White supremacist groups in the US

Significance: White supremacist groups are racist organizations that believe in the superiority of white people, and specifically those of northern and western European descent. While other details of their ideology may vary, many such groups have sought to shape American society, including through hate crimes and domestic terrorism.

Since the end of the Civil War (1861–65), the United States has been home to a variety of white supremacist groups. Although these groups vary a great deal in membership demographics and behaviors, they all share the belief that people of northern and western European ancestry (and often Christians specifically) are superior to other people. These groups are sometimes difficult to delineate because many of the groups are interrelated or share leadership and tend to appear and disappear frequently. However, it is possible to identify several major organizations that have had significant impact in the United States.

Ku Klux Klan

The oldest organized white supremacist group in the United States is the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). It was created by several Confederate veterans, headed by Nathan Bedford Forrest, in 1866. Its name comes from the Greek word kuklos, meaning “circle.” The original Klan members engaged in acts of terrorism that were meant to keep the newly freed slaves from claiming their rightful places in society. The group’s white costumes and pointed white masks were intended to hide the identities of the Klan members while simultaneously provoking more fear in their victims. Within a few years, however, the original Klan was disbanded, in part because of internal strife.

The Klan was resurrected in 1915. For the next several years, it experienced its peak popularity, with membership in the millions, including many prominent public figures. It preached the inferiority of blacks, Jews, Catholics, and other minorities, and Klan members were responsible for several hundred lynchings. This era in general was one of high xenophobia and anti-immigrant feeling in the United States, and the Klan promised to protect the “American” values that nativists held dear.

After the 1920s, the Klan’s popularity surged and waned periodically, but it never approached the large membership it once had. Numerous KKK groups emerged again during the 1960s, opposing the US civil rights movement with a terror campaign that included the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young African American girls and injured twenty-two others. By the end of the twentieth century, however, the Klan was a small, fragmented organization located primarily in the southern states and rural areas and crippled by several multimillion-dollar lawsuits. In 2019 the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) estimated that there were "between 5,000 and 8,000 Klan members, split among dozens of different—and often warring—organizations that use the Klan name."

Neo-Nazis

The American neo-Nazi movement began shortly after World War II. Adherents of this movement espouse the views of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, who believed in the superiority of the Aryan “race.” Although neo-Nazis share many beliefs with the Klan, they are particularly vocal in their hatred of Jews.

There have been a number of loosely allied neo-Nazi groups in the United States. The most influential of these were the American Nazi Party, the National Alliance, the American Front, Aryan Nations, and the Order. Although neo-Nazi membership has never reached the great numbers that the Klan once boasted, some neo-Nazi groups have been as renowned for their violence as the Klan. Unlike the Klan, neo-Nazi groups have tended to be more active in urban areas and in western states.

Perhaps the most well-known of the these neo-Nazi groups is the skinheads—less an organization than a movement. The skinhead movement began in England in the 1970s among disaffected working-class youth and was loosely related to the punk movement. It came to the United States in the early 1980s, where it attracted young, working-class people who felt pessimistic about their futures. Skinheads got their name from their proclivity for shaving their heads. They created an entire subculture, which involved certain clothing (red suspenders and Dr. Martens boots), music (“oi” music, which combines elements of punk, ska, and speed metal and is often overtly racist), and behaviors (beer drinking and violence).

Most skinhead groups are only loosely organized. However, some attempts have been made to unite them and inspire them to further acts of aggression. Among the most noticeable of these was Tom Metzger’s White Aryan Resistance, the youth-oriented arm of which is known as the Aryan Youth Movement. Metzger sent representatives to forge alliances with skinhead groups. After one of these alliances resulted in the brutal murder of an Ethiopian man in Oregon, the slain man’s family successfully sued Metzger for $12.5 million. However, Metzger continued his activities, which included running a telephone hotline and a website.

Militias

By the 1990s, the most visible and fastest-growing white supremacist groups were the militias. The militia movement actually began in the early 1980s, during the farm crisis, when some people who lost their farms blamed government policies. They were joined by some who lost their jobs during the recession of the late 1980s. Although not all militia groups are white supremacist, many are. They believe that the US government is run as part of a Jewish conspiracy and that this conspiracy, as well as the increasing number of people of color in the United States, is threatening the future of white people.

