In a Brennan Center for Justice excerpt from his book, Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within, former FBI agent Mike German, who worked undercover in white supremacist and militia groups, argues that law enforcement has a lax approach to far-right violence and that there is a broader, complicated relationship between police and white supremacy that is mostly unacknowledged, even refuted. “The Justice Department and FBI have so far resisted congressional demands to collect comprehensive national data on the violent acts perpetrated by white supremacist and far-right militants,” German writes. “Acknowledging that white supremacist violence is a serious problem is the first step, and gathering the data that proves it is the next.”
“It is hard to overstate the danger that white-supremacist police pose to people they are sworn to protect. Yet the FBI has shown stubborn resistance to acknowledging the problem,” German, noting that just over three months before the attack on the Capitol, he had testified in the House of Representatives regarding the unfortunate persistence of racism, white supremacy, and far-right militancy within law enforcement. “The subcommittee chairman who invited me, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), also asked FBI officials to testify at the hearing, but they refused. Raskin said the bureau managers disavowed previously released FBI intelligence reports that had warned about white supremacy in law enforcement and stated they did not currently consider it a significant concern.” Then came the January 6th attacks, which made the threat posed by white supremacy and far-right militancy in law enforcement much harder to deny, German writes.
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