 Welcome everyone and welcome to this second in a series of seminars or webinars on nationalistic extremism in North America I'm John short here I'm the director of the International Policy Center and the wiser diplomacy center at the University of Michigan sterile our School of Public Policy, and we're pleased to be running this series as part of our 2021 2022 North American colloquium which is a partnership that we have at Michigan with the University of Toronto, and the autonomous National University of Mexico. This theme of nationalistic extremism will culminate in a conference that will host in person here in Ann Arbor in April. In the meantime, as I mentioned we're in the second of our four webinar sessions on the theme. The first in late October dealt with the historical drivers for nationalistic extremism in Canada Mexico in the United States. Today we're here to talk about the current threat environment. In the winter will have further sessions on the policy tools and frameworks available and new new approaches to dealing with and countering nationalist extremism. For today's session on the current threat environment we're delighted to have two panelists with us, and a third who has submitted a video as he's unfortunately unable to be here synchronously. To start by introducing him Dr Leonardo Curcio Gutierrez is at the Center for Research on North America at the Autonomous National University of Mexico. He's an expert on national security, and as the author of eight books as well as the co author of a few dozen more, all on topics related to national security and governance in Mexico and other, and other countries. Next we have Dr Stephanie carbon, who is an associate professor of international relations at the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs at Carlton University in Canada. Stephanie is an expert in international law security terrorism and technology. She's the author of the book prisoners of America's Wars from the early Republic to Guantanamo from Columbia and Hurst in 2010, as well as the co author of the book science law liberalism American way of warfare, the quest for humanity and conflict published by Cambridge in 2015. Among other things Stephanie has worked as a consultant to the US Defense Department and spent three years as an analyst with the Canadian government on national security issues. Third we'll have Dr Cynthia Miller address, who is professor at the School of Public Affairs and School of Education, and runs the polarization and extremism research and innovation lab in the Center for University. Excellent at American University in Washington DC, Cynthia regularly briefs policy security education and intelligence agencies in the United States at the United Nations, and around the world on trends and domestic violent extremism, as well as strategies for prevention and disengagement. She's the author of the new book hate in the homeland, the new global far right from Princeton University Press and some of you in the Ford School community had the privilege of hearing her speak about that book. Just last month. She's also also the author of several other books, including from Princeton University Press in 2018 the book, the extreme gone mainstream commercial is commercialization and far right youth culture in Germany. Cynthia is a graduate of the University of Michigan both the master of public policy program and the doctorate in sociology. So we are delighted to have such a great panel. And I'm also privileged to have my partner in prime job at Ali, a colleague here at the Ford School himself, an expert in nationalist extremism and person with many years of high level experience in the US government including a senior director of counter terrorism at the National Security Council, and other senior roles at the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI and elsewhere. So I'm going to turn over to job it, and he will moderate today's webinar panel. Thanks john for that introduction and great to be with everyone today. Hopefully at one point we're going to have these in person and maybe we'll have to wait to April to get to that. But definitely, definitely great to have everyone on this for this session today and john as you mentioned we're going to take a look at the current landscape and there's a lot of ground to cover on that between Mexico, Canada, and the United States and that landscape seems to be shifting even underneath our feet so even what we thought a year ago might be a little different from from what the threat environment looks like now but that's what we're going to try to get into with the panel today and john I believe based on the order of presentations we're going to have the recorded session. First, and then we're going to have the, the short remarks from Dr. Carvin and Cynthia and then I will engage in a Q&A with them and then hopefully we'll get some questions from the audience as well. Wonderful. And with that I'll share Leonardo's video. Hi, good morning to everyone. I would like to express how deeply honored I am to share the panel with you, Dr. Carvin and with you, Dr. Miller Idris. I would like to thank Dr. George for hosting us and for his kind presentation. I know that it's not the proper way, it's not the best way to participate in a panel delivering my remarks recorded but sometimes it's impossible to deal with Eastern time and Paris time so sorry about that. I know I'm missing a very interesting debate and let me share with you a couple of thoughts about the subject we are discussing. The current landscape is changing naturally at the sunset of the last century. Universalism and cosmopolitanism were highly appreciated values. Globalization as a human project provided a highly optimistic framework to organize the international arena to deal with global uncertainty to force convergence and to build the basis for dignity, for respect, for foster this sense of belonging to the planet as a common homeland. As a French thinker Edgar Moran said, we have to identify our homeland as the planet, as our homeland. The first challenge to this wishful thinking was the debate introduced by Samuel Huntington. We belong to different civilizations. So it's preposterous to expect a peaceful world in those circumstances. We belong to different civilizations. We have different approaches so we are in a certain way destined to fight. The second challenge was the identity also raised by the brilliant yet controversial Huntington. The identity, who I am, who are we as a nation is never an innocent question. Identity as nationalism is always a provocative way. It's probably elegant sometimes to stress differences. We are not equal. We speak different tongues. We have different religions. We have different values. So we are essentially incompatible. We do not match. The national or the natural connection between identity, national identity and the daily life in North America or the anxiety after the crisis, the financial crisis of 2008 is naturally migration. How can we deal with that complicated issue, which is, you know, emotional, highly human, we don't trust if we don't know each other, is highly politicized and is a driver for political polarization. The anti-Mexican narrative displayed by Trump and company five years ago killed, for instance, NAFTA. The spirit of Houston was killed by this narrative. And by the way, this narrative empoisoned the atmosphere of the region. I am afraid, by the way, that it is not over. Probably in the next presidential elections, the ghost of nativism will reemerge in America and in the region. Allow me to share with you a couple of remarks about the Mexican reaction to this anti-Mexican wave. Mexico, happily, the Mexican response to this anti-Mexican wave has been mainly rhetoric. López Obrador, our popular and populist as well president, used in a synergic way this bombastic narrative to campaign, mainly to campaign. But once in office, his strategy has been highly pragmatic, even condescending, if I may say. López as the epitome of the Mexican left is not surprisingly anti-American. On the contrary, he is a huge fan of USMCA. He doesn't want to establish deeper ties with China. And he is convinced by the idea of a light shoring, near shoring. So in the left wing political spectrum of Mexican culture is not growing anti-Americanism nor anti-Canadianism. Ambulo is not recycling the classic topics about or against