White Nationalist

White nationalist groups espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies, often focusing on the alleged inferiority of people of color. They frequently claim that white people are unfairly persecuted by society and even the victims of a racial genocide. Their primary goal is to create a white ethnostate. Groups listed in a variety of other categories, including Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi, racist skinhead and Christian Identity, could also be fairly described as white nationalist.

TOP TAKEAWAYS

In 2023, there were 165 active white nationalist groups across the United States – the highest number the SPLC has ever recorded. White nationalists have been mobilized by the broader far-right reactionary movement that has taken hold in American politics in recent years. Groups have been particularly active in on-the-ground organizing, participating in their own demonstrations and appearing alongside more mainstream right-wing groups and individuals, especially at anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion events.

Many white nationalists see their primary goal as challenging the neoconservative wing of the American right. Figures including Nick Fuentes, a livestreamer who was present outside the U.S. Capitol at the Jan. 6 insurrection, are trying to harness the grievances of white, right-leaning Americans into an openly ethnonationalist political movement, one they hope will become the core of the Republican Party. Evidence that the American right is hardening its views and embracing exclusionary and authoritarian politics – Donald Trump’s presidency; the adoption of white nationalist conspiracies like the “great replacement” among Republican politicians; the Jan. 6 insurrection; successful attacks on reproductive rights; antipathy toward policies aimed at achieving racial equity and inclusion; and the widespread demonization of LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, non-Christians and others – has given white nationalists hope that their views will continue to march toward the center of American politics.

Though Fuentes continues to have broad influence among today’s white nationalists, the movement has few prominent leaders. Some, like Patriot Front leader Thomas Rousseau, hold dictatorial sway over their own group, but shy away from building their own public profile. Others – such as the leaders of the now-defunct National Justice Party – reached their pinnacle of influence in the early years of the Trump presidency and have since seen their dominance wane. Many newer white nationalist groups have autonomous chapters that embrace similar strategies but do not answer to a single, national leader. Active Clubs, which grew from 12 chapters in 2022 to 39 in 2023, expanded this year in part because individuals can start their own local chapters without the approval of any leaders. The group’s founder, Robert Rundo, offers his followers guidance on how to embrace a white nationalist “lifestyle” – including purchasing clothing from his brand Will2Rise, embracing hypermasculinity, adopting an intense fitness regimen and consuming the work of white nationalist musicians and authors he promotes – but he has not instituted a system of bylaws, nor does he dictate the activities of individual Active Club chapters. His influence within the group has receded in the past year as he sits in prison awaiting trial for riot charges.

The white nationalist movement increased its on-the-ground activism in 2023 – a trend seen across the hard right. While the movement saw a huge upswing in demonstrations and protests in the early years of the Trump presidency, that activity waned after the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, which brought intense public and legal scrutiny to participating groups and individuals. In the aftermath, many leaned into their belief that no “political solution” would solve the problem of multiracial democracy – only political violence. While white power activists and other far-right extremists continue to engage in acts of violence – including threats and intimidation campaigns – they also feel empowered to once again return to the streets. Such groups as Active Clubs, National Justice Party and Patriot Front have, for example, protested LGBTQ+-inclusive events and drag shows, and held unannounced “flash” demonstrations aimed at intimidating communities.

KEY MOMENTS

As it has since its founding in 2017, Patriot Front continued to host theatrical flash demonstrations throughout 2023. On March 15, approximately 150 members marched through Washington, D.C., masked and in uniform. Later in the year, the group protested Pride events throughout the country.

Active Clubs hosted small gatherings throughout the year, but their largest event came in August when, for the second year in a row, SoCal Active Club hosted an MMA tournament at a gym in Huntington Beach, California. In addition to numerous Active Club chapters, the event included members of other white power groups, including Patriot Front, and was filmed and promoted online by Media2Rise, a propaganda outlet created by Active Club and Rise Above Movement founder Robert Rundo. According to SoCal Active Club, the event drew more than 160 attendees.

The Tennessee Active Club chapter was particularly mobilized in 2023. Led by Sean Kauffmann, the Active Club chapter trains in a gym above the Nashville, Tennessee, Lewis Country Store, as Hatewatch revealed in June. In response, Kauffmann, Lewis Country Store owner Brad Lewis and members of multiple Active Clubs protested outside the Southern Poverty Law Center’s office in Montgomery, Alabama. Members of Tennessee Active Club also forged an alliance with Gabrielle Hanson, a Franklin, Tennessee, mayoral candidate, and provided security for Hanson at an October political forum.

