Countering Violent Extremism

CVE or Countering Violent Extremism refers to a specific US federal government and private sector partnership program started for the purpose of expanding US federal counter-terror activity into civilian life, including Hollywood, social workers, psychologists, academia, psychiatrists, community organizers, and low-level law enforcement. The program was founded during the Obama administration and is often seen as a progression of the "War on Terror" as defined by the Bush administration.

The program has been criticized for targeting law-abiding citizens/demographics for mass surveillance, including astroturfing, spying, and infiltrating law abiding communities. CVE has also been criticized for using specious criteria, and junk science to justify their initiatives.

Current status and activities

The American CVE program still operates in the USA, but according to George Washington University, receives relatively little funding and has issues with staff numbers. Today, CVE still operates in the USA through a medium-sized network of small, near-defunct organizations founded by Mitchell Silber, including ICSVE and a now-defunct organization called Light Upon Light.

Silber co-authored a 2007 NYPD report which was removed from the NYPD's website after a lawsuit. The report which Silber co-prepared identified habits such as growing a beard and wearing Islamic clothing as signs of "radicalization".

The CVE program in general was more or less rejected by Middle Eastern, South Asian, Muslim, and Arab communities in the United States, some of whom were subject to CVE-related spying.

Silber's former CVE organization Light Upon Light, together with its now-deceased CO Younes Abdullah Mohammed, had heavily advertised and promoted the reactionary and right-wing incel forum named incels.co, now known as incels.is. They had also promoted it's founder Diego under a pseudonym named 'Alexander'. According to Silber, Light Upon Light received, "significant" DHS funding, as well as funding from unnamed organizations.

Status and successors

However, most self-described CVE organizations nowadays appear to be outside the United States, and include a large network which consists of RAN, Moonshot CVE, and many others. It is unknown the degree to which any of these organization still have any formal connection to Obama's initial program, but all United States ones mentioned have recently received federal government grants.

A similar program to CVE was founded during the Trump administration within the DHS and was called TVTE. Biden replaced this program with a similar DHS program called the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3). Both TVTE and CP3 have been critized for the same reasons CVE is/was.

See also

• Incel