Canada called the Proud Boys terrorists. The U.S. shouldn’t.

A look into the unexpected ways we deal with extremists.

Alexandra Sahara

and

kate

Feb 22, 2021

4 minute read

☕ Coffee for pitches ☕

THE QUESTION

Should the US designate far-right hate groups, like the Proud Boys, as terrorists?

A participant donning Proud Boys branded clothing waves a U.S. flag at a "Stop The Steal" rally outside the Minnesota governor's mansion. While the group has been labeled "white supremacist,” “extremist,” and ”white nationalist” by the FBI, it has not been labeled “terrorist.” Source: Flickr/ Chad Davis

THE TEASER

The word “terrorist” evokes nothing less than the image of the Twin Towers collapsing on 9/11. It’s a deeply charged title—one that many of us would naturally think is pretty clear to use when necessary.

It’s kind of a “we know it when we see it” deal, and people are seeing it, especially with right-wing extremist hate groups. This includes the Proud Boys and possibly the Oath Keepers—six more of which were just announced last week to be facing conspiracy charges for their involvement with the Capitol assault.

But in the US, the designation of “terrorist”—and all the financial and legal consequences that come with it—is half semantics and half legal loophole.

While we have the well-known Foreign Terrorist Organization, or FTO, list, it doesn’t seem to keep up with the increasing right-wing terrorism activity recently noted by the UN, jumping a whopping +320% over the last 5 years.

*A map highlighting the interstate activity of organized far-right extremist militias and armed groups, as reported by the ACLED. Note: No events were recorded in Hawaii or Alaska.*

The problem with the FTO list is that it’s dedicated to foreign actors and not ones with a significant domestic presence, which in and of itself is, legally, pretty open-ended.

So you might ask, “Why don’t we just use similar consequences for domestic organizations? We have something like that, right?”

As a matter of fact, we do—Executive Order 13224, the same one used by President Bush in the aftermath of 9/11. The problem here is that these consequences are pretty narrowly focused on economic sanctions. That’s not ineffective, it just poses two problems.

There is the assumption that the president will in fact execute such executive action, and more importantly, that they are doing so based on strategic goals rather than to win political favor, which is what former President Trump often used terrorist designations for.
Economic sanctions don’t carry the same kind of proactive policing one might hope for when a hostile organization is born. 13224 places organizations on a list monitored by the Treasury Department, not an organization like Homeland Security, NSA, CIA, FBI, or anything under the Department of Defense.

Does that mean we should make a new list for domestic terrorists? Maybe even expand the Patriot Act to cover these organizations?

History says “Woof, bad idea.”

The US has a messy history of partisan infighting that weaponized policy. Often, these policies were used to disrupt organizations supporting progressive social movements. Extensions of laws like the Patriot Act would have to be extremely carefully crafted so as to avoid political weaponization on both sides of the aisle.

So what can the US do?

Catrina Doxsee made an interesting argument on Defense360, a publication by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From their perspective, the state could expand the existing definition of domestic terrorism by attaching criminal penalties, among other examples. This is in conjunction with “centralized data collection and transparent reporting on domestic terrorism, which should be used to direct federal counterterrorism resources to prioritize and respond to the greatest threats.”

It would be through the expansion of definitions of domestic terrorism, that the US could better manage the growing threat of right-wing extremism here at home.

WHY THIS STORY IS WORTH IT

There is an emotional urge to label far-right hate groups as terrorists in the US… but the pros might not actually outweigh the cons.

PEOPLE WORTH INTERVIEWING:

Jason M. Blazakis. He led the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism Finance and Designations (‘08-’18) and authored this piece about terrorism designations in Slate.
Catrina Doxsee. She is a program manager and research associate for the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and authored this piece on domestic terrorism designations in Defense360.

WHAT WE DON’T HAVE ANSWERS TO YET:

In the US, there was a minimum of 6,000 hate groups between 1990 and 2008, and most lasted less than a year, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. So does that mean a group that gets on a watchlist list and dies is removed from the list? Or, if it made a comeback, it would be automatically added back on?