[ applause ] you're watching c-span 2, created by america's cable television companies as a public service and brought to you today by your television provider. coming up shortly house republicans will be holding a news conference on their fall legislative agenda. live coverage starts at 9:30 eastern. >> we're back and we will spend the next segment talking about right wing extremism in the united states and with us is author and university of massachusetts professor ari pearlinger, the author of "american zellettes." good morning. >> good morning. thank you for having me. >> let's frame this conversation first.

first, how do you define extremism? what exactly is it? >> we're talking about groups or sometimes even individuals who, their political views are really on the margins, on the extremes of the political spectrum, but not just that, but they also are militant in the way they promote their views, that means that they are engaging illegal activities as well as in many cases utilizing violence or violent practices to promote their goals. >> now we're going to talk about right wing extremism with you, later on left wing extremism. can you tell me the difference or is there a difference between right wing extremism and left wing extremism? >> yes. well the difference is in the ideological ideas they're trying to promote and when we're talking about the far right, we're talking about groups that want to promote privileges of specific groups. when talking about the u.s., we're talking about groups that want to restore or to maintain

the privileges of white people, these are groups that oppose american society, these are groups that oppose in many cases the central government or want to undermine the powers of central government, but in general we're talking about groups that really believe that they need to basically advance and maintain the privileges of specific segment of the population, whether these are white people or males, we have a lot of far right groups that now also promote a male supremacy, so again, we're talking about groups that are really trying to maintain the exclusiveness of the constituency that they aspire to represent. >> now can you give me some examples of current right wing extremism in the united states? >> oh, there's many. one of the things that is important to remember is that the landscape of far right extremism in the u.s. is very

diverse, very flagmented so we have the traditional white supremacy groups that we are all familiar with such as the kkk and various neo nazi organizations and skinheads that are very active in various parts of the country. we also have a set of groups that are mainly focusing on anti-government or anti-federal ideology. these are groups that believe that the federal government is extremely intrusive and is interested to increase its power and violate their constitutional rights. they also promote theories about the future intentions of the federal government and most of us know these groups as the militias or the militia movements and some of the more contemporary groups are the 3 percenters or oath keepers. finally we also have groups that

are using religious transcripts and religious rhetoric to advance white supremacy and far right ideas and here i'm talking mainly about the christian identity movement which use religious -- to provide homophobic sentiments, ideas of white supremacy, et cetera. >> let me remind our viewers they can take part in this conversation and we will open up regional lines. in the eastern or central time zones, you can call 202-748-8000. in the mountain and pacific time zones, 202-748-8001. remember you can always text 202-748-8003 and always reading on social media. now, ari, what is america's history with right wing terrorism? is this something that's been going on since the american revolution or before or is this more of a recent 20th century

thing? >> no, it's definitely part of the history of the american political system and political landscape. the first anti-immigration exclusive movement was the know nothing party, a party that was fairly successful in the mid 19th century and promoted anti-immigration policies, anti-catholic ideas and so on and they used toxic and racist language in order to promote their ideas. after world war -- sorry after the civil war, of course we see the emergence of the kkk and multiple waves of kkk activities shortly after the civil war, but also in the early 20th century and after world war ii we see the emerges of various neo nazi organizations in the '80s we see the skinle heads joining them

and become a significant power within the american white power movement. the skinheads were the most organized movement within the far right in the last decade of the 20th century and in between you also see the emergence of the militia movement and it's important to note that while i'm talking about different groups there's a lot of overlap in terms of their ideology and also in terms of membership. many individuals eventually joined multiple groups and most of the groups didn't prevent their members from being active in multiple platforms, so it's, again, it's a very fluid landscape, nonetheless we're talking about a lot of split and mergers and it can be challenging to monitor and identify the different active groups and always you have new groups and new movements that are relying partially at least on previous ones. >> we've talked a little bit

about the past. let's talk about what's going on right now. dhs has what the political filed a draft of the department of homeland security state of the homeland threat assessment and here's a little bit of what it said. lone offenders and small cells of individuals motivated by a diverse array of social ideological and personal factors will pose the prime terrorist threat to the united states. we assess that white supremacist extremists, who increasingly are networking with like-minded persons abroad will pose the most persist issent and lethal threat. do you agree with their assessment, this is the most persistent and lethal threat for terrorism in the united states? >> i agree with their assessment but the data shows that they are correct and they just wouldn't have made that statement without actually having the data to back it up. if you're looking at the data

you see since 2008, the most prevalent type of political violence in the united states is violence from the far right. we see a dramatic rise in the level of violence after the elections in 2008 and since then, we are experiencing a very high levels of violence. of course there's fluctuations but overall talking about domesticic, ideological violence the far right is the one in the u.s. >> let's let some of our viewers join in the conversation and start with mike calling from sommerville, massachusetts. mike, good morning. >> caller: good morning. this is going to go off what you just said. i'm glad you mentioned the homeland security report. i'm going to make a comment and then, yeah, ask a question because i'm sitting here and i'm very socially liberal, but i'm

trying to figure out is it just my bias or is it really true that the right wing extremism is worse than the left wing extremism in terms of the threat it poses to the country? i really think the right wing extremism is a lot more dangerous at this point for a couple reasons, one being because folks that support that kind of thing are really functioning on a core level of hatred and violence and an urge to maintain exclusive power at the expense of others, puts also that they're empowered by the gop, by trump. it feels like it's gotten a lot worse in terms of the divisiveness and it was pretty bad during the bush years. the obama years.