free trade, classic topics used by the unions and the left wing party politics in Latin America. He considers that we are neighbors and we have to deal with that fact. The leftist traditional narrative, though, has some components that could have disruptive potential in the foreseeable future. The narrative of Mexican nationalism is highly victimist. The classic approach is against mining and energy and oil. Next year, the electric reform proposed by the president could be, could provide the ground for a growing nationalist speech defending our sovereignty. Keep an eye on that. And finally, it's probably an old-fashioned ideology of national liberation, but it's in a very good shape these days. Our president considers Cuba not a stubborn and authoritarian regime, but a heroic one, which is disturbing, but that way it is. Which deserves, by the way he said, a kind of Nobel Prize for its endurance and resilience. That could be as well a source of unrest for the region. But I have been a little bit long. I know I would like to apologize once again. Thank you very much for your kind invitation. I wish you an excellent debate. So with that, or with those remarks from Dr. Curzio, unfortunately, wasn't able to be here, but I think he provided an interesting macro-level view on some of these key drivers and issues in Mexico. Let me next turn to Dr. Carvin to give us the view from Canada. So, and I believe you have some slides you'd also like to share. So hopefully that function will work. Dr. Carvin, we're not getting sound from you. How's that? Yeah, much better. Thank you. Yeah, I like that introduction where you said I was going to, you know, I study technology because I'm always the person who leaves the mute button on. Thank you so much for having me here today. I was absolutely delighted to receive this email. Yeah, I mean, from the biography, I realize I need to update it a little bit. Most of my work recently has been on violent extremism and national security threats, mostly from a Canadian perspective, but also how they intersect with that of our allies. So this is a very interesting conference and I'm happy to be here. So there's a number of observations that I wanted to make just from the get go. And you know I had this actual interesting exchange with John just before we started because the title Nationalist Extremism. I don't know to the extent to how how well that translates to the Canadian experience because we have actually had kind of nationalist violence in the form of the FLQ right like so when I think of nationalist violence that's kind of what I think of. But you know, yeah, it's kind of the what's called now I think ideologically motivated violence extremism or I am the E that's the term that's increasingly being used instead of left versus right or nationalist or anything like this it's just. It really refers to kind of a soupy mix of ideas grievances conspiracy theories that kind of comes together and I'll get to that in a second. Secondly, I think the important thing to keep in mind the Canadian context is just how transnational are these I am the E groups are. It's a very odd mix of importing and exporting of ideas and the Canadian movements in Canada have been heavily influenced by both movements in Europe as well as the United States, but also Canada has exported some of our some of our extremists to particularly the United States. And finally, the way that the I think the biggest trend in Canada right now is the way that I am the groups are intersecting with the anti lockdown anti public health measure protesters and so I'll get to that in the presentation. The definition I use basically for far right extremism which kind of covers I think a lot of the IMB not all of it, but it's a starting place is the one here from Perian Scriven's, which is a loose movement, animated by a racially ethnically and sexually defined nationalism. This nationalism is typically framed in terms of white power and is grounded in xenophobic exclusionary understandings of the perceived threats posed by such groups as non whites to use immigrants homosexuals and feminists. And so I'm not going to add Islamophobia to that, but it's not that's not a comprehensive understanding I mean if you look at like some of the Q and non groups that are here now I mean they tend to be relatively diverse. And those groups are being targeted by some of the IMB extremists so it's going to be interesting to see where that goes. In addition, a lot of the movements which I'm going to list in a second they tend to be imported and adapted from Europe. So for example, Pegida, the soldiers of Odin, although that group in Canada has like come together and fallen apart multiple multiple times. And then as well as the United States so some of our first hate groups like the KKK, the base, it says Adam Waffen to should be Adam Waffen. These are very highly transnational groups as well. And so again, not strictly speaking Canadian but we're have that the scene here in Canada is kind of heavily influenced by what's happening abroad. But again, Canadians have played influential roles in transnational movements, like, I'll get into that in a second and then in two slides actually, but like you know today we think of people like Lauren Southern even to a certain extent Jordan Peterson I wouldn't put them as a violent extremist of course but certainly someone who is intersected with this movement and some not great ways and and Faith Goldie the proud boys. These are all individuals who are Canadian had big online presence and in a lot of cases have actually tried to go to the United States in order to kind of try and make it big. So this is how the Canadian Security Intelligence Service are domestic, I guess it's the Canadian MI five if you will. This is how they understand the threat now. So the religiously motivated violent extremism would be things like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah politically motivated violent extremism would be certain kind of separatist groups, like the Pakistani separatism for example which has a very small presence in Canada, and then I am the, which they see is kind of, you know, they kind of broke it up into four categories, xenophobic violence such or racially motivated violence. Gender based violence is now pretty big incel the incel movement was actually. In Canada we've had a number of incel attacks and additionally the term incel was coined in Canada by Canadian woman, not in a malicious way it just kind of got hijacked anti authoritarian violence has been pretty big since at least 2014. And then you kind of have the, the other right, which we'll get to in a second so, who are we talking about really we've seen here the legacy hate groups, KKK the creativity movement, again started by Canadian had to go to the United States though, in order to really kind of thrive but your ideas really still carry on, in particular the creativity movement coined the term racial holy war, and the again the symbols that these groups tend to promote, continue to be influential today. Secondly, we have anti authoritarianism, which is again this idea that government is a legitimate they were a lot rely on the misinterpretation of treaties, or made up treaties. And again, they, we use the term pseudo law, in order to kind of talk about the kind of, you know, ideas that they're basing their, their, their bizarre kind of conspiracy theories. And so on, there's a famous case here in Canada called needs versus needs which coined the term organized pseudo legal, pseudo legal commercial arguments that are put forward. Again a lot of intersection with conspiracy theories. I was anti authoritarianism we also have, though unfortunately a number of shootings we have shooting in Monkton new Brunswick. We have the white nationalist the iron march legacy groups this is a real concern, particularly in the current era, neo Nazis accelerationists, the base Adam Waffen, all these different kinds of groups the order of nine angles, actually carried out a pretty horrific stabbing at a Toronto mosque last year. This is a group of four person associated with that group kind of, or satanic neo Nazis in cell violence, which is of course gender based violence the idea that there's conspiracy theory against kind of better males and that society has to be reordered so that every male can have some kind of female partner. Islamophobic anti