john home and out 0 mexico city nasa has launched nearly 4 tons of supplies to the international space station while honoring a black mathematician. here in. the cygnus can still has been named the s.s. catherine johnson her calculations helped put the 1st americans into space in 1962 it's the sickness capsules fifteen's mission to the i assess supply runs with space x. and john glenn's mercury flight carrying. recapping our top stories for you so far this half hour 2 people have been killed in me in march 2nd biggest city during the bloodiest day of protest against the military coup the violence has provoked more global condemnation including threats of further sanctions against the generals there are possibilities of many more people

dying and we ourselves can even know whether we will die or not but we need to fight until the end regardless of our lives in order to succeed and that is only after we get rid of this military dictatorship iran says it still studying the e.u. proposals to hold an informal meeting involving the u.s. and all participants in the 2050 nuclear deal u.s. president joe biden says he's willing to rejoin talks to save the agreement the russian opposition leader alexina valmy has suffered 2 legal defeats in one day the kremlin critic lost an appeal against his nearly 3 year jail sentence and was fined for defamation in a separate case large chunks of aircraft have fallen on to the suburbs of denver in the u.s. after one of its engines caught on fire a passenger recorded this video onboard the boeing triple 7 which was bound for honolulu and hawaii it did make a safe emergency landing at the denver airport one very large piece of the engine narrowly missed a private home no one in the plane or on the ground was hurt. people have thrown

bottles at police and smashed up shops in barcelona during a 5th night of protest against the jailing of a rapper. convicted of glorifying terrorism and insulting in his song. the us president joe biden has approved a major disaster declaration for texas freeing up emergency federal funds after the state's deadly winter freeze millions of people have had to deal with days of power and water after a massive snowstorm overwhelmed utilities companies. health care workers in bolivia are on strike but insists it will not affect patients that have land in the government repeal a new health emergency which bans strikes during the pandemic that allows foreign staff to be hired union says the law is unconstitutional and silence dissent those are your headlines up next it's the bottom line i'll have more news in 30 minutes we'll see about. the president.

at a time when the rest. plenty of money to be made in. hi i'm steve clements and i have a question is white supremacist growing in the united states both in numbers and politically and can it be stopped let's get to the bottom line. president joe biden became the 1st american leader in history to specifically attack white supremacies in his inauguration speech by contrast during debate with joe biden then president trump refused to condemn white supremacists the idea that america should be made great for white people only well it's been around for more than 150 years and it's represented by almost 200 different groups around the country today and we're not just talking about the south this mentality is widespread in places like new york and california oregon virtually every corner of

the country as the riots on the united states capitol on january 6th showed it's everywhere in our military law enforcement among c.e.o.'s college professors real estate agents you name it sure the department of homeland security under the trumpet ministration added white supremacist extremism to its list of priorities threats but will that do anything today we're talking to 2 people who deeply into the american white supremacist movement as an f.b.i. agent in the 1990 s. michael german infiltrated neo nazi groups and militia groups today he's a fellow at the brennan center for justice he wrote a book on his experiences called thinking like a terrorist and i highly recommend it that was turned into a movie by our next guest film director and writer daniel reduces the threat the thriller was called imperium and it started daniel radcliffe as an f.b.i. agent who dives undercover in the world of neo nazis conservative talk show radio host and professional family band who also just happen to sympathize with the white supremacists by the way in case you're wondering the movie is not based in the

confederate south but it's up there in the northeast of the country and it's as relevant today as when it came out 5 years ago thanks so much for being with us gentleman let me start out with you michael if. you know i have read your book around 20072008 daniels movie came out. in 2016 this is 2021 we saw this insurrection on january 6th and as part of the flavor of the moment white supremacists are out there i would ask you is it still a clear and present danger today what you investigated way back when it's sure it's been a persistent threat all along and you know now that the media and some government entities are starting to look at it it looks like it's increasing but this has always been there and when people ask me about the threat moving forward i say it's exactly what it was on january 2021 and january 5th

2011 and january 5th 1909 this has been persistent part of our culture and of violence has been. not exactly ignored but not not addressed in a systematic way thank you for that daniel what i saw your film 1st 5 years ago and then i watched it again recently it just hit me in my gut and i'm saying oh my god you are just way ahead of everybody in terms of of getting a snapshot if you will of this virial it's that was going on you know in in our suburban neighborhoods how do you feel about what you did as a film then and as you reflect on what you're seeing unfold around the nation today . well just to sort of piggyback off what mike was saying i mean the great discovery that i made when i started looking into this film and researching it which was i started working on it around 2013 was exactly what mike is saying in

the sense that this movement and the adherence to it the people that have these beliefs they were always here it's not like they suddenly sort of magically appeared in 2016 when everybody started paying attention to them and it's not like they're you know appearing now that people are paying more attention to them it was simply that nobody was really looking at it and so for someone like me or really anybody that cared to look back in 201320142015 you could very easily go online and find online communities with millions of members talking about you know everything under the sun so i think for me when i started working on the move when i became aware of this community and i became aware of of the numbers of it and the depth i felt very strongly that there was you know a story there to be told and i remember even in taking the film around again for 2016 before this all sort of hit into the mainstream everyone was sort of like well you know my german's cases where they back in the 1950 s.