While social media outlets have made some strides in recent years to hinder the spread of hate and harassment on their platforms, Twitter, now called X, has erased much of that progress since billionaire Elon Musk came to the helm in October 2022. The account belonging to Nick Fuentes, for example, was reinstated in January 2023 for a short time.

WHAT’S AHEAD

Members of the white nationalist movement are placing much of their energy into harnessing the anger and resentment of Trump supporters into a broad authoritarian movement. They hope to convince white Americans that they are persecuted by “anti-white” ideas and policies, including the adoption of inclusive education in schools. This movement could cause further disruption and violence, especially as the country heads toward the 2024 presidential election.

The continued radicalization of the GOP has greatly aided the white nationalist movement, exhibited by the party’s embrace of such racist concepts as the “great replacement,” vilification of immigrants, attacks on reproductive care, and demonization of queer and trans people.

White nationalists will continue to abet the broader right’s attacks on marginalized people and communities through propaganda production, participation in protests and other forms of intimidation and even violence. Twitter’s choice to reinstate extremists and slacken enforcement of hate speech policies will mean that more people will be exposed to white nationalist propaganda and harassment.

BACKGROUND

Adherents of white nationalist groups believe that white identity should be the organizing principle of the countries that make up Western civilization. White nationalists advocate for policies to reverse changing demographics and the loss of an absolute, white majority. Ending nonwhite immigration, regardless of legal status, is an urgent priority – frequently elevated over other racist projects, such as ending multiculturalism and miscegenation – for white nationalists seeking to preserve white, racial hegemony.

White nationalists seek to return to an America that predates the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Both landmark pieces of federal legislation are cited as the harbingers of white dispossession and the so-called “white genocide” or “great replacement,” the idea that whites in the United States are being systematically replaced and destroyed.

These racist aspirations are most commonly articulated as the desire to form a white ethnostate, a calculated idiom white nationalists favor to obscure the inherent violence of such a radical project. Appeals for the white ethnostate are often disingenuously couched in proclamations of love for members of their own race, rather than hatred for others.

This platitude collapses under scrutiny. One favorite animating myth of white nationalists is the victimhood narrative of Black-on-white crime – the idea that the dominant white majority is under assault by supposedly violent people of color. Another deeply related myth is the deceptively titled “human biodiversity,” or the pseudoscientific belief that different races are genetically different, and that these differences influence propensity toward criminality and other traits. Appeals to the bogus “empirical science” of human biodiversity are frequently coupled with thinly veiled nods to white, racial superiority.

In addition to obsession with declining white birth rates, these themes inspire some of the most powerful propaganda that animates and drives the white nationalist movement.

Adherents frequently cite Pat Buchanan’s 2001 book The Death of the West, which argues that these declining white birth rates and an “immigrant invasion” will transform the United States into a so-called “Third World” nation by 2050, as the text responsible for their awakening or “red pill.”

White nationalists also frequently cite American Renaissance, a pseudo-academic organization dedicated to spreading the myth of Black criminality, scientific racism and eugenic theories. Its annual conference, a multiday symposium with a suit-and-tie dress code, is a typical early stop for new white nationalists.

Antisemitism is deeply woven into the modern-day white nationalist movement, whose adherents use Jews as scapegoats for their perceived cultural and political grievances. White nationalists often argue that Jews are orchestrating the “great replacement” – making people of color, whom they believe to be less intelligent and more easily manipulated, into the numerical majority of Western countries in a bid to secure complete political control. Kevin MacDonald, the author of The Culture of Critique, a trilogy of books alleging a Jewish control of culture and politics with evolutionary psychology, has been cited by innumerable white nationalists as the person who introduced them to the idea of a Jewish conspiracy.

White nationalists also commonly pass through paleoconservatism, an anti-interventionist strand of libertarianism that seeks to limit government, restrict immigration, reverse multicultural programs and deconstruct social-welfare programs. Some of the most prominent voices in the movement’s recent history, including Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor and Peter Brimelow, did stints at Taki’s Magazine, the most prominent paleoconservative journal.

