neo-nazis

'Stirred rage': Extremists — 'emboldened' by Trump — 'increasingly view him as an enemy'

The guardian reports FBI head Kash Patel, has “eviscerated” sections of the FBI tasked with investigating right-wing extremists who are considered the most dangerous domestic security threat facing the U.S. today.

“What we know is these groups are emboldened and the federal government appears to be abandoning its efforts to monitor and surveil racists and white supremacists,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “They can certainly act with less concern about FBI interference, and we should expect there will be more violence and more activity on the streets from these groups given what the federal government has shut down.”

The Guardian reports “one of the president’s first moves, mere hours after his second inauguration in January, was to give full pardons to 1,500 people involved in the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill.” The president has also canceled research grants for academic and government researchers studying the de-radicalization of extremists.

But despite “this backdrop of helpful policies,” the Guardian reports far-right activists and fascist street-fighting gangs known as active neo-Nazi clubs increasingly view Trump as an enemy.

“His alliance with Israel and Netanyahu is obviously problematic for antisemites, and there have always been questions about how dedicated Trump is to the cause of a white America,” said Beirich, referring to American right-wing extremists’ view of the president. “Frankly, white supremacists have never had it so good as they do now under Trump.”

Joshua Fisher-Birch, an analyst and expert on online extremists, tells the Guardian that some propagandists have claimed the Trump administration is “explicitly attempting to appeal to white Americans to manipulate them further … whether economically, politically, or while planning a new war.”

But those perceived overtures are only going so far. According to Fisher-Birch, an influential channel with more than 2,000 subscribers within the far-right Telegram ecosystem carried out a poll in mid-July about Trump and the Epstein files. That poll showed that 70 percent of its respondents said they did not support the president.

“The irony is that they should be celebrating Trump regardless,” said Beirich, “for the ICE raids, for appointing extremists like Darren Beattie and Stephen Miller, for putting Confederate statutes back up and assaulting DEI, not to mention the pardons.”

The Guardian reports Beattie, a senior state department official, has been linked to white nationalism, “while[ [Stephen] Miller has been widely seen as the architect for the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy and has long been lambasted for his racism and white supremacist ideology.”

Read the full Guardian report at this link.

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'Hitler been dead!' Crowd runs off armed neo-Nazis and burns their swastika flags

Local residents of a predominantly Black neighborhood near Cincinnati, Ohio recently chased away a group of masked men carrying rifles and displaying swastika flags.

On Friday, Cincinnati-based ABC affiliate WCPO reported that a group of several people wearing black clothing had been spotted on an Interstate 75 overpass in Lincoln Heights, Ohio waving banners emblazoned with swastikas. Some in the group were seen openly carrying AR-15 rifles and wearing red face masks.

However, the group was quickly ran off by a crowd of angry local residents, who seized some of the swastika flags and recorded video of themselves burning them in the street.

"Burn that b---- up," one member of the crowd is heard saying. "Get the f--- out of here ... Hitler been dead! Y'all living in the forties!"

Lincoln Heights is almost 90% Black, according to 2020 Census data. The neo-Nazi demonstrators were condemned by other members of the community following their highway display, with Cincinnati mayor Aftab Pureval calling it "shocking and disgusting."

"Messages of hate like this have no place in our region," Pureval tweeted Friday. "This is not what we stand for, and it will never be what we stand for."

Neo-Nazis were also seen demonstrating in Columbus, Ohio in the weeks following the 2024 election. The Columbus Dispatch reported that a group of masked men shouting racist slogans and waving swastika flags were met by an angry crowd that pointed guns at them and doused them in pepper spray. One of the men complained to police after the confrontation that he had "never been attacked like this."

Watch the video of the confrontation in Lincoln Heights below, or by clicking this link.

Neo-Nazis appeared in Lincoln Heights (metro Cincinnati) Ohio and got ran out of dodge… but not before locals stole and burned their swastika flag in the street.

[image or embed]
— The Rooster (@rooster.info) February 7, 2025 at 3:39 PM

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White supremacist with Nazi tattoos charged with 'truly heinous' axe murder

A man who has been identified as an official member of a white supremacist group has now been charged with the brutal murder of a camper in Montana last month.

CBS News recently reported that 41 year-old Daren Christopher Abbey has pleaded not guilty to deliberate homicide in the death of 35 year-old Dustin Kjersem in October. Abbey is pleading self-defense, claiming that Abbey tried to kill him while the two were in his tent. Abbey led police to the scene of the killing, and his DNA was found on a beer can in Kjersem's tent.

Kjersem was initially thought to have been a victim of a bear attack after his mangled body was found at a campsite in Big Sky, Montana. However, investigators soon discovered that Kjersem's head sustained several blows from an axe with a 26-inch handle, and that he was also stabbed in the neck with a screwdriver. Both the axe and screwdriver had been rinsed off in the creek.

During the official autopsy last month, medical examiners found that Kjersem's skull showed "multiple chop wounds," ruling out the theory of a bear attack. Prior to Abbey being charged, law enforcement warned residents in the area to be careful if they planned on venturing into the woods. Kjersem's sister, Jillian Price, urged the community to identify her brother's killer and bring that person to justice.

"There is someone in our valley who is capable of truly heinous things," she said.

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported that Abbey is originally from California, lists his religion as "odinism," is affiliated with an unnamed white supremacist group and has multiple tattoos including an iron cross, a swastika and "SS lightning bolts." His bail has been set at $1.5 million and if convicted could spend up to 100 years in prison.

