Assessing threats of political violence and rising extremism on the far-right

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• Judy Woodruff:

  In response to the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, some Trump supporters have also increased calls for a civil war.

  Laura Barrón-López takes a deeper look at threats of political violence by elements of the far right.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  Those dangerous threats are being fueled by conspiracy theories, as well as the mistrust of the FBI and Justice Department that has been promoted by many Republican politicians.

  To explain the rising extremism on the right, we're joined by Barbara Walter, professor at University of California at San Diego and author of the book "How Civil Wars Start."

  Barbara, thanks for joining us.

  Barbara Walter, University of California, San Diego: Thank you for having me.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  I want to ask you about — the Mar-a-Lago search prompted a lot of Trump supporters to call for civil war.

  How does this fit into the growing pattern of extremism on the right?

• Barbara Walter:

  So, for those of us who study violent extremism here in the United States, this is not a surprise at all.

  If you had been on the chat rooms starting in 2008, you would have seen an increasing narrative that talked about shifting to a more violent strategy if more conventional methods of maintaining power — and, by that, I mean, white power — here in this country didn't work.

  And so what we're seeing is sort of that narrative moving into the mainstream.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  And, yesterday, a gunman breached an FBI office in Cincinnati, Ohio, before being killed by authorities.

  Reports said that he appeared to be at the January 6 insurrection. And he had also previously said he wanted to attack the FBI. When you see these incidents connected to violent rhetoric, what does that say to you?

• Barbara Walter:

  Yes, so we know that violent extremism here the United States has increased consistently since 2008. And it continues to increase quite dramatically. We know that much of the violence is being perpetrated by far right groups. And we know the profile of those far right groups.

  About 65 percent of them are white supremacist groups. About 29 percent of them are anti-federal government groups. And there's overlap there.But the anti-federal government groups are groups that think that the federal government is illegitimate, if it is — if they see it as legitimate, that it has too much power.

  And the reason they don't want the federal government to have too much power is that federal law overrides state law. And so what we're seeing is an increase in attacks on law enforcement agents and on federal government employees.

  And so, of course, the gunman in Cincinnati was targeting the FBI. And that's no coincidence. And I will say one more thing, that there is a book called "The Turner Diaries." And it's considered the Bible of the far right. "The Turner Diaries" outlines exactly how you would persecute — how you would prosecute — how you would conduct a civil war against the U.S. government.

  And the very first thing it says that you should do is to attack the FBI.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  Speaking of distrust of institutions, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has said that, if Republicans take control of the House, they will investigate Attorney General Merrick Garland, and a number of other Republicans have said that the FBI should be simply destroyed.

  What signal does that send to the Republican base?

• Barbara Walter:

  Well, that signals to them that these organizations are illegitimate, that are somehow corrupted, that don't deserve to exist.

  And when you get to the point where you begin to believe that, then your trust in democracy and your belief that democracy should continue to exist evaporates. So this is exactly a strategy that a would-be autocrat or a strongman would want to pursue.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  And then, also, in response to this FBI search, there are some who are arguing that prosecuting former President Trump will absolutely result in a civil war and, therefore, a breakdown of democracy.

  But would impunity for Trump embolden the same forces calling for that civil war?

• Barbara Walter:

  Well, I — first of all, I don't believe that prosecuting President Trump is going to be a trigger for civil war.

  And that's because we know what the triggers of civil war are. And the triggers tend to be things that bring a loss of hope to the base of supporters. And a loss of hope usually comes from a series of losses at elections. So, if a group that thinks that it deserves to be in power loses one election, then loses a second election then loses a third election, they begin to lose hope that they will ever come to power again.

  That's when you tend to see a shift towards violence. So, President — former President Trump is no longer in power. There's going to be an election in 2024. A Republican candidate is going to run for power. And if that Republican wins that election, there's going to be a resurgence of hope amongst the base, and we're going to see less risk of civil war, rather than more.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  And then very quickly, Barbara, you served on a CIA-led task force that studied political instability and violence. That task force was not able to study the U.S.

• Barbara Walter:

  Yes.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  Should the U.S. be studied under a similar task force? And how would that be done?

• Barbara Walter:

  Yes.

  Well, first of all, I should be clear that the CIA should absolutely never study the United States. It is an agency designed to gather intelligence on countries outside the United States. We do not want the CIA looking at American citizens.

  That is essentially what the FBI does. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency that's designed to gather intelligence about threats to American citizens from within the United States. It's designed to enforce federal law.

  So we have an agency that already is in place to do that, and, in fact, can do a very, very good job at that. It used to be that the peak of militias — of violent extremist groups and militias in the United States was in 1996.

  And after the Oklahoma City bombing, the FBI was very effective in infiltrating far right groups and essentially disbanding them.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  Barbara Walter, thank you.

• Barbara Walter:

  My pleasure.