This Is Very, Very Alarming

[Content Note: White supremacy; misogyny; terrorism.]

Julia Edwards Ainsley, Dustin Volz, and Kristina Cooke at Reuters: "Exclusive: Trump to focus counter-extremism program solely on Islam—sources."

The Trump administration wants to revamp and rename a U.S. government program designed to counter all violent ideologies so that it focuses solely on Islamist extremism, five people briefed on the matter told Reuters.

The program, "Countering Violent Extremism," or CVE, would be changed to "Countering Islamic Extremism" or "Countering Radical Islamic Extremism," the sources said, and would no longer target groups such as white supremacists who have also carried out bombings and shootings in the United States.

Now, this proposal is still under review. There is a chance it may not happen. But that five sources told Reuters it was being considered at all is deeply troubling.

White supremacists and affiliated violent ideologies—including MRAs and anti-choice terrorists—have, over the course of this nation's history, been a much graver danger than jihadists.

Just across the border in Québec this week, six Muslims were killed at their mosque by Alexandre Bissonnette, a white man who was "someone who made frequent extreme comments in social media denigrating refugees and feminism."

So, a white supremacist and misogynist attacked Muslims, but Trump wants to focus on jihadists.

The thing is, even when Muslim men have committed public acts of violence, the thing they all share in common, along with Bissonnette, is a hatred of women.

I have been writing in this space for years about expressed misogyny and domestic violence as a precursor to mass violence, public shootings, and acts of terror.

Elliot Rodger. Ben Moynihan. Marc Lépine. Seung-Hui Cho. George Sodini. Anders Behring Breivik. Jaylen Fryburg. Mark Dorch. Christopher Harper-Mercer. All of these men had expressed a resentment of and hatred for women.

December 2012: Adam Lanza goes on a killing spree at an elementary school. He started his rampage by killing his mother.

April 2013: Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon, is reported to have been arrested for domestic violence against his girlfriend several years before the bombing.

February 2015: Cedric Ford goes on a shooting spree, wounding 14 people and killing three others across multiple sites after being "served a protection from abuse order just hours before the first shooting."

June 2015: Dylann Roof justifies his mass murder of parishioners at the AME church in Charleston by asserting his ownership of white women.

November 2015: Robert Dear shoots at a Planned Parenthood facility, killing three people. He has a history of anti-choice vandalism, stalking, peeping, and domestic violence.

June 2016: Omar Mateen goes on a deadly shooting spree at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. He has a history of domestic violence, including against an ex-wife whose parents had to physically extricate her from the marriage.

July 2016: Micah Xavier Johnson ambushes police and kills five officers. He was discharged from military service for sexual harassment.

July 2016: Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel goes on a violent rampage in Nice on Bastille Day, after his wife threw him out of the house and filed for divorce. A neighbor said: "He kept to himself but would always rant about his wife. He had marital problems and would tell people in the local cafe."

Which is not even the complete list of misogynist mass killers, nor a comprehensive accounting of the incidents of mass violence committed by people with a history of domestic violence.

When the Huffington Post analyzed five years of data on mass shootings, they found "that a majority of these mass shootings were related to domestic violence. In 57 percent of the incidents, a family member or an intimate partner was among the victims."

And that is just mass shootings directly related to domestic violence. If any incident in which the perpetrator had any history of domestic violence were included, the number would shoot up exponentially.

"The pattern," wrote Pamela Shifman and Salamishah Tillet in the New York Times last year, "is striking. Men who are eventually arrested for violent acts often began with attacks against their girlfriends and wives. In many cases, the charges of domestic violence were not taken seriously or were dismissed."

This is the reality of mass violence:

Christian men. Muslim men. White men. Men of color. Men who kill civilians. Men who kill cops. White supremacist men. Anti-choice men.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 17, 2016

They slap various ideologies over their acts of heinous violence. But there's virtually always a history of hatred and harm of women.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 17, 2016

We wring our hands and wonder how we can stop this violence, as if there's not an OBVIOUS COMMON THREAD we diligently endeavor to ignore.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 17, 2016

If Trump has any real interest in addressing violence committed against the citizens of this country, then he would not diminish focus on white supremacy and he would further increase focus on domestic violence as a precursor to mass violence.

But of course he doesn't. He just wants to do harm to Muslim people, and demonizes them in order to do it.