Juliette Kayyem Senses Trouble
The security expert says that Kamala Harris's nomination intensifies an already troubling threat atmosphere. She talks with me about the role race plays in our national politics.
Below you’ll find an edited interview conducted last week with Juliette Kayyem—CNN security analyst, Harvard Kennedy School lecturer, and best-selling author. When I first met her, she was a former Obama official writing a column for the Boston Globe; I later covered her 2014 campaign for Massachusetts governor. Kayyem says that the terms used to demean Kamala Harris are not just racist, but dangerous: “that language means that this person is undeserving, and therefore in some ways inhuman, and that objectifies the target.”
This interview is part of a series of conversations I am having about the state of race relations in this presidential election year. Previous interviews can be found at these links:
—Diana Hwang of the Asian American Women’s Political Initiative;
—journalist Julio Ricardo Varela;
—Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.
Bernstein: As we're speaking, the Democrats are moving forward in nominating a mixed-race woman for President. From your perspective as a security expert, what does that say to you? What alarm bells does that ring?
Kayyem: From a threat environment perspective, her nomination changes everything. We were already entering, and I'm quoting the FBI here, a heightened threat environment in this period. Part of it is foreign influence. But based on the FBI assessments, most of it is domestic generated, and most of it is coming from the right. In large measure that is because the party that represents the right, or at least members of that party, are complicit in condoning, welcoming, luring, and flirting wth violence as the natural extension of democratic differences. And the purveyor of this for eight years now, of course, has been Donald Trump. The failure to condemn January 6 is part of their strategy to create fear, and the threat of violence in the population. I don't think we need to be shy about that. They know what they're doing, and it's our obligation to call it what it is.
That incitement was quite generic: it was against the forces that would take away your home and make you feed illegal immigrants. Now we have a potential focus of that: a mixed-race woman who identifies as African American. The woman issue is relevant; we certainly know that female public officials are more targeted than male public officials. But it's the race issue that is going to be a galvanizing force. GOP House members are already playing with that, calling this a DEI [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] pick—DEI is a proxy for Black—calling her lazy, saying she slept her way to the top. All of that language means that this person is undeserving, and therefore in some ways inhuman, and that objectifies the target. And we've got a Secret Service that's clearly handcuffed by what happened against Donald Trump.
Bernstein: In addition to worrying that someone will try to take out Harris herself, is there a broader concern of more generalized or unfocused attacks?
Kayyem: Yes. It's what we call the threat atmospheric. There are different ways to describe threats. One is a specific, credible threat; one is a credible threat, but not specific; and one is a threat environment. Race is injected into the atmosphere of our society now, in the way we talk about the election, but also in the way that people identify themselves, the way that people think about public policy and social issues. The DEI issue, which is a proxy for “they're taking away your life and lifestyle, whites,” is going to be prevalent. So it's specific to her, and that's a Secret Service issue. But I think it's also now thrust firmly into the atmospherics of our already heightened environment.
Bernstein: When there are discussions about these kinds of domestic threats coming from the right, conservatives get very defensive about it. They say, “you're trying to say that all white conservatives are dangerous.” Does that make it more difficult for security professionals and law enforcement to handle this?
Kayyem: Yes. I'm watching it right now with [FBI Director] Chris Wray testifying [for the House Judiciary Committee]. To really get to the core of what's happening requires honesty about why it's happening. And that gets us into the political realm, which generally the director of the FBI doesn't like to do. So he's talking generically about political violence. I’m not denying left-wing violence—although we can’t even associate that with the assassination attempt on Trump—but according to FBI numbers, the vast majority is coming from the right wing. The violence-condoning wing of the GOP tries to silence the calling out of it, and I think it's worked. The number of headlines you and I have seen where it's like, “Trump is angry about XYZ.” Trump's not angry; he basically said to kill a judge's kid. There’s a difference between those two things! But we're just so afraid to call it out.
Bernstein: You're well known for talking about “stochastic terrorism.” It's kind of your buzz phrase. To what extent is race used as the motivating factor in generating stochastic terrorism?
Kayyem: Yeah, I got a dictionary.com call out when people started to look it up! Stochastic terrorism is a way of describing a form of incitement used by terror leaders, to enrage followers in a way where the listener hears it as a call to violence, even if the speaker doesn't say so directly. So what does it mean when Trump says, “It’s going to be wild?” Or “liberate Michigan”? He knows how some of his people will hear it. It allows the speaker to claim plausible deniability. We spent four years with him as President with his people saying “he was joking, why are you taking him so seriously.” It was a way of inciting a population, and race was part of that.
