White House Unveils Plan to Fight Domestic Terrorism

The White House has unveiled US President Joe Biden’s strategy for fighting domestic extremism and terrorism which have spiked in recent years.

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"Too often over the past several years, American communities have felt the wrenching pain of domestic terrorism. Black church members slaughtered during their bible study in Charleston . A synagogue in Pittsburgh targeted for supporting immigrants . A gunman spraying bullets at an El Paso Walmart to target Latinos," Biden wrote in the foreword to the 32-page plan unveiled on Tuesday.

Biden added, "We cannot ignore this threat or wish it away." "Preventing domestic terrorism and reducing the factors that fuel it demand a multifaceted response across the federal government and beyond.

The plan titled National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism outlines steps recommended by national security officials and advisers into one blueprint on how to more effectively identify domestic extremists in the country after years of heightened focus on foreign terrorists. The steps include strategies for strengthening law enforcement partnerships and stemming extremists' recruitment in armed forces.

The plan warns that domestic terrorism is both persistent and evolving in the United States, embracing "a range of violent ideological motivations, including racial or ethnic bigotry and hatred as well as the anti-government or anti-authority sentiment."

Domestic extremists "also take on a variety of forms, from lone actors and small groups of informally aligned individuals to networks exhorting and targeting violence toward specific communities, to violent self-proclaimed "militias” who, despite legal prohibitions in all fifty states against certain private militia activity, assert a baseless right to take the law into their own hands," the plan further warns.

The plan describes terrorist cells as having traits of lone wolves who prepare and carry out terrorist acts alone, and teams who commit acts of violence in a command structure and with material assistance from an extremist group.

"Across violent ideologies , individuals and small groups both formal and informal – have been galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States to carry out violent attacks," it said, adding, "Among that wide range of animating ideologies, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (principally those who promote the superiority of the white race) and militia violent extremists are assessed as presenting the most persistent and lethal threats . We are taking on this complex and evolving domestic terrorism threat."

The anti-domestic terrorism plan comes in the wake of the deadly Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill by white supremacists. The director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) testified in a testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in May that the deadly attack by supporters of former President Donald Trump constituted "domestic terrorism."

As a result of the ongoing investigations, the U.S. Justice Department has charged over 300 extremists from far-right groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys over the deadly attack.