Now that Donald Trump has grudgingly been goaded into denouncing white supremacy, he needs to take concrete actions to address the tragic violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend.
Trump took a useful first step on Monday by labeling the violent actors as thugs, promising action against lawbreakers and condemning racism.
However, in light of Trump’s earlier equivocation on the Charlottesville melee, and his pattern of ignoring or only belatedly acknowledging hate-motivated violence against minorities, he will need to do much more.
We all know that Trump bears his true soul via Twitter. If he wants to convince Americans that he stands against racism and white supremacy, we will need to see prompt and spontaneous tweets against racism and hate crimes in the future, not stage-managed, ghost-written statements days after the fact.
Next, Trump needs to take a series of strong actions to undermine the impression of many white supremacist leaders that they have a compatriot in the White House committed to fulfilling their hateful agenda.
The first step toward achieving this goal is to direct federal law enforcement agencies to commit substantial resources to identifying violent right-wing extremists and investigating any illegal activities of organizations that support them.
A federal law enforcement effort against white supremacist and other groups is long overdue. Right-wing extremist organizations blossomed after the election of Barack Obama. But the Obama administration dismantled even the paltry federal efforts that existed at the time to analyze the threat that right-wing extremism presented.
The recent uptick in domestic extremism justifies an increase in both analytic and investigatory resources dedicated to this problem. Doing so will require Trump to reverse the widespread cuts he has proposed at the FBI.
Trump should also make clear that the civic obligation to report evidence of potential terroristic activity applies to all Americans. In the past, Trump has stated that Muslim Americans have an obligation to “report the problems when they see them.” The “see-something, say-something” concept should apply across the board.
While non-violent white supremacists and racists have a constitutional right to protest as they did in Charlottesville this weekend, they also have a duty to inform law enforcement if they suspect their members are planning violence.
In addition, Trump should reverse his administration’s efforts to dismantle the Obama Administration’s programs to counter violent extremism. These programs represented a good-faith effort to understand the roots of extremist behavior and stimulate community-based efforts to undercut ideologies that call for the use of violence to bring about political change.
Although Obama’s programs were properly criticized for focusing primarily on extremism motivated by Isis and al-Qaida, there were at least some fledging efforts to address right-wing extremism in place at the end of his administration.
Trump, however, is gutting the entire effort. Last month, John Kelly, the former Department of Homeland Security secretary, rescinded multiple grants designed to attack the roots of rightwing extremism. Trump’s budget provides no funding for these grants in future years. Last week, the head of the office running these programs resigned in frustration. In light of Charlottesville, Trump needs to reinvigorate efforts to combat extremist ideologies and apply these programs to all forms of extremism.
(Full disclosure: I was part of a team whose funding was rescinded. Our project would have created web-based videos and other materials to persuade youth to reject both rightwing and Isis-based extremism.)
Finally, it is critically important that Trump provide federal assistance to localities who have determined they want to remove monuments glorifying and falsifying this history of the Confederacy.
These efforts motivated the violent protests of Charlottesville and have led to violent threats against companies participating in monument removal. Efforts by a fringe minority to block these actions cannot be allowed to stand. Trump should offer localities subjected to intimidation with federal resources to safeguard the removal process. The Department of Justice should investigate the illegal violent threats against contractors.
After running a highly divisive campaign that emboldened overt racists to advocate for their agenda in the political arena, the president now has an opportunity, with the Charlottesville tragedy, to demonstrate that his words against racism and bigotry are not hollow promises. He has a long way to go.
David Schanzer is a professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy and director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University.