He's essentially playing into replacement theory. What Trump believes about America is that the pie is shrinking, and if you don't fight for your piece, then the other person, the “other,” is going to get it. It's this idea of victimization, which breeds the incitement. Stop the Steal is “this was mine, someone else took it.” The language is one of limited supply, and you’ve got to demand through whatever means to get it. Two things matter with this. One is that I don't think Trump pretends anymore. When his supporters call for civil war I don't think we need to read between the lines. Also, words that you're starting to hear about Harris—lazy, stupid, DEI—are all part of creating a caricature of her as unqualified for a Presidency that's being taken away from Trump if we don't do something.
Bernstein: There's another audience for that message about a limited supply of society's goods: the “security moms” you’ve written about. These are mostly white, suburban women who tend to have socially progressive views but turn to conservative candidates when the world feels unsafe or unstable. I think a lot of those folks considered themselves allies to the Black Lives Matter movement back in 2020, but seem to have backed away from that based in part on reports of borders being overrun and cities full of crime. Would you agree with that?
Kayyem: Yes, I think so. Tactically there are two questions. One is, can a former prosecutor—who the left often complained about—offset that concern? She's put people in jail, she's hardly forgiving. And the second is whether immigration can be offset by Dobbs. I look at the same polling you do: if Harris can make this election about Dobbs, you have a different calculation. Trump is a very smart politician, but I think his picking J.D. Vance will be potentially viewed as his fatal error if Harris is able to win. The ladies do not like Mr. Vance.
Bernstein: Harris’s husband. Douglas Emhoff, is Jewish—as is yours, by the way; you raised the kids Jewish, right?
Kayyem: Yeah!
Bernstein: Anti-Semitism has been a rising threat in recent years. Is there a concern that Kamala Harris’s husband will galvanize anti-Semitic activity?
Kayyem: I think that's right. Once again there is this narrative: is anti-Semitism coming from the left? Absolutely. But the poster children of it are fundamentally the right. Part of it will just be the mixed nature of the couple, the mixed belief systems. Then, of course, walking straight into the politics of the Israeli-Hamas war; she is known to be more critical of Israel's war efforts then President Biden's team. And you're already starting to hear that she wants significant changes to that team for that.
Bernstein: And that leads into what I wanted to ask you about as an Arab American. [Kayyem’s parents immigrated from Lebanon.] For the 20-plus years since 9/11, many Arab Americans have felt the need, as targets of discrimination, to keep their heads down. It feels like we’re seeing a generational change with the current willingness and desire to publicly demonstrate and seek out allies, and put forth their opinions as Arab Americans.
Kayyem: I think that's right. I've been at Harvard, of all places. It's been a very difficult time. What we also have to remember—I see it in my own kids—is that this is a generation of Jewish Americans who have only known Netanyahu. And to define Israel vis-a-vis Netanyahu is not something they want to do, nor should we ask them to do. In all the student activism, a lot of these organizations were led by Jewish students, who are saying, “there's no way I'm going to make my identity related to him.” The diversity in the Jewish community was not reflected in the political aspects of our electeds. The second thing is, of course, that the conduct of the war became indefensible by any metric. And so the Palestinian cause aligned with the human rights and humanitarian effort cause, in a way that was a counter to the “we support Israel in whatever it does” narrative.
For Arab Americans, for me, it's been such an interesting time. I've been able to walk a tremendously difficult line as an Arab American in counter-terrorism. I’m married to a Jewish man, with Jewish kids. But I too, by my race, even despite my marriage, was called a lot of things I have never been called before, including anti-Semitic. I don't engage in it, but I went to war with ADL [Anti-Defamation League]. I couldn't believe what they were saying.
Bernstein: There are a lot of pretty loud voices, not just in the conservative media, that will paint you as pro-Hamas if you say anything critical about Israel.
Kayyem: Yeah. And I have been. When you have a history like mine, you can laugh at it. But I do think it was meant to silence that diversity. It is very hard to overcome an accusation of being anti-Semitic, and it is particularly hard if you're Arab American. I was just, because of my background, because of my family, able to sort of manage a very narrow lane. But I was surprised at the failure of many of my Jewish colleagues and friends, to speak out about what they knew was the wrong way to approach the war.
Bernstein: Especially the Harvard community.
Kayyem: Yeah.
Bernstein Has it changed at all? It's been eight months now, has the atmosphere changed at all?
Kayyem: Yeah. It just became indefensible, to speak about Israel and not speak about what was happening to the Palestinians. And I think most people realize it. And so either they went silent, or they focused on you know, October. As you said, it’s eight months since October. But it was as if time stopped.
Phenomenal interview!