policing white supremacy: the enemy within

A former FBI agent’s urgent call for law enforcement to prioritize far-right violence and end tolerance for police racism

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.

Despite over a hundred deadly acts by far-right militants since the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and the far right’s attempts to obstruct transfer of power to a duly elected president on January 6, 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, and police membership in white supremacist organizations. The threat these officers pose became clear when at least twenty-eight current and former law enforcement officials were alleged to have participated in the 2021 Capitol breach.

With chapters on ＂The Rise of the Proud Boys,＂ ＂A New Approach to Policing Hate Crimes,＂ and ＂Policing the Police,＂ Policing White Supremacy shows how the lack of transparency and accountability in federal, state, and local law enforcement has eroded public trust and undermined democracy. ＂Law Enforcement’s Role in Resisting White Supremacy＂ points the way forward to a future where far-right violence is recognized and addressed as the true threat it presents to our country.

Mike German is a fellow with the Liberty and National Security program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. He has worked at the ACLU and served sixteen years as an FBI special agent. He is the author of Thinking Like a Terrorist and Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Our Democracy (The New Press).

Beth Zasloff is the author of Hold Fast to Dreams: A College Guidance Counselor, His Students, and the Vision of a Life Beyond Poverty, written in collaboration with her husband, Joshua Steckel (The New Press). Beth has taught writing at New York University, Johns Hopkins, and in New York City public schools. She is director of the Midtown Workmen’s Circle School, a progressive Jewish community, and co-author, with Edgar M. Bronfman, of Hope, Not Fear: A Path to Jewish Renaissance. She is a graduate of Yale University and the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and lives in Brooklyn.