WASHINGTON — Four “serial rioters” from California traveled to Charlottesville, Va., to incite rioting during last year’s deadly violence around a white supremacist rally, and they repeatedly attacked counterprotesters, resulting in serious injuries, federal law enforcement officials said on Tuesday in announcing charges against the men.

Members of a militant white-supremacist organization called the Rise Above Movement, the men arrived in town “with their hands taped and ready to do street battle,” said Thomas T. Cullen, the United States attorney for the Western District of Virginia. They punched, kicked, head-butted and pushed the counterprotesters, according to court papers, and were “among the most violent individuals present in Charlottesville.”

Their organization’s propaganda contains “fascistic themes of emasculated young white men needing to reclaim their identities through learning to fight and engaging in purifying violence,” according to court papers. The men had also committed acts of “violence and brutality” in cities in California including Huntington Beach, Berkeley and San Bernardino, the government said.