Under the leadership of Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department has waged a dangerous and ridiculous war against so-called “black identity extremists”—all while simultaneously ignoring right-wing extremism in America. In fact, they’ve not just ignored it, they’ve actually celebrated it. After Trump’s inauguration last year, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded funding for programs that serve to counter violent extremism from the right while reshaping the program to solely focus on Islamic terrorism. However, this would be a mistake. Since 2001, right-wing extremists have been responsible for a similar numbers of killings as Muslim extremists. Given this, plus Trump’s behavior after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer (as well as who he has hired to work with him and almost everything else he does), this behavior can only leave us with one conclusion: this president and his administration are definitely allies to right-wing terrorists.
So now that it’s been made abundantly clear, it shouldn’t shock us in the least that white supremacist groups are on the rise and that one group, in particular, is responsible for five killings since May 2017. The Atomwaffen Division is looking to change the world with “real-world apocalyptic violence,” according to Joanna Mendelson of the Anti-Defamation League.
Atomwaffen is German for "atomic weapons," and the group is extreme. It celebrates Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson, its online images are filled with swastikas, and it promotes violence.
One of the group's videos shows young men, wearing scarves over their faces and camouflage, firing rifles during military-style training. The video begins with group members shouting in unison, "Race War Now," and concludes with the tag line, "Join Your Local Nazis."
"Atomwaffen no doubt takes some of the white supremacist rhetoric to another level. The views that they articulate are white supremacists on steroids," [said Mendelson].
For the amount of chaos they are trying to cause, you’d think Atomwaffen would be bigger than it actually is. But according to various monitoring groups, they likely have less than 100 members around the country, with most of them concentrated in the states of Florida and Texas. However, it doesn’t take large numbers of members to kill people. And there have been three separate attacks in three states (Virginia, California, and Florida), with a total of five victims in all. All of the suspects have been linked to this one group, and all are young white men between the ages of 17 and 19.
"All these young men, steeped in this propaganda, both online and off, went on to enact violence," said Keegan Hankes, who studies far-right groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"The fact that so much of it came to light in a short period of time shows how devastatingly potent some of these materials can be," he added.
As far-right groups try to expand, they are operating more openly, he said. One tactic is posting flyers on college campuses. The purpose appears twofold.
Groups believe they'll find some recruits and provoke outrage among others, generating the notoriety they seek.
Because of how white supremacy and racism work, the media is unlikely to ask the following questions. But since they would most assuredly do this if the suspects were black or brown (because they certainly do it when we are victims), let’s try it. Is this because these young men live with or were raised by single mothers? How many times were they suspended from school in the past? Where these killings drug-related? How many run-ins with the law had these men had before? What is it about white men that is so inherently violent?
Though these questions don’t come easily to us, we should be asking them with the same frequency as we do when a black or brown person is a victim of a crime. And we should really be asking why so many white men are mass shooters and are joining these kinds of groups and violently trying to harm others.
Of course, the coverage of these white supremacist groups won’t be as excessive, and they won’t be portrayed nearly as threatening as black nationalist groups or even civil rights activists are. Yet we have a lot of reason to worry. Though this particular group is small in number, white supremacist groups are upping their recruitment and are unapologetically out in the open.
Atomwaffen was also one of the many white supremacist groups that gathered last year in Charlottesville, Va., for a rally that turned violent.
"I've been doing this work for 17 years, and not to be hyperbolic in any way, but we've never been as busy as we are today," said Mendelson of the ADL. "The white supremacists are much more emboldened."
They're no longer on the fringes, she said. Now they want to be mainstream.
Any guesses as to why? Actually, no need to guess. They’ve got their own president now. And though he isn’t the first, he’s certainly more openly sympathetic to them in policy and practice than we’ve seen in a long time. Sadly, the neo-Nazis are a-okay in Trump’s America. And that should frighten and anger us all.