I never knew the U.S. has never designated a white supremacist group as a terrorist group.
It’s weird President Donald Trump’s administration has taken this step because according to the MSM he is a white supremacist.
The administration slapped the label on the Russian Imperial Movement.
Believe it or not, The New York Times first reported this story:
While the label of specially designated global terrorist has been frequently used for Islamist extremists, there have been growing concerns among U.S. officials about violent white supremacists with transnational links over the past five years. In 2018, the White House added that threat to the government’s National Strategy for Counterterrorism.“These designations are unprecedented,” said Ambassador Nathan A. Sales, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator. “This is the first time the United States has ever designated white supremacists as terrorists, and this illustrates how seriously this administration takes the white supremacist terrorist threat. We are doing things no previous administration has done to counter this threat.”The State Department’s designation for the organization, the Russian Imperial Movement, sets up the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to block any American property or assets belonging to the group. It will also bar Americans from financial dealings with the organization and make it easier to ban its members from traveling to the United States.
Stanislav Anatolyevich Vorobyev, Denis Valliullovich Gariev, and Nikolay Nikolayevich Trushchalov, the leaders of the group, will receive a designation “as individual terrorists who will face similar sanctions, the officials said.”
Of course, the NYT implied Trump’s administration took this move in order to stop the suggestions that he supports white supremacist groups.
Officials said the Russian Imperial Movement has no ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but has not taken any action against the group. The group “has helped advance the Russian government’s external goals by recruiting Russian fighters to aid pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.”
The FBI continues to investigate if the leader of the Russian Imperial Movement “has any ties to the Russian government’s security or intelligence services, former law enforcement officials said.”
The organization had two facilities in St. Petersburg. U.S. officials said they “offered paramilitary training to neo-Nazis and white supremacists.” The leaders had activities to train others “for woodland and urban assault, tactical weapons and hand-to-hand combat training.”
The Russian Imperial Movement helped neo-Nazi groups in Scandinavia:
The group has also helped support neo-Nazi organizations in Scandinavia, which dovetails with the Russian government’s broader pattern of trying to stoke internal divisions, including along racial lines, and sow chaos in Western democracies.In 2017, the Russian Imperial Movement came up at a trial in Sweden of three men who were accused of plotting bomb attacks targeting asylum seekers. Prosecutors said two of the defendants had traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, to attend 11 days of paramilitary training at a camp operated by the group, fueling their radicalization.
Mary McCord served in the Justice Department under President Barack Obama and Trump. She told the NYT:
“It is important,” she said. “Far-right extremist causes, in particular white supremacy and white nationalism, have become more international. It is appropriate for the State Department to have been scrutinizing whether there are organizations that meet the criteria for that designation because with it, the organization becomes poison in terms of doing business with it or providing funds, goods or services to it.”
I found this video on YouTube. The organization justifies its actions as a way to bring Russia and the West back to the Christian faith. They make these moves because people have gone against God’s word.
The narrator slams gays and foreigners.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY