'Best thing that’s happened to us': How Trump 'turbocharged' extremists in the midwest

The Oklahoman reports the Aryan Freedom Network and other neo-Nazi groups may sit “on the outermost edges of American politics,” but “several trends have converged since Trump’s re-election”.

“[Trump] awakened a lot of people to the issues we’ve been raising for years,” said Oklahoma resident and neo-Nazi Dalton Henry Stout. “He’s the best thing that’s happened to us.”

Stout wears the initials “AFN,” short for Aryan Freedom Network, on his hat, according to Reuters reporters, and he and his partner “oversee a network they say has been turbocharged by President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.” Stout claims Trump’s attacks on diversity initiatives, his hardline stance on immigration and his invocation of “Western values” is “driving a surge in interest and recruitment” for his organization.

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What was once extreme now blends more easily into the broader far-right, not because those extreme groups have changed, but because the terrain around them has, said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a nonprofit that tracks hate speech and extremism.

“A Proud Boy doesn’t even seem that scary anymore because of the normalization process,” Beirich told Reuters.

Reuters conducted interviews with “a dozen members of extremist groups, nine experts on political extremism and a review of data on far-right violence,” and discovered that ideas once confined to fringe groups are now more visible in Republican politics. This includes election denialism and rhetoric portraying immigrants as “invaders.” Researchers claim Trump’s public support and pardons for far-right figures and Jan. 6 insurrectionists helped normalize those views.

This coincides with a surge in white nationalist activity, with extremists committing a growing proportion of U.S. political violence, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) project. In 2020, ACLED linked such groups to 13 percent of all U.S. extremist-related demonstrations and acts of political violence. By 2024, they accounted for nearly 80 percent.

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Trump has denied that he supports white extremism, and the White House rejects the notion that his rhetoric promotes racism, but Reuters reports Kentucky resident William Bader, the leader of Klan faction the Trinity Knights, is nevertheless energized.

“White people are finally seeing something going their way for once.” Bader told Reuters.

Read the full Oklahoman report at this link.