Militia groups tended to be located in the western and midwestern states. Members of these groups reject the authority of the federal and state governments, insisting that the only legitimate power lies at the county level. Many of them engage in tax protests and have set up their own so-called common-law courts, in which they have “convicted” government officials. Some groups, such as the Republic of Texas, have claimed to secede from the United States. Some militia groups have also engaged in violence.

Militia groups believe that government oppression will increase until a revolution occurs, during which white “patriots” will be able to secure their freedom. Paramilitary and survivalist training is common among these groups. They are often inspired by The Turner Diaries (1978), written by National Alliance founder William Luther Pierce under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald, a fictionalized account of the revolution that these groups believe is imminent.

Christian Identity Movement

The Church of Jesus Christ Christian, or the Christian Identity Church, is a religious sect that has ties to many white supremacist groups. It teaches that Aryans are the chosen people, Jews are the spawn of Satan, and people of color are “mud people.” Another belief is that a race war is coming, and during this war, all but the Aryan “race” will be exterminated. Although Christianity plays a part in many white supremacist groups, not all white supremacists belong to the Christian Identity movement.

White Nationalism and the “Alt-Right”

Use of the term "white nationalism," referring to a desire for a shared white national identity and a belief in the necessity of protecting and preserving the supposed white race, began to emerge in the United States in the 1960s. Self-proclaimed white nationalist groups tend to assert their distinction from white supremacist groups, arguing that they are driven by pride in their own racial identity rather than hatred for others. However, the fundamental ideology—the belief that white people are entitled by virtue of their race to hold an elevated or protected position in society compared to people of other races—remains the same, and opponents of white nationalism argue that the label is merely a euphemism intended to make white supremacy more palatable to the general public.

The self-proclaimed "alt-right" movement, which emerged in the 2010s, has similarly been criticized for hiding an ideology rooted in white nationalism, populism, racism, and anti-Semitism behind a euphemistic, seemingly respectable label. Extremism analyst and consultant J. M. Berger, a fellow with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, said to Harrison Jacobs for Business Insider in August 2017 that while "not everyone in the alt-right is an overt white nationalist . . . white nationalism is definitely the movement's center of gravity, and the term originated with an explicitly white nationalist website." Former neo-Nazi Christian Picciolini, later founder and leader of the nonprofit organization Life After Hate, told Jacobs that both "white nationalism" and "alt-right" were products of the movement's deliberate long-term efforts "to blend in, normalize, make the message more palatable."

The surge in white nationalism that led to the rise of the alt-right was seen by many sociologists as part of a racist backlash against the election of Barack Obama as the first Black US president, undergirded by economic insecurity from the 2008 global financial crisis. The movement was also seen as contributing to the 2016 election of Donald Trump, who ran a highly nationalist, anti-immigrant campaign, often used racist rhetoric, and drew support from notorious white supremacist leaders such as David Duke (known for his ties to the KKK, neo-Nazis, and Holocaust denial). As president, Trump continued to use both overt and coded racist language, helping to mainstream white nationalism even as he occasionally made official statements denouncing racism and anti-Semitism. For example, he downplayed any threat from white supremacists following the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally of neo-Nazis and other alt-right supporters in Charlottesville, Virginia, and even praised some of the marchers as "very fine people." In the wake of such normalization, the SPLC, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and other watchdog organizations reported a sharp increase in hate groups and hate crimes through the late 2010s. One notable group was the Proud Boys, founded during the 2016 election campaign, whose leaders denied espousing racism yet often promoted Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynist, and white nationalist concepts as part of their stance against what they characterized as political correctness.

Another major factor in the rise of white nationalism in the 2010s was social media, with platforms such as Facebook hosting pages for many white supremacist groups despite ostensible rules against hate speech. Efforts by social media companies to identify and remove such activity—or their failure to do so—became a significant issue, generating debate over free speech. Some extremist groups that were banned from mainstream online channels resurfaced in other forms or moved to the dark web. One example of a group that spread largely on social media was the so-called boogaloo movement, a loose libertarian subculture advocating violent armed rebellion against the government. While some supporters avoided racial language or even expressed sympathy for Black causes, the movement originated on forums with significant militant white nationalist presence, and many "boogaloo bois" promoted racist material. By 2020 US law enforcement officials had identified individuals tied to the boogaloo movement in multiple killings and warned of further efforts to conduct or incite violence.

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