The self-proclaimed leader of Michigan-based white supremacist group, The Base, accused of threatening a Dexter family two years ago, has taken a plea deal. Justen Watkins pleaded guilty Monday, April 18, to one felony count of gang membership for his role in the group which is accused of terrorizing a family in Dexter in December 2019 after mistaking their home for the home of a podcaster who speaks out against white supremacists. In pleading guilty, his additional counts of unlawfully posting a message and using a computer to commit a crime will be dismissed at sentencing. Watkins, 25, Bad Axe, and codefendant Alfred Gorman, 35, of Taylor, both waived their preliminary examinations in October 2021, sending their cases to trial. Gorman pleaded guilty Jan. 10 to one felony count of gang membership and was sentenced to four years of probation and to spend one year working alongside a University of Michigan professor of Ethnic Studies. Michigan hate group member sentenced to work with ethnic studies professor, avoids jail time. The Base, founded in 2018, is a white supremacy group that openly advocates for violence and criminal acts against the U.S., and purports to be training for a race war to establish white ethno-nationalist rule in areas of the U.S., including Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, according to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office which is prosecuting the case. The group also traffics in Nazi ideology and extreme anti-Semitism, at one point requiring its members to read neo-Nazi books that urge the collapse of Western civilization.
via mlive: Michigan white supremacist group leader pleads guilty to gang membership