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US seen as 'exporter of white supremacist ideology’: US official

Saturday, 09 November 2019 9:20 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 09 November 2019 9:31 AM ]

Anti- racist protesters demonstrate against a gathering of self-described conservatives on Independence Mall on November 17, 2018 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Getty Images)

Other countries are beginning to regard the United States as an exporter of white supremacism following an upsurge in racially motivated attacks around the world, according to a senior US national security official.

“For almost two decades, the United States has pointed abroad at countries who are exporters of extreme ideology,” Russell Travers, acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told an audience in Washington, DC.

“We are now being seen as the exporter of white supremacist ideology. That’s a reality with which we are going to have to deal,” he said.

Travers said there is now a global movement of what he termed “racially motivated violent extremism,” or RMVE (pronounced “rem-vee”), fueled by a wide variety of motivations and facilitated by social media and other forms of internet communications.

“A large percentage of RMVE attackers in recent years have either displayed outreach to like-minded individuals or groups or referenced early attackers as sources of inspiration,” he said.

Travers cited as examples Dylann Roof, an American white supremacist who killed nine African-Americans in a church in Charleston, South Carolina; Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people in attacks on two mosques in New Zealand in March; and Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in two attacks in Norway in 2011.

The three attackers “have gained international reverence and are serving as an inspiration” for many like-minded white supremacists, “including those looking to plan or conduct attacks,” he said.

After spending years of fighting wars in the Middle East, US counterterrorism officials are struggling to counter the growing white supremacist threat in the US, according to Travers.

PressTV-Trump is afraid to take on white supremacists: Biden

Joe Biden has said that President Trump is afraid to take on white supremacists, following the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas.

Many observers say US President Donald Trump divisive rhetoric has worsened race relations in the country since his election in 2016.

Since his election, polling has shown Americans wary of Trump when it comes to race. In January, a CBS News poll found nearly 6 in 10 Americans saying race relations in the country are generally bad.

Similarly, about 60 percent of Americans considered Trump’s actions to be bad for Hispanics and Muslims, and about half said they were bad for African Americans, according to a February 2018 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

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