Strategies for pursuing the white ethnostate fall into two major categories: mainstreaming and vanguardism. Mainstreamers believe that infiltrating and subverting the existing political institutions is the only realistic path to power. They aspire to convert disaffected “normies” to their politics and advocate for white nationalists to seek esteemed and influential positions in society where they can access resources otherwise unavailable to avowed racists. This path often requires white nationalists to disguise their politics and compromise on their most extreme positions. Mainstreaming allows those sympathetic to white nationalism to pursue or enact policies furthering white nationalist priorities. These policies are not always exclusive to white nationalism, such as immigration restriction or the elimination of social-welfare programs.

Vanguardists believe that revolution is the only viable path toward a white ethnostate. They believe that reforming the system is impossible and therefore refuse to soften their rhetoric. They typically seek to reform what they believe to be an “antiwhite” establishment through radical action and often openly advocate for the use of violence against the state and people they perceive to be their political enemies. Through acts of violence, they believe they can further polarize politics and accelerate what they view as the inevitable collapse of the United States.

The racist “alt-right” was the most prominent strand of the white nationalist movement during the 2016 presidential campaign and the first half of the Trump presidency and is a political moment that allowed activists to temporarily paint over cracks that have historically divided the movement. Composed of a broad coalition of far-right activists and groups, the alt-right hoped to push ethnonationalism into the political mainstream. But after the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, alliances faded into infighting when the movement came under intense public and legal scrutiny, including a civil suit that ultimately found many of the most prominent alt-right leaders and groups liable for $26 million in damages.

Growing disillusioned with trying to achieve political goals through mainstream channels such as electoral politics and mass organizing, an “accelerationist” wing, focused on bringing about the collapse of society, has gained a prominent place within the movement. This violence-obsessed subset predominantly congregates on the messaging platform Telegram, as well as other “alt-tech” platforms that do not moderate users’ content.

Still, especially in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, a large part of the white nationalist movement remains focused on bending the mainstream right toward open ethnonationalism. These actors want to build alliances with Republican elected officials, create their own political parties and institutions, and, especially, cultivate a cohort of young, radical activists within the GOP.

Groups listed in a variety of other categories, including Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi, racist skinhead and Christian Identity, can also be fairly described as “white nationalist.” As organizational loyalty has dwindled and the internet has become white nationalism’s organizing principle, however, the ideology is best understood as a loose coalition of social networks orbiting online propaganda hubs and forums.

Outline map of US states with number of White Nationalist groups.

2023 WHITE NATIONALIST HATE GROUPS

View all groups by state and by ideology.
 * - Asterisk denotes headquarters.

Active Club
Alabama
Arizona
Huntington Beach, California
Sacramento, California
Colorado
Connecticut
Atlanta, Georgia
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
Chicago, Illinois
Indiana
Kansas
Massachusetts
Michigan
Missouri
Montana
Las Vegas, Nevada
Reno, Nevada
New Hampshire
North Carolina
Ohio
Medford, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Nashville, Tennessee
Sevierville, Tennessee
Houston, Texas
Lubbock, Texas
Parker County, Texas
San Antonio, Texas
St. George, Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah
Virginia
Pasco, Washington
Spokane, Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

America First Foundation
St. Petersburg, Florida
Chicago, Illinois*

American Freedom News
Hampton Township, Pennsylvania

American Freedom Party
Los Angeles, California*
New York, New York

American Renaissance/New Century Foundation
Oakton, Virginia

Amerikaner
South Dakota

Antelope Hill Publishing
Green Lane, Pennsylvania

Arktos Media
New York, New York

Blood River Radio
Bartlett, Tennessee

California Blackshirts

California

Christ the King Reformed Church
Charlotte, Michigan

Clockwork Crew
California

Council of Conservative Citizens
Potosi, Missouri

Counter-Currents Publishing
San Francisco, California

Evergreen
Bedford, Pennsylvania

Fight White Genocide
Columbia, South Carolina

Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation
Vienna, Virginia

Full Haus
Purgitsville, West Virginia

Gab
Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania

Homeland Institute
Town of Hancock, Maryland

KosChertified
San Marcos, California

National Justice Party
Arizona
California
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maryland
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Nebraska
Nevada
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Dayton, Ohio*
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
West Virginia
Wisconsin

New Columbia Movement
California
Florida
Georgia
Old Forge, Pennsylvania*

New Jersey European Heritage Association
New Jersey

Northwest Front
Seattle, Washington

Occidental Dissent
Eufaula, Alabama

Occidental Observer
Hayden, Idaho

Occidental Quarterly/Charles Martel Society
Atlanta, Georgia

Patriot Front
Alabama
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Washington, District of Columbia
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas*
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming