Canadian police have carried out a string of raids at the rural homes of suspected members of the Atomwaffen Division neo-Nazi group.
More than 60 Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers conducted the raids southwest of Quebec City, officials say.
“It’s a far-right affiliated group, which could be described as having neo-Nazi allegiance,” RCMP Cpl Charles Poirier told CBC.
Two search warrants were executed in the towns of Saint-Ferdinand and Plessisville for what officials described as a “national security operation.”
“Searches underway in St-Ferdinand and Plessisville. Investigation targeting individuals with suspected ties to the Atomwaffen Division terrorist group. All measures are in place to ensure the safety of the public and our police officers,” tweeted the RCMP, along with pictures of heavily armed officers.
Atomwaffen Division is a neo-Nazi group founded in the United States in 2015, and described by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups in the US, as “a series of terror cells that work toward ushering in the collapse of civilization.”
The SPLC also describes the group as trending “younger and fetishises violence as the only vehicle for apocalyptic, racial cleansing.”
The group claims Charles Manson as a leading influence and bases its ideas on using violence to trigger “apocalyptic collapse so a white ethnostate or whites-only utopia can be constructed in its wake.”
The Canadian Public Safety Department put the Atomwaffen Division on its official list of terrorist groups in 2021.
In May, a 19-year-old man from Windsor, Ontario, was charged with terrorism over alleged links to the group.
