I testified last week in a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on disinformation and the government’s role in countering it. Unfortunately, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., used the occasion as an opportunity to share some false information of her own.
The hearing, titled “Censorship Laundering: How the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Enables the Silencing of Dissent,” was hosted by the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Accountability. I was there to testify about the work my research lab does to prevent people from being persuaded by disinformation and harmful online content.
We’re facing a national crisis rooted in the rampant circulation of propaganda; dis-, mis- and malinformation; and other harmful online content.
Greene’s appointment to the House Committee on Homeland Security earlier this year was controversial. As Daniel Strauss of The New Republic wrote earlier this year about the potential damage she could do, “If there’s any topic that Greene has used to peddle misinformation and foster fear, it’s national security.” As a member of the committee, she now has access to classified and sensitive information about national security and terrorist threats, and regularly participates in hearings like the one I testified at in order to be informed and ask expert witnesses questions, under the committee’s objective of enhancing U.S. security.
In an exchange with me, Greene asked if I considered Trump supporters extremists. I told her that my lab focuses on “violent extremism — not about what people believe, but to the extent that they are moving toward violence.” She pushed back, saying: “Trump supporters, specifically,” to which I replied, “If they’re calling for violence, it doesn’t matter to me who they support.”
And Greene said, in words that were livestreamed to the nation: “Haven’t seen any.”
There are two ways to interpret her words. Either she meant she hasn’t seen any violent extremists anywhere, or she meant she had not seen any Trump supporters who had called for violence. Both statements are absurd.
We’re facing a national crisis rooted in the rampant circulation of propaganda; dis-, mis- and malinformation; and other harmful online content. Over the past three years, my research lab has fielded a constant stream of emails and calls from individuals and communities across the country who feel threatened by online disinformation.
In Michigan, a grandfather and military veteran wrote to ask what he could do about his grandson, who had joined an armed militia. In Texas, faith leaders asked for ways to help congregations who were torn apart by conspiracy theories. In Vermont, a local entrepreneur asked if the school system could do more to prevent his future employees, most of whom he hired straight from the local high school, to stop from espousing so much dangerous propaganda, which had become a problem for his business.
It’s hard to overstate how much online disinformation is circulating. Antisemitism, conspiracy theories, anti-LGBTQ+ hate and misogynistic content has spiked across platforms. The Anti-Defamation League reported that white supremacist propaganda efforts in 2022 were at the highest level it has ever recorded.
Communities across the country are struggling to address it.
For much of Thursday’s hearing, there was some rare consensus in the room. No one was in support of censorship as a solution to disinformation. Everyone argued in strong support of the First Amendment and agreed that freedom of expression is essential to protect. And there was bipartisan agreement, at least from some in the room, that there is a problem with disinformation and the harms it is leading to across the country.
But then Greene said that she hasn't “seen any” — by which she either meant Trump supporters who call for violence or violent extremists more generally.
That statement is so impossibly wrong that it is hard to imagine it needs to be challenged. But when an elected official says something that so clearly contradicts all available evidence, it merits correction. And the facts are absolutely clear.
The number of open domestic terrorism-related cases in the U.S. jumped 357% from 2013 to 2021, with the most violent incidents from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.
Hundreds of Trump supporters have been arrested on criminal charges related to their violence at the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Several members of the extremist Oath Keepers and Proud Boys groups have already been convicted of the serious charge of seditious conspiracy for their actions. Not all Trump supporters are violent, of course. But all it takes is a brief look at the Jan. 6 footage to know that some have been.
If Greene meant that she hasn’t seen any violent extremists at all, then she must not be looking at any of the evidence. The number of open domestic terrorism-related cases in the U.S. jumped 357% from 2013 to 2021, with the most violent incidents from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists. Much of that violence is driven by online exposure to disinformation, propaganda and conspiracy theories. According to the Global Terrorism Database, terrorist attacks motivated by conspiracy theory extremists were responsible for 119 attacks globally in 2020 — a jump from six attacks the year before.
Repeated mass shooters, such as one at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood, have been motivated by false and antisemitic conspiracies about demographic change and a supposed orchestrated replacement of white people. Just recently in Allen, Texas, eight people lost their lives at the hands of a man with a swastika tattoo who had posted both violent misogynistic and neo-Nazi content online.
The good news is there is a growing body of evidence about what works to equip the public with tools that shore up their capacity to intervene in pathways to violent extremism, while protecting their right to free speech and reducing the need for security-based approaches. We have found that it only takes seven to 12 minutes of reading one of our intervention guides for readers to be significantly better informed about harmful online content and the risks of radicalization to violence; to feel more empowered and confident about intervening; to build their own capability to intervene; and to know where to get more help.
Parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, mental health professionals and others deserve help confronting an unprecedented amount of disinformation and being more confident and capable to keep their families safe and protected from harmful online content and violent extremism.
The last thing we need is elected officials who deny there is a problem to begin with.
CORRECTION: (May 15, 2023, 4:10 p.m. ET) A previous version of this article misstated the number of people killed in the Allen, Texas, mass shooting. Eight people were killed by an extremist gunman, not nine.
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