Suspected neo-Nazi is said to have planned mass attack in New York

A grand jury in a federal court in New York City has indicted an alleged neo-Nazi leader who is said to have planned a deadly attack on Jews and members of ethnic minorities.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced that a 21-year-old Georgian citizen named Mikhail Chkhikvishvili allegedly tried to recruit people to commit hate crimes and a mass shooting in Brooklyn. Authorities said he was known as “Commander Butcher” and led a white supremacist group called the Maniac Murder Cult. He was arrested in Moldova on July 6, officials said.

According to a press release from the Ministry of Justice:

As early as July 2022, Chkhikvishvili repeatedly encouraged others, primarily through encrypted mobile messaging platforms, to commit violent hate crimes and other acts of violence on behalf of MKY (the white supremacist group). This included conspiring to incite acts of violence with the leader of another violent extremist neo-Nazi group and inciting mass violence in New York by an individual claiming to be a potential MKY recruit, but who, unbeknownst to Chkhikvishvili, was in fact an undercover FBI agent (UC).

Authorities claim that Chkhikvishvili gave the undercover agent tips on how to carry out an attack:

In a September 2023 conversation, the UC asked Chkhikvishvili if there was an application process for membership in MKY. The defendant responded, “Yes, we ask people for videos of brutal beatings, arson/explosion, or murder.” He further stated that “poison and arson are the best options for murder” and suggested that a larger “mass murder” within the United States should also be considered. Chkhikvishvili advised the UC that the victims of these acts should be “low-racial targets.”

One of the schemes Chkhikvishvili allegedly hatched involved having someone dress up as Santa Claus and hand out poisoned candy to ethnic minorities and children at Jewish schools in Brooklyn. (No defense attorney was listed for Chkhikvishvili in online court records, NBC News reported.)

By my count, this is the second federal indictment in just over a month alleging that a mass murder plot fueled by racial hatred was foiled. In June, the Justice Department charged an Arizona man with trying to ignite a race war with a mass shooting at a rap concert in Atlanta.

Combined with a resurgence of racist hate speech on X and other social media platforms — along with neo-Nazis freely marching through city streets, as we saw recently in Nashville — these charges indicate a rise in blatant racism. And they underscore a fact highlighted by officials in both the Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations: White supremacists remain one of the greatest domestic threats to Americans.