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The echoes of white nationalism have seeped into talking points espoused by conservative media and the GOP party. The shooting in Buffalo is the latest example of where those dangerous thoughts can lead. Andy speaks with hate crime researcher Jeannine Bell and extremism reporter Andy Campbell about how Republican politicians and political pundits spouting anti-immigrant and anti-Black hate leads directly to someone taking action on those beliefs. Is this a quest for country-wide reconciliation and rehabilitation, or a war over good and evil? How can you fight hate in your community? Find out.

Keep up with Andy on Twitter @ASlavitt.

Follow Andy Campbell and Jeannine Bell on Twitter @AndyBCampbell and @jeanninelbell.

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Check out these resources from today’s episode: 

• Order Jeannine Bell’s book, “Policing Hatred: Law Enforcement, Civil Rights, and Hate Crime”: https://nyupress.org/9780814798973/policing-hatred/
• Pre-order Andy Campbell’s book, “We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism”: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/andy-campbell/we-are-proud-boys/9780306827464/
• Find vaccines, masks, testing, treatments, and other resources in your community: https://www.covid.gov/
• Order Andy’s book, “Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response”: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250770165

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For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com/show/inthebubble.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Andy Slavitt, Andy Campbell, Janine Bell

Andy Slavitt  00:21

Welcome IN THE BUBBLE. I’m Andy Slavitt. It’s Friday, May 20th. And for the third week in a row, I could say, what a week, what a week. Friday is the day that we dive into one of the major issues of the week, and talk about the things that are most on your mind. And we try to do this by having great guests that can both help us understand and assimilate what’s happening, talk a little bit about the big picture and then talk about what the calls to action are. Because it is very disempowering to feel like scary events are happening around us nearly a week’s past, since the tragic shooting in Buffalo, New York, that killed 10 Black, people injured three others, the number of reported hate crimes in the country is up yet again, up 9% in the US, according to federal data. And as we’ll talk about on this show, the majority of hate crimes are targeted against Black people. Just not to say that there are also not a lot targeted against Asians and Jewish people and others, but they’re racially and ethnically motivated. We’re gonna get into this today. And we’re examining the rise in hate crimes. And also, I think this notion that what I think was once considered extremist is now becoming more and more mainstream. Joining us today are our two great people that I’m excited to introduce you to for the dialogue. One is Professor Janine Bell. She’s a hate crime scholar and professor of law at Indiana University, Maurer School of Law. Welcome, Professor.

Janine Bell 

Great to be here.

Andy Slavitt

And Andy Campbell. At the sea. He is breaking my prohibition and people named Andy on the show, mostly for my own confusion. He’s reported HuffPost, who focuses on crime and extremism. And he has a new book coming out this fall called We Are Proud Boys. When I showed it to my wife, she was lying. And she was like, why would you have a proud boy on the show? Which would have been a good question, but I assure you or maybe he’ll assure you that he’s not a proud boy. Welcome, Andy.

Andy Campbell  02:25

Hey, happy to be here. Certainly not a proud boy. And the takeaway from the book is proud boys, not good.

Andy Slavitt 

Not good. Yeah. Let’s start with recapping the news for people who hadn’t been paying attention. Can you talk, Andy, maybe we’ll start with you about the events that took place to Buffalo on Saturday and what we’ve learned since?

Andy Campbell 

Certainly, so what we know so far is White, you know, 18-year-old gunman carried out this racist attack in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York on Saturday, he killed 10 people, injured several others. He live streamed the mass shooting and he also released a manifesto. You know, which extremism experts and researchers have been sort of poring over the past week. And, you know, he gave thought to his targets. He wanted to find a place where the impact of his racist attack and he wanted it to be a racist attack would be the most felt. Now he chose the supermarket over a school. He initially was apparently going to go to an elementary school, but he broadcasted as far and wide as possible. And he used to talk points in his manifesto showing that, you know, he was following racist conspiracy theory about the great replacement, which, you know, a posits that the you know, so called White race is going to be replaced by Brown people over the next 50 years. And it’s a conspiracy theory and in one touted by some of our widest reaching media figures like Tucker Carlson, your Fox News, and a gamut of other sort of racist podcasters and other media professionals. But what we’re seeing as we look into this is we’re seeing a guy who was had been catapulted into and pushed himself into this racist conspiratorial world, online and fed by national media sources.

