DHS funded program comparing GOP, Christians to terrorists

By Adam Andrzejewski
Real Clear Wire

The Department of Homeland Security is giving anti-terror funding to a university program that compared Republican and Christian groups to white supremacist groups and neo-Nazis, according to the Media Research Center.

The DHS grant of $352,109 funded a 2021 seminar at Dayton University in Ohio, titled “Extremism, Rhetoric, and Democratic Precarity” and featured a graphic called the “Pyramid of Far-Right Radicalization.” It compared groups like Fox News, the Republican Party, and the Christian Broadcasting Network to neo-Nazi groups like the Daily Stormer and white supremacy groups like the American Identity Movement.

All of these groups were sorted into different tiers of extremists, with the Republican Party, for example, representing a lower level of radicalism and extremism, and other hate groups representing higher levels.

This seminar was hosted and funded by Dayton University’s PREVENTS-OH program, which received the DHS grant as part of the Department’s “Targeted Violence & Terrorism Prevention Grant Program.” The program awarded about $40 million over 80 grants to fight “all forms of terrorism and targeted violence” and host “media literacy and online critical thinking initiatives.”

The PREVENTS-OH program hosted other radical speakers, including a University of Cincinnati research fellow who was a self-proclaimed member of Antifa. The seminar that featured the graphic comparing Republicans to Nazis also “compared former President Donald Trump to Pol Pot and suggested Florida Governor Ron DeSantis might wish to start a second Holocaust,” according to MRC.

It’s egregious enough that an academic institution would host and promote such divisive and absurd seminars, but forcing Americans to fund a seminar likening the Republican Party to neo-Nazi groups is offensive and immoral, and only further divides our nation.