White jihad is a political neologism for white supremacists' adoption of jihadist methods, narratives and aesthetic.
Groups such as the Order of Nine Angles, National Action and Atomwaffen Division actively promote white jihad. Multiple individuals influenced by white jihad have been involved in planned terrorist attacks between 2020 and 2021.
White jihad is a form of fused extremism exemplified by cases of white supremacist activists drawing on jihadist methods, narratives and propaganda to promote their violent ideals and perpetrate terrorist attacks. According to academics Ariel Koch, Karine Nahon and Assaf Moghadam, white jihad represents a "clear and present danger". They trace the historical roots of white jihad to the relationship between Adolf Hitler and Amin al-Husseini during World War II, and to the ideals of racial separatism shared between George Lincoln Rockwell and Malcolm X.[1] [2] [3]
White supremacism and jihadism converge on antisemitism, anti-Americanism and opposition to liberal democracy and adopt similar propaganda narratives. Jihad and Islamist terrorism are romanticized by some white supremacist activists, while the Islamogram online jihadist community adopts propaganda elements from neo-Nazism and the alt-right. During the 2010s, methods of attack generally associated to jihadist terrorism began to be praised and adopted by white supremacists, such as suicide attacks and ram car attacks. For example, a member of neonazi group Aryan Strikeforce planned a suicide attack against anti-fascists, while a French Generation Identity member evoked the idea of using his car to carry out a jihadist-style attack. A growing adoption of the notion of the martyr also made its appearance among white supremacists, with neo-fascist accelerationists openly promoting the idea of "saints", analogous to the notion of the martyr in jihadism.[1] [2]
Analogous to jihadists calling for sharia law, white supremacists call for "white sharia".[1] Originally a meme born in 2016, white sharia is a concept developed by neo-Nazi, white supremacist and white nationalist groups, including The Daily Stormer website and blogger Sacco Vandal, with the aim of promoting a white patriarchy and the aim of countering what they call "socialist female hypergamy" because they believe it is threatening the white race. It refers to the domination of women by white men and it also refers to the control of women's sexuality, reproduction and daily lives, as well as a return to an extreme form of patriarchy within a white ethno-State, drawing on a distorted interpretation of Islamic sharia law. White sharia combines the fear that white men are losing control of white women with a fear of Islam and a fear of non-white men. This notion is opposed by some individuals and organizations within the white nationalist milieus because advocates of it have drawn inspiration from the "Islamic world".[4] [5] [6]
During the 2000s, the neo-Nazi organization Aryan Nations expressed its support for jihadist terrorism and it also called for an "Aryan jihad" against the "Judaic tyrannical system".[1] [7] Since 2015, neo-Nazi terror groups National Action and Atomwaffen Division have promoted white jihad by adopting symbols, terminology and methods from Islamist extremism. National Action is linked to violent attack motivated by white jihad, such as the brutal attack on a Sikh man in 2015 in the United Kingdom. In France, influenced by the propaganda of Atomwaffen Division and al-Qaeda, two radicalized youths oscillating between jihadism and neo-Nazism have planned attacks between 2020 and 2021, until their arrest. In the United States, an individual active on platforms linked to the Islamic State and to white supremacism planned attacks in 2017.[3] [8] According to an article which was published in the Belgian daily newspaper L-Post, one of the most important groups which advocates white jihad is Feuerkrieg, which was founded in 2020 by an Estonian minor. In 2021, a British minor member of this group was arrested for a terrorist offence, thus, he was the youngest person to have been arrested for this offence in the United Kingdom.[9]
The Order of Nine Angles (O9A) is a Satanist neo-Nazi group which has played an important role in the promotion of the idea of white jihad. Its ideologue David Myatt attempted to synthesize far-right ideas with Islam, calling for a jihad against Jews and Americans. However, according to academic Jacob Christiansen Senholt, for Myatt, neo-Nazi and Islamist ideologies are only a way of subverting radical activists to serve his Satanist agenda. In June 2020, an American soldier was charged with passing sensitive information to an O9A-inspired group, with the aim of passing it to members of Hurras al-Din. Atomwaffen Division itself was inspired by O9A.[1]