Every State Needs Strong Hate Crime Laws

Mark Pitcavage is the director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. In the 1990s, he was research director of the Justice Department’s State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training Program.

Updated November 1, 2016, 11:01 AM

Rightwing extremism takes many forms and its adherents engage in many activities, from spreading propaganda to major acts of terrorism. The most effective strategies for responding to these activities involve exposing and countering them, while respecting constitutional boundaries.

Fighting extremism — whether domestic Islamic extremists radicalized by ISIS or rightwing extremists radicalized by white supremacists — should never be a partisan issue.

As a general rule of thumb, the best response to hate speech is more speech. The First Amendment protects freedom of expression, including hate speech. But people have a right to speak out when they encounter hate: Whether in town halls or on social media, they can drown out the voices of hate and anger. People of goodwill outnumber extremists.

The best response to criminal conduct is effective law enforcement action. When someone engages in bias-motivated violence, law enforcement should enforce hate crime laws. Currently, 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books but some, including South Carolina, do not. Accurate hate crime reporting is also a must.

Many states have laws to combat antigovernment extremists such as sovereign citizens, but some state laws need strengthening and all states could benefit from more aggressive prosecutions under such laws.

In general, law enforcement agencies are responsive to the criminal threats posed by rightwing extremists. After all, they themselves are a frequent target of such extremists. However, more training opportunities are needed; at present, much of the burden of training officers on subjects like domestic terrorism and criminal extremism falls on the shoulders of nongovernmental organizations like mine. More can and should be done.

Many Americans underestimate the amount of rightwing violence. Government institutions and the news media should play a role in raising awareness of the threat. Some communities, too, tend to treat local extremists as harmless “good old boys” instead of paying attention to their messages and actions.

Most important, fighting extremism, no matter the source, should never be a partisan issue. We must take extremist threats seriously from wherever they emerge, whether domestic Islamic extremists radicalized by ISIS or rightwing extremists radicalized by white supremacist and antigovernment websites.

There should be no competition, because if we fail to address any threat, we all lose.