"“I want to assure our community that our office is fully committed to pursuing justice in this devastating case,” Gallatin County Attorney Audrey Cromwell stated. “Daren Abbey has been charged with homicide and tampering with evidence, and we will work diligently to present all available evidence and facts to the court.”

Click here to read CBS' full report. And click here to read the Daily Chronicle's article in full.

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'It was nothing': Trump minimizes violent Charlottesville neo-Nazis as 'a little peanut'

Former President Donald Trump made headlines in 2017 after insisting that there were "very fine people on both sides" after the deadly Charlottesville, Virginia "Unite the Right" rally that ended in a violent hate crime. And on Thursday, he brought up Charlottesville once again, this time completely unprompted.

After Judge Juan Merchan dismissed Trump and the jury after Thursday's testimony by witness David Pecker, Trump walked out to a gaggle of reporters and offered his impromptu take on the trial and other issues that he's using to define his campaign. At one point, the former president brought up the wave of protests spreading across college campuses in support of Palestinians amid the Israeli assault on Gaza.

While Jewish students participating in the protests maintain that demonstrations in support of Gaza aren't anti-Semitic, Trump nonetheless seized on reports of Jewish students feeling unsafe as justification to broadly label the protest movement as hateful.

"Charlottesville was a little peanut," Trump said. "And it was nothing compared — and the hate wasn't the kind of hate that you have here," Trump said.

Of course, the main difference between the pro-Palestine demonstrations at college campuses and the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville is that while there have not yet been any acts of violence reported from student protesters, one of the participants in the Charlottesville rally drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing activist Heather Heyer and injuring more than 30 others. In 2019, the driver of the vehicle was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to 29 out of 30 federal hate crime charges.

On the night before the rally, a crowd of white supremacists from groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and the openly pro-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party marched to a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee chanting slogans like "blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us." Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke said the rally represented "a turning point for the people of this country."

"We're going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump because he said he's going to take our country back," Duke said at the time.

To contrast, the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University in New York City recently held a Passover Seder, which is the traditional meal that accompanies the observance of one of the most significant Jewish holidays.

"Our Jewish sisters and brothers at Columbia lead us in the most important tradition of Passover, the Seder meal," City University of New York criminal justice lecturer Danny Shaw wrote on Facebook, with a photo of the Seder. "Song and prayer precede and follow the customary meal."

Despite the protests being overwhelmingly peaceful and nonviolent, universities have largely responded to them with a heavy-handed approach. In a video posted Thursday by Atlanta CBS affiliate reporter Patrick Quinn, Emory University professor Noelle McAfee — who is the chair of the university's philosophy department — is seen being arrested by an Atlanta Police Department officer wearing tactical gear and a ski mask.

Watch the video of Trump's comments below, or by clicking this link.

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Maine GOP lawmaker doubles down on comments defending Nazis

A Republican state representative in Maine is standing by her previous comments defending the right of neo-Nazis to organize and conduct paramilitary drills.

Rep. Laurel Libby, who represents the capital city of Augusta, previously spoke out against legislation that would ban unauthorized paramilitary activity. In a video that has since gone viral after being tweeted by the Maine House Democratic Campaign Committee, Libby is seen in the state capitol not only speaking out against the bill's restrictions on paramilitary groups, but going a step further to defend groups that call for the eradication of marginalized groups.

"Let’s talk about the Nazis," Libby said. "I would like to know what they did that was illegal. I would like to know what they did, in detail if folks would like to share, that was wrong, that infringed on another person’s right. Holding a rally, and even holding a rally with guns, is not illegal."

Libby further elaborated on her position by stating that while she personally didn't agree with neo-Nazi groups, she nonetheless felt compelled to defend their Constitutionally protected rights.

"We don’t have to like what they stand for. We don’t have to agree with their positions. We don’t have to think well of them," she said. "But you know what we do have to do? We have to protect their First Amendment right to free speech and association."

The Maine Republican is not backing down from her remarks, accusing Democrats of "intentional manipulation of the facts." She insisted to USA TODAY that her comments were taken out of context, saying, "I don’t have to like those actions, but it is my job to protect them." She also compared neo-Nazis holding paramilitary drills to protected political speech akin to kneeling during the national anthem or burning the American flag.

"We don't have to like the neo-Nazi activities," she said. "They have a right to free speech and the freedom of association."

Democrats in the Maine legislature argued that the context in which the bill was introduced was also important. The anti-paramilitary bill was introduced in response to white supremacist Christopher Pohlhaus — who co-founded the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe — attempting to create a military training center for neo-Nazis in rural Maine.

"You ever been at work, just doing your job and enjoying the day when one of your coworkers stands up and asks why Nazis are so bad? No? Well, lemme tell ya ‘bout my day," tweeted Democratic state representative Amy Roeder.

The anti-paramilitary training bill ultimately passed the Maine House of Representatives by just one vote.

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Why Is the Media Reluctant to Cover Neo-Nazi Violence?

It's been just a little over two months since a white supremacist rammed his car into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters and killed a woman in Charlottesville, Virginia. It seems as if the mainstream media has already gotten bored with the story of neo-Nazi violence and domestic terrorism. Leading white nationalist Richard Spencer snagged a huge amount of coverage for scheduling a speech at the University of Florida, which provoked stories about how much the school was spending on security, the potential for protests and the fact that the state's Republican governor felt compelled to declare a state of emergency. But when three of Spencer's biggest fans and core followers — their names are Tyler Tenbrink, William Fears and Colton Fears (the latter two are brothers) — were arrested for attempting to murder protesters, coverage of the event was relatively sparse.

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