Sec. 3. Findings
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Congress finds and declares the following: Countering violent extremism is not the work of government alone, and countering radicalization to violence is frequently best achieved by engaging and empowering individuals and groups at the local level to build resilience against violent extremism. The Federal Government must strengthen partnerships and networks among local stakeholders in order to develop tailored programs to counter violent extremists that incorporate local conditions, challenges, and opportunities.
The multipronged effort to degrade and destroy violent extremist groups must include efforts to counter messaging that can recruit or inspire followers around the world to join such groups. The ability to rapidly disseminate images and ideas to shape the public narrative makes social media a strategic messaging and recruitment mechanism for a variety of different groups, including— human rights and political organizations; governments; and terrorists and insurgent groups. Due to the strategic role the Internet plays in recruitment to terrorist violence, online counter-narratives promoted by nongovernmental peers are most likely to directly reach and resonate with individuals who aspire to become foreign fighters or carry out terrorist attacks.
Acts of violent extremism committed in the United States include— the homegrown violent extremist attack on June 12, 2016, in Orlando, which killed 49 people; the April 19, 1995, anti-government violent extremist bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people, including 19 children; the November 5, 2009, attack at Fort Hood, inspired by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which killed 13 soldiers; the August 5, 2012, White supremacist attack on a Sikh place of worship in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, which killed 6 people; the anti-Semitic shootings by a member of the Ku Klux Klan on April 13, 2014, at a Jewish community center and retirement community in Overland Park, Kansas, which killed 3 people; the November 15, 2015, shooting at an abortion clinic in Colorado Springs, which killed 3 people; and the February 10, 2015, execution of 3 American Muslims in Chapel Hill.
Former violent extremists can be powerful messengers in debunking terrorist ideologies because they have credibility, and the Department of State has successfully used defectors in counter-messaging against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (commonly known as ISIL ).