--:-- Sean Rameswaram: NYU Stern wants to help you gain core business knowledge plus analytical savvy with its new online MS in quantitative management. You can learn more at stern.nyu.edu slash business ready.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So far, 50 dead, and the number will go up. They were killed because they were Muslims. They were killed because they were praying. Their story must not be only told on TV. We must not become numb as we hear the story again and again and again. The attacks on an African American church must not be repeated. The attack on a synagogue must not be repeated. An attack on a mosque must not be repeated.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: There's a pretty good chance you live far, far away from New Zealand. But this weekend, everyone felt a little closer to the country. There were vigils held for victims of the Christchurch shootings across the world, from Australia to Israel to Washington, D.C.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Noam Hassenfeld, you went to the vigil here in D.C. last night, and it sadly wasn't your first time reporting on a vigil after a shooting for the show.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: It wasn't, unfortunately. I was in the exact same place for a vigil after the Tree of Life shooting. Back in October, at that vigil, people told me they weren't shocked. And this time, people were saying they felt the same way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, it's very sad to say, but we've been through so many of these that things kind of stay the same. People move on, unfortunately, fast.
--:-- Reza Bagai: This is Reza Bagai. I'm a Muslim youth leader who organized the vigil. Unfortunately, you know, we live in a constant state where every day is a threat. My mosque has had bomb scares, and people have tried to break in and hurt people, and that's a sad reality.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't think anything's going to change. But Reza says politicians can help change the inevitability that he and others have been feeling.
--:-- Reza Bagai: Response to horrific events.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: I also spoke with Imam Yahya Hendi. He's a Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University. And he's also the voice we heard at the top of the show.
--:-- Imam Yahya Hendi: [voice at the top of the show] He said he felt let down by American politicians. The voice of President Trump has not made Muslims feel safe. It has not made Jews feel safe. It has not made immigrants feel safe.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We the people have the power to vote out those who speak a language of hate. I have enough faith in America. I have enough faith in the power of the people to come together and honor what Muslims have done and continue to contribute to the United States of America.
--:-- Imam Yahya Hendi: This isn't just an attack on the Muslim community. What happened in New Zealand is an attack on our human family. It is an attack on every Jew, on every Christian, on every Buddhist, on every Hindu, on every Sikh. It is an attack on our very humanity.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: After the Tree of Life shooting, I started feeling a little scared to go to synagogue. I wonder if going to a mosque feels different at all.
--:-- Yasmeen Al-Hasan: I have heard from Muslim youngsters that language of fear. They're afraid of going to the mosque. My message to them, that's exactly what the terrorists want us to do. That's exactly what white supremacists want us to do.
--:-- Noam Hassenfeld: They want us to stop going to our mosques, our synagogues, our temples, and our churches. Not going gives them the voice that they have won. We must continue to go and more than ever before.
--:-- Yasmeen Al-Hasan: My name is Yasmeen Al-Hasan, and I am a student at Georgetown University. I am a Palestinian-American Muslim. Did you go to mosque on Friday?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, I did go to Jum'ah at Georgetown. And what was the scene like? What were you feeling?
--:-- Yasmeen Al-Hasan: On Friday, I felt very numb and not shocked. And so in that moment, I wanted to be in a space where I don't have to pretend or feel this need to prove myself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I have found that wherever I am in the world if I am in a mosque, I am welcomed as if it is a homecoming. I can speak the language, I can speak it poorly. I can literally just walk in, and they will welcome me as if I am a sister.
--:-- Yasmeen Al-Hasan: Mosque, it's more than just a place of worship. It's a place of community, which is why when I mourn, when I am hurt, I want to be in a place of community.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Was there any discussion of fear, of safety, of being reluctant to go to mosque?
--:-- Yasmeen Al-Hasan: I have never felt fully safe here. Like this horrible, horrible tragedy in New Zealand just perpetuates that. And so, no, I don't feel safe, but I never have.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For as long as I can remember, and I was born here, I'm 20 years old right now, I have always felt like the other. I am not Arab or Muslim presenting. I don't wear the hijab. My skin is lighter than that of my brothers and sisters.
--:-- Yasmeen Al-Hasan: My middle name is Mohammed. And when I was younger, I hid that because I was ashamed of that. I was ashamed that there was this distinguishing mark. But after all of this time, I am unapologetically, openly Palestinian Muslim because I am fortunate enough to be able to do that without the guarantee of getting killed or hurt.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Not all the ones I love can say the same, but I have never not felt like an other here. Do you feel American?
--:-- Yasmeen Al-Hasan: When I am in the United States, I am not made to feel American. I have lived here my entire life. I was born here. I was raised here. English is my first language. I carry an American passport.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When I'm in the United States, I don't feel American. When I'm anywhere else in the world, I feel American.
