The Base | |
---|---|
Founder | Rinaldo Nazzaro |
Leader | Justen Michael Watkins (2020-2021) [1] [2] [3] [4] |
Foundation | June 2018 |
Country | United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa and Belgium |
Motives |
|
Headquarters | |
Ideology | Neo-Nazism White supremacy Accelerationism Antisemitism Factions: ONA Satanism |
Political position | Far-right |
Slogan | "Save Your Race, Join The Base." [8] |
Status | Active |
Size | |
Allies | |
Designated as a terrorist group by |
|
Website | https://thebase966874062.wordpress.com/ (defunct) |
Part of a series on |
Terrorism and political violence |
---|
Part of a series on |
Neo-fascism |
---|
Politicsportal |
The Base is a white supremacist and neo-Nazi accelerationist paramilitary group and training network, formed in 2018 by Rinaldo Nazzaro. It is active in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Europe, and designated as a terrorist organization in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and the European Union.
The group was founded in June 2018 by Rinaldo Nazzaro, who uses the pseudonyms Norman Spear and Roman Wolf. [19] Nazzaro was reported to have bought several blocks of off-the-grid land in Washington state, United States, in 2018 for use as a survivalist training camp. [20]
Nazzaro, who used to work for the FBI and the Pentagon, moved to Russia around the time he created The Base, and directs the group's activities from there. In November 2020, a feature-length interview with Nazzaro was broadcast on Russian state television. [15]
The Base is a white nationalist accelerationist paramilitary group and training network. It advocates the formation of white ethnostates, a goal which it believes it can achieve via terrorism and the violent overthrow of existing governments. The group's vetting process serves to connect committed extremists with terroristic skills to produce real-world violence. [19] It organizes "race war preppers" and operates "hate camps", or training camps. [21] [22] [23] [24] The group has links to the Atomwaffen Division and the Feuerkrieg Division, which are far-right extremist groups. [23]
Nazzaro has characterized The Base as a "survivalism and self-defense network ... sharing knowledge and training to prepare for crisis situations", but he denies its connections to neo-Nazism. Nazzaro has stated that his goal is to "build a cadre of trainers across the country." [19]
The Base has been designated as a terrorist entity by the following countries:
The group is active across the United States, and it is also active in Canada. [31] Before his identity was revealed in January 2020, Nazzaro, known online as "Roman Wolf" and "Norman Spear", was personally involved in active recruitment, with the aim of forming cells in Europe, South Africa and Australia. [20] [23]
The Base has recruited members by using iFunny, a meme social media website. In secure chat forums, Vice noted members designing memes to spread as propaganda. [19]
Propaganda from a The Base training camp near Spokane, Washington was posted in August 2019. [32] [33] [34] [35]
In late 2019 and early 2020, secret recordings were made of some of The Base's recruitment activities. The tapes include its attempts to recruit several Australians, including a 17-year-old and a Western Australian man, Dean Smith, who ran for parliament for Pauline Hanson's One Nation party. Another Australian who went by the name of Volkskrieger was a key person in the recruitment drive, which focused on finding people with legal access to firearms and security licences. [20] [36] [37]
Richard Tobin and The Base were linked to synagogue vandalism in Racine, Wisconsin, and Hancock, Michigan, which occurred a day apart in September 2019. [32] Court documents allege that Tobin organized the vandalism, then named the two members of The Base who he assigned to vandalize the synagogues. Tobin called the event "Operation Kristallnacht". [38]
Yousef O. Barasneh, a Neo-Nazi Arab whose father immigrated from Amman, spray-painted swastikas and other anti-Semitic symbols and slogans on Beth Israel Sinai Congregation in the city of Racine, Wisconsin sometime between September 15 and 23, 2019. [39]