like this isn't really a thing anymore so i think what's been happening is just there's been a sort of awakening and an awareness process where people have come to understand what's always been out there and what is is there today just as mike said as it was one year ago 10 years ago etc you know i'm. thankful you know one of the things i opened the show with today was talking about president biden's condemnation of white supremacist donald trump when he had an opportunity to to condemn white supremacy didn't do that but we'll leave that aside for a moment but let's listen to president biden's comments. now a rise of political extremism white supremacy domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat. to michael i want to ask you bluntly this is the president the united states talking about this for as long as i've known you and i need to acknowledge it's been for a very long time you have been on this be you have been concerned about the blind

spots in our law enforcement the negligence the dereliction of responsibility in following and taking these white supremacist the neo nazi movement seriously are you comforted by what president biden has said and do you believe that what president biden has laid out is an inflection point in this story. i certainly think it's important for the president to acknowledge that and i think that that was their primary opportunity to do that in a way that was going to get this kind of extension to the issue here i think it's easy to bridge that white supremacist and far right militancy as something that's on the fringe of our society. that is just. a skinhead with the swastika on his neck and not really recognized how deeply woven in white supremacy is throughout our society in fact all of our and you shouldn't and that's

why we have so many racial disparities in pretty much any category you could look at and that part of what we have to deal with i think is going to be much harder you know law enforcement should focus on addressing the violence and that's their job but it's for the rest of us to address our how white supremacy is still in effect in our society a thanks for that daniel let me ask you a similar question you know michael's been out there writing these reports the brennan center i've been reading them lately he says look the law enforcement doesn't many law enforcement groups don't have even prohibitions on affiliating or joining white supremacist groups or some of these groups that are out there i guess when your film came out and you know your name is now tagged to this line of inquiry in the country are you do you find yourself being targeted all by by police groups by law enforcement groups that think that you've kind of opened a pandora's box daniel. i mean tank thankfully no that hasn't been my experience

but it was sort of one of the things that mike brought to my attention early on was this overlap between you know i can't remember what the exact numbers are but they're incredibly high and disturbing numbers of people both in the military and law enforcement is ations again mike knows this much better than i do who either have been affiliated with white supremacist groups or know people that have. and i think it's a great lesson that i learned from mike and the thing that i tried to portray in the film is exactly what he was talking about in the sense that there are that we have of a very sort of stereotypical notion of what a white supremacist or an air nazi is it looks like and that the reality is that's just sort of a very visual tip of the iceberg and in fact in today's world even within the hard court appearance of the movement people more and more are trying to distance themselves from those kinds of symbols but their beliefs and their activities and their practices are exactly the same and so these people exist at all sort of

levels of our society that exist in suburban communities that existed among highly educated communities and i think that's what was so shocking to me back then and i think it's a little less shocking today to people but i still don't think that people really fully understand the degree to which these belief systems in idiology really exist among you know large swathes of the population that are educated and you know all the rest of it so i'm told michael daniel sort of describing you your educate i use one of things that comes out in the film about the character playing you you know harry potter's daniel radcliffe is that this individual has the knack and the ability to be empathetic with those. folks that want to create violence that want to create a race war that are celebrating hitler and i guess my question to you is what is it in you that has given you insights into thinking like a domestic terrorist into thinking like these people what is that bridge that many

other others of us don't have or don't understand. you know i think. the experience that i had working with these people who otherwise were normal in every kind of way and ordinary except that they saw themselves actively at war with american society and were willing to engage in criminal conduct to further their advantage in the war. made me realize that this was not. some of the bridge on the border of our society that this actually was part of our society and we have to understand it that way and you know as an f.b.i. agent working undercover my job was to focus on people who are engaged in criminal activity to further their cause but far more of that you know there are far more neo nazis out there than neo nazis who will commit crime and i think that

distinction is really the important one that has been lost since 911 there were a lot of hardcore nazis who who saw who i was hanging out at when i was undercover and would say hey you know you're a smart guy why are you hanging out with those idiots though those idiots are going to get you arrested they're going to get your locked up come with us we produce a newsletter we. can run you for office we can we can put a tie on you and run you for a school board and you know don't hang around with those idiots well from a law enforcement perspective those people are fine i don't i don't spend time with them i need to go focus on the criminals but understanding how that are of the white supremacist movement still has purchased in our political in our politics is really important to understand if we want to address this problem holistically throughout our society let me share with you both some numbers that. i think are interesting about what some americans are looking at when they look at the future