Andy Slavitt  04:42

Professor Bell, can you ground us a little bit in some of the statistics about the rise in hate crimes? What data do we have about the people in groups that are being targeted?

Janine Bell 

Well, you are correct, you are correct in your opening, that the majority of what With respect to racist hate crimes, because they’re, of course, lots of different types of hate crimes, African Americans are most likely to be the victims of those crimes, the largest category of individuals targeted by race-based hate crimes. This has been the case, since the beginning of collection of FBI data in 1990. This is the largest group, there have been increases in the number of Asian Americans targeted since pandemic, this is one of the results with respect to pandemic. And of course, there are also the smallest group, of course, of individuals by race is Whites, right? Anyone can be a victim of a hate crime, if you have a race, you can be a victim of a hate crime.

Andy Slavitt

Let’s talk about who are committing these crimes. What do we know about what the you know; we know this was an 18-year-old white male is that typical?

Janine Bell  06:08

Alright, so the largest group of perpetrators, as identified by the FBI and all the other data that is collected the FBI data is not the only data. Whites are the largest racial group with respect to perpetrators and men, more than women for identified perpetrators. So the typical perpetrator, and this is both something I’ve seen in my own research, and also the data collected by the FBI, that typical, you know, perpetrator is a white male.

Janine Bell 

And I’ll piggyback off that real quick. I mean, domestic extremist incidents in general and violence are surging in a way that we haven’t seen in decades in these are primarily by White supremacist, anti-Muslim, anti-Black, anti-government extremists on the far right. And that right wing, far right violence greatly eclipses that on the left for any viewers who are coming in here and saying, well, what about leftist violence? It is a far-right white supremacist issue, and it’s been going on for some time.

Andy Slavitt 

Here’s the data that I came across and tell me if it’s consistent with what you’ve said, that of the 450 murders by political extremists, kind of by the anti-Defamation League. They’re broken down into basically three categories, those committed by right wing extremists, those committed by Islamic extremists, and those committed by left wing extremists. And the count was 75%, from white extremists, 20% from Islamic extremists. 4% from left wing extremists, Professor Bell, is that consistent with what you’re seeing?

Janine Bell 

It isn’t inconsistent with what I’ve been seeing.

Janine Bell 

Yeah, not inconsistent. You know, I will say that there are, you know, so many different reports covering so many different facets, but I will say again, that the extreme domestic extremists incidents and violence are surging, and they are wholly and primarily by White supremacist and far right extremists.

Andy Slavitt  08:15

Okay, Professor, I guess a lot of us would be sit here and trying to understand if something different is happening now. Or if there’s different flavor of what’s happening now. Obviously, racism is baked in to the founding of the country. And you don’t have to look far or hard to see this throughout our history. What are you seeing in terms of the threads that are just the same consistent threads that we’ve always had? And where are you seeing new flavors, new motivations, new things happening, that are a bit different?

Janine Bell

First of all, not new motivations, right? The great replacement theory is old, and really, really, really old. But to the extent that perhaps during the 1970s. And perhaps during the Civil Rights Movement, there was a sense of upward trajectory with respect to sort of increasing progress with respect to ending marginalization, that has stopped, right? And there’s much more of speaking about the difficulties of backlash, and the extent to which minorities and people that are, you know, considered marginalized, are really not marginalized at all, and shouldn’t be attacked. So the perpetrator in this context, you know, he got the message from individuals who are mainstream, right, if you can turn on the news and see it, then it is mainstream.

Andy Slavitt  10:10

It sounds like you’re pointing to a couple of things, one of which is magnification, which happens differently today. And the second is magnification not just by the quote unquote dark web, but by primetime news coverage or quote unquote, primetime news coverage, let alone which I will get to in a second, which is the sport of a political party, which I want to explore. Is that being what you’re saying is that we are seeing progress. And this is a reaction to that progress. And these are the places it’s magnified?

Janine Bell 

Absolutely, I would agree completely with that.

