Every so often it’s important to step back from the freak show of the moment so that you can see the whole circle. That has never been more important than at this moment and under this administration.
Everything that has happened during recent years is all about one thing: fear by white people that they will inevitably lose their numerical advantage in this country; and with that loss comes an alteration of American culture and shifting of power away from white dominance and white control. White people don’t want to become one of many minority groups in America and have others – possibly from Asia, Latin America, Africa or the Middle East – holding the reins of power and dictating inclusion and equity.
This is manifested in every issue you can imagine: the Confederate monuments fight, opposition to Black Lives Matter, intransigence on gun control, voter suppression laws, the Muslim ban, the hard line on asylum-seekers coming across the southern border, calls to abolish the visa lottery, the defaming of majority black countries, efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade, the addition of a census question that could cause an undercount of Hispanics, the stacking of the courts with far-right judges (the vast majority of whom are white men). You name it, each issue is laced the white panic about displacement.
One manifestation of this panic, on the fringes, is a growing domestic terrorism problem largely driven by white nationalists and white supremacists. As ABC News reported about congressional testimony given in May by the assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, Michael McGarrity:
“He said that of the 850 domestic terrorism investigations currently underway inside the United States, about 40 percent target subjects who adhere to racist ideologies, and ‘a significant majority’ of them are white nationalists or white supremacists. The vast majority of the other cases involve subjects who promote anti-government or anti-authority sentiments, McGarrity testified.”