We've Got Matching Funds!

A very generous donor has pledged to match the next $10,000 in donations. Double the impact of your donation and Support the Libertarian Institute Today!

$17,622 of $60,000 raised

Don’t Rebrand the ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ Program—Just End It

by | Feb 3, 2017

Don’t Rebrand the ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ Program—Just End It

by | Feb 3, 2017

The question shouldn’t be which groups the program ought to target. It’s whether the program should exist at all.

For the Southern Poverty Law Center, the move suggests that “President Trump wants the government to stop its efforts to prevent terrorism by far-right extremists.” For Jezebel, it’s “another victory in a long series of wins for Neo Nazis, the KKK, and other violent and terroristic groups.” Salon calls it “pandering to white supremacists.” The target of their ire: a plan to rebrand the federal government’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program. According to Reuters, which cites “five people briefed on the matter,” the Trump administration wants to rename it “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism,” or maybe just “Countering Islamic Extremism,” and to focus its attention on Muslim terrorists rather than the various domestic right-wing kinds.

In practice, CVE’s efforts are already focused overwhelmingly on Muslims. But the big question here shouldn’t be which groups ought to be the program’s targets. It’s whether the program should exist at all. No matter whether it’s aimed at Islamists, white nationalists, or anyone else, the CVE approach has two big problems.

First: It rests on the idea that the best way to root out terrorism is to fight “radicalization.” This idea has support among both Democrats and Republicans, but the evidence supporting it is sparse. When investigators at the British think tank Demos (not to be confused with the U.S.-based liberal group of the same name) spent two years studying the differences between violent and nonviolent radicals, they found that while nonviolent radicalism can be a stepping stone to terrorism, it can draw people away from terrorism too. Meanwhile, there were other forces pulling people into terrorism that didn’t have much to do with ideology at all. Other probes have reached similar conclusions. So the focus here is all wrong: Radical ideas do not usually lead to violent tactics, and violent tactics do not emerge only from radical ideas.

Our Books

Shop books published by the Libertarian Institute.

libetarian institute longsleeve shirt

Our Books

cb0cb1ef 3fcb 417d 80d8 4eef7bbd8290

Recent Articles

Recent

No Donald Trump, America Was Not ‘Always Free’

No Donald Trump, America Was Not ‘Always Free’

In his State of the Union address last week, President Donald Trump promised that Americans “will always be free.” That throwaway line assured another round of applause from his Republican devotees on Capitol Hill. But will other Americans be as gullible or servile as...

read more
Can Putin Be Negotiated With? Yes

Can Putin Be Negotiated With? Yes

As President Donald Trump attempts to engage with Russia to end the conflict in Ukraine, supporters of the proxy war in Washington, Europe, and Ukraine claim that President Vladimir Putin is an evil dictator who cannot be trusted. The implication is that talking with...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This