Andy Slavitt 

So I want to go Andy, to get back to something you refer to. And I want to challenge this notion that what we’re seeing is solely the result of extremist thinking and mentality. And just put forward this, I’m gonna just say it as plainly as I can. There are a number of people, how many I think we are learning maybe bigger than we think. Who really well, they may not have always said it out loud, want the US to be a White majority Christian nation? I think they’re probably okay. With black and brown people like picking crops and doing stuff that are not jobs that they want. You know, maybe today that’s working with Amazon factory. I don’t know. But that is a sentiment at root. That is not an extremist view. Maybe I’m impolite to talk about it certain companies. But I think one of the things that happened with the rise of Donald Trump is that it became more okay to say some of those things out loud. And a lot of this is couched as well, I’m against illegal immigration. And, and that may be the more polite codeword. But if you look at the policies, it’s in the way that it’s used. It’s not just illegal immigration, it’s also legal immigration, illegal immigrants. And if you look at the policies, it’s not just recent immigrants, it’s people that have immigrated from non-European countries. Now, I’m not going too much of a limb here, because as you said, Andy, this weight replacement theory is something that’s talked about, on very prominent places like Tucker Carlson, let’s do something that I would love to do. But let’s play a soundbite from Tucker.

Andy Slavitt 

Explain, Professor, the origins of what this great replacement theory is that Tucker talked about, you’ve mentioned, it’s not a new thing.

Janine Bell 

The idea is that there are particular people, White people who are the rightful people at the top of the hierarchy. And any improvement that minorities make, will shift the people at the top of the hierarchy, the White people at the top of the hierarchy, from their position.

Andy Campbell  14:15

And just to add to that, and, you know, there’s a, you know, the conspiracy sort of the way that Tucker and companies sort of capture is they, you know, posit that White birth rates and this is something that has been posited by right wing pundits for decades that White birth rates are, are being outpaced by Brown, and immigrant birth rates, and that that is somehow going to erase a culture and identity that doesn’t actually exist. And really, this is all a normalization of what used to be sort of backhanded racism into the mainstream, like you said, just three years ago, just three years ago, Representative Steve King of Iowa, lost his committee assignments on the house and reelect and he lost his reelection bid, after he wondered aloud, hey, what’s so bad about being a White nationalist? Three years later, now you have Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona and other lawmakers speaking at a White nationalist conference, two years in a row, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingram are taking White nationalist talking points in the mainstream. And you have these bigoted street gangs fighting out for these causes in the street. Right?

Andy Slavitt 

So are people saying, like, what’s so wrong with saying I’m a White nationalist? How do you draw the thread between that to these violent acts? I mean, obviously, something has to happen. And there’s some radicalization that goes on. But as this kind of giving cover to the thinking, that drives this kind of behavior.

Andy Campbell 

Yeah, I mean, it’s the extremist, you’re right to say that there are a subset of Americans who just believe this racist garbage. And the extremists are bringing it into the mainstream by fighting it out in the streets. I mean, there are people pushing for this, in, you know, racist, white nationalist podcasts, there’s people pushing for it in the mainstream, the Tucker Carlson’s of the world. And then you have these right-wing street gangs, who like the Proud Boys who I wrote a book about, they are, you know, positioning, fighting, political violence and bigoted violence in the street. They’re positioning that as protected constitutional discourse, and as patriotic discourse, something to be celebrated, and not pushed away. And so you have this entire spectrum of people pushing these, what should be fringe and, you know, polls show like, these are fringe beliefs, but they’re being placed at the mainstream to where they represent half the country.

Andy Slavitt 

Are they fringe beliefs? Are they fringe actions? Like, I wonder professor, like if this young man in Buffalo, like, is it just more okay for him to feel like, these are beliefs that are just fine to have put aside acting on them for a second. But it is fine to have because we have a political party and the most popular news-ish program in the country that are basically saying these are acceptable views.

