Trump stirs far-right rage despite FBI deprioritizing extremist threat

The Guardian

3 days ago

Donald Trump has faced an onslaught of criticism from opponents and Maga diehards alike, on issues such as Jeffrey Epstein, the war with Iran, and his steadfast alliance with Israel in the face of genocide. But among the ever dangerous far right, which has generally applauded Trump's efforts to deport thousands of people a day, his actions of late have stirred rage among a group experts say has benefited greatly from his administration's law-enforcement pivots.
The FBI, headed by Trump acolyte Kash Patel, has reassigned the jobs of thousands of agents and eviscerated parts of the bureau tasked with investigating rightwing extremists that are considered the most dangerous domestic security threat facing the US today. Those same types, which includes a locus of fascist street-fighting gangs known as active clubs and accelerationist neo-Nazis, increasingly view Trump as an enemy, but are freer than ever to organize – almost entirely due to changes instituted in his latest presidency.
'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 Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, referring to American rightwing extremists' view of the president. 'Frankly, white supremacists have never had it so good as they do now under Trump.'
Bierich did concede the far right was 'never outwardly fond of him,' they have celebrated Trump's enthusiastic deployment of Ice raids.
On a neo-Nazi Telegram channel that has become a bellwether and influencer for active clubs around the world, Trump's latest quip declaring he would not provide disaster relief in case of a natural disaster to states that do not support Israel struck a major nerve.
'Israel first, America last,' it said in a post viewed several thousands of times by followers, with a headline associated with the story. In another adjacent account, neo-Nazis went further: 'The fact that they even tried to put that in is disgusting.'
In recent years, neo-fascist groups such as Patriot Front – heavily allied to the active club movement – have used natural disaster cleanups as a way to recruit and launder their image as white saviors to 'European' Americans.
'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,' Beirich said. '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.'
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. Even research grants for academic and government researchers looking at the de-radicalization of extremists of every political persuasion have felt the force of Trump's budgetary cuts.
Yet with this backdrop of helpful policies, far-right activists have found reasons to part with Trump's agenda. A near full-scale war with Iran earlier in the summer also set off a flurry of posts among some of the most hardcore and popular neo-Nazis who saw the latest geopolitical venture as a new, costly Iraq war.
'Both sides spent years hyperventilating over the undisputed lethality of Iran,' wrote one influential neo-Nazi propagandist channel on Telegram. 'I'm just happy it doesn't look like whites will be dying for Israel.'
But it was a recent American Eagle ad featuring the actor Sydney Sweeney – one alluding to her jeans as a reference to physical, genetic genes – that has enraged the online hordes of the far right. One called it Maga's blatant attempt to win back their support through 'white coded media' in service of a broader agenda.
'Some Telegram propagandists have claimed that the Trump administration is explicitly attempting to appeal to white Americans to manipulate them further,' said Joshua Fisher-Birch, an analyst and expert on online extremists, 'whether economically, politically, or while planning a new war.'
According to Fisher-Birch, an influential channel with over 2,000 subscribers within the far-right Telegram ecosystem carried out a poll in mid-July about Trump and the Epstein files, which showed that 70% 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.'
Beattie, a senior state department official, has been linked to white nationalism, while 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'.
Beirich cited how Patriot Front and Blood Tribe, another public facing neo-Nazi group, are marching on American streets with regularity, while people like former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio – formerly imprisoned for his role in the January 6 attacks – have become regular speaking fixtures in official Republican circles.
Fisher-Birch agreed that the far right was feeling the moment.
'Many extreme right groups and propagandists certainly think that they have more latitude now than compared to a year ago,' he said. 'However, it is also important to note that some groups are worried about being targeted for their antisemitism.'
Even so, there are others in the extremist world who still view Trump and the broader US government with skepticism, undeterred by recent FBI changes or the president's general tone towards them.
For example, the Base, an internationally proscribed neo-Nazi terrorist group with roots in the US, still sees Trump as a problem.
'We don't expect leniency from the Trump administration,' it wrote on one of its accounts earlier this year, referring to a nationwide crackdown on the group in the past. 'It was Trump's [department of justice] which conducted an aggressive nationwide dragnet targeting members of the Base in 2020.'
It added: 'By comparison, political pressure against the Base was minimal when Biden was president.'