--:-- Yasmeen Al-Hasan: Do you have any hope that at any point in the next couple of decades, you know, your children's generation, at some point, someone will feel fully and wholly unambiguously American?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can't not have hope. As cheesy as that sounds, and I hate when people say that. But if I'm fighting for something, then I have to have hope that it's going to matter.
--:-- Yasmeen Al-Hasan: What Yasmin said sort of echoed throughout the vigil. There was this tension. The obvious fact of hatred, the threat of violence, and the reality that it probably won't change anytime soon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then this shift, an understanding that there needs to be some kind of hope, even if it doesn't always seem that reasonable.
--:-- Yasmeen Al-Hasan: I have been told time and time again that I, an American born and raised, do not belong here. I am a Muslim woman of color who has engraved her Palestinian roots into every breath and every word that rolls off this tongue.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I'm sorry that I will never be sorry. And that sorry was not an apology to you, but an apology to younger me looking at myself in the mirror, wishing that it looked like just every single one of you.
--:-- Yasmeen Al-Hasan: So when I tell you I belong here, it is a fact. It is truth in its entirety.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That last voice you heard was a D.C. poet named Mariam Abu Ghazala. Before that, you heard Noam Hassenfeld from Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We'll take a look at the rise in white supremacy in America after the break.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: NYU Stern is the only top-ranked business school offering the flexibility of an online management master's and applications are now being accepted. So here's a bit about the program.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It offers core business knowledge with an emphasis on analytics. Students learn from the same passionate educators, scholars, and business leaders who teach on campus at NYU in New York City.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Join a close-knit virtual community of faculty and peers. I've always wanted to belong to a close-knit virtual community. You can find out if you're a fit for the Masters of Science in Quantitative Management from NYU Stern's School of Business.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's an online course. Learn more online at stern.nyu.edu slash business ready. One more time, that is stern.nyu.edu slash business ready.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On Friday, after the attack in New Zealand, a reporter asked President Trump if he thought white nationalism was a rising threat.
--:-- President Trump: I don't really. I think it's a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. I guess if you look at what happened in New Zealand, perhaps that's the case. I don't know enough about it yet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're just learning about the person and the people involved. But it's certainly a terrible thing. Terrible thing.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: Covers right-wing extremism for ProPublica, and I asked him if he agrees.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: With the election of Barack Obama, in the U.S., we started seeing an increase of violent white supremacist activity at that time. And the movement was sort of galvanized and brought back from the dead by the election of the first African-American president, by his concern about firearms and interest in gun control, by sort of other issues that motivated them.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: And so since then, we have seen a steady uptick in violent incidents connected to white extremists. And we've seen a big surge, I believe, in the last couple of years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. In the last couple of years, of course, the Unite the Right rallies and the Tree of Life shooting come to mind. But has there been an increase of the smaller stuff to the things you wouldn't hear about?
--:-- A.C. Thompson: Yeah. I mean, I think there's several things going on. And one is that the Trump candidacy and Trump election sort of catalyzed a new generation of white supremacist activists, most of them young men under 30.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there was a real new energy in the movement that you hadn't seen for a long time. So there had been this uptick that was slow and steady after 2008. And suddenly, 2015, 2016, you see this explosion of activity.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: And a lot of that is linked to Donald Trump, that people are saying, hey, this is our guy. We finally have our moment. The things that he's saying are resonating with me in a way that nobody else ever has.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he was a real sort of driver for the new white supremacist movement. And though we're focusing on the United States here, we should mention that the shooter in New Zealand who was an Australian also made references to Donald Trump, right?
--:-- A.C. Thompson: Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can see in the writings of the alleged New Zealand shooter that he's drawing from a grab bag of influences, including many American influences.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In the United States, are we talking about like mostly young white men with very sharp, short haircuts? Who is this group that we're talking about?
--:-- A.C. Thompson: You know, it has been really interesting. In the last couple of years, what you have seen are many, many young white men who come from middle-class backgrounds, who are college-educated, who are plugged into the mainstream of society, who are drawn to these movements and are getting involved in these movements.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think there's sometimes this sense that, oh, these white supremacists are a bunch of idiots. They're a bunch of rednecks. And that's just not true. Like these people are very bright. They are drawn from sort of the center of society, not the fringes of society.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: And they have skills that make them very dangerous, both when it comes to proselytizing and when it comes to acts of terrorism.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you've spent time with these groups. What do you think is drawing these young men towards these groups? Are they disaffected by multiculturalism in America? What exactly is it?