immigrants. This is, again, this is slightly different in Quebec, I'm kind of speaking more to the English Canadian experience but again, this is. The anti immigrant Islamophobic movements here tend to really be inspired by kind of European groups that are imported. And then the alt right cultural chauvinist so you know there's an America first movement in the US that's now we now have a Canada first movement, really creative guys brilliant. We also have the proud boys which again was started by Canadian. That's now been listed as a terrorist organization and something called wing ism which is kind of far right youth driven, very meme heavy base graphic violence so I have a tax I don't really want to spend all my time on those but you can see there's been a growing number of a fairly serious attacks here in Canada. And then of course we have the intersection now with anti public health measure networks, in particular the far right. So a lot of YouTube personalities or these protesters that kind of live stream there. I don't know, kind of, you know, everyone's kind of ganging up on some poor pharmacy somewhere that's hanging out vaccinations, certain politicians that have made their army, their, their brand, not particularly successfully like no anti vaxxer was. That's not true they have there are anti vaxxers that were elected but not based on an anti vaxxer platform. And then again with this intersection with the imve groups that are trying you know they have shown up to these anti vaxx protests that are in the forums that are trying to encourage this. And as well we have other religious far right, which honestly is just trying to resist a lot of these but has kind of done well to network in far right Christian American organizations mostly I think for the purpose of getting money. A lot of grift going on here but that's what it looks like and this is you know some of the examples of these movements which again if anyone has questions I can go into it. And as an example here of, you know, the top right is the one of rebel media they're they're trying to get money for people to to fight government measures Canada first this is the groper movement that's based off of the US. These were sovereign citizen pamphlets that were handed out by the so called Queen of Canada demand. I have a lady by the last name is you Dillow who's Q and on influence but kind of gone her own route now and she's now encouraging her followers to try to shut down vaccination sites. We have politician sorry that's a Hilda Brandt there he's a he's a religious preacher who had his church shut down Randy Hilli is a politician who's been again campaign against these things and then we see these kind of far right publications that are coming out against these publications so again I see I'm kind of running out of time so again if I was to identify the concerns it's really the kind of links between the far right and the anti public health measure protesters. I put it here a picture this is a report that we put out last week with the Institute for strategic dialogue with two other co authors that goes into this in a little bit more detail if you're interested in what's happening in Canada. Let's go after COVID-19. It's fractious links between all these different groups but they've really built up some networks. So these networks could turn to more traditional far right issues. If it's youth driven like we're seeing with the Canada first movement and the wing is a movement. It could it's probably going to be done through the prism of culture and fighting to take Canada back and anti government movements can pose a risk to public order as as we've seen a number of protests so this is kind of maybe getting to your next series so I don't want to spend too much time on this, but I think there's a number of problems that we have going forward. One is I don't think there's still a good understanding of what this. People were taught that terrorism is still is only al-Qaeda for 20 years and trying to convince law enforcement to take this seriously is hard. So even when they do see these protests it's they don't necessarily recognize the problem for what it is or where it comes from. They just see a bunch of people like shouting about some person named Q and, and all these kinds of things but they don't understand how this is all intersecting into a big picture. And the third question is jurisdiction. Who is actually responsible for this is a really tricky question in Canada in the US it's kind of the FBI. But in Canada the jurisdictions really really messy and I'd be happy to explain more of that if people had questions but it's not immediately obvious who should be taking charge. Finally, you know borderlines, you know I've talked here about preachers and things like this I mean they're allowed to have obnoxious terrible beliefs that's that's their right. It's when they act on it so it's not always clear when security agencies should be getting involved if they should be involved at all, or if this is really just kind of a policy challenge so I'll end my comments there. Having provided that hop skip and a junk over the terrible landscape that is Canadian imve. Thank you very much. All right, Dr. Herman thanks for for painting that really broad picture, a lot of diversity in the landscape and I'll just make an observation and I don't want to steal any of Cynthia's thunder for giving the US perspective but just from the security perspective and being in the trenches and that my own career. I find it really interesting that, and I actually had a pretty good relationship with Cesis and my time in government. And during my time it was all focused on the jihadist threat right then those multiple conversations with my colleagues in Ottawa, and when they would come to DC we were really laser focused on that. So, Cesis puts out its public facing document on what this different sort of domestic terrorism threat looks like in Canada and that came out last year and again your thesis uses its own nomenclature and taxonomy and then the US put its own document out in 2021 through the National Counterterrorism Center which I also worked in for several years and that is the first public facing intelligence community product by the United States that lays out its framework for what this threat landscape looks like and I'm sure Cynthia is going to talk about that but I just wanted to have our listeners understand kind of the difference in that and then where the US kind of insight from the intelligence community perspective has landed so with that Cynthia, great to see you again and over to you. Thanks Java great to see you and a lot of my remarks will dovetail really nicely I think especially with the Canadian perspective but from the things we've already heard. I'm not going to use slides but I will tell you a little bit of structure. I am planning to just make three major points the first is to talk about the changing landscape of domestic violent extremism in the US in particular. So I'll talk about how things are transforming the second is what we do or how we think about these broader threats to democracy, things that don't traditionally fall within the realm of the extremist fringe but actually are more in the mainstream. So threats to election workers more political violence kind of things. And the third I want to talk about solutions and sort of in that case not just what we're doing in the US but what we might learn from some other countries, in particular Germany where I spent the first 20 years in my career really studying these issues. And of course I want to thank Ford school and you have them in general for being there, you know for inviting me it was great to be there in person and it's great to be back virtually as an alum and as a Ford school grad. I'm really happy to be here. So on the changing landscape just on that threat assessment issue that Java just mentioned. You know, in late 2020 DHS issued the first Homeland Security threat assessment that listed that essentially said domestic violent extremism is the most pressing threat to the nation and identified white supremacist extremism as the biggest threat more than that. After January 6 the Office of the Defense, ODNI, the Director of National Intelligence issued a slightly revised threat assessment that is saying, sort of a split threat which is, you know, anti government extremists or unlawful groups essentially