On 16 January 2020, three members of The Base were arrested by the FBI just before a gun rights protest, 2020 VCDL Lobby Day, was scheduled to be held at the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond. [40] The FBI had six members under surveillance for several months and had set up CCTV cameras inside the group's apartment to observe them and to prevent them from causing any harm. [41] According to FBI documents, three members were discussing "the planning of violence at a specific event in Virginia, scheduled for January 20, 2020." [42] On January 17, the trio were indicted for illicit activities. [43] The next day, three additional members were arrested for plotting to "derail trains" and poison water supplies. [44] FBI recordings released in November 2021 showed two of the men, Patrik Jordan Mathews and Brian Lemley, discussed mass murder of black persons to trigger a race war; they were both sentenced to nine years in prison in October 2021. [45]
On the night of December 11, 2019, two members – Justen Watkins and Alfred Gorman – appeared at a residential home in the town of Dexter, Michigan. There, they shined lights and took photographs on the front porch. Watkins and Gorman incorrectly believed the home belonged to an "antifa" podcaster, Daniel Harper of I Don't Speak German , and the pair intended to threaten him. Unknown to them, it was the home of an unrelated family. Watkins and Gorman uploaded their photos to a Telegram channel used by The Base. On October 29, 2020, Watkins and Gorman were apprehended by the FBI, and charged with gang membership, unlawful posting of a message, and using computers to commit a crime. [46] [47] According to Vice News, between the attempted intimidation incident and his arrest, leaked chat logs revealed Watkins was planning a "fortified compound" in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In the said logs, he was discussing plans to purchase homes and land (and subsequently fortify them) with members on Wire, wanting to establish an enclave to house and train members. [48]
In April 2021, two men were indicted in Floyd County, Georgia, for alleged theft and ritual beheading of an animal. The assistant district attorney said a "dozen members of The Base" participated in the blood-drinking ritual. [49]
Rinaldo Nazzaro uses the pseudonyms Norman Spear and Roman Wolf. [19] [50] Nazzaro used to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as an analyst and he also used to work as a contractor for The Pentagon, [51] and he also claims to have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. [52] Nazzaro owned a security contracting firm, Omega Solutions International LLC. He is a white supremacist and a supporter of the Northwest Territorial Imperative, which proposes the creation of "a separatist ethnostate in the Pacific north-west". [50]
With his wife, Nazzaro resides in Saint Petersburg, Russia, according to BBC News; an apartment in the city was purchased in his wife's name in July 2018, the same month in which The Base was founded. [53] A video posted online in May 2019 shows Nazzaro, apparently in Russia, wearing a t-shirt with an image of President Vladimir Putin and the words "Russia, absolute power". [53] The BBC also reported that in 2019, Nazzaro was listed as a guest at a Russian government security exhibition in Moscow. [53] Some members of The Base suspected that Nazzaro was connected to Russian intelligence, which Nazzaro denies. [52] In November 2020, a feature-length interview with Nazzaro was broadcast on Russian state television. [15]
Justen Michael Watkins was the leader of The Base from 2020 until 2021 when Rinaldo Nazzaro retook leadership of the group and reconfigured it in April 2021 to "protect it from infiltrators". [54] [55] In October 2020, he was charged in connection to an incident in December 2019 in which he encouraged (via messages) other members of The Base to target a family's home. It was later discovered that he and two other members had entered two abandoned properties formerly operated by the Michigan Department of Corrections in Caro to host firearm drills. Regarding the activity in MDoC proprety, Justen Michael Watkins was charged with:
On April 11, 2022, he pled guilty to conspiracy to train for a civil disorder and felony firearm in a plea agreement stipulating that he will serve 32 months to 4 years of incarceration and a second consecutive sentence of two years. In his plea, Watkins admitted that he visited the MDoC facility to perform firearms training there with multiple others. He was then sentenced in accordance with the plea agreement. [56]
On March 29, 2024, the Michigan Supreme Court denied Watkins's appeal (he was 26 at that time). The Michigan Court of Appeals reversed a decision earlier in May 2023 from the Tuscola County Circuit Court that granted Watkins a resentencing. [56]
