From the original report: > “white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement . . . by organized groups and by self-initiated infiltration by law enforcement personnel sympathetic to white supremacist causes.”
"self-initiated infiltration" sounds more like the racists were already there. My understanding from other reporting is that there's a law enforcement/military -> extremist militia pipeline as well, e.g. Oath Keepers and such.
I’m explicitly not taking a position on this topic -instead, I want to call out the significant disparity in perspective. HN seems to nearly unanimously accept the labels applied to these groups without question while other communities of which I’m part reject them (also without question).
More worrying than the polarization to me is the fact that neither group seems aware that other sees things so differently, and that the opposite opinion is broadly held by the other side. The assumption seems to be that only “extremists” would hold that view, when the reality is that 30%+ of the population share it.
The “moderate” position is vanishingly small these days.
Using “extremist”, “anti-government”, “right-wing”, and “white supremacist” almost interchangeably seems to be very common. Both this article and the report its based on repeatedly refer to “white supremacist or far-right militant groups”. Those are very different things.
* - Nominally at least.