After the Jan. 6 insurrection, a CBS News analysis found that at least 81 of the more than 700 individuals charged in relation to the attack were current and former armed service members. In response, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin committed to addressing extremism within military ranks. But the Biden administration’s approach, which draws on a long and fraught U.S. history of targeted surveillance in the name of protecting national security, only risks traumatizing the same communities it claims to keep safe.
Upon taking office, President Joe Biden backtracked on campaign promises to end the Trump administration’s Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Program. Instead, the program became the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), part of federal efforts to “comprehensively combat domestic violent extremism, including white supremacy.”
Civil rights advocates were immediately wary of CP3, citing previous counter-extremism programming’s surveillance of primarily Black and Muslim communities. The federal government has already tried to rebrand counter-extremism as the antidote to white supremacist activity. Its efforts largely focused on funding the nonprofit Life After Hate, which claims to help people leave white supremacist groups. In 2016, the group applied for a DHS grant with plans to expand its work to target “jihadism.” In Jan. 2022, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told NPR he was “very cognizant of the trust deficit” related to counter-extremism and “that is precisely why we created CP3.”