of the country some embrace the diversity some don't but if you look at those that say i prefer to live in a community with people who come from diverse cultures let's look at this graph. 78 percent of democrats say that they are turned on by that 45 percent of republicans . let's take another look if you look at the question our country has made the changes needed to give black americans equal rights with white americans that means the job is done the white community says 49 percent believe that black community 11 percent. if you flip that around you see racism is built into the american economy the government and the education system and you look at that white community says only half of that the black community 83 percent feels and sees that systemic racism i guess my point here is when you look at those dimensions. half of the white community is is not on board with further steps of diversification and i

think that that when you kind of look at this other question out there that by the year 204550 percent of the electorate will be. nonwhite voters so you're going to have the the. i guess the minority majority amerge at that point so i guess my question to you gentlemen is when you look at that and you look at the anxieties people have we're talking about white supremacists today but if you look at people who are concerned about immigration they're worried about you know losing their jobs broadly or the shifts because they're feels like there's 0 some tension sometimes between races i guess my question to you daniels a filmmaker's a conceptualize or you know as somebody who i think by shining a light on this you're also interested in how it how do you get americans to embrace diversity and to not have the fear that they do that somehow they're going to lose their their standing in society. as the the culture becomes more

multi-racial more multi-ethnic. i mean if i had the answer to that it's a very very difficult question you know and i think that i think that one of the good by products of all of this that's happened the last several years is it has allowed us to at least understand that the things that you're talking about are what lie beneath all of this right that even even in neo nazi and that was the great education process for me is operating from a point of view of grievance in the sense that they think that they are the victim and they think you know that they as crazy as it sounds they think that they are being exterminated by jewish interests you know it's a conspiracy theory it's crazy but the point is that the emotional content of it is i'm being victimized people are trying to exterminate me and my family people are trying to wipe me out and that's the most extreme version of it right but there are lesser versions of that i'm being marginalized i'm not getting a fair shake i'm you know i'm being discriminated against all the rest of these things that characterize i think

a lot of the people who have the views that you just showed in those lights and so while i don't necessarily you know know how to fix said i do you i believe at least from the perspective that i come at these things from that at least understanding the mindset of these people at least being in touch with the fact that they feel that you know that these that they don't are not getting a fair shake don't have opportunities whatever it is that's part of that and so you know how we address that and how we effectively communicate to them what's actually going on that i don't have an answer to but i think you know we're at least growing to understand the phenomenon of the psychology behind it better and i think that's at least that's at least progress and want to remind you thank you michel one of things i've been trying to get my head around i've interviewed on this show dr cornell west also reverend william j. barber who these are very important black leaders in the country and they talk about in there any question of inclusion and people who need help they both say we

need to take care of the white community who's poor too at the lower end of the economic ladder and that's a vital part. of getting social justice and civic justice in the right place i guess my question is you know 2016 i interviewed joe biden and he said the democratic party had become a party of snobs liberal elites in a way and that that needed to be fixed do you think there is a strategy from what you know about de radicalization but how do you you know undo some of what you see out there i just love to know as a law enforcement person who dealt with human beings do you find and again not to blow the ending of the film for folks i should tell you everybody go out and look you know watch imperium but there is a scene i think i can talk about that won't go to a young man who finds his way out of this how do you get more young men to in this in this particular case deal radicalized. so i have trouble with this concept of radicalization because it suggests irrationality where

. that's not actually proven by the parable studies of people who actually commit political violence and you know they're not brainwashed they're not overcoming their reason they've just chosen a particular path and. again we have to make sure that we're addressing the right thing i think it's very important to have an act with a bull society for that goal that there is economic justice and social justice as well as as racial justice but that's not it's not that that poor white people are joining the group of people went to that. attack on the capital who blew their own private jet right this is this is more deeply woven throughout our society that we have to understand what our media culture is doing that is

pitting americans against one another and how politicians are using those divisions to. secure their own power base right i mean we've often heard of racist dog with vote in our politics well donald trump you know with some media outlets that promoted. found a way to make those dog whistle the bullhorn and it and it made a lot of this activity more public and more acceptable to be part of the militant wings of the party and still be accepted into the mainstream political conversation and i think that's why it's very dangerous that different powerful daniel this would be an unfair question to you but if you were to update imperium to make it in light of what we're seeing play out on our t.v. screens have you thought a little bit about what else you would bring to this the set of visuals the set of stories that you've told if you were to bring it into today. well i'll answer that

i also want to piggyback off what mike was saying to write in this sense i think that point of radicalization is really important and it's borne out by what we just saw i.e.d. that we saw that huge group of people from all kinds of backgrounds if provided with information that we know is false but that they believed would engage in activities that you know are unthinkable would break into buildings would be willing to commit violence would do all 'd sorts of things so you know in that way again we at least saw on public display what that thought process looks like and that there are a lot of people if they are convinced that certain things are going on they will out of their own sense of justice and rightness and standing up to tyranny and all his other things they will they will do you know terrible things so you know i think that in terms of you know updating the movie it's interesting