As of 2024 [update] , Watkins is serving his sentence at Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility as a Level 4 inmate. [57]
Jason Lee Van Dyke, the former lawyer and one-time leader of the Proud Boys, was alleged in 2020 to have tried to plot the assassination of a rival, [58] attempted to join the Base, but was denied membership for being a "huge liability". [59] In an effort to convince the group's leaders that he should be allowed to join the Base and would be a productive member, Van Dyke offered up his expertise in weapons training and his property in Decatur, Texas for a paramilitary camp. [59]
A combat engineer master corporal, Patrik Jordan Mathews (a.k.a. Dave Arctorum or "coincidence detector") of the Canadian Armed Forces Reserve, was identified as one of the three arrested. Earlier, on 16 August 2019, Mathews had been outed as organizing a terrorist cell for The Base and Atomwaffen in Manitoba via undercover reporting by the Winnipeg Free Press . He was also described as putting up posters to "intimidate and threaten local anti-fascist activists". Other posters in Manitoba, which began appearing in July, stated "Save your Race, Join The Base" and "The Base: Learn Train Fight". [22] [31] Vice News also discovered he had participated in a training camp in the U.S. state of Georgia. [60] On August 19, the RCMP searched his home in Beausejour, Manitoba and seized guns. [61] The military had been alerted about Mathews in April and launched an investigation in July. [62] By August 24, he had gone missing and was reported as being voluntarily released from the Forces. [63] [64]
Mathews' truck was found near the border in Piney, Manitoba, [65] and it was assumed he had entered the United States illegally. [66] [60] [67] [68] It is possible Mathews was assisted by a Minnesota cell of The Base. [69] Arrested in January 2020, Mathews and Brian M. Lemley Jr., 33, pleaded guilty to weapons charges in Greenbelt, Maryland, and were sentenced in October 2021 to nine years in prison. William G. Bilbrough IV, 19, was sentenced to five years for illegally bringing the Canadian into the USA. [70]
Luke Austin Lane was a cell leader of The Base and an Order of Nine Angles follower. His cell consisted of a few members in Georgia and was particularly militant. He practiced firearms training with his cell, videoing their activities and posting the film online for propaganda purposes. In January 2020, Lane and two accomplices, Jacob Oliver Kaderli and Michael John Helterbrand [71] were arrested for allegedly stockpiling weapons and plotting to kill a couple they thought were anti-fascist and their young children. In preparation, Lane, along with dozen other people, engaged in paramilitary training, consumed psychedelic drugs, sacrificed a ram, and drank its blood in an occult ritual on his property. [52]
Aryan Nations is a North American antisemitic, neo-Nazi and white supremacist hate group that was originally based in Kootenai County, Idaho, about 2+3⁄4 miles (4.4 km) north of the city of Hayden Lake. Richard Girnt Butler founded Aryan Nations in the 1970s.
The Order, also known as Silent Brotherhood, was a Neo-Nazi terrorist organization active in the United States between September 1983 and December 1984. The group raised funds via armed robbery. Ten members were tried and convicted for racketeering, and two for their role in the 1984 murder of radio talk show host Alan Berg.
Robert Jay Mathews was an American neo-Nazi activist and the leader of The Order, an American white supremacist militant group. He was burned alive during a shootout with approximately 75 federal law enforcement agents who surrounded his house on Whidbey Island, near Freeland, Washington.
James Nolan Mason is an American neo-Nazi. Mason is an ideologue for the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi terrorist organization. After growing disillusioned with the mass movement approach of neo-Nazi movements, he began advocating for a white supremacist revolution through terrorism. He was referred to as the "Godfather of Fascist Terrorism" in the Fair Observer. He has been convicted of assault and weapons charges, as well as charged with sexual exploitation and possession of pornographic images of a minor. In 2021, Mason was one of only two individuals sanctioned by the Canadian Government on its list of terror-related entities.