Janine Bell 

Yeah. And I think that the bigger problem, I agree entirely, right? And moreover, many liberals would say that the views are fine to have so long as you don’t act on it. They see the action on them as the only problem, not the views themselves. You have under the First Amendment, the right to believe anything you want. And it doesn’t matter where you are almost. On the political spectrum, there is support for that. And I think that that is the problem, right? We’ve turned our backs on the idea that these views are problematic. Yes. And, you know, you’re always going to have some people who behave in a manner that is inappropriate, if they have these views. So we spend no time trying to suggest to people that they should not hold views that are against traditional American ideals. And they absolutely are.

Andy Slavitt  18:49

Well, if we’re going the other way, we’re taking things out of textbooks that talk about the fact that there has been racism in this country, we’re striking them from textbooks,

Janine Bell 

We certainly are quickly and aggressively.

Andy Campbell 

Well, and we are also questioning, you know, leftist violence in the street and BLM Antifa violence in the street, we’re questioning, you know, Well, isn’t that a problem to without asking the question, why are people out in the street? I mean, there are people out in the street, doing what Democratic lawmakers have so far failed to do, which in my mind is fighting back against the notion that you have to accept White supremacists in your community, and there are people out there fighting back against that. And we’re wondering if the White supremacist murder toll is at the same level as the Antifa and BLM fighting back against them in the street. It’s ridiculous.

Janine Bell 

I think we’re not really wondering. I think that’s part of the you know, attempt. It’s a trick, right? We call out proud boys and suddenly, oh, there’s the others. aside, right, there is the other side. And it’s just as violent. Don’t you know,

Andy Slavitt  20:06

this false equivalence makes me upset about it goes to something you both I think are touching on, which is a lot of people sort of believe if we all just understood each other better, and held hands and got to know each other’s point of view and understood that, you know, we’re not all motivated by bad things that this happens to us, we get radicalized. That kind of thinking, to me, poisons another type of thinking, which is there is good and there is evil sometimes. And sometimes good just has to win and evil has to be defeated. And you can’t sit down and reconcile beliefs, which make less of people than other people.

Andy Campbell 

Right? And let me tell you what happens when liberals sit back and say, you know, let’s just let them fight. Portland, Oregon. I mean, the establishment there in Portland has largely said, you know, this is the far right coming in here and demonstrating, which really means they’re hosting street fights. This is just First Amendment, political discourse. They’re throwing up their hands, and they have no idea what to do with it.

Janine Bell 

And when people stand up, they get stabbed to death. They get stabbed to death on, on public transportation.

Andy Campbell 

Exactly. And that’s what happened there.

Andy Slavitt 

It’s talking about this path, between in the connection between this basic fundamental normalization of racism that we’ve all just been talking about that goes on, and someone getting radicalized, and turning from someone with beliefs that are abhorrent to these kinds of actions. And we’re starting to hear whether it’s January 6, or this event and looked at with the three of us could probably count could go with the rest of the show. And in that name, all the events and all the tragedies that ever occurred, that people are being radicalized quite quickly. That’s a, I have to admit, that’s a real mystery to me, I know that there are people that think really bad things. What are the ingredients that send someone into being radicalized to the point where these kinds of events happen is it family, is it internet, is it community, what is going on?

Andy Campbell  22:28

As we’ve seen, I mean, to me, and there are a lot of ways into extremism. But for me in the way that I have watched, young and old people delve into this is the normalization factor. And again, a lot of these movements have come on the heels or been promoted by some of our top-level voices, the proud boys are a prime example they were created out of the audience of a right-wing podcaster, who said, you know, I just want to start a men’s club of people who aren’t going to take immigration anymore. And he pretended that this was their, their sort of mantra, and I’m going to, you know, fight back against anyone who criticizes me. And, you know, the underlying communication was the rule set for the proud boys, which is to rank up, you have to commit acts of political violence against the left to rank up and somehow through despite raising his audience to become a gang and raising these young people and saying, to be a part of my crew, you have to commit political violence for the cause. And that cause includes at this time, Donald Trump, and then turning to the mainstream media and going, no, no, we’re just, you know, Western chauvinists. We just dislike immigration, and we’re proud to say it and we fight back against it, the ability to mainstream that rhetoric. And as we’ve been sort of, like hinting at the ease at which these guys are able to bamboozle the other side by just saying, Hey, this is protecting speech, we can say we want that normalization means that a young racist guy and old racist guy can join the proud boys and have it not actually been a problem. I’ll give you an example. I write about a number of police officers who even after January 6 police officers who were found to be members of the proud boys while they were on the force, and there are a number of police departments who look at that and say, they haven’t violated any rule here because it’s not illegal to be a proud boy. And so that’s all the only barrier that I need when the rest of us are going okay. This is full of White supremacists and bigots and political violence is in the ruleset. We as a, as a, as a country, as a community, we have heard that. And yet, because it’s not against the Constitution, or because it doesn’t violate a law, that has to be allowed. This is what this normalization brings so many people into this movement.

