Trump administration is minimizing white supremacist threat, officials warn
Source: The Guardian
Sat 24 May 2025 07.00 EDT
Last modified on Sat 24 May 2025 15.01 EDT
US state department employees recently opened up their emails to find a PDF to their new “style guide”, which dictates what language and terminology they can and can’t use. According to this new updated guide, the term “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism”– “REMVE” or “RMVE” – was now banned, except in situations where they were legally compelled to use it.
While style guide updates in government agencies that tinker with acronyms between administrations are not unusual, the document did not yet propose an alternative term for the threat from the violent far right. Current and former state department officials told the Guardian that this was just one reason why they are concerned about how seriously the Trump administration will take the ongoing threat from white supremacists at home and abroad.
Over the last six years, the state department caught up to European partners by recognizing the transnational threat posed by the radical far right – after decades of laser focus on jihadist terrorism. In January, one week before Donald Trump returned to the White House, the state department took action against the white supremacist collective Terrorgram, designating it as a foreign terrorist organization and linking it to a shooting at an LGBTQ+ bar in Slovakia, a knife attack at a mosque in Turkey and a planned attack on energy facilities in New Jersey.
It was the third “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist” group to ever face terrorist designation or sanctions from the state department. First was the Russian Imperial Movement in 2020, and later the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance in 2024. In addition to the new ban on using language to refer to the threat of white supremacists, last month Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, unveiled a plan for huge cuts at the state department, which would result in the elimination of more than a hundred offices and about 700 jobs – including those whose portfolios include racially motivated violent extremism.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/24/trump-threat-far-right-white-supremacist
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