Has any racist, nationalist, prejudice, supremist, extremism, groups been labeled as terrorist domestic of foreign n the us in all of its history
Executive summary
The United States has historically distinguished between formal terrorist designations for foreign organizations and investigative classifications for domestic violent extremists: federal law and practice have allowed the State Department and Treasury to label racist, nationalist, or white-supremacist groups that operate transnationally as terrorist entities, while the federal government has largely lacked a formal mechanism to proscribe purely domestic groups as “terrorist organizations” — even as agencies identify white supremacists as the top domestic terrorism threat [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. The legal divide: foreign proscription versus domestic characterization
Since the 1990s Congress and the executive branch created statutory pathways to designate Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and to impose sanctions under Executive Order 13224, tools that the State Department and Treasury use to proscribe foreign actors and transnational extremist networks, including violent white‑supremacist groups that operate across borders [1] [5] [2]. By contrast, the federal government has no analogous statutory proscription process for groups that are purely domestic: criminal charges target unlawful acts by individuals, and membership in a domestic movement alone is not a statutory basis for a terrorism label at the federal level [3] [6].
2. When racist or nationalist groups became “foreign” targets
U.S. officials have used foreign-designation authorities to sanction racially motivated extremist networks that have transnational links: for example, the State Department and Treasury have designated online and international white‑supremacist networks and individuals under counterterrorism authorities and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs), a move officials described as addressing the transnational components of violent white supremacism [2] [7]. Those actions show the government will treat white‑supremacist groups as “terrorist” when they meet the criteria of foreign or transnational activity and therefore fall within existing designation authorities [2] [1].
3. Domestic violent extremists: labeled a threat, not proscribed as organizations
Federal agencies and Congress use categories like “domestic violent extremists” (DVE) and “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” (RMVE) to describe threats and allocate resources, and DHS and the FBI have publicly identified white supremacists as the principal domestic terrorism threat in recent years [8] [4] [9]. The Department of Justice, FBI, and DHS investigate and prosecute violent acts committed in furtherance of domestic ideologies, but they do so under ordinary criminal statutes rather than through a formal domestic “terrorist organization” designation process [6] [10] [3].
4. Patchwork at the state and political levels, and recent attempts at change
Some state and local jurisdictions have criminal statutes that define terrorism without requiring foreign origin — meaning at the sub‑federal level prosecutions or bans can be framed as terrorism even where federal law provides no organizational proscription [4]. Political pressure and public debate have repeatedly called for formal domestic designations [3], and in at least one high‑profile instance the Executive Branch has asserted a domestic designation in a presidential action claiming to label a domestic movement as a “domestic terrorist organization” (White House announcement referenced) — a development that, if implemented, would be unprecedented and legally contested given long‑standing free speech and federal‑statute concerns documented by legal analysts [11] [3].
5. Bottom line: what has and hasn’t been labeled
Concrete answer: yes and no — yes, racist, nationalist, and white‑supremacist groups and networks have been officially designated as terrorist or terrorist‑linked entities when they meet criteria for foreign or transnational designation authorities (SDGT/FTO tools have been applied to such actors) [2] [7] [1]; no, historically the U.S. federal government has not had a routine statutory mechanism to proscribe purely domestic groups as terrorist organizations, even while treating domestic violent extremists — especially white supremacists — as the top domestic threat and prosecuting violent acts under criminal law [3] [4] [6] [8]. The landscape is dynamic: interagency practice, state statutes, and executive actions have created pressure points that could alter how “terrorist” labels are applied going forward, but any formal shift will raise legal, political, and civil‑liberties contests [3] [4].