Research Findings
Racist Networks of America
A proposed framework for consistent global dialogue about racist, racial-authoritarian, and identity-based intimidation networks.
Prepared by Cory Robert Koplin, Founder & President — Out Finding Phoenix Chartered
Status: Independent proposal for discussion. This paper has not been adopted, endorsed, or approved by the FBI, NSA, Associated Press, the United Nations, or any religious body.
Purpose
Invite consultation on a common, conduct-based vocabulary for research, reporting, prevention, pastoral response, and lawful public-safety cooperation.
This paper respectfully invites a structured global dialogue about how societies describe and respond to networks that translate racial supremacy, antisemitism, xenophobia, religious hatred, or other identity-based hostility into coordinated intimidation, exclusion, recruitment, financing, or violence. The proposal begins with a working public-education title — Racist Networks of America (RNA) — but does not ask any recipient to accept that title, adopt a list of organizations, or confer a legal designation. The immediate request is narrower: review the definitions, safeguards, evidence levels, and consultation process; identify conflicts with existing law and professional standards; and consider participating in a neutral working group.
A durable framework must protect lawful advocacy, dissent, journalism, religious belief, peaceful assembly, and due process. It must also give communities a shared language for recognizing when prejudice becomes targeted coercion, operational coordination, or violence.
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Executive Summary
Public debate often collapses ideology, association, incitement, hate crime, and terrorism into a single label. That can obscure genuine threats while stigmatizing lawful political or religious activity. RNA is proposed as a transparent research and dialogue framework — not a criminal or terrorist designation — to map documented relationships and distinguish rhetoric from conduct.
Use observable conduct and verifiable relationships, not party identity, religious affiliation, nationality, or unpopular opinion. Separate ideological similarity from documented association, material support, operational coordination, criminal conduct, and violence. Publish sourcing, confidence levels, dates, jurisdiction, review history, and a meaningful correction and reply process. Apply the framework consistently to racial supremacy and identity-based hostility regardless of the speaker's race, nationality, religion, political affiliation, or institutional status. Reserve legal terms — including hate crime, domestic terrorism, and terrorist organization — for authorized institutions applying controlling law to specific facts.
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The Proposal
The public-facing working title is Racist Networks of America (RNA). For formal, international, and research settings, the recommended descriptor is Racial-Authoritarian Network Ecosystem. The second formulation is less geographically limiting and makes clear that the unit of analysis is an ecosystem of relationships rather than a single organization.
Important limitation: RNA is not an organization, membership label, watchlist, government designation, or allegation that all examined actors share command and control. It is a proposed analytical vocabulary.
A racial-authoritarian network ecosystem is a documented set of persons, organizations, media channels, funders, institutions, or informal communities whose repeated activity contributes to identity-based domination, exclusion, intimidation, or violence, and whose relationships can be described with evidence and an explicit confidence level. The definition is intentionally narrower than political disagreement and broader than criminal prosecution. It permits researchers and communities to discuss patterns while requiring them to identify precisely what has — and has not — been established.
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Why a Common Framework Is Needed
Inconsistent labels can exaggerate loose ideological similarity into organizational membership. Communities may recognize intimidation patterns before conduct meets a criminal threshold, yet lack a disciplined vocabulary for describing them. Law-enforcement, journalistic, religious, academic, and human-rights institutions operate under different mandates and evidentiary standards. Global dialogue requires translation across legal systems without pretending that one jurisdiction's terminology applies everywhere.
The framework therefore emphasizes interoperability rather than uniform legal conclusions: institutions may share factual observations and relationship types while retaining their own legal, editorial, theological, and professional judgments.
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Classification Architecture
Classification should describe functions and evidence, not create guilt by association.
Functional Categories
Ideological production
Creates or systematizes claims of racial hierarchy, collective dehumanization, exclusion, or authoritarian domination.
Recruitment and propaganda
Packages, amplifies, or targets those claims to attract adherents or mobilize hostility.
Political or institutional influence
Attempts to translate identity-based exclusion into policy, administration, or institutional practice.
Financial or logistical support
Provides money, venues, technology, transport, equipment, or services with knowledge of the supported activity.
Intimidation and coercion
Organizes harassment, threats, doxxing, discriminatory exclusion, armed intimidation, or retaliatory pressure.
Operational violence
Plans, directs, facilitates, attempts, or commits violence or criminal property destruction for an ideological purpose.
Evidence & Relationship Levels
Lead requiring verification; never presented as fact or used for public classification.
Comparable themes or language; does not establish contact, membership, or coordination.
Verified personnel overlap, attendance, communication, funding, publication, or event connection; context and date required.
