objective" ones.

So rather than making it seem like there's some hidden force out there pulling the wool over society's eyes, what people need to realize is that political speech is always trying to win for a particular side. When people speak, whether they mean to or not, they are promoting an agenda. Period.

All political speech is subject to imagined relations to real social conditions, since speakers have positions and have to imagine what their relationship with social conditions are when speaking. This doesn't mean there isn't truth and every state is merely a Machiavellian power play.

But when it comes to speaking and writing in the public sphere, we have to consider peoples' imagined relations to society just as much as we consider the extent to which their statements refer to something like the real social world.

In other words, ideology is everywhere in political speaking, writing, and conversing. The sooner everyone in the debate about fake news gets comfortable with this basic concept, the better.

David I. Backer is Assistant Professor in the Department of Professional and Secondary Education at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.

Dylann Roof and the Right: Domestic Terrorism and the Mainstreaming of Extremism

By Sean Posey

In April 2009, a Department of Homeland Security report leaked to the public entitled "Right Wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." Released within months of President Obama's inauguration, it bravely sketched the broad strokes of a nascent white nationalist backlash. Yet the report was pilloried by a variety of pundits on the right. However, the recent mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina-and a rising tide of extremist attacks before it-confirm many of the worst predictions in the report. And as the media dithers, the rhetoric of white nationalism and far-right extremism is once again finding expression in the form of mainstream pundits and even presidential candidates.

The DHS report focused on several key themes. Officials correctly theorized that the election Of Barack Obama could drive "efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda…."[1] The number of far-right organizations increased from 139 in 2008 to 1,360 in 20102.[2]

The DHS report also frequently highlights the importance of economic recessions, free trade agreements, and a "perceived" loss of jobs in both manufacturing and construction.[3] Unfortunately, this was one of the least commented on passages from the report. The U.S. lost more than five million jobs in manufacturing between the beginning of the Great Recession and 2014, and many of those losses can be blamed on free trade agreements.[4] Wages are flat; many of the jobs gained since the recession actually pay less overall. Far from being a "perceived" issue, the government could have fully examined the very real connections between widespread economic pain and the growth of far-right "patriot" and hate group movements.

Conservative commentators attacked the report immediately, but not because it lacked a nuanced discussion of economics. Peter Roff (among many others) commented in U.S. News and World Report that the DHS report represented "little more than a nine page screed against phantoms." [5] Roff pointed to a report issued by the Bush Administration on left wing extremism as being substantively different and less political than that of the Obama Administration's. He also criticized the DHS for indicting "people who hold certain political beliefs that are well within the mainstream of American political thought…." In this he proved to be far more correct than he might have imagined.

The massacre of nine African Americans by Dylann Roof, a self-described white nationalist, at the Emanuel AME Church is now fully revealing the connections between far-right organizations and mainstream conservative figures. It also validates the 2009 DHS report. Days after the brutal shooting, Roof's political manifesto emerged online. In some sense it is a standard white nationalist screed. Yet Roof directly points to organizations that influenced his thinking-including the Council of Conservative Citizens, a lesser-known but influential group on the right.

The Council of Conservative Citizens emerged in 1985 as a modern day descendant of the White Citizens' Councils of the Old South. Several prominent businessmen and politicians formed the backbone of the early organization. Today Jared Taylor, a prominent "racial realist," serves as the spokesman for the group. Opposition to interracial marriage is a key part of the organization's platform, as is the promotion of supposedly conservative Christian values. The groups members have vociferously spoken out against the civil rights movement, denounced the legacy of Martin Luther King, and engaged in the crudest possible racial characterizations of African Americans.

The CCC has also long been tied to conservative politicians, even after the Republican Party's connection to the group became known in the late 1990s. Leonard Wilson, a former committeeman for Alabama, is on the organization's board. Former Majority Senate Leader Trent Lott was a member while serving as a representative. Jess Helms had close ties to the organization while serving in the North Carolina State Senate and as chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Dozens of conservatives have spoken at CCC events over the years or have connections to the group, including Congressman Roger Wicker of Mississippi; Haley Barbour, former governor of Mississippi and chairman of the Republican National Committee; Senator Gary Jackson of Mississippi; Representative Bob McKee of Tennessee; and Mike Huckabee during his time as Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas. Bob Barr, a former Libertarian Party Presidential candidate in 2008, spoke before gatherings of the CCC on several occasions. Other conservative scions have connections to the groups as well, including Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

In 1997, the CCC presented a Confederate Flag from the South Carolina Statehouse (a flag similar to the one later taken down from the same location by activist Bree Newsome in the aftermath of the Charleston shootings) to Jean-Marie La Pen of the National Front, a French white nationalist party. Three years before, Congress passed a measure condemning the Nation of Islam as an extremist group in the aftermath of a racially charged speech given by spokesman Khalid Abdul Muhammad, but it has failed to issue a similar condemnation of the Council of Conservative Citizens in the aftermath of Charleston. Indeed, there has been little official effort to recognize the attack as an act of domestic terrorism at all.

