Aryan Nations is a white supremacist

White supremacy

White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...

 religious organization originally based in Hayden Lake, Idaho

Hayden Lake, Idaho

Hayden Lake is a both a city and a lake in Kootenai County, Idaho, United States. Hayden Lake is one of several natural lakes in northern Idaho...

. Richard Girnt Butler

Richard Girnt Butler

Richard Girnt Butler was an American aerospace engineer for Lockheed, who later became the leader of the Christian Identity white supremacist group Aryan Nations.-Biography:...

 founded the group in the 1970s, as an arm of the Christian Identity

Christian Identity

Christian Identity is a label applied to a wide variety of loosely affiliated believers and churches with a racialized theology. Many promote a Eurocentric interpretation of Christianity.According to Chester L...

 organization Church of Jesus Christ–Christian. The Federal Bureau of Investigation

Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...

 has called Aryan Nations a "terrorist threat", and the RAND Corporation has called it the "first truly nationwide terrorist network" in the US.
The origin of Aryan Nations is in the teachings of Wesley Swift, a significant figure in the early Christian Identity

Christian Identity

Christian Identity is a label applied to a wide variety of loosely affiliated believers and churches with a racialized theology. Many promote a Eurocentric interpretation of Christianity.According to Chester L...

 movement.