Home-grown terror

Last month, a Montgomery, Texas, man was convicted of five felonies for his activities as the leader of a neo-Nazi group called Atomwaffen. This is a win for safety and democracy, but the Department of Justice should also take it as a warning about the ways domestic terrorism is morphing.

According to the DOJ, Kaleb Cole, 25, was convicted of conspiracy, three counts of mailing threatening communications, and one count of interfering with a federally protected activity.

The details of the Atomwaffen offenses are disturbing. According to the DOJ, the group targeted journalists and employees of the Anti-Defamation League. They mailed threatening posters or glued them to their victims’ homes. The posters read, “you have been visited by your local Nazis.”

Other posters displayed threatening images, like a hooded figure throwing a Molotov cocktail at a house. Another contained the words “Death to Pigs,” the same message that members of Charles Manson’s cult wrote in the blood of their victims during a home invasion murder in 1969.

Cole was tried in Seattle. The Atomwaffen incidents happened in Seattle, Tampa and Phoenix. Altogether, Cole’s five convictions could lead to up to 30 years in prison. Three other co-conspirators have pleaded guilty and been sentenced.

On the same day DOJ announced Cole’s conviction, it also released a statement on domestic terrorism that leaned heavily on hate crimes and civil rights reasoning. The statement announced the appointment of a hate crimes coordinator in the U.S. attorney general’s office, and a national anti-hate crimes campaign to raise public awareness. Hate crimes are typically directed at victims based on demographic categories like race, religion or sexuality.

Those are worthy endeavors that we support. And it’s worth noting that many of Cole’s victims were racial or religious minorities. But not all of them. Rather than race, these victims were clearly chosen because of their professions. We congratulate the Biden administration on its win against Atomwaffen, and we encourage DOJ to work not only against identity-based terrorism, but also to protect people who may be threatened because they’ve chosen careers that threaten hateful ideologies.