State Department: White supremacist terror ‘on the rise and spreading’

Racial and ethnic terrorism, particularly white supremacist threats, are “on the rise and spreading geographically”  according to a State Department report released Wednesday.

“The threat posed by racially or ethnically motivated terrorism (REMT), particularly white supremacist terrorism, remained a serious challenge for the global community,” the report reads. 

In 2019, the world experienced an uptick in white terrorism, such as the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shooting in March and the El Paso, Texas, shooting in August. 

White terrorist groups “increasingly target immigrants; Jewish, Muslim, and other religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or intersex (LGBTI) individuals; governments; and other perceived enemies,” the report found. 

In April, the State Department designated a white supremacist group, the Russian Imperial Movement, as a “foreign terrorist organization” for the first time.

The report also commented on the threats from ISIS and other radical Islamist terror groups, which it said were evolving.

According to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the killing of ISIS’s founding leader in Syria and the fall of its caliphate has led Islamic extremism to subside in those regions and move to northern Africa.

Nathan Sales, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for counter terrorism, told reporters radical Islamic terrorism is now a “global network that reaches every inhabited continent.”

The State Department also announced Wednesday that it is increasing the reward for information related to the whereabouts of ISIS’s new leader, Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahma al-Mawla, up to $10 million. 

“We’re undaunted in our pursuit of bringing terrorists to justice,” Pompeo told reporters Wednesday.