A Hatewatch investigation has revealed that the U.S.-centered accelerationist white power group The Base had a sprawling international network of recruits and overseas cells that was even more extensive than that revealed in a recent BBC investigation. After BBC TV’s “Panorama” showed how The Base expanded its network to Europe, Hatewatch can reveