101: Countering Violent Extremism (CVE)

Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) is a domestic counterextremism strategy to counter radicalization and violent extremism following a rise in ISIS’ operations and recruitment across Europe and the United States. Introduced by the Obama Administration, the strategy has been lauded by some academics, politicians, and activists for providing an alternative to arbitrary detention, instead seeking to protect communities and prevent mass violence. However, this counterextremism framework and its programs are based on the faulty logic that ideological, cultural, psychological, and environmental factors determine—and can purportedly be used to predict—a person’s likelihood of committing mass violence. 

Consequently, the CVE framework disproportionately targets communities harmed by the imperialist, globe-spanning War on Terror by turning expressions of cultural and religious identity, political activism, and mental health struggles into markers of radicalization. Instead of preventing violence by addressing its causes, the CVE approach continues the War on Terror’s structural violence by criminalizing the communities it purports to protect. 

CVE programs recruit people to collaborate with state security in conducting surveillance on their own communities. CVE links community organizations and institutions directly to law enforcement through the use of multidisciplinary threat assessment and management teams—composed of law enforcement, community members, educators, religious leaders, and medical professionals—to identify individuals who are perceived to be at risk of committing violence. The Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program (TVTP) also provides funding to community organizations, religious establishments, medical centers, universities, schools—and most notably, law enforcement, which remains the biggest recipient of TVTP funding—to develop discriminatory violence prevention programs.  

Since the January 6 Insurrection, government officials, Democratic politicians, academic centers, and nonprofit organizations have redoubled their support for the counterextremism strategy behind CVE, viewing it as an effective way to protect American institutions and society from White supremacists, far-right Generically used to describe factions of right-wing politics that are outside of and often critical of traditional conservatism. Learn more militias, and mass shooters. In practice, however, CVE measures continue to empower law enforcement agencies to target communities historically impacted by policing and the War on Terror, including Black, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, South Asian, and immigrant communities, those struggling with mental health, and the formerly incarcerated. Thus, CVE measures further harm people already at risk of experiencing White supremacist and far-right violence. 

This 101 explains how CVE functions in its many forms, how it impacts communities that are disproportionately criminalized and targeted during the ongoing War on Terror, and how CVE impacts the American public more broadly.