The Northwest Territorial Imperative was a white separatist idea put forward in the 1970s–1980s by white nationalist, white supremacist, white separatist and neo-Nazi groups within the United States. According to it, members of these groups were encouraged to relocate to a region of the Northwestern United States—Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Western Montana—with the intention to eventually turn the region into an Aryan ethnostate. Some definitions of the project include the entire states of Montana and Wyoming, plus Northern California.
Right-wing terrorism, hard right terrorism, extreme right terrorism or far-right terrorism is terrorism that is motivated by a variety of different right-wing and far-right ideologies. It can be motivated by Ultranationalism, neo-Nazism, anti-communism, neo-fascism, ecofascism, ethnonationalism, religious nationalism, anti-immigration, anti-semitism, anti-government sentiment, patriot movements, sovereign citizen beliefs, and occasionally, it can be motivated by opposition to abortion, and homophobia. Modern right-wing terrorism largely emerged in Western Europe in the 1970s, and after the Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, it emerged in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Accelerationism is a range of revolutionary and reactionary ideas in left-wing and right-wing ideologies that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change, infrastructure sabotage and other processes of social change to destabilize existing systems and create radical social transformations, otherwise referred to as "acceleration". It has been regarded as an ideological spectrum divided into mutually contradictory left-wing and right-wing variants, both of which support the indefinite intensification of capitalism and its structures as well as the conditions for a technological singularity, a hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible.
Siege is an anthology of essays first published as a single volume in 1992, written in 1980s by James Mason, a neo-Nazi and associate of the cult leader Charles Manson. After growing disillusioned with the mass movement approach of neo-Nazi movements, he began advocating for white revolution through terrorism. Referred to as the "Godfather of Fascist Terrorism", Mason has been proscribed as a "terrorist entity" in Canada.” Mason originally wrote the essays for the eponymous newsletter of the National Socialist Liberation Front, a militant splinter of the American Nazi Party.
The Atomwaffen Division, also known as the National Socialist Resistance Front, was an international far-right extremist and neo-Nazi terrorist network. Formed in 2013 and based in the Southern United States, it expanded across the United States and it had also expanded into the United Kingdom, Argentina, Canada, Germany, the Baltic states, and other European countries. The group was described as a part of the alt-right by some journalists, but it rejected the label and it was considered extreme even within that movement. Atomwaffen was described as "one of the most violent neo-Nazi movements in the 21st century". It was listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and it was also designated as a terrorist group by multiple governments, including the United Kingdom and Canada.
Antipodean Resistance (AR) is an Australian neo-Nazi hate group. The group, formed in October 2016, uses the slogan "We're the Hitlers you've been waiting for" and makes use of Nazi symbols such as the swastika and the Nazi salute. AR's logo features the Black Sun and Totenkopf with an Akubra hat, a laurel wreath and a swastika.
I Don't Speak German is a podcast about white nationalism in the United States, self-described as "a podcast confronting white nationalism one asshole at a time" by its hosts Daniel Harper and Jack Graham.
The Russian Imperial Movement is a Russian ultranationalist and white supremacist militant organization which operates out of Russia. The group seeks to create a new Russian Empire. Its paramilitary wing is the Russian Imperial Legion. During the Donbas War, it recruited and trained thousands of far-right volunteers who joined the Russian separatist forces in Ukraine. It has also given training to other far-right groups in Europe and North America.
Paul Nicholas Miller, better known as GypsyCrusader, is an American white supremacist internet personality. Described as antisemitic and racist by various advocacy groups and the United States Department of Justice, he frequently broadcasts himself on the internet cosplaying as various contemporary popular culture personas. In June 2021, Miller pleaded guilty to charges related to unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition, leading to a 41-month-long imprisonment. He is known to have cosplayed as the Joker, the Riddler, Mario, and others while video chatting with strangers on the now defunct website Omegle. He is known for his advocacy for a race war, espousing white supremacy and neo-Nazism. He has been tied to multiple alt-right and far-right organizations, including the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo movement.
