The group’s founder, a former Homeland Security employee who is living in Russia, has retaken a leadership position after briefly leaving the organization. Despite an aggressive two-year-old FBI crackdown, decades of prison time facing some of its members, and a founder who lives in Russia under suspicious terms, the neo-Nazi terror group the Base not only still exists but is trying to recruit again. According to sources familiar with the recent inner workings of the Base, it has somewhat rebounded, though as a shadow of its former self. The founder, Rinaldo Nazzaro, 47, by his own admission, still lingers around the remnants of the group from afar. While at its height it boasted around 60 members, the Base is now said to comprise a dozen or so men nationwide and a bad reputation for being a law enforcement honeypot. In an effort to reinvent itself, the Base, which for a time was under the intense pressures of FBI counterterrorism agents, put together a new, shoddily written—and unreleased—manifesto penned in the winter. The text, obtained by VICE News, offers a glimpse into how one of the more violent, American neo-Nazi groups has recently seen itself and how it planned on continuing to exist in the face of relentless police pressure. (…)
But in a series of emails to VICE News, Nazzaro both suggested he has retaken the reins of the Base and that the “draft” manifesto was the work of a previous leadership structure. He also said that the group was reoriented in mid-April to protect against infiltrators and spies, which have exposed the Base time and again, and that the numbers have changed. “The Base is in a rebuilding phase of sorts,” he said, before claiming he has reorganized the Base. “The network has been reconfigured and is now entirely compartmentalized. Only I know the total number of participants. I won’t reveal that information to you. Anything you’ve heard elsewhere is purely speculation.” (Nazzaro added that the Base doesn’t recognize a formal leadership structure, but did describe himself as “lead network administrator,” a claim that is in lockstep with the violent far-right ideology of “leaderless resistance.”) “Leadership in a terrorist organization is important for recruitment and radicalization,” said Mollie Saltskog, a senior intelligence analyst at the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security firm, when she heard that Nazzaro had retaken a leadership role in the group. In recent months, he had begun a different training network apart from the Base, which he then abandoned. “Having Nazzaro back as the official leader of the Base can boost such efforts.”
via vice: Neo-Nazi Group The Base Is Recruiting Again, Despite FBI Takedown