because it's a movement that is always in flux i mean all sorts of groups that are in the headlines now everything from the proud boys on down were not really part of the equation at least not that i was aware of back in you know 5 years ago or there's a lot of change and specially since you know ironically i think there's parts of the movement that are very media savvy and that are very focused on their image and changing that image and how they get on the news and how they get more air time and so it's you know a lot of it will be looking at how it continually unfortunately is able to rebranded self get more media access get more attention and try to mainstream itself you know and that and that's the huge opportunity i think that the last several years but mike was saying has has given these folks is that there are all kinds of opinions that are either becoming mainstream or even if they are not mainstream much more out there and apparently so successful talk about them there were

a few years ago so i think that's the biggest change that i see. this is not in the shadows anymore and i think that has a ripple effect all throughout the movement you know thank you michel one of things that struck me again about your stories and your work really since 2007 is you know trying to focus on the blind spots of the f.b.i. the blindspots of law enforcement and you know to that end one of the things i would just ask you is you know what do you think the temperature is today of these movements and then secondly when you listen to legislators they also talk about the protests after george floyd's murder the black lives matter movements you know and when you look back in history the black panthers or others are more organized you know efforts in some areas around you know race and some poor of domestic terrorism from decades ago i guess in terms of not having blind spots in our discussion is do you have any concern that there is a you know rising organized violence group on the other side of the square asian of

those that are trying to you know be wrapped around b.l.m. movements and i want to ask this because that comes up a lot in congress sure i think there is a blind spot in that you know the f.b.i. remains a mostly white mostly male. organization and if you look at how white males voted over the last 2 elections you have a pretty good idea what. vast majority of f.b.i. agents would would believe and. particularly when you. after $911.00 the idea was we had done the least. and so we reduced what are called criminal predicates and this is the level of evidence you need to start investigation so we remove these criminal predicates with the idea that we want the f.b.i. to act you know with less evidence but when you do that you tend to have a tendency in this is true throughout the history of the f.b.i. you know when it when white male f.b.i.

agent looks out on the horizon about who might be a threat later these violent white supremacists who have been part of our society for decades aren't right is the big problem it's some new emerging issue that tends to come from a space that is uncomfortable for that f.b.i. agent right so it's easy to look at black lives matter movement or the standing rock water protectors and think that that is extremely dangerous even though if you evaluate them objective lead by the evidence they're not nearly as violent as as white supremacist or pyrite militia groups. so there is a tendency to view them and in fact the f.b.i. created a designated terrorism in the category called black identity extremism. that tried to manufacture a terrorist threat out of the black lives matter movement so so i think it is a problem but my concern with those groups actually becoming violent is the lack of

law enforcement attention to its promises violence well gentlemen we're going to have to we're going to have to leave it there today is a discussion i could have for a very long time and i think it's a you know a very real and present struggle in the country right now dan recluses you you know began looking at this way way early and mike german you did the same for so writer and director daniel reduces former f.b.i. agent michael german thank you so much for joining us today thanks so much thanks. so what's the bottom line former president bill clinton called racism america's constant curse and history is clear every time men have to share power whether with women or with any minorities there's a rise in intolerance these groups prey on fear and they talk about white genocide and their followers are not just the poor and the an educated it's very important for white supremacy to be taken seriously by the by the administration as a threat to national security but what will

a domestic terrorism label actually do even though it's high time well it just drive these attitudes underground without tackling the root causes if that happens this whites vs anybody different mentality will continue to be america's constant curse and that's the bottom line. this thing is just sick and it's time for a different approach one that is going to challenge the way you think i'm asking the questions now as a new host on the next season of the show that's got no space for sound bites only

comedy so let's leave simplicity to the headlines join me as i take on the lies dismantle the misconceptions and debate the contradiction. marc lamont hill and it's time to get out front right here on al-jazeera. the usa is always of interest the people all right in the world people pay attention to what was going here and i do see it as very good at bringing the news to the world. when freedom of the press is under threat demonstrators and journalists are dealing with internet outages police intimidation and charges of his addition and the state line becomes the default so media namely developing new kinds of images that that lead to that it gives to these guys that just how did he create and use it just makes it hard for people to know what's real and what's not step outside the mainstream to shift the focus covering the way the news discovered the listening posts on a. be the hero world needs

right now. washington. should should should. threats of more sanctions against me and mas ruling military after the bloodiest day in more than 2 weeks of anti coup protests. hello and welcome i'm peter w. watching al-jazeera live from our headquarters here and also coming up the kremlin critic alexina felony loses to court cases in one day and leaving him heading to prison for.