Patrik Jordan Mathews is a Canadian white supremacist and former Armed Forces Reserve combat engineer. In 2021, he was sentenced in the United States to 9 years in prison for criminal activities connected to The Base, a neo-Nazi and far-right accelerationist group that has been described as terrorist organization.
Far-right terrorism in Australia refers to far-right-ideologically influenced terrorism on Australian soil. Far-right extremist groups have existed in Australia since the early 20th century, however the intensity of terrorist activities have oscillated until the present time. A surge of neo-Nazism based terrorism occurred in Australia during the 1960s and the 1970s, carried out primarily by members of the Ustaše organisation. However in the 21st century, a rise in jihadism, the White genocide conspiracy theory, and after effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have fuelled far-right terrorism in Australia. Both the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) are responsible for responding to far-right terrorist threats in Australia.
The Active Club Network are decentralized cells of white supremacy and neo-Nazi groups active in many U.S. states, with multiple chapters in other nations. Largely inspired by the defunct street-fighting Rise Above Movement formed by Robert Rundo in 2017 and hooliganism, the network was created in January 2021 and promotes mixed martial arts to fight against what it asserts is a system that is targeting the white race, as well as a "warrior spirit" to prepare for a forthcoming race war. Some extremism researchers have characterized the network as a "shadow or stand-by army" which is awaiting activation as the need for it arises.
On September 19, 2019, members of neo-Nazi accelerationist paramilitary group The Base vandalized Beth Israel Sinai Congregation in Racine, Wisconsin, and Temple Jacob in Hancock, Michigan in the US, in a campaign the group dubbed "Operation Kristallnacht". Three members of The Base were arrested and subsequently found guilty.
According to a report by the civil rights group the Southern Poverty Law Center the Order of Nine Angles "holds an important position in the niche, international nexus of occult, esoteric, and/or satanic neo-Nazi groups." Several newspapers have reported that the O9A is linked to a number of high-profile figures from the far right and that the group is affiliated and shares members with neo-Nazi terrorist groups such as Atomwaffen Division and proscribed National Action, Sonnenkrieg Division, Combat 18 and Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM). Also the leader of the eco-extremist terrorist Individualists Tending to the Wild claimed to have been influenced by the O9A.
Spear, who claims to be an Iraq and Afghan War veteran, is a self-proclaimed white nationalist with a significant online following. His latest act involves bringing neo-Nazis together, regardless of affiliation and ideology, into a militant fascist umbrella organization. His tool for doing this? A social network which he calls "The Base," which is already organizing across the US and abroad, specifically geared toward partaking in terrorism. Advertisement
The Base, a neo-Nazi group which aims to provide military and survivalist training to fellow white supremacists, has been ramping up its activities including a massive recruitment campaign and a planned 'hate camp.'
Several Canadian military members have been accused of having ties to AWD, including Master Cpl. Patrik Matthews, a reservist who went missing in August after being relieved of his duties. It was suspected that Matthews was a recruiter for the neo-Nazi group.
Investigators say Richard Tobin, 18, of Brooklawn, used the neo-Nazi social network The Base to recruit the perpetrators who carried out the September attacks on synagogues in Michigan and Wisconsin.
According to Manitoba RCMP, a missing person report was filed for Patrik Mathews on Monday. In a statement they provided to Vice, Manitoba RCMP said that the 26-year-old 'was last seen by family members in Beausejour on the evening of August 24, 2019'.
A survivalist-themed paramilitary group, The Base has factions across the U.S. and Canada. The group reportedly hosted multiple 'hate camps' in northern U.S. states this year. Mathews claimed to have crossed the border multiple times to attend U.S.-based hate camps, the Free Press reported after an undercover investigation of the group. But he was reportedly turned away from the border during a trip to a hate camp this spring, prompting The Base to discourage international trips, while encouraging an increased presence in Canada.
A former Canadian soldier who is accused of participation in a neo-Nazi terror group is suspected by Minnesota police to have recently illegally entered the US by crossing into rural Minnesota, a state where an active cell of the group is believed to be present.