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Abstract: The events of January 6th 2021, and the era of emboldened armed white supremacist violence that surrounded the United States Capitol attack spurred state commitment to counter “white supremacist terrorism.” This unprecedented shift on the part of the federal executive branch, spearheaded by the Biden Administration, redirected War on Terror tools previously fixated on Muslim populations toward new subjects: white supremacist terrorists.
The Biden Administration marshaled counter-radicalization policing—the preventative informant-driven surveillance program—as the centerpiece of its white supremacist counterterrorism strategy. Counter-radicalization theory, specifically devised with Muslim subjects in mind, seeks to prevent the process whereby a subject becomes “radicalized,” or ideologically motivated to commit a violent act. This Article begins by analyzing the War on Terror roots of counter-radicalization policing, and the state and societal white supremacy that drove it. Interrogating the entrenched nature of white supremacy within different government institutions highlights the structural realities that impede its enforcement and the harms of extending the powers of the national security apparatus.
In addition to examining the enforcement perils tied to white supremacist counterterrorism, this Article introduces the concept of “surveillance relapse.” Surveillance relapse is the probability that counterterror enforcement will revert to principal and historic subjects of surveillance—Muslim and Black communities—because of the deeply racialized understanding of terrorism rooted in the federal and local law enforcement agencies tasked with carrying forward surveillance. This Article examines the critiques of a white supremacist counterterrorism regime through the prism of three surveillance relapse types: state-oriented relapse, circumstantial relapse, and structural relapse.
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