Janine Bell 

It’s not just not violated a law; the First Amendment absolutely supports the right to Association. And many liberals are strongly supportive of this. And they will be supportive, as well, you know, of the proud boys. And they’re very right to exist, because the myth is that the right of the proud boys to exist, protects the NAACP.

Andy Campbell 

Which is ridiculous. And so at the end of the day, when you have this kind of normalization, when you have this kind of thought process where there’s just no fighting back, because fighting back is against the Constitution, you have it to where, you know, it’s not just a, you know, a young guy with a neck beard in his mom’s basement joining. I mean, it is actually patriotic in some circles to join the Oath keepers. It is patriotic to many lawmakers. I mean, Congressman Lauren Boebert of Colorado, suggested Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was a suicide bomber. You know, these racist, we have racism in Congress, we have extremism in Congress. So these groups in these extremists are accepted. And so maybe it is time to stop calling them extremists. I mean, Roger Stone counts the proud boys and the Oath keepers as his personal bodyguard and friends, the leader of the proud boys.

Andy Slavitt  26:52

You recall what it took to get Donald Trump, to even denounce.

Andy Campbell 

He doesn’t denounce. It’s a political strategy.

Janine Bell 

Right. But the biggest problem here is that if we took a poll, I think that the vast number of Americans would denounce the ideas that the proud boys espouse. Right, but they’re not saying anything. So this is a clear sign of market failure. Right? If there’s a marketplace of ideas, we are hearing from a single set of ideas, and the other side is mostly silent. I don’t know whether it’s laziness. And it’s probably as I said, not support. I don’t think it’s support.

Andy Slavitt 

And well, and but both sides ism is another form of that silence.

Andy Campbell 

Yeah, yeah. And well, and you get, you know, while the Democrats have been sort of the convinced that, you know, by these Republican forces that this is legitimate public for speech, this violence in the streets, they’re also taking away speech, they’re using the law to inhibit speech at the same time. And so really, I mean, so much of when people ask me, what is the answer here? I mean, so much comes down to, you know, Congress, the people we vote in, growing a spine in unison and sort of being progressive about attacking back, we have to fight back.

Andy Slavitt  28:56

President Biden was in Buffalo early this week I want to play what he said. Now, I want to say what I explicitly what I think he only said implicitly since I think as you’re both calling out, this is a time not to leave the unsaid, unsaid. He He’s not talking here about guns. He’s not talking here about racism. But what Biden is almost saying here when he says this is a threat to democracy. It’s, in my opinion, he’s hitting it something different. And I think if he went the next step, I think he would say that this is sanctioned behavior and dialogue. And I Look at the number of Republicans that have spoken up since this shooting and said this is wrong, our party should not support this. And I think I could count one person who’s left the party, and another person who has been ostracized from the party. But none of the party leaders have said, a word. And I think this is I normally don’t like to politicize things on this show by talking about things of political parties, because there are people that identify as Republicans or Democrats, and I don’t want to alienate them. But you have to say that today, since Donald Trump’s been president and just witnessed the midterms, that the broad control of the Republican Party are by people who, at best, at best, are silent. And in the main, understand that this is where their political support comes from. And at worst, and you’ve given a couple of examples that does Andy, are, in many ways cheering this up from the sidelines. Is that wrong?

Janine Bell 

I don’t think it’s wrong. I’ll say that. I don’t think it’s wrong.

Andy Campbell 

Keep going Professor Bell.