represent the most serious threat to law enforcement to elected officials to the government institutions and white supremacist extremists represent the most pressing and lethal threat to civilians from our members of targeted groups essentially split threat. So it's evolving right and part of how it's evolving the two sort of things I want to say there are that we're seeing an evolution from organizational forms of terrorism and extremist groups to what we call post organizational forms, meaning that it's much more a situation where people are radicalized online in more patchwork kinds of ways by encountering extremist propaganda some of which comes from organized groups, but they are less likely to actually become card carrying members of those groups, even as they plot and plan and terrorist violence. That means that the strategies which I'm going to talk about later to address it. When they have focused historically on monitoring and surveilling and infiltrating groups are struggling, I think to catch up to what do you do about this post organizational form and some of the more conspiracy driven types of violence that, you know, assemble sometimes into groups like Boogaloo let's say, is a, what I call a mobilizing concept. It is a concept about it's a code word for Second Civil War, and sometimes groups form around the same concept, but they don't actually always share ideological roots with other groups that mobilize around the same concept so we had Boogaloo groups in the summer of 2020, marching alongside Black Lives Matter protesters in some cases for example because they saw shared common denominator around anti law enforcement. And in other cases, Boogaloo boys were opposing those Black Lives Matter protesters because they believe they were there to protect institutions or commercial entities so they they both in both cases they were mobilized by a concept around a Second Civil War or revolution or the collapse systems, but they're actually ideological roots are quite muddled or varied in other ways so the concept itself mobilizes. We see that with Western the concept of Western values to where Western values is used, particularly in Europe so I'm talking mostly about the US but by far right political parties have drawn successfully support from people on the left. So by arguing that Islam is a threat to women's and LGBTQ rights. And so this concept of Western values has drawn kind of a broader ideological support or the defense of ideological of Western values has drawn broader ideological support and drawn people to political parties that are actually anti immigrant by making that argument and rooting it. And so that gets to my second point which is not only we've seen post organizational forms, but much more muddled and patchwork ideologies and that's related so you know you see these concepts that mobilize people you see things like a white supremacist extremist group that got reconstituted late this year with an argument that they are now Bolshevik focused on liquidation of the capitalist class, but as white supremacists. So they're anti capitalism, white supremacist pulling together two sets of kind of ideological motivations that typically have not come together so an increasing ideological anti capitalism and increasing cross ideological environmental sustainability claims. So we see eco fascism for example motivating recent terrorists including in El Paso, who are you that sustainability is linked to closure of borders and anti immigrant violence is justified based on claims about sustainability and preservation of the land for white people so racial entitlements the land feeding into this but still drawing people who are traditionally owners of environmentalism of protection of the land of sustainability of nature has a lot of merchandise and products being sold that are about nature and, and that match the natural order of things. As a justification for social inequality for example so strange kinds of eco fascism and links and beliefs in nature as as a root for white supremacist thinking. So we see that with anti capitalism we see it with eco fascism, we see it with things like the boogaloo which get muddled ideological kinds of claims. So it's that patchwork type of ideology. So that's the kind of changing landscape, it's a mess. It's muddled, it's muddy, it's hard to disentangle, much harder on the back end to use a security frame to analyze infiltrate, monitor and surveil these groups it's like a big amoeba that keeps morphing into new things. Making things even complicated now have this broader set of threats is my second point to the nation that is not just typically the fringe, right but really ways in which extremist actions of violence have moved into the mainstream so we've been seeing so many attacks on election workers threats and violence and death threats that the Department of Justice late and late fall. We have a special task force to address it. We have obviously seen January 6 spontaneously mobilized violence around events. We have threats against health care workers teachers school board officials violence enacted that is political that is anti mask that is anti vaccine that's drawing people from again, a kind of the anti facts crowd which is traditionally anti science alternative medicine a little bit more leftist and hippie bringing them into conversation with the anti government crowd, and with the conspiracy crowd so you get these strange coalitions of people showing up at protests, who are gathered on what I call the long the lowest common denominator so they're sort of assembling on the thing the one thing that they agree on even if actually their goals normally do not align at all. And that landed us as a country on a global list of what are called backsliding democracies. Last month so some people may have followed that in the news there's been a lot of analysis of that. First time we landed on that list. It's a good sign for our democracy and I will say that that group is a Swedish based NGO that releases that list every year has historical data that shows it does take about nine years from the point a country lands on a backsliding that gets identified as a backsliding democracy to either collapse as a democracy, or reconstitute itself in stronger ways so so it's not an immediate collapse but it's a huge warning sign and it really shows, you know that essentially as some people have argued and who are electoral scholars that the, the most important principle of a democracy is the agreement of a losing incumbent to leave office. And we have just in the recent Marist poll released last week now, only a third of Republicans even say that they would accept the 2024 election results, if their, if their candidate loses. So, we already know that the next few years are going to be a real struggle when you have, and this isn't, you know, I'm not trying to make this a partisan issue but the data, the polling data is partisan in this way that Democrats weren't 100% either but it was better is something like 70 or 80%, but it's not ideal right ideally you want 100% of people to accept the credible results of an election, and not less. And that in some cases has led to tremendous violence and I think we should anticipate it that it will in 2022 and in 2024 related to that I would say is also the rampant spread of disinformation propaganda and of conspiracy theories and part of that is also the trouble that led us into backsliding democracy. So, I haven't been paying attention to time. David do I have time to talk about solutions or should I should we stop and get into that in Q amp a. Yeah let's maybe pause on that Cynthia and then I've got a couple what I would call kind of icebreaker questions for both you and Stephanie and then I will launch those covers in a way some of what you already said but I'd be good to kind of pull out some additional insights and then hopefully we'll get some questions from the audience john is that kind of the plan from audience participation. Okay. All right, so great comments, Cynthia. I think it's not obviously a one for one with Canada but the same broad diversity of ideologies and organizations and groups and movements and I like your media analogy because that sort of captures the fluidity of everything. So let me ask a question or two that kind of just digs into some of that. And this is in a way is sort of a step back from both of you