This excerpt originally appeared in Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within, published by The New Press.
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. Just over three months before the attack on the Capitol, I 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. They were wrong, blinded by their biases and unwilling to let evidence rather than their personal and institutional prejudices dictate their counterterrorism policies. The January 6 attack made the threat posed by white supremacy and far-right militancy in law enforcement much harder to deny.
This book is a call to action. It underlines the urgent need for law enforcement at federal, state, and local levels to better protect the public from far-right violence and to root out overt racism and white supremacy within the ranks. It also addresses the complicated relationship between police and white supremacy writ large. Through U.S. history, police have been marshaled to enforce racist laws, starting from the American colonies’ slave patrols. Today, white supremacy endures in the well-documented racial inequities in our political, economic, and social institutions, particularly the criminal justice system. Inaction by law enforcement in the face of white supremacist violence, including racist police violence, supports these discriminatory systems and sends a message about whose lives matter most in America.
The good news is that fixing deficiencies in policing violent forms of white supremacy is more straightforward than one might imagine. Congress has already provided sufficient authority and resources for law enforcement to investigate, prosecute, and punish white supremacist and far-right violence. When law enforcement employs these tools, they are very effective. As of this writing, the U.S. Justice Department has charged more than 1,200 people who attacked the Capitol on January 6, including members of well-known white supremacist and far-right militant groups who it successfully convicted of crimes of terrorism and sedition. Most of those charged have pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial. Federal, state, and local prosecutors have also leveled dozens of charges against a defeated former president of the United States and his co-conspirators for attempting illegally to overturn the results of a free and fair election.
What has been lacking is the determination to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of far-right violence as a serious national security threat. Hundreds of rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6 have yet to be charged, despite being identified by volunteer “sedition hunters” who reported them to the FBI. And far-right militants continue to engage in public violence without a sufficient law enforcement response. 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. Acknowledging that white supremacist violence is a serious problem is the first step, and gathering the data that proves it is the next. Once the problem is accurately scoped, enforcement efforts can be properly tailored, and the agencies responsible for addressing these crimes can be held publicly accountable.
To address white supremacist violence effectively, law enforcement needs approaches that are more strategic and more focused: more strategic by using data to evaluate the extent and nature of white supremacist violence, and by understanding militants’ overarching goal of normalizing and legitimizing this violence as a political tool; and more focused because law enforcement must concentrate its efforts and resources on evidence of violent criminal activity, rather than policing political expression and associations, no matter how odious. Policing violence, not ideology, will guard against biased investigations and ensure that law enforcement resources are targeted toward real threats, not disfavored political groups.
Effectively policing white supremacy also means limiting the role of police. Instead of expanding law enforcement authorities and resources, our nation should invest in and empower the communities impacted by white supremacist and far-right militant violence. Responses must include restorative approaches to hate crimes and far-right violence, which can help rebuild the social cohesion that white supremacists are trying to destroy.
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Copyright © 2025 by Mike German and Beth Zasloff. Reprinted here with permission.