Janine Bell 

Yeah, it’s I mean, sort of what these individuals would say, is, of course, I don’t support the individual’s actions, right, the perpetrators actions. But the ideas, there is some truth in that. And then they’ll fill in some sort of low level, you know, support for it. Which is essentially saying the same thing. Right. You know, he took it too far. Of course.

Andy Campbell 

until, until the President and the Vice President are talking like Professor Bell is right now, we haven’t made progress, because I have watched so many over the years of the Trump years, just recently, and we’ll see on these January 6 hearings coming up. But I have watched so many congressional hearings, on the threat of white supremacy and, you know, domestic terrorism, and on the right, and every single one, I think, that I’ve ever seen, has been completely derailed by a Republican questioning whether white supremacy is even a thing. And so we as a country are not only unable to confront and attack back against these threats. But like Professor Bell said, we are silently accepting it by being completely unable to discuss it like we are now. And it’s exacerbating the problem. And it’s exacerbating the public’s perception of what’s right and wrong. As we go into these next elections,

Andy Slavitt  32:59

which are painting, it’s a picture of two political parties, one of which, either implicitly, or in some cases explicitly knows that this type of thinking is what gets them elected, and is very much embraced what had been considered extremism and brought into the mainstream and another political party that in its quote, unquote, quest for tolerance is tolerating behavior that should never be tolerated. That feels like the recipe, the political recipe we have.

Janine Bell 

I disagree. I don’t think it’s a quest for tolerance on the part of the Democrats. You were referring Andy to the Democrats, right? It’s not a quest for tolerance. It’s fear. Right? They’re afraid that they will alienate Democrats, who kinda like the idea. Some of the ideas, not the sort of horrible ones, they would say the horrible ones, quote, unquote, but find some level of attractiveness in just a few of the ideas. It’s the big tent issue, right, trying to keep everybody in the big tent. And that is the reason this is not called out.

Andy Slavitt  34:26

Yeah. Well, there may be both. There may be both going on. There may be that but I also think there is an unwillingness for people who even find those ideas of poured it feels like even they feel like to your point, hey, but those voices even if we disagree with them have a right to exist, and therefore don’t take them on with the fight. That look, if you were if they were saying this about you, you react very differently than when you’re reacting in some intellectual level of saying I don’t agree with this idea. But the fact is, There’s people telling a number of people in this country that they’re just not welcome. And how you could respond to that, as if it were an issue, as opposed to an intolerable threatening statement is where I see a line that is being crossed.

Janine Bell 

I couldn’t agree more.

Andy Slavitt 

Let’s talk about some of the solutions. As we as we get through it. And some of the places we need to go. Let’s start very locally, Professor with the City of Buffalo, can you tell us about the effects that these kinds of violence are having on communities and have on the communities that are connected to these communities? And what can be done there most immediately?

Janine Bell 

Okay, so a hate crime, especially a violent, well publicized hate crime like this one is a message to the community. This is what will happen to you, if you go about your daily life. I mean, there is nothing more troubling, right, than people being shot at the grocery store, something that we have to do. Right. So the community lives in fear of an attempt directed at them, when they do something as basic as going to the grocery store. I have communicated with people I know and Buffalo, and they’re literally afraid to go out of their homes. And you should sort of expand that to an old and large, significant Black community. This place was a gathering place. So this is a significant injury, that, you know, is going to be long standing.

Andy Slavitt 

So what’s the right response from someone who’s listening to this, nodding their heads and saying, I want to do something, I don’t count myself among the people that think they should be tolerated. I don’t know how to funnel what I’m feeling. I would say as much as people like to be empathetic, very hard for people to walk in other people’s shoes, and truly know what this feels like until it happens to them. But I feel like if there is overwhelming support, and I’m gonna go with the theory that this isn’t about reconciliation, this is about defeating the bad people, that’s just by perspective. But that’s going to require an overwhelming majority of people that are not addressing the problem right now. Or they’re addressing it in very intellectual analytical ways. By saying, This is bad, this is bad, but I’m unwilling to do anything. Or they don’t know how to reach out, take action show support. Any thoughts for people who are having those kinds of feelings and thoughts?