have just described and it's almost asking you to pick up on where we left off in the first panel but which none of you are on. But to both of you in what ways are the the current threat environments that you both described so eloquently, either similar or different to what that same environment in Canada and the United States look like 10 or 20 years ago so I'd be curious to get both of your perspectives on that point. I'll try and go first I mean I think when I so when I was working with the government on violent extremism, I remember the first time we saw this hit Facebook in a big way, and it was the murder of Lee rugby in the UK. Right the murder of Lee rugby in the UK was a giant kind of far right event on Facebook. We saw there's the EDL the English Defense League we saw the creation of the CDL like literally just take any bad organization just put Canada in front of it and that's, yeah, that's how we roll sometimes. So we had the Canadian Defense League start up and the number of likes that I got was huge and someone who's looking at this issue kind of started putting this out. I was noticing it kind of taking off so I would say about 2013 was actually probably the year that I mean look it's existed online forever but in terms of like it going from kind of like a movement online to a mass movement available. And you know I just really want to compliment Cynthia on her presentation I just thought it was wonderful and yeah I can see so much of it and in a big way. The thing I'll know here is, is we have seen it really again. The other the other moment I would say so, speaking 20 years I would say 2016 the US, the 2016 election was like an electro shock in Canada with regards to thinking about this and the problems of online discourse. And then the other really big one was actually the Christ Church shooting. And then all of a sudden I was pulled into all these meetings about, you know what do we do about this problem I think not that we've solved it. But you know, I think, so I would say those three events seem to have really had the biggest impact. And then in our election this year which we had in 2021. The Prime Minister started to be followed around by some, some of these protest movements and some of the he got people through rocks at his head. And it was really the first time we'd seen stuff like that was, it was gravel, but I mean it was it was not good it's like this isn't a very it's very normal for Canadian politicians to be able to kind of mingle with the general population it's very normal for Canadian citizens to be able to walk around Canadian public institutions in a relatively controlled way but there so it's different. The last thing I'll say sorry is the one thing that I did notice in, in every year now our, our, our NSA, the communication security establishment puts out a threats to Canadian democratic institutions, online paper is the third time they've done this. Every time ever they talked about the influence of the United States. And they said for every tweet that for every retweet a Canadian sense, nine of them originate in the United States. So the influence of the US discourse is so heavy on Canada. And the one thing we have started to see is that importation of this idea of the big lie. The idea that elections are not free and fair that they're rigged all that kind of stuff that I thought that might play a bigger role in 2021. It didn't it didn't. It doesn't seem to have caught on because our electoral systems a little bit different than from what you guys have you guys have kind of this whole thing. I'll just call that we are our elections are very centrally controlled and we still use pencils and stuff like that so it's a little bit harder to make those arguments but I'll stop talking there. Thank you. Thanks for for that. So Cynthia any, any perspective add on kind of the step back. Yeah, I mean, you know what's been happening in the states. It's hard to say just 10 or 20 I mean, really the white power movement is what Kathleen blue has called it she's a fantastic historian who I recommend everyone read her book called bring the war home dates the shift really to the 1970s where you start to see disgruntled Vietnam that setting up anti government kind of white power training camps that led directly to Oklahoma City eventually. And, but then after that we had a shrinking a kind of going underground of the entire anti government and white supremacist movements for lots of different reasons. And then 911 happened. So what happened then 911 kind of pivoted everybody's attention to the threat from abroad and the threat from Islamist extremism and terrorism. So when white supremacist hate groups and anti government extremism and the unlawful militia forms started to grow which started in 2009. And then we had record breaking hate group numbers and the constitution of things like the oath keepers and the three percenters, which was right after Obama was elected. So, you know this kind of backlash effect. Nobody was really paying attention so they were growing. It was really so it really predates but that was 2016 and 17 came. We had, I see people starting to pay attention here around the unite the right rally right after the 2016 election and then Christchurch El Paso is I think what really drove congressional hearings and, and attention at the policy levels leading to revised threat assessments, but the roots of it really go back a long time so there's this balance between have you know what's changed, meaning, I think what's really changed is that people are paying attention to it, and the intelligence and the security and in the policy communities, far more than they were, even four or five years ago. Really only because of such shocking and tremendous violence that, and a changing nature of that violence I mean part of what Christchurch did was turn, you know it was live stream, and the live streaming of it really did shift and the global inspiration I hate to use that word but that is what really happened I mean he was inspired by brevic and Oslo and then El Paso shooter and others were inspired directly by him. So it's, you know you really saw this kind of literal scoreboard in meme form emerge online with kill counts and with labeling of saints and disciples and really trying to emulate these, you know, these these terrorist actors emulate these these other guys in almost like lone wolf form to not members of groups but inspired by this global brand conspiracy theory called the great replacement. So, and the great replacement itself, which is really important to say that used then to attack Muslims in New Zealand to attack Jews in in Pittsburgh and to attack Latinos in El Paso so it became this really overarching and then it was over seasoned Germany and elsewhere as well. And so you saw this really more ecumenical, anyone who's other than white men were attacked with the same conspiracy theory and that was sort of different than what we've seen before. So, so there's lots of ways to look at the difference but I would say the biggest difference is that people are paying attention. And I'd like to get the, the virtual audience involved so please if you have a question or comment. If you can use the raise hand function please do so but I also want to put an observation and then see if either of you want to make a comment on that if we're going to think about a step back perspective here. And I talked about this in a class that I led this semester on domestic tourism but if you actually go back to the same kind of starting point something that you talked about in the sort of late 1960s early 1970s here in the US was sort of the beginning embryonic beginnings of this kind of new phase of the white power movement. And so what we had in the United States was a lot of people don't remember an equally lethal and hyper violent far left threat in the United States which probably at least in terms of numbers conducted more attacks than anything on the far right end or the white power spectrum, which I just find fascinating and they were both coexisting at the same time. They were now 50 years later and that very lethal far left rat doesn't seem to be present either in the US, or Canada and I'm curious if both of you also see that or if you think that has a potential to change or, you know, is there potential to go back to the future of the 1970s or bombings and kidnappings and shoot us with