A recent report by the New America Foundation analyzed domestic terrorist attacks by jihadists and far-right wing groups and lone attackers since September 11, 2001. They found that far-right extremists have killed nearly twice as many people as Islamist radicals. [6] These findings not only help repudiate the singular focus on the Islamist threat within America-they also call for a popular recognition of the domestic terror threat posed by the extremist-right. The media is largely ignoring the issue, however, save for the New York Times, Al Jazeera, and a few other publications. A recent Syracuse University study found wide discrepancies in the tenor of the coverage given to domestic terror attacks by extremists not affiliated with Islam or the political left. According to the report,"…It indicates that news organizations experience a degree of cognitive dissonance when non-Muslims (or individuals affiliated with the dominant hegemonic culture) commit terrorism-like violence."[7] Despite the media's blind spot, the attacks (and attempted attacks) that have taken place since the DHS report in 2009 reveal a stark picture. They echo the warning that " right-wing extremism is likely to grow in strength" if trends continue.[8]

In April 2009, Richard Poplawski, a white supremacist, killed three police officers in Pittsburgh in the second-worst assault on law enforcement since the World Trade Center attacks. In 2012, neo-Nazi Wade Michael Page shot six worshippers at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. That same year Jerad and Amanda Miller killed two police officers in an ambush in Las Vegas; they left a swastika and a Gadsden flag on the bodies before moving on to murder a shopper at a nearby Walmart. There has also been a string of failed or interrupted attacks by a variety of individuals on the extreme right as well, including the attempted bombing of a Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Washington. Authorities also uncovered an effort by white supremacists to assassinate Barack Obama and carry out a campaign of mass murder against anonymous African Americans. The number of assaults against law enforcement officials is a notable element of many of the attacks. A recent survey of domestic law enforcement agencies recorded that 74 percent of jurisdictions found "anti-government extremists" to be a more serious threat than Islamic militants.[9]

The rhetoric and vitriol that is commonplace in white nationalist and far-right circles is also making its way into the mouths of public figures on the right. Anne Coulter has long made a living writing inflammatory books likeHow to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any brains They'd be Republicans, and Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama. She has managed to carve out a place in the mainstream media while also essentially providing many of the talking points of white nationalists.

In her latest book, Adios America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole, she ups the ante. A bevy of white nationalists are cited or directly mentioned in the book. In chapter ten, she cites the work of white nationalist, Peder Jensen, better known as Fordjman, who Norwegian mass-murderer, Anders Breivik, cited over a hundred times in his manifesto. She also cites Robert Spencer, co-founder of "Stop Islamization of America." He appears numerous times in Breivik's manifesto as well and is banned from entering the United Kingdom. Peter Brimelow's work also appears. Brimelow, who once spoke at the mainstream Conservative Political Action Council, has called for Texas to secede, the organization of a campaign to protect "white rights," and the abolition of Martin Luther King Day - which Brimelow contends has turned into a day of "anti-white indoctrination." [10] Additionally, he has close connections to Jared Taylor of the Council of Conservative Citizens.

If Anne Coulter is the pundit channeling white nationalists, then Donald Trump is the candidate giving voice to many of their views. Trump is currently polling second among prospective presidential candidates, even as he unleashes a tirade of invective at immigrants. His candidacy is also garnering the support of groups on the far right, including the Council of Conservative Citizens. Fellow Republican candidates are trying distance themselves from Trump, but it is more difficult for them to distance their party from the tenor of his remarks.

While still clearly a minority, the far right-not Islamic terrorists-now present the greatest clear and present danger inside of America. The 2009 DHS report has proven prescient in many respects, and it should be revived and revisited in the wake of the Charleston massacre and the attacks and plots of others on the right. The problem is exacerbated by the inability of the mainstream media and the Republic Party to confront violent acts committed by non-Muslim assailants as actual terrorism. While Republicans have called government reports about far-right groups "propaganda," events and the statistics are proving the DHS largely correct. And all the while the rhetoric of extremists continues to seep into the mainstream.

Notes

[1] U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, April 2009.

[2] Southern Poverty Law Center, "Hate and Extremism," http://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do/hate-and-extremism (Accessed July 5, 2015).

[3] UDHS, "Rightwing Extremism"

[4] The Economic Policy Institute, "Fast Track to Lost Jobs and Lower Wages," Working Economics Blog, Robert E. Scott. http://www.epi.org/blog/fast-track-to-lost-jobs-and-lower-wages/ Accessed July 4, 2015.

[5] Peter Roff, "DHS Report on Leftists Not Like Napolitano Report on Right-Wing Extremism," U.S. News and World Report, April 16, 2009. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2009/04/16/dhs-report-on-leftists-not-like-napolitano-report-on-right-wing-extremism (Accessed July 5, 2015).

[6] New America Foundation, "Deadly Attacks Since 9/11," http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks.html (Accessed July 7, 2015).

[7] Adam Yehia Elrashidi, "A Matter of Faith: U.S. Cable News Coverage and Definitions of Terrorism," S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University, May 2013.

[8] UDHS, "Rightwing Extremism"

[9] Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer, "Law Enforcement Assessment of the Violent Extremism Threat," Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, http://sites.duke.edu/tcths/files/2013/06/Kurzman_Schanzer_Law_Enforcement_Assessment_of_the_Violent_Extremist_Threat_final.pdf (Accessed July 6, 2015), 3.

[10] RWW News. "Brimelow: States Like Texas Should Secede" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqkliyiaIas (Accessed July 7, 2015); RWW News. "White Nationalists Victims of Lynch Mob" http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/peter-brimelow-states-texas-must-consider-secession-protect-white-rights (Accessed July 7, 2015).