The State Department is pushing to designate at least one violent white supremacist group as a foreign terrorist organization, an unprecedented move that national security experts say would be a big step toward fighting a growing threat on U.S. soil.

State Department officials want to have the designation finalized by next week, according to four people familiar with the effort. But the White House, where top officials have long preferred to focus on terrorism by Islamist extremists, has yet to give the green light.


Former U.S. officials and counterterrorism analysts say the top candidate for the designation is Atomwaffen, a neo-Nazi group that was founded in the United States but has expanded into the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and Estonia.

Designating Atomwaffen or another neo-Nazi group like The Base as a terrorist outfit would send a major signal that the U.S. views far-right terrorism as a rising danger that increasingly ignores national boundaries, thanks in no small part to the internet.

But it also could place an uncomfortable spotlight on President Donald Trump’s troubled history with white nationalist activists who support his populist message. The president infamously insisted there were “very fine people” on both sides of the racial debate following violent 2017 clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, leading to furious criticism followed by a series of White House efforts to walk the comments back.

President Donald Trump infamously insisted there were “very fine people” on both sides of the racial debate following violent 2017 clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Trump administration has nonetheless increased its focus on far-right extremism. In February, FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers that his agency has “elevated to the top-level priority racially motivated violent extremism so it’s on the same footing in terms of our national threat banding as [the Islamic State terrorist group] and homegrown violent extremism.”


The FBI arrested five alleged Atomwaffen members last month and eight alleged members of white supremacist group “the Base” in January. Six members of Atomwaffen have been convicted since 2018 on charges including planning terrorist attacks and murder.

Designating a white supremacist group such as Atomwaffen as a foreign terrorist organization will allow federal prosecutors to more easily charge suspected members with providing material support to terrorists if the suspect has trained with and/or offered advice, personnel or funding to the group. The existence of Atomwaffen was first announced in October 2015 on a now-defunct online forum called Iron March, which was founded out of Russia.

Joshua Geltzer, a counterterrorism expert who served on the National Security Council from 2015 to 2017, called the discussions about such a designation “long overdue.”

“There are 68 groups on the State Department list of foreign terrorist organizations, and not one is a violent white supremacist group,” Geltzer said. “We don’t use national security tools just to be symbolic, but I think finally adding to this list a white supremacist organization would really show that the U.S. recognizes the threat these groups pose, is willing to confront them using appropriate tools, and is now awakened to their distinctly transnational nature.”


A number of lawmakers, think tanks, and civil society groups—including Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.), the Soufan Center and the Anti-Defamation League—have pushed State for months to include white supremacist organizations on the FTO list.

Sharon Nazarian, a senior vice president at the Anti-Defamation League, urged the State Department to consider making the designations during a congressional hearing in September. “Our federal legal system currently lacks the means to prosecute a white supremacist terrorist as a terrorist,” she told lawmakers.

As of October, the department was unwilling to comment “on internal deliberations related to FTO designations,” according to a letter sent to Rose by Mary Elizabeth Taylor, assistant secretary of State for legislative affairs.

Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.) has pushed State for months to include white supremacist organizations on the FTO list.

The State Department and White House did not immediately return requests for comment, while the FBI referred questions to the State Department.

Rose, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism, resurfaced the issue last week, introducing a resolution urging the State Department to make the designations and arguing that doing so “would further empower law enforcement and intelligence officials to better address the growing threats they pose to the homeland.”

Rose’s resolution explicitly named Atomwaffen’s foreign off-shoot groups, including Sonnenkrieg in the U.K., AWD Deutschland in Germany, Northern Order in Canada, and Feuerkrieg Division in the Baltic States. “I’m hopeful the administration will follow through and make this designation official,” Rose told Politico on Monday, “because the people on the front lines deserve every tool possible to protect the American people from terrorists.”

The United States does not have a domestic terrorism law, and there is no legal mechanism for designating domestic extremist groups as terrorists. But designating subsidiaries or foreign offshoots of a group that was founded in the U.S. would make it easier to track and prosecute alleged members operating within the country, experts said.

“We can always use more tools,” Wray said during an October congressional hearing, when asked whether the foreign terrorist designation would help law enforcement combat white supremacist violence. “You’re never going to find a law enforcement or intelligence professional who wouldn’t like more tools. And I can imagine situations where what you’re describing would be very helpful for us to have as a tool.”


The designations would also allow law enforcement to monitor Americans who go overseas to train with the designated white supremacist groups, said Mollie Saltskog, a senior intelligence analyst at the Soufan Center, thereby allowing officials to gather intelligence “and fill in some of the puzzle pieces” on the organizations.

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As for First Amendment challenges to the designation, “we certainly think it will be an issue,” said Emerita Torres, director of policy research and programs at the Soufan Center.

But the foreign terrorist designation option has not faced as much political pushback as have calls for a domestic terrorism law, Torres noted, and “there are a lot of lessons learned” from the post-9/11 surveillance issues that can be applied.

The State Department’s recent movement on the designations, which experts said is a process that requires extensive research and resources, also reveals a desire to get ahead of the issue before it’s too late, said Colin P. Clarke, a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center.

“We’re used to waiting for a problem to get too big for it to ignore,” Clarke said. “But what’s happening here is a good thing because the U.S. government, the broader intelligence community, think tanks and analysts are trying to act in the early stages of this.”

Mary McCord, the former head of DOJ’s national security division who has publicly warned of the threat posed by far-right extremists, called it “a welcome move by the State Department,” noting that the designations could open up “new avenues of investigation domestically” that could help prevent a terrorist attack.

Next Monday, State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism Nathan Sales will be speaking at George Washington University to “outline concrete steps” his bureau is taking to address the terrorist threat posed by white supremacist movements.