Repeated or consequential support with documented knowledge of the relevant activity.
Evidence of joint planning, tasking, command, recruitment, financing, or execution.
A final court judgment or authoritative official finding, accurately described with jurisdiction and appeal status.
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Thresholds & Safeguards
No person or organization should be publicly classified solely because of ideology, political affiliation, religious doctrine, controversial speech, attendance at a lawful event, a social-media follow, or a single uncontextualized interaction. A public assessment should require multiple reliable indicators, material relevance, and human review.
Where speech is evaluated, reviewers should consider context, the speaker's influence, intent, content and form, reach, and the likelihood and imminence of harm. This reflects the six-part threshold approach of the UN Rabat Plan of Action while preserving the high threshold required before expression is treated as unlawful incitement.
Mandatory Safeguards
- —Presumption of lawful activity and no guilt by association.
- —Clear separation of fact, allegation, analysis, opinion, and legal conclusion.
- —Source quality grading, corroboration, date limits, and contextual quotation.
- —Notice and a meaningful opportunity to respond before consequential public classification, except when safety or law prohibits it.
- —Accessible correction, appeal, periodic review, and removal procedures.
- —Protection of victims, minors, confidential sources, worshippers, researchers, and lawful whistleblowers.
- —Independent civil-liberties, community, and multidisciplinary oversight.
- —No automated designation. Technology may organize evidence but may not make the final judgment.
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What the Framework Is Not
It is not a request for the NSA or FBI to investigate constitutionally protected ideology, religion, journalism, or association. It is not a substitute for criminal statutes, intelligence authorities, judicial process, or editorial standards. It is not a partisan counterpart created to label political opponents as terrorists. It is not a crowd-sourced blacklist, reputational score, or permission to publish private personal information. It does not imply UN endorsement, government sponsorship, or adoption by any named recipient.
A hate crime requires a criminal act plus a bias motivation under the applicable law. Domestic-terrorism inquiries require legal predicates and must not be based on ideology alone. Public discussion should preserve those distinctions.
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Roles in a Global Dialogue
Law enforcement: Clarify legal thresholds, referral pathways, threat reporting, victim support, and civil-liberties controls; distinguish public education from investigative action.
National-security institutions: Advise only within lawful mandates on foreign influence, transnational financing, information integrity, and analytic standards; avoid domestic political surveillance.
News organizations: Test terminology against verification, attribution, corrections, source protection, and avoidance of guilt by association.
Religious and interfaith bodies: Contribute prevention, pastoral care, moral leadership, community trust, reconciliation, and protection against antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Christian hatred, and other identity-based hostility.
Civil-rights and academic partners: Design transparent methods, assess bias and disparate impact, evaluate outcomes, and provide independent critique.
United Nations and international partners: Relate the proposal to existing human-rights, hate-speech, atrocity-prevention, and freedom-of-expression frameworks; convene voluntary consultation if appropriate.
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Proposed Consultation Process
Convene a 90-day terminology and mandate review with law, journalism, civil liberties, faith, affected-community, research, and human-rights representatives. Compare the proposed vocabulary with existing domestic and international definitions; publish conflicts and unresolved questions. Test the evidence levels against anonymized historical cases representing different ideologies, institutions, countries, and targeted communities.
Commission privacy, bias, freedom-of-expression, religious-liberty, data-retention, and security assessments. Publish a revised framework, dissenting views, governance rules, and a decision on whether a limited pilot is justified. If piloted, restrict the pilot to methodology and aggregated research; do not publish a named-group registry during the design phase.
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Draft Principles for Consideration
Universality — Apply the same standard regardless of ideology, identity, power, or institutional status. Precision — Name the conduct and relationship actually supported by evidence. Proportionality — Match the response and publicity to the severity, certainty, reach, and immediacy of harm.
Human rights — Protect equality, safety, expression, religion, association, privacy, and due process together. Transparency — Disclose methods, limitations, sources where safe, funding, governance, and corrections. Prevention — Prioritize education, off-ramps, resilience, pastoral care, victim support, and de-escalation before harm occurs. Accountability — Escalate credible threats and crimes through lawful channels; do not substitute public accusation for investigation or adjudication.
"Societies need language strong enough to expose organized identity-based intimidation and disciplined enough not to reproduce the injustice they seek to prevent."
A legitimate framework must follow evidence, distinguish belief from conduct, protect lawful dissent, and remain open to correction. This concept paper is offered as the beginning of that dialogue — not its conclusion.
For consultation: Cory Robert Koplin · Founder & President, OFP Chartered · [email protected]
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