In Policing White Supremacy, former FBI agent Mike German, who worked undercover in white supremacist and militia groups, issues a wake-up call about law enforcement’s dangerously lax approach to far-right violence. German has been a Brennan Center fellow since 2014, and the book is coauthored by Beth Zasloff.

Despite over a hundred deadly acts by far-right militants since the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the far right’s attempts to obstruct the transfer of power to a duly elected president on January 6, 2021, the FBI continues to deprioritize investigations into white supremacist violence, instead targeting marginalized groups such as environmentalists and Black Lives Matter. In 2005, for example, the FBI labeled eco-terrorists as the top domestic threat, despite not a single fatal attack in the United States.

Noting that the FBI does not even compile accurate national data on white supremacist violence, German also exposes the continuing tolerance of overt racism in law enforcement, as well as police membership in white supremacist organizations. The threat these officers pose became clear when at least 28 current and former law enforcement officials were alleged to have participated in the 2021 […]

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