Neo-Nazi

Neo-Nazi groups share a hatred for Jews and a love for Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. While they also hate other minorities, gays and lesbians and even sometimes Christians, they perceive “the Jew” as their cardinal enemy.

Top Takeaways

As in previous years, the neo-Nazi movement continued to struggle under significant setbacks to in-person organizing in 2022. In some regions, groups, such as Nationalist Social Club (NSC-131), have staged small demonstrations targeting LGBTQ populations, immigrants, people of color, Jews and other religious minorities with intimidation and hatred. Longstanding, more traditionally organized neo-Nazi organizations have continued to flounder, including the National Socialist Movement, a decades-old group with roots in the American Nazi Party, which was rocked by the 2019 departure of its longtime leader. The Neo-Nazis’ failure to revive pre-2019 membership numbers have not stopped its members or leaders from making headlines through acts of violence.

Much of the momentum behind the neo-Nazi movement today continues to come from smaller, more decentralized cadres and online social networks with a terroristic focus. Still, these groups, which embrace a tactic known as white power accelerationism, have proven to be susceptible to the same disruptions from law enforcement, journalists and activists throughout 2020 and into 2022, as the more traditional membership-based organizations they claimed were outmoded.

Key Moments

On Jan. 31, 2022, someone called in bomb threats to at least six historically Black colleges. The caller who phoned in a bomb threat to Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida, claimed to be a member of Atomwaffen Division, a white power accelerationist group born out of the fascist forum Iron March whose founding leaders lived in Florida. However, the Southern Poverty Law Center did not identify any active Atomwaffen Division chapters in 2022, but a broad swath of the white power movement has embraced their aesthetic and ideology.

Terrorism-minded neo-Nazis celebrated the perpetrator of a May 14, 2022, shooting in Buffalo, New York, who killed 10 Black people and injured three more. The suspect in the shooting, who pled guilty to multiple murder, terrorism and hate crime charges on Nov. 28, in his alleged manifesto cited the Daily Stormer as one of the sources that shaped his racist and violent worldview.

Finally, a federal court in Montana issued a bench warrant for Daily Stormer editor Andrew Anglin’s arrest on Nov. 9. The same court found Anglin in civil contempt about a month prior for failing to respond to post-discovery requests in a Southern Poverty Law Center-led case against Anglin. To date, Anglin’s whereabouts are unknown.

What’s Ahead

The size and influence of historically prominent groups will remain limited or continue to dwindle as the movement continues to reshape itself to cater to a new generation. Like other parts of the white power movement, many of those within this younger generation of neo-Nazis have tossed aside traditional organizing tactics in favor of decentralized, online spaces. They gather on loosely moderated platforms such as Telegram, where they valorize and advocate for acts of terror. This rhetoric will continue in 2023.

For the past few years – and even more so after the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 – American lawmakers have pushed for additional legislation governing domestic terrorism, citing several neo-Nazi groups tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Though this legislative pressure has ebbed and flowed since early 2021, it nevertheless represents one of numerous points of pressure for the white power movement, which includes, but is not limited to, its neo-Nazi wing. These include attention from journalists, academics, nongovernmental organizations, activists and opposition researchers as well, which has left much of the movement weak, paranoid and unable to mobilize.

Background

While some neo-Nazi groups emphasize simple hatred, others are more focused on the revolutionary creation of a fascist political state. Nazism, of course, has roots in Europe, and links between American and European neo-Nazis have, at times, been strong. American neo-Nazi groups, protected by the First Amendment, often publish material and host websites that are aimed at European audiences – materials that would be illegal under European hate speech laws. Similarly, many European groups put up their Internet sites on American servers to avoid prosecution under the laws of their native countries.

For decades, most visible neo-Nazi group in the United States was the National Alliance. Until his death, it was led by William Luther Pierce, the infamous author of the race-war novel The Turner Diaries, a book believed to have served as the blueprint for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Today, one of the most vocal wings of the neo-Nazi movement advocate for a tactic known as white power accelerationism. Proponents of this form of accelerationism see terroristic violence as the sole method for ushering in the collapse of modern civilization so a fascist society grounded in white ethnonationalism can take its place. Though some prominent neo-Nazi groups, such as Atomwaffen Division, have embraced these tactics, more recent proponents have tended to completely eschew traditional organizing methods, favoring loosely knit online communities and, at times, very small, localized training cells.