Thread by @NYTmag

We're publishing next week's cover story early:

U.S. law enforcement failed to see the threat of white nationalism. From the FBI to the DHS to state police — now they have no idea how to stop it.

nyti.ms/2Dj40rr

Dan Stout, a police officer in Gainesville, Florida, learned to his horror that Richard Spencer was planning a speech at the University of Florida. Stout had no clue who most of these people were, and neither, it seemed, did anyone else in law enforcement. nyti.ms/2QfD0fp

There were no current intelligence reports he could find on the alt-right.
The state police couldn’t offer much insight.
Whatever the F.B.I. knew (which wasn’t a lot), they weren’t sharing.
The Department of Homeland Security had only scant material.
nyti.ms/2QfD0fp

White supremacists and other far-right extremists have killed far more people since Sept. 11, 2001, than any other category of domestic extremist. nyti.ms/2QfD0fp

The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism has reported that 71% of the extremist-related fatalities in the United States between 2008 and 2017 were committed by members of the far right or white-supremacist movements. nyti.ms/2QfD0fp

These statistics belie the strident rhetoric around “foreign-born” terrorists that the Trump administration has used to drive its anti-immigration agenda. nyti.ms/2QfD0fp

These statistics raise questions about the United States’ counterterrorism strategy, which for nearly two decades has been focused on American and foreign-born jihadists, overshadowing right-wing extremism as a legitimate national-security threat. nyti.ms/2QfD0fp

In this atmosphere of apparent indifference on the part of government officials and law enforcement, a virulent, and violent, far-right movement has grown and metastasized. nyti.ms/2QfD0fp

“We willingly turned the other way on white supremacy because there were real political costs to talking about white supremacy,” says the national-security strategist P. W. Singer. nyti.ms/2QfD0fp

“What we need to worry about is the guy who is riled up by this rhetoric and decides to go out and do something on his own. We have people who are ticking time bombs”

Read the full story on the government's failure to curtail the white nationalist threat nyti.ms/2Dku8SQ