Fast Forward

School Shooter ‘Trained’ With Florida White Supremacist Group

The flag of the Republic of Florida, a white supremacist group that “trained” alleged school shooter Nikolas Cruz. Image by ADL

By Helen Chernikoff February 15, 2018

The alleged perpetrator of the most recent American mass shooting, which took place on Wednesday at a Florida high school, was a participant in a white supremacist group, reported the Anti-Defamation League.

A spokesman for the group Republic of Florida told the ADL that Nikolas Cruz, 19, had participated in training exercises conducted by the group Republic of Florida, which seeks to create a “white ethnostate” in Florida, according to the ADL.

Cruz has been charged with the shooting spree that killed 17 people and injured 14 at Majory Stoneman Douglas High School in Fort Lauderdale.

The Republic of Florida describes itself as a “white civil rights organization fighting for white identitarian politics,” and is a few years old, the ADL said.

The alleged murderer of a Jewish college student, Blaze Bernstein, in California had ties to Atomwaffen Division, a growing American Nazi organization that researchers call the most potentially violent neo-Nazi group operating in the country.

In December, a young white supremacist named William Atchison killed two students at a high school in New Mexico before killing himself, the ADL said.

Contact Helen Chernikoff at chernikoff@forward.com

Helen Chernikoff is the Forward’s News Editor. She came to the Forward from The Jewish Week, where she served as the first web director and created both a blog dedicated to disability issues and a food and wine website. Before that, she covered the housing, lodging and logistics industries for Reuters, where she could sit at her desk and watch her stories move the stock market. Helen has a Master’s of Public Administration from Columbia University and a BA in History and French from Amherst College. She is also a rabbinical school dropout. Contact her at chernikoff@forward.com and follow her on Twitter at @thesimplechild.

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