Extremist watchdog explains New England white supremacists galvanized by Trump

Former President Donald Trump is due in court Thursday afternoon to face four felony counts related to attempting to overturn the 2020 election results. Prosecutors allege Trump incited the Jan. 6 violence at the U.S. Capitol by his supporters, including members of right-wing groups.

Kristofer Goldsmith is the founder of Task Force Butler, a nonprofit group of veterans who've been tracking extremists in New England, and he joined WBUR's Morning Edition to talk more about their efforts.

Highlights from this interview have been lightly edited for clarity.

On how people from New England were involved in the insurrection 

"There was a recent arrest of a member of NSC-131 — a New England-based neo-Nazi organization — who was on the very front lines in using violence against the police that day to breach the building. We found that multiple members of NSC-131 weren't just present at the riot, on Jan. 6, but were actively engaged in combat against uniformed police officers. NSC-131 posted online, showing photos of a stolen capitol police officers helmet, bragging about their participation in the riot."

On the goal of local white supremacist groups

"The explicit goal of neo-Nazi organizations like NSC-131, which also calls itself PINE, is genocide. They say that they advocate for New England to become a white ethnostate. Well, how do you achieve a white ethnostate? There's only one way. That's genocide — that's either mass murder or mass migration."

On how these groups might react to the most recent Trump indictment

"I'm not worried about an immediate reaction by an organized group. I mean, this is the third indictment. The previous ones didn't cause any sort of notable reaction.

"Donald Trump keeps targeting not just the prosecutors, not just the American citizens who end up on juries, but he's targeting, like, the people of D.C. and the people of each state where he is prosecuted. So nowhere in America is safe. Every person who wears a uniform, whether that's military or police, in every state, every jurisdiction around the country, is going to have radicalized Trump supporters looking at them as representatives of this deep state, of this illegitimate government. And they are a potential target for random acts of terrorism that are inspired by the former president."

"The explicit goal of neo-Nazi organizations like NSC-131, which also calls itself PINE, is genocide. They say that they advocate for New England to become a white ethnostate."

On what needs to be done to better track these groups and hold them accountable

"New England has a unique problem in that it's got this regional based neo-Nazi organization, NSC-131. Now, NSC-131 is relatively small. There are only a few dozen members at any given time. And anytime that they engage in any in-person action, there are members of this neo-Nazi organization crossing state lines. What law enforcement needs to do is coordinate and simply share intelligence across jurisdictions.

"One of the problems with dealing with this extremist organization — or any extremist organization in the United States — is often local jurisdictions, the police at the street level, don't understand what they're looking at, and they don't understand the context. And they view these incidents when they happen in their own backyard as one-offs, not realizing that it's part of this interstate conspiracy, of this terror campaign, that started in Boston and is spreading throughout the rest of the New England region."