law enforcement and assassinations from far left extremists here in the US. So if you look at the global terrorism index data, they have some incredible charts that show, you know, the, the far left terrorism, the 70s in particular all the way up to the early 80s, not just was equal but far exceeded any other form of, you know, political terrorism and extremism so, and then it did start to decline in the 80s and that's when you start to see this rise of on the far right side of things and I should say I define far right is one of the other things one is supremacist ways of thinking that dehumanized so that can be white supremacist but also male supremacist Christian supremacist. You know, we've got a range of different Western supremacy. So the proud boys fall into that as a Western chauvinist group right, but also the anti government side where you have authoritarianism and refusal to protect minority rights and rejection of freedom of the press, etc, etc. So, so it's, you know, that's the way that I define it and, and I would expect us to see significantly more far left terrorism in the years to come. What we're seeing is rising accelerationism, which is an ideologically agnostic tactic or strategy that is applied equally and growing on all sides which is sort of like a burden all down mentality it is about collapsing the existing political and economic order. So it is a tactic that's used by anti capitalist but also by anti government extremists. It uses it sees violence as the best means to collapse the systems that will later be reconstituted and the way you reconstitute them varies, depending on what group or, you know, ideology you're talking about, but we've been seeing that rise across the political spectrum, and also then bring come together in these weird ways like the white supremacist who are arguing for the liquidation of the capitalist class right. So, I think we're going to start to see the eco fascist like weird coalitions that don't make sense if we think in traditional binary left right spectrum, we have to really start looking at this in a more three dimensional way, where we can visualize these strange comings together and overlaps that have you you can see it when you start to see in their logic, why it makes sense to liquidate the capitalist class like you can be a white supremacist and be anti capitalist at the same time, but that's going to draw people to get, you know, to them from other kinds of movements and so I think the same thing with anti backs and anti government extremists they're coming together on one common theme or denominator, even though they're actually the rest of their goals don't align. So I do think we're going to start to see, I'd be surprised if we didn't start to see more political violence and terrorism coming from both these strange, strange new kinds of coalitions and, and also just more from what we had been seeing in the 70s and early 80s, whether that's environmental or anarchist or animal rights or anti capitalist. Great, thanks for that. Cynthia Stephanie anything from the view in Canada. Yeah, I mean, this is a really interesting question so I'm sorry if you hear my dog, he also has views. But, you know, there's this Canada, particularly in the 60s and 70s. I've heard it described as the hotbed of social rest. We didn't have a kind of traumatic experience like Vietnam that radicalized a lot of people right like we didn't have that so in terms of like far left, but we actually had like kind of like small far right movements the Edmund Burke society the creativity movement comes out of the 60s and 70s and the far right. But in terms of the far left, I mean, yeah, there were some protests. The biggest is it's almost certainly like I mentioned at the beginning is the FLQ the the front of the best on the Quebec, but that was so unpopular what they did it actually hurt the cause of sovereignty to a large extent Quebec and I think they realized that no doing this is stupid. And so it lasted for two years, the people who are involved in that movement, it killed one person. They fled to Cuba but then eventually they came back serve their time and they're now free. So, so yeah, I mean we had in the 80s like there were some anti apartheid movements they poisoned some there they claimed to poison some South African wine. There's a group called the Squamish five which did actually try to attack I think a hydroelectric plant they blew oh they fire bombed a bunch of pornography stores. You know so like the kind of like far left violence hasn't really existed in Canada. The most recent thing you could possibly say was a group called the resistance international East, which is out of Quebec and they bombed a hydro tower kind of made it lean a bit but didn't fall over. They bombed a Canadian Armed Forces recruitment center and as well as the car of an oil executive. So, and then they've kind of disappeared, they were infiltrated by the RCMP who then blew the investigation, shocker. And then you can laugh, because you know what I'm talking about. Well other conference we can have. But yeah, so what we're seeing now from the left in Canada is really disruptive protest, but not what I would call extremist violence so the big issue right now is people taking over railroad tracks and and putting encampments on railroad tracks. And that to me isn't extremist violence it's a pain in the butt maybe if you're trying to get from one place to the other, but it's not that I think should resource extraction issues become a bigger issue in the next couple of years they cove it kind of maybe deflated it. There could be some more extremist violence from the left, we really aren't to my knowledge seeing these movement. There's something called deep green revolution. Again, didn't really see a lot. So I don't know. There is a movement however I think in kind of more conservative political groups to list antifa. I don't know how you're ever going to list them as a terrorist organization I just, I just it's not going to work. But there is that movement and I do worry that some of this more disruptive protest will be considered violent extremist activity, which I think in my view would be an abuse of terrorism laws. Yeah, thanks for that, Stephanie and again we haven't seen this manifestation of this ultra violent far left extremism yet, but I agree with Cynthia that has the potential to go in that direction. Down the road john you've got your hand up and I know there's a question in the chat box as well. I would love to ask a question I thank you first of all Cynthia and Stephanie those great presentations. My questions about the demographic evidence available about violent extremism. In my first encounters with this in the United States, the image I and I think many other people had was something like Timothy McVeigh you've got some military aged white male who's a little bit down and out economically and not terribly educated from a rural or area or an excerpt, but the January 6 protests challenge that a little bit. I think it's been striking to some people how many of the folks involved in that movement and that activity are people who have children who are professional employees and so on. I wonder what you could say about in Canada in the US respectively about what we know on the, on the demographic profile of the people who are becoming involved in nationalistic extremism, when they typically what age is it typical that the people get involved and what are the sort of socioeconomic and other aspects of the profile that we should be aware of. Well, historically in the US is a great question because and it's a great observation is absolutely true that these things are really different. The way I answer this right now is really different than how I would have answered it two years ago question about you know, historically it's youth, meaning, and you know I define all the way to age 35 men under the age of 35 who are who are most at risk for violent expressions of extremism and terrorism. Yeah, that's where the data shows in the US, but also in, in a lot of other places in the world on that especially on the far right side but in general across Paris ideologies youth are more prone to violence. That has changed not just because of January 6 but all of the political violence all that strange political violence in the odd coalitions that I've been talking about that have really started even