Janine Bell  38:09

Absolutely call up the police department, your police department in your jurisdiction, buffalo or wherever? Ask what are their procedures around hate crimes? What are they doing? Are they part of the more than 80% of police departments that reported zero hate crimes in their jurisdiction to the FBI? Is that what they’re doing? Really, zero? Because we’re paying attention to hate crime when they’re huge. Incidents like that. That’s not the vast majority of hate crimes in this country. They are low level. Sometimes people start out low. And then no one sort of pays any attention except the victim. And then they do more and more. That’s what I’ve seen in my research. So call your police department say so what are you doing with respect to hate crimes? And if they say, well, we just count them. What happens when someone calls and says, you know, someone has written and word go home on my garage? Vandalism is a huge percentage of the number of hate crimes recognized by the FBI in this country. What would you do? Would you send somebody out? So push your police department to respond to hate crime. Maybe look for the person who did it. In my first book, I studied a hate crime. I was embedded in a hate crime unit that actually investigated hate crime. So this can be done.

Andy Slavitt 

I, I wouldn’t want to jump on your point, about not the ones that are attracting a lot of media attention and getting the news because it feels like oh gee, what do you do about someone who’s off to dependent buffalo. But the fact that there are so many things in our own communities that enable this to happen all the time. And there are points of leverage there. I’ll pick one example, which is the police union contracts that are negotiated by the police unions, and some of the things that are in those types of contracts. I’m wondering professor, whether that’s the right example, or whether there are other examples of places where we can focus and force on making change that are impacting the sort of the day to day hate crimes that are happening all over this country, all the time.

Janine Bell  40:48

Yeah, well, I think it’s not quite right to use the sledge hammer of the union contracts. I think that if police knew that people in the city cared about hate crime investigation, they might actually investigate hate crime. Right? The police model is such that if we report more crime, you get mad at us. They need to get the message that we don’t think that about hate crime. If you report more hate crime, right, that shows you’re doing your job because you’re actually fine.

Andy Campbell 

If I could just jump off of that real quick. And, you know, I think it on top of Professor Bell’s great response I, the number one other thing you could do is support your community activism because this summer and beyond, you’re going to see people out in the street, you’re going to see people online, doing research and quick history lesson. It wasn’t law enforcement or politicians who built a case against the architects of unite the right in Charlottesville in 2017. It was a local community. It wasn’t the law enforcement or politicians who built dossiers on every single January 6 attendee that the law enforcement is now using to prosecute those cases. It was researchers, it was activist, it was people out in the street. And the summer, you’re going to see that

Andy Slavitt  42:26

Tell me more about what we’re gonna see over the summer.

Andy Campbell 

I mean, women’s rights are being taken away. Police brutality, still a thing, we are taking a step backward. And just about every facet of culture that we know in America, get involved. It’s not even just people out in the street fighting. It is people online researching extremists calling politicians, you know, revealing Republican politicians to be White supremacists and police officers to be white supremacists researching and you know, helping all of these movements, whether you can get on the street, or you’re sitting in your chair online, supporting that, instead of hindering that community activism goes so far, because again, it is historically, at least in the most recent sense, and many other senses, not law enforcement or politicians coming to help us. It is our local communities. And it is not that is not a flowery hippie thing to say. It is happening right now. There are people out in your community right now doing work against these forces. And you can support that.

Andy Slavitt 

If people are and we’ll put some links in our show notes for people there. If someone’s convicted of a misdemeanor hate crime, and there is such a thing as a misdemeanor hate crime, should they be allowed to own a gun and ammunition and high velocity weapon? Is there more that can be done more than lawmakers could do, more than we could advocate for from our lawmakers? When it comes to the teeth in this hate, n hate crime legislation?

Janine Bell  44:04

Well, we might enforce hate crime legislation first, right? Before we throw it out. So little enforced, very few hate crimes prosecuted in this country. Very few people arrested for hate crimes, prosecutors don’t want to bring hate crimes charges. So let’s use it a little before we throw it out.

Andy Slavitt 

So the problem is less about whether we have the right things on paper, and more whether or not we are enforcing what’s already on the books.

Janine Bell 

Yeah, absolutely.

