For decades, white supremacists have stood united against the mainstream in the fight for racial integration. As recent as 2008, al-Qaida issued an audacious statement directed at the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups across the world saying that “we understand your distress, and we support you in this distress, especially in regard to the treachery of the modern society and media.”
But in the last few months, white supremacists have appeared to be drifting apart, sometimes violently, at conferences and rally. Last year in Charlottesville, Va., white supremacists clashed with counterprotesters, with many of the counterprotesters dressed in black. The president on the Sunday after the clashes used the most incendiary language of any major politician, saying the hate groups were “very fine people.” Though the president didn’t explicitly link neo-Nazis to white supremacists directly, conservatives were quick to do so.