predating the pandemic itself just a little the first major alarm bells that started off in my head were actually January 2020, but the 22,000 people showed up to protest second amendment rights in Richmond, Virginia. And luckily nothing happened but these heavily armed incredibly heavily armed people showing up in large numbers it was it was so clear it could have gone wrong and that kind of risk of spontaneous violence I think is is really high right now whether it's the vehicle ramming or with, you know, shooting someone here something that sounds like a backfiring or one shot goes off and then all of a sudden you have a real blood bath and so the, those kinds of things are drawing much older people and conspiracy theories like and more women and more women from stranger demographics like the wellness and the yoga communities who are rooted again in this alternative medicine space that rejects a lot of science, and then rejects authority, and has made them a little bit right for manipulation in the policy space so one of the anecdotes I can tell is where I really started to feel this was I spent a lot of time talking to folks in the media and, you know, most of my life, I've been talking about what parents and teachers can be doing to, to address youth radicalization. And in the late summer of 2020, I fielded my first question the first now of many from team Vogue about what could they tell kids who are calling them and writing to them for help with their parents who are radicalizing. And you started it was such a shocking question for me that, you know, it, it was a moment where I realized like this is where we're entering a whole different world these these kids, you know, and of course my advice is also really different than it is for parents like 15 year olds deserve a childhood and deserve safe adults you know it's not enough to have to fix their parents. You know I have a really different set of advice for for her parents on what they can do and who they should go to for help, etc, but kids need to find another safe adult so if you know a kid like that out there. You know it's find a better resource, you know it's not your job to try to fix your parents and, and you're in an unsafe environment if your parents are radicalizing into a violent movement. So that's, you know that has definitely changed and we saw that on January 6 we've seen that in state capital protests we've seen it on the unlawful malicious side we've seen it on the conspiracy side. The white supremacist extremism side I think we're still primarily seeing younger actors be the ones who are responsible for violence but that could change. We're not sure. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure I would say too much that was different I will say it like again I talked briefly in my presentation about this woman romantic to do low, who is the self proclaimed Queen of Canada. And I don't know if I should say that I'm watching her live chats let's just say I've seen them. And, you know, that's actually a disturbing thing because she's gone from posting to actually interacting now with her followers and kind of a very cult like fashion or new religious movement fashion. And you do you do worry about that but I mean, often she's just providing life advice to these people, and she's just telling them that you know they're going to be okay. There was a woman, you know she was 33 years old and she's like I've lost all my teeth. You know when the new order comes and I going to get my teeth back and she's like yes you're going to get your teeth back. And you know like these kinds of things like I mean it and a lot of people are older and they're trying to find out like, you know this whole straw man theory or and Sarah or whatever it means to getting this the whole money, the fake bank account theory I think you simply you know and talk about, you know that that you know their promises of money, carrying illnesses and things like that and this is really appealing to the baby boomers right like this is this is what they want this is what they think is coming. There's this also with, there's a group here in Canada called anti anti hate Canada, they call it fash wave, which is this kind of really almost punk aesthetic, but with fascist overtones that that they push forward and I think what we're seeing. So, on the youth side we're seeing kind of, I would say the almost like a Facebook driven social media kind of me, you know, January six style stuff. The youth are, I think they're, they're smart. They're in it. Yeah okay occasionally get the unite the right protest but generally speaking you're all these are people who understand that they have to subvert conservative movements in order to bring about the kind of change that they want and that's what they're working towards and they're they're sticking to things like memes and they're, they're, they're the drum they're going to beat the loudest is cultural. And in parts of Canada like Quebec that's going to have huge resonance and that's that's a concern going forward. Thanks, Cynthia and Stephanie for those insights on john's question we have one question from the chat. Elena I can turn it over to you if you're still on or I can read your questions so. I'll give you a second to unmute if you want to jump in. Elena you're still on mute so. Alright, just in the interest of time I'm gonna, I'm going to just read the question from Elena so her question is what is so what is more dangerous for society, open violent acts or deeply hidden violent thoughts so I think I kind of understand the gist of the question. Okay, I think it's about it. I mean, the US government. So answering this for the US side the US government has very much focused on the violence on the physical violence aspect of extremism and terrorism so even when you look at the tiny bit of prevention resources that are provided by the federal government which is in the Department of Homeland Security, they use, they do talk about prevention of radicalization but it's always paired with violence so it's radicalization to violence, right so they're very careful for good reason about not being accused of or feeling like they might be in the business of policing ideas or ideology and that I think in the US context around protection of the First Amendment and free speech is incredibly important. So what we've been urging them to consider is that there are precursors to violence that are really important for us to combat in terms of protection of democracy itself that that can create the fertile ground for violent ideas and ideologies to happen and that includes discrimination, propaganda, conspiracy theories persuasive tactics like scapegoating and fear mongering that we can do more on the education side and we should be doing more on the education side to build digital literacy and media literacy tools and ways to work within communities and fund communities to create their own models and tools for, for working across the age spectrum, you know I used to say from fifth graders to 50 year olds to get back to john. It's a demographic question and editor told me yesterday I have an op ed coming out tomorrow that talks about this, we should change it to eighth graders 80 year olds. And so, because you know everybody over 50 is not immune to this which tells you a little bit about where we are in the demographic issue so you know that we need this across the life course basically and so, and that's not just about violent ideas, but about the things that are really dangerous I think to the undermining of democratic norms and practices so that that's it's been tough for the US to adopt that but there are other countries you know again in Germany where I spent much of my career this is the the defense of democracy approach that argues that actually the best way to combat and extreme this fringe is by equipping the mainstream of the tools to be resilient against it. You actually have to strengthen the mainstream against the overtures that will always come from the fringe you can't eradicate that fringe will always be there, and part of the task of ensuring a healthy democracy is strengthening mainstream from within. So it's a different approach it means thinking more about resilience and less about risk or in addition to risk, you know, investing in resilience. And it's something that the US really hasn't done, I would say at all our model of