--:-- A.C. Thompson: You know, there's a lot of different things that you hear from the young men involved in these movements. And so one thing that you hear is white people are becoming a minority in this country and minorities are not treated well. And we know that. And we don't want to be a minority.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so there's this sort of fear of a brown planet and there's this sort of recognition that to be a person of color or minority in the U.S. has not been a good thing oftentimes.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: I think another thing that I see is a sort of generalized concern with the future of America and the future of the world and a sort of hunt for answers. And these are folks that rather than saying, oh, the way forward is restraining capitalism or a more ecologically centered future, their answer ends up being the Jews are behind all this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We need to solve all our problems through purging all people of color and people who are not Christians from this nation and then that will sort of solve our looming economic class problems are environmental problems.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: Like that's the one-stop solution to make things better. Like for example, I was just listening to a neo-Nazi podcast and that was the big conversation is like, hey, you know, if we just get rid of Jews, the vast bulk of the problems in the U.S. will go away. Not all of them, but most of them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think what you see is young men looking at real-world problems and finding these sort of magical and toxic solutions to them.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: You mentioned listening to a neo-Nazi podcast. How much is just access to online forums emboldening these groups and helping them proselytize their messages?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That is a key factor, right? So if you look back at the history of the white supremacist movement in the U.S., these people were always early adopters of technology.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: They were, in the 1980s, one of the first groups to start using BBS systems on the internet. I mean, well before anyone else.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the white supremacists had a setup called Liberty Net that they used to organize back in the 80s. But if you fast forward to now, the ability to reach a mass audience through the biggest platforms out there is now available to the white supremacist movement.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: And the ability to have constant, instant communication between people who are spread all over the country and indeed all over the world, that's a new thing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if you look at YouTube right now, there's a whole white supremacist and neo-Nazi world on YouTube. And it basically the same with every different social media platform.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: And the sort of circles will pop up. There be an outcry. They get knocked down. But then they pop up again.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so the current white supremacists have access to an audience that their forebears couldn't dream of.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: So are these white supremacists mostly focused on things like rallies and demonstrations and terrorist attacks? Are the outliers?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One thing that's happened since the Charlottesville rally in the U.S. white supremacist movement is that there has been a turn away from sort of public protest and political action towards terrorism.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: And so I've interviewed many people who said, I was at Charlottesville, or I was following what happened at Charlottesville. And what I realized is, it's impossible to affect the sort of change that we white supremacists want to affect in the U.S. through legal means.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the only way forward for us is violent, terrorist struggle. And that is a widespread feeling within the movement now.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: And I think what we're seeing, whether it's in New Zealand or whether it's in Pittsburgh or whether it's in New York City, is an expression of that turn towards terrorism from the movement.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's always been a terrorist current throughout the white supremacist and white power movement for decades. But this current iteration of it, I think, has clearly turned from sort of public-facing actions like Charlottesville, like rallies and that sort of thing, towards underground action and terrorist action.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: So what is the United States government doing to police this unprecedented spread of white supremacy online and in our culture?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I think that's a question that a lot of people have been asking over the last couple of years. And I want to back up a little bit to explain where I think we've been and where maybe we're going.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: If you back up and you go back to 1995, we had the Oklahoma City terror attack carried out by Tim McVeigh, as well as accomplices. Tim McVeigh was a member of the white supremacist movement. He was a member of the militia movement. He was inspired by a white supremacist text called the Turner Diaries.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He thought he was going to set off a race war and a war against the U.S. government. And after he killed 168 people, there was a lot of energy devoted at the federal level to making sure that didn't happen again.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: And I would say at times there was even probably significant overreach by law enforcement. But there was a whole expertise and knowledge from that time period within federal agencies as well as local and state agencies about what white extremism looked like and who these people were and how they organized and what they wanted to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After 2001 and the 9-11 attacks, sort of interest in that particular discipline, that particular world of terrorism dropped off.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: And the focus at the federal level, as well as at other levels, became really heavily tilted towards so-called Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic extremism.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that sort of knowledge base disappeared. By the time you get to now, not only are sort of the people that chased the white supremacists of the 80s and 90s gone and their knowledge gone, but the movement today draws from that earlier era, but is very different in many ways and uses different modalities to communicate, organizes in different ways, but has the same apocalyptic end goal.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: And so I think there has been a lack of expertise in the last couple of years to both draw on the lessons of the previous decades and respond quickly to these new developments.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And have you seen a shift in how people in law enforcement that you talk to or deal with in reporting on white supremacy are dealing with this?
--:-- A.C. Thompson: Yeah, I think that you're seeing law enforcement play catch up and start to jump into this arena and pay more attention to it and try to educate themselves about this new wave of white supremacists.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that they were slow to move that way, but they are now moving to confronting this threat.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I would say that's at all different levels. You may not have a lot of support from that from the very top, and you may not have a sense that this matters from people at the very top.
--:-- A.C. Thompson: But I know the sort of field agents and the detectives that are out there are looking at this very closely.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A.C. Thompson. He's an investigative reporter for ProPublica.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram. This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The team's made up of Noam Hassenfeld, Bridget McCarthy, Luke Vanderplug, Afim Shapiro, and Irene Noguchi is our executive producer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Siona Petros is our intern, and the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder makes music for us.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher, and we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks to NYU Stern for supporting the show today. Their new online MS in quantitative management is waiting for you. Learn more at stern.nyu.edu slash business ready. That's stern.nyu.edu slash business ready.
