Atomwaffen Division: America's Neo-Nazi Terrorists

The post 9/11 focus on Islamist terrorism has caused security agencies, and indeed the general public, to underestimate the threat posed by other forms of radicalism. Far-left and far-right groups have grown more prevalent in many countries, even as Western societies spend billions of dollars in an only partially successful campaign against groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Building off these fears, Neo-Nazi groups have also been growing in power, especially in Eastern Europe and the United States. In the longer term, these groups themselves may turn out to be an equally serious threat to our societies in their own right.

One such nascent group in the US calls itself 'Atomwaffen Division'. Meaning 'nuclear weapons division' in German, the group preaches a hard-line doctrine of hate against Jews, homosexuals, and non-Aryan people. What sets them apart from other groups of similar ideology, however, is that they already have blood on their hands. In January this year, one of their members allegedly murdered a 19-year-old gay Jewish student named Blaze Bernstein. Few within the group expressed remorse for the victim, while many celebrated his death.

“We haven’t seen anything like Atomwaffen in quite a while,” said Keegan Hankes, a researcher who tracks the group for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “They should be taken seriously because they’re so extreme.”

Now, the group's organizational Discord chat has been leaked to ProPublica, which has provided an in-depth look at Atomwaffen Division, its leaders, and the ideology of hate they espouse. While interesting from a journalistic perspective, it also shows how these groups operate, how they organize themselves into cells not unlike their Islamist peers, and finally how they create a filter bubble for themselves that only serves to intensify their radicalization.