prevention is the prevention of violence, which as I have often argued, means that our model of success. In terms of the prevention definition is about how equipped we are to barricade the door. And it's called secondary prevention by standard training training for the security guards at the doors of the synagogue. It's how well we are prepared to thwart a violent attack that's usually how prevention is defined and understood. And I'm not saying we shouldn't do that, but I just don't think it should be our measure of success, and that we need to be having more conversations with different agencies with the Department of Ed with the Department of Health and Human Services with social workers with mental health features about more primary forms of prevention as well. So, in Canada, we are structurally slightly better. By the way, I think you for this question it's kind of what I was getting at when I was like what's the borderline here right like where, where does the freedom of expression, and in the national security risk begin like that this is it this is an issue. I think from the Canadian perspective we're slightly better off because we have been. Well first of all, we have a dedicated department to Canadian values right which is the department of Canadian heritage. And for you for years I think what came heritage was basically founded, because no one knew anything about Canadian history because it's Canada boring is where. So we actually stress, but they actually have the values mandate so you know I tell students I'm like, I mean like if you're interested in disinformation encountering it don't don't work at CSIS you want to work at Canadian heritage. Because that's where that's where these discussions are actually that's where the policy solutions are being helped. So that helps in some ways that you actually have a body now the problem is that has been formed by national security and we're kind of trying to learn how to have that conversation between the two bodies. There's one called the Canada Center. The full name is the Canada Center for countering violent Canada Center for Community Engagement and countering radicalization of violence, the CCP EVE, which sounds like some kind of communist volleyball team, but it's so we now just goes by Canada and they spend a lot of time researching prevention in the space they actually work with their big counterpart in the US state in the US I believe is the National Institute of Justice. So they do a lot of work there. But yeah, I mean so they've actually set up programs for people who like they fight sorry I should say they fund programs in communities that are for people who may be going down a path that that's not great. And so it traditionally was set up for, I'd say the religiously motivated violent extremism, but is now increasingly it's for the far right, like predominantly the number one client base now in Quebec is 100% the far right. So, we have some of these programs in place. They are not compulsory, but they are at least a path that you can offer people and their families in terms of how to potentially deal with this. We have very few metrics on how successful these kinds of programs are, but it is at least something that we have and we can evaluate hopefully more in the future and look forward to so as to the question what's more dangerous it's I would say the violent extremism is always going to be more dangerous you have the right to hold obnoxious views. It's the problem is when you act on it but as Cynthia correctly states there's a lot more we should be doing the prevention space, using a public health model, not a national security model in order to try and encounter this threat. And I'll just kind of jump in and my own personal experience in government I mean this was an issue that we just spent so much time on. In the years I was in government from post 911 to the late 2010s, mostly are almost exclusively again on the jihadist side of things. And it was just, you know, fits and starts along the way we're a lot of hard working smart people, big ideas, but we just couldn't sort of get a program together to do more on the prevention of jihadist extremism and maybe I think one of the lessons was this might not be the best role for the federal government right this is probably something that other kind of stakeholders can, can are better equipped and maybe the best role for the federal government is to fund these programs and let them deliver the, the programatics or the content or whatever but yeah to try and have the folks, formerly folks like myself kind of on the hands of the steering wheel for this it just wasn't just didn't lead to the that really quickly because I think I think it's a really good point and I think there's two things that are different now one is that so I totally saw that happening before and I think one is that when the threat was primarily seen through the jihadist lens, the prevention landscape was so much more fraught with issues of targeting and with civil rights and the fears of, of, of scapegoating whole communities, who are themselves members of targeted groups and vulnerable. We're talking about the threat coming from within, you know, ordinary citizens across like not just white Americans but we really have a wide variety of like a huge problem with people believing disinformation and propaganda and not accepting election results etc etc so to me it's easier now I think if you just sort of say it's everybody we don't have to target particular groups we need it for everybody we need it for early on. And the other thing I would say is like I'm not I totally agree with you I think that part of the problem is that the federal government. One it should be funding it but the federal government historically has not had a very good multi sector engagement of experts on the subject so it's not like other federal governments are able to do it, but they involve like Norway it's a dozen agencies involved in counter counter the domestic violent extremism, you know, strategic plan in Germany I think it's nine agencies so you know we pretty much situated in the, in the security space. And then we have trouble coming up with prevention ideas because those aren't the experts you know we need people who are and I say this as a professor of education. So then I'm usually the only person in these rooms comes from an education background and so then it feels more glaring like we just need more ideas in the room, coming from other agencies, but maybe it is just, you know, an issue of funding and leaving leaving its local communities, my fears that then those local communities will do the same thing, which is situated in law enforcement security and local FBI offices rather than leaning into therapists and social workers and youth workers and teachers and counselors. So Stephanie anything I know we are almost out of time so. I just want to highlight yeah I think one of the major flaws of our CD programs as they have been introduced a lot of them are affiliated with law enforcement, which may make people let more families less reluctant to go ahead with that. And also like the RCMP is not the best counter violent. They're not great at it. So the other problem too if they don't have, I say the right expertise they should be more of a public health thing the better models I think are the ones in Quebec which are like psychologists and clinicians and they do bring all these those different local actors together to design specific programs for people that takes a lot of time a lot of money and it's resource intensive. And it took us a long time the FBI to realize you know Bureau probably shouldn't be leading this mission. It's got other priorities but prevention and CV is not one of them. Okay john I will hand the mic over to you, but thanks Cynthia and Stephanie for being with us hopefully we'll get to see you again next spring as well. Yes, thank you very much for those great presentations and responses to questions. We're delighted to be able to to have two more webinars of this kind in our series on January 10. We'll have one at the same hour on policy tools and frameworks for countering nationalist extremism and on February 11 will have our fourth in the series on new approaches to the topic and so we hope that you'll all come back to join us and also look forward to an in person colloquium in April. Thank you all very much. Have a great day.