on the left side you have people functioning on a core value of some kind of -- what am i trying to say? functioning on some kind of need to bring people together and support others and to heal the community. what does your guest think about that? am i being bias or is it true that one side is more dangerous than the other? >> go ahead and respond, ari. >> so, first of all the data shows indeed we have more violence from the far right and from the far left. i think all experts agree about the data. also, it's important to mention that the far right is more

organized, more effective, it seems like in terms of mobilizing support and in coordinating its efforts. there is a higher number of groups that are active really on the far right. if you are looking at some of the more noticeable, most visible recent attacks such as the attacks against the synagogue in pittsburgh, in california, you see that eventually it seems like the far right is much more effective in inspiring lone wolves and individuals in perpetrating actual attacks. i would also mention the fact that in general we see the political polarization of political rivals enhance and empower individuals and groups to engage in violence and, again, if you delidge mize the other side, portraying the other

side as anti-patriotic and as a threat, eventually you'll get to the point in which some people feel empowered and feel that they have the legitimacy and the support to use violence against their political rivals. >> let's talk to brian calling from salt lake city, utah. brian, good morning. >> yes. i just feel a lot of this stuff he's saying is propaganda because the right conservatives aren't racist. we don't go burn people's houses down. it's an tif fa and all in portland, oregon, all these places, chicago, they don't say black on black killing and that's what it is. but my question to you is, the antifa, the -- they're the racist people and america is not a racist country, i'm sorry.

but they're the ones burning stuff down and it's not we, the conservatives. the democratic party is the party of the ku klux klan. when you're saying, you know, the right wing, that all started with the democrats. woodrow wilson, even lyndon johnson was a racist and martin luther king made him give rights so we could -- that's all bull crap. it's not what america is about. >> go ahead and respond, ari. >> again, you know, as a scientist, i care less about the parties and issues, i'm looking at the data. while antifa, when you're talking about antifa, you're talking about the movement, a recent studies are talking about something between a 10 to 20, 30

people in each area or in each town, so we're talking about a very small groups that are not really koords nated effectively and so far, while they are maybe involved in some of the protests that we see, it's very difficult to argue that they are engaging in any kind of violent campaigns. they're definitely not operating in the same level that we see on the far right. organizations such as the 3% or the oath keepers who have an organization that deploying their people in areas where there's clashes. it's much more organized. you are correct, in the early 20th century, many politicians from the democratic party were members of the kkk. they were affiliated with organizations, but again, this is political reality that existed more than 100 years ago.

today, again, i'm not arguing that any of the political parties are supporting violence. i'm just saying that rhetoric is maybe concerning. i will also add one more point is that as someone who is reading the publications of the far right, the white supremacy groups and so on for some time, ideas and conspiracy theories that i read in their writings ten years ago are now appearing in much more mainstream platforms. that's my concern that the transition of some of the more concerning and appalling conspiracy theories gradually moving to the mainstream and gaining more legitimacy. this is something that concerns me personally as someone who is trying to study this threat and evaluate its development. >> here is an argument that's made by the center for strategic and international studies in their study on terrorism in the united states from this -- this analysis from july, what they

say, first, far right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators, including from far left networks and individuals inspired by the islamic state and al qaeda da. right wing attacks account for the majority of all terrorist inincidents in 1994 and have grown in the past six years. do you agree with that analysis? >> i agree and that level of violence is higher. in my book i provide a more robu robust data because we have to understand the data being captured by law enforcement and some of the research centers is attacks that lead to casualties or that again some potential visibility. however if you're looking at all the less visible incidents such as spontaneous attacks against people of color, against

minorities, attacks against lbgtq, acts of vandalism against religious facilities and so on, the numbers are much higher and that the trend is even more clear. definitely if you're talking about the numbers, i don't think that anyone can doubt the numbers and to agree with the fact that currently, the most prevalent form of violence, political violence, in this country is coming from the far right. i will also say that there's other types of violence, but if i need to frames the conversation, here we're talking about violence that is motivated by political objectives, political goals or to promote political policies and if you're looking at that type of violence, again, the data shows that it's much more prevalent and much more -- exists on the far right of the perspective. >> let's talk to tim calling from ac worth, georgia. tim, good morning. >> caller: yeah, good morning.

appreciate you coming out and expressing your opinion. i think it's just that. if you look at [ inaudible ] the cover-up trying to identify these people that are throughout, again, making a statement for what, antifa, black lives matter, who are these people. we're talking thousands of people. i don't stand for any racism. i'm for the human race. why the division, why are you coming trying to create your division. that's what needs to stop in this country. >> go ahead and respond. >> divisions are not good, however the political polarization and delegitimacy of rivals is something intensifying in the last decade or so, very visible ways. and again, i think we need to be conscious about the fact that we

have a problem. i think just ignoring the problem or arguing that there's no such a problem and especially as someone who is trying to study these phenomena from a scientific perspective, the only thing i can rely on is data. your audience should believe me --