Only the Right Can Defeat White Nationalism

The massacre in El Paso, Texas, has, for the moment, reminded Americans of the danger posed by far-right terrorists. Former national-security officials have demanded that the U.S. government “make addressing this form of terrorism as high a priority as countering international terrorism has become since 9/11.” Retired Marine General John Allen and the former senior U.S. diplomat Brett McGurk have argued that far-right extremism poses “an equal threat” as jihadist groups such as ISIS.

This is incorrect. White nationalism is a far greater threat to American democracy than jihadism, and always has been. But there are actually two challenges posed by white nationalism: One is the threat posed to American communities by attacks like the one in El Paso, which law enforcement can and should prevent. The other is the threat the ideology the attackers support poses to American democracy, which can be defeated only through politics, and only by the American people themselves.

“There’s an attack-prevention problem, and there’s also a political problem. These problems overlap and reinforce each other, although they are not exactly the same problem,” J. M. Berger, an author and security consultant who has , told me. “Policy makers can try to deal with this from an attack-prevention standpoint and avoid the political element, and there’s an argument to be made for keeping the law-enforcement response separate from the