LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (TB&P) — Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson thinks the attacks spawned by the resurgence of white supremacy groups can be deterred by public officials speaking out, stronger hate crime legislation and better intelligence surveillance, but he’s wary of gun control proposals at the center of the national debate on gun violence.
Hutchinson, who as a U.S. Attorney famously helped negotiate a peaceful standoff and successful prosecution of a white supremacy group in the mid 1980’s, said the resurgence in white nationalism has a lot to do with the ability to congregate virtually.
“What is different today is the mass media, it is the social media, that you can’t control it as much and it’s harder to get the intelligence information on all the threats that are out there,” Hutchinson said. “In the ’80s it was multiple groups in different physical locations. Today, you might have physical locations, but you also have individual actors that are located in the basement of some house, that drives 400 miles to carry out an act of violence. So it’s what we see different today is the social media, the reach that they can have with a much more limited effort.”
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