Andy Slavitt 

So as we finish up here, I want to thank you both and maybe give you both the last words to leave people with. I’ll start with you; Andy and Professor Bell give you the last word. What is it that isn’t being told about this story? What is it that people are missing? What do they need to know, what can they do?

Andy Campbell

People need to understand that they aren’t powerless. And that even though democracy is under fire right now, and your ability to vote away your problems is being thwarted, which it absolutely is, continue to vote. But also, again, I just want to go back to support your community activism. And that goes in vocal support too, because we have, again, the right is on the attack right now, and the left doesn’t know what to do with it. And we are unable to look at why BLM is in the street, why Antifa is in the street, why women are in the street, and instead are looking at this as a crime issue and is just not this is, you know, people are going to be out in the street. support those people and you will find yourself a part of a movement that is doing good work, to thwart the hate and extremism around us.

Andy Slavitt 

Professor Bell, where do you want to leave us

Janine Bell  46:01

The perpetrator didn’t get his ideas first, from the internet, the perpetrator saw ideas in the mainstream that we are not speaking out against, and then turn to the internet. We need to speak up more if you have a problem with the ideas that Black people you don’t aren’t worth a whole lot, then you need to speak up a lot more.

Andy Slavitt 

Andy Campbell, senior editor and reporter at the Huff Post, got a new book coming out. We’re the proud boys how right-wing street gang, I ushered in a new era of American extremism. Thanks for joining us. And Professor Janine Bell, Professor of Law at Indiana University, Maurer School of Law. Thank you so much for joining us. I know this has been a draining conversation in a draining week.

Andy Campbell 

Thank you, Andy, and thank you for Professor Bell. It’s been an honor sitting next to you.

Janine Bell 

Thank you for having me.

Andy Slavitt 

If you’re counting, that was our third Friday conversation. The first one was on the leaked decision on Roe v. Wade, the second one was on the under representation of women in politics and how that’s leading us to an under representative government. And our third one. On the heels of the buffalo shooting is really about the mainstreaming of extremism. Boy, I really hope that as many of our friendly conversations are about news, it’s positive. The news, it’s challenging, but I am not going to shy away on this show for bringing you the tough story is to try to put shed some light on them and make some sense of them as hard as they are. And I’m sure it’s sometimes difficult to listen to a conversation about hate. And it’s even more difficult for people who see themselves in hear themselves in this hateful rhetoric and in these hateful actions. And it’s even more challenging for people who then fear routine activities like going to the grocery store. But I think it became clear from listening to the guests that the problem we have is that we don’t talk about it. Or we’re too polite about it. And I don’t want to be guilty of that on the show. So when the news is challenging, we’re going to talk about it. We’re going to try to talk about as directly as possible and call out for what it is. And then it just won’t always be challenging. The news is also going to be good at times as well. Okay, let me tell you what’s coming up. Next week, we’ve got two episodes that are going to be about what’s happening in the pandemic. One is following the variants as they are flying around the world, changing what they’re teaching us. And the other is going to be about testing and the availability of testing and new innovations around getting tested because that is one of the things that we have to protect ourselves in this search. followed that we’ve got a number of really interesting shows coming up Beto O’Rourke, Larry Summers, many others more conversations like this. I would be remiss if I didn’t wish you an amazing, wonderful spring weekend. Head. Enjoy. Try to get some peaceful thoughts and try to do something fun that you enjoy with family and know that no matter what happens, we’re going to be talking to you Get on Monday. Thanks

CREDITS

Thanks for listening to IN THE BUBBLE. We’re a production of Lemonada Media. Kathryn Barnes, Jackie Harris and Kyle Shiely produced our show, and they’re great. Our mix is by Noah Smith and James Barber, and they’re great, too. Steve Nelson is the vice president of the weekly content, and he’s okay, too. And of course, the ultimate bosses, Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs, they executive produced the show, we love them dearly. Our theme was composed by Dan Molad and Oliver Hill, with additional music by Ivan Kuraev. You can find out more about our show on social media at @LemonadaMedia where you’ll also get the transcript of the show. And you can find me at @ASlavitt on Twitter. If you like what you heard today, why don’t you tell your friends to listen as well, and get them to write a review. Thanks so much, talk to you next time.