Should we be concerned about right-wing extremist infiltration into law enforcement?
Hasret Dikici Bilgin, the Principal Investigator of Turkey for Horizon 2020 project entitled “De-Radicalization in Europe and Beyond: Detect, Resolve, Re-integrate” (D.Rad), Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at Istanbul Bilgi University
April 9, 2021
Violent radicalization has become a growing concern for the policymakers and scholars alike since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Subsequent attacks in Western countries initially by Al-Qaida and later by ISIS-affiliated groups triggered Islamophobia and anti-migrant attitudes. The threat posed by jihadist radicalism turned into such a pressing concern that the term radicalization became to single out Islamist extremism.[i] The place Islamist radicalization occupies on the public agenda is not unfounded. From the train bombings in Madrid in 2004 to the beheading of the schoolteacher in France in 2020, jihadist violence has left behind the trail of a long death toll. The concern over jihadist radicalization, however, came at the expanse of playing down the far-right extremism. Increasingly since 2010, there have been numerous attacks by the far-right radicals. Mass shootings in a summer camp in Norway in 2011,[ii] the Charleston Church Massacre in 2015[iii] and the Charlottesville car attack in 2017[iv] in the United States still reverberate in the public memory. We even witnessed the live-stream massacre of the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand in 2019.[v]
All these incidents created public debate and the politicians declared that thorough investigations had been carried out. The newspapers gave a lengthy analysis of how the attacks were planned, what kind of weapons were used, and devoted large spaces to the motivations of the perpetrators. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to realize how the policymakers, researchers, and newspapers approached the attacks by the jihadists and far-right extremists differently. The main focus has been on the individual attacker frequently depicted as a frustrated lone wolf in the far-right attacks. We read newspaper coverage on the mental health of the attacker,[vi] and we read the academic analysis of the motivations of the lone wolf with an emphasis on personal and political grievances.[vii] Recently, an increasing number of studies underline the problems about this conceptualization and draw attention to the radical milieu around the attackers.[viii] However, there remains to be said more about the involvement of the law enforcement in the far-right attacks. It is difficult to fathom that the preparations of all such grand attacks went unnoticed by the police. Neglect of duty and delinquency have been part of the investigations; yet, again, not much on the organizational nature of the connections.
The first country forced by the evidence to accept that the right-wing radicalization goes beyond mere sympathy in law enforcement was Germany. For years, the German authorities treated the right-wing radical attacks as a series of isolated events. Then, it became irrefutable that the far-right activity within the Special Forces Command (KSK) acquired an organizational character.[ix] Storming of the American parliament on January 6, 2021, came to be known as the Capitol Riot, reinvigorated the discussions on the extent of the radical right-wing infiltration in law enforcement. The organization of an attack on the parliament in a consolidated democracy is unprecedented. This is also the first time the investigations connected the rioters to multiple far-right groups in the United States.[x] In the previous incidents, the American police focused on the victims of the far-right attacks rather than the attackers. It was even documented that the police worked with the far-right rally organizers to pursue the leftist activists after a rally in 2016 which left 10 wounded people.[xi] Now that several on-duty and former police officers and public servants were arrested in relation to the incident,[xii] we might be entering a new phase in which infiltration of the right-wing radicalization in law enforcement will be under focus. The time might have come that we should reconsider radicalization and state-led radicalization with a new perspective.
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[i] Alex P. Schmid, “Radicalisation, de-Radicalisation, Counter-Radicalisation: A Conceptual Discussion and Literature Review,” ICCT Research Paper 97, no. 1 (2013): 22.
[ii] Police Name Norway Terror Victims,” BBC News, July 26, 2011, https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-14298769.
[iii] Nick Corasaniti, Richard Pérez-Peña, and Lizette Alvarez, “Church Massacre Suspect Held as Charleston Grieves,” The New York Times, June 18, 2015, sec. U.S., https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/us/charleston-church-shooting.html.
[iv] Greg Myre, “Why The Government Can’t Bring Terrorism Charges In Charlottesville,” NPR, August 14, 2017, https://www.npr.org/2017/08/14/543462676/why-the-govt-cant-bring-terrorism-charges-in-charlottesville.
[v] Kristen Gelineau and Jon Gambrel, “New Zealand Mosque Shooter Is a White Nationalist Who Hates Immigrants, Documents and Video Reveal - Chicago Tribune,” Chicago Tribune, March 15, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20200602054023/https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-mosque-killer-white-supremacy-20190315-story.html.
[vi] Christina Anderson, “Norway: Mass Killer Found to Be Sane,” The New York Times, April 11, 2012, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/world/europe/norway-mass-killer-found-to-be-sane.html.
[vii] Mark Hamm and Ramón Spaaij, The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism, The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism (Columbia University Press, 2017), https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7312/hamm18174/html.
[viii] Bart Schuurman et al., “End of the Lone Wolf: The Typology That Should Not Have Been,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 42, no. 8 (August 3, 2019): 771–78, https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2017.1419554; Lars Erik Berntzen and Sveinung Sandberg, “The Collective Nature of Lone Wolf Terrorism: Anders Behring Breivik and the Anti-Islamic Social Movement,” Terrorism and Political Violence 26, no. 5 (October 20, 2014): 759–79, https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2013.767245.
[ix] “The Dark Side of State Power: Exploring Right-Wing Extremism in Germany’s Police and Military,” Der Spiegel, August 12, 2020, https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-dark-side-of-state-power-exploring-right-wing-extremism-in-germany-s-police-and-military-a-0600aa1e-3e4e-45af-bfc9-32a6661e66ef.
[x] Clare Hymes, Cassidy McDonald, and Eleanor Watson, “What We Know about the ‘Unprecedented’ Capitol Riot Arrests,” CBS News, April 2, 2021, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/capitol-riot-arrests-2021-04-02/.
[xi] “California Police Worked with Neo-Nazis to Pursue ‘anti-Racist’ Activists, Documents Show,” The Guardian, February 9, 2018, sec. World News, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/09/california-police-white-supremacists-counter-protest.
[xii] Bart Jansen, “‘A Nightmare Scenario’: Extremists in Police Ranks Spark Growing Concern after Capitol Riot,” USA Today, March 23, 2021, https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/elections/2021/03/21/police-charged-capitol-riot-reignite-concerns-racism-extremism/4738348001/.