For immediate release | Friday, May 15, 2020

White Supremacy Groups in America

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Media at CEP

CEP Resources Explore How These Extremist Groups Recruit, Market, & Fund Themselves, Particularly Online

(New York, N.Y.) – The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) maintains resources documenting white supremacist groups—their history and known activities—currently operating in the United States. These groups continue to propogate hatred, bigotry, and violence against racial and ethnic minorities and spread anti-government propaganda in an effort to advance their radical agendas.

CEP’s reports provide an overview of the history, propaganda, violent activities, and notable rhetoric of the most active and virulent white supremacist groups in the country, as well as several prominent white supremacist media outlets.

To explore CEP’s U.S. White Supremacy Groups resource, please click here.

The ideologies of Neo-Nazi groups, such as the National Socialist Movement (NSM), The Base, Hammerskin Nation, and Atomwaffen Division usually include anti-Semitic and homophobic components that align with Nazi dogma. In contrast, groups such as the League of the South and American Identity Movement propagate their radical stances under the guise of white ethno-nationalism, which seeks to highlight the distinctiveness––rather than the superiority––of the white identity. Furthermore, white ethno-nationalist groups claim that the white identity is under threat from minorities or immigrants that seek to replace their culture.

In recent years, social media and the Internet have provided new outlets for white supremacists to spread their messages and recruit supporters, primarily among younger demographics. American Identity Movement, Atomwaffen Division, and Vanguard America have spread their propaganda on college campuses, too, and the NSM and League of the South have created youth wings and student memberships.

CEP has identified nine especially virulent U.S. white supremacist groups:

  • American Renaissance, a right-wing magazine-turned-blog dedicated to discussing the “problems of race.”
  • Atomwaffen Division, an allegedly disbanded neo-Nazi organization that sought the creation of a National Socialist government through a violent “white revolution,” and believed that a race war was inevitable to achieve “total Aryan victory.”
  • Hammerskin Nation, one of the largest, most organized, and most violent neo-Nazi skinhead gang in the U.S. that encourages members to enlist in military forces, such as the U.S. Army, in order to train for a pending race war.
  • Identity Evropa/American Identity Movement, a group that promotes white European identity and the preservation of white culture based on the concept of “identitarian politics.”
  • League of the South, a self-proclaimed “neo-Confederate” group that seeks a second Southern secession and a society dominated by “European Americans.”
  • National Socialist Movement (NSM), a prominent neo-Nazi group that has directed extremist, incendiary rhetoric toward Jews and other minorities while supporting violence in pursuit of its political goal of “the union of all Whites into a greater America on the basis of the right of national self-determination.”
  • The Base, a white-supremacist network active in North America, Europe, South Africa, and Australia that describes itself as an “international survivalist and self-defense network” that seeks to train their members for fighting a race war.
  • Traditional Worker Party/Traditional Youth Network, a now-defunct group guided by the Fourteen Words mantra that fought for the interests of white Americans, who it says have been “abandoned by the System and actively attacked by globalists and traitorous politicians.”
  • Vanguard America/Patriot Front, a white nationalist, neo-Nazi group that opposes the idea of a multicultural America and has propagated an extremist, incendiary platform targeting African Americans, immigrants, Jews, and other minorities.
