Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within

Michael German
Fellow, Brennan Center for Justice, New York University Law

in conversation with:

Chesa Boudin, Executive Director, Criminal Law & Justice Center, UC Berkeley, and
Lawrence Rosenthal, Chair, Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, UC Berkeley

The FBI has long warned its agents that the affiliation of law enforcement officers with white supremacist and far-right militant groups poses a threat to FBI investigations and security. But the FBI does not have a program to identify these officers and protect the public from them. Former FBI agent Mike German will explain the continuing deficiencies in the law enforcement response to racist violence and what must be done to correct them.

Mike German served 16 years as a special agent in the FBI, including two domestic terrorism undercover operations against white supremacist and far-right militant groups. He resigned in 2004 to raise concerns regarding continuing failures in the FBI’s counter-terrorism program. Mike later worked as a lobbyist at the ACLU, and he is currently a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. He is the author of Thinking Like a Terrorist: Insights of an FBI Undercover Agent and Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy. His latest book, Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within, written with Beth Zazloff, was published in January 2025.

Hybrid: Register here

In-person location:
2111 Bancroft Way, #104, Berkeley CA
Doors open at 3:30pm and close at 4:15pm.
No admission after 4:15pm.

Sponsored by: Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies and Criminal Law & Justice Center
Center for Right Wing Studies is part of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues.

Light refreshments will be served.

For the in-person event, you can use these links:
Add to my Google calendar (bCal only)
Download to my calendar

For the virtual event, you will be able to add it to your calendar after you register.

Advance Praise for Policing White Supremacy

Kirkus Reviews: “An urgent call for a different approach to policing and containing radical right-wing violence.”
 
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI): “Mike German’s brave undercover service informs this insightful view into the gathering danger posed by increasingly emboldened white supremacist and domestic militant groups.”
 
Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing: “Mike German utilizes firsthand experience and extensive research to expose the long-standing failures of law enforcement to address the terrifying collusion between the extreme right and American policingthat threatens the very foundations of our democracy.”
 
Caroline Fredrickson, Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and former president of the American Constitution Society: “In Policing White Supremacy, Mike German unmasks the failure of the FBI to prioritize white supremacist violence. By failing to fight white domestic terrorism, and even to collect accurate data on its occurrence, German shows how the FBI has helped create an atmosphere in which law enforcement is infiltrated by and tolerates white supremacist police officers. A devastating critique, Policing White Supremacy needs to be read by policymakers and the public.”