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Reveal

Inside the Global Fight for White Power

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.78.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From Russia to Sweden and the United States, there’s a growing network of White nationalist groups that stretches around the world. The reporting team at Verified: The Next Threat investigates how these militant groups are helping each other create propaganda, recruit new members and share paramilitary skills.

We start with a group called the Russian Imperial Movement, or RIM. Its members are taking up arms in Russia’s war against Ukraine, which they say is a battle in a much larger “holy war” for White power. Newsy senior investigative reporter Mark Greenblatt interviews a leader of the group who says RIM’s goal is to unite White nationalists around the world. The group even runs training camps where White supremacists from around the world can learn paramilitary tactics.

Russia’s White nationalists are making connections with extremists in the United States. Greenblatt talks with a neo-Nazi named Matt Heimbach, who was a major promoter of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Soon after Charlottesville, Heimbach invited members of RIM to the U.S. and connected them to his network of American White power extremists.

We end with a visit by Greenblatt to the State Department in Washington, where he interviews two top counterterrorism officials. They say they’re aware of the growing international network of White supremacists, but explain that White power groups are now forming political parties, which makes it more difficult for the agency to use its most powerful counterterrorism tools.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal.

0:06.6

I'm Al Leedson.

0:08.8

The war in Ukraine is now in its six-month.

0:12.4

Experts say it could grind on for a long time, maybe even years.

0:16.7

Russia's military continues its advance in eastern Ukraine this weekend.

0:20.7

Russia's getting help on the battlefield from fighters who belong to a little known group called

0:25.4

the Russian Imperial Movement, or Rim.

0:30.0

RIM posted this video online a few weeks ago, which they claim shows a special weapon being fired

0:36.5

at Ukrainian positions.

0:39.2

For the Russian imperial movement, fighting in Ukraine isn't about supporting President

0:44.2

Vladimir Putin. In fact, they've openly called for a different leader. For Rim,

0:49.5

Ukraine is a battle in a much bigger war, an international holy war.

0:55.0

Their goal is to unite white Christian nationalists in a global fight for white power.

1:00.0

Rim soldiers claim they're more committed to the invasion of Ukraine than Russia's own military.

1:06.0

They're taking casualties, but are not deterred.

1:09.0

We continue to work and fight. They're taking casualties, but are not deterred.

1:14.4

We continue to work and fight,

1:18.3

and in general, we are really full of spiritual uplift.

1:22.5

Because unlike some units from the Ministry of Defense,

1:25.1

we know what we are fighting for.

1:28.1

For us, this is a religious war.

1:37.2

Today, Mark Greenblatt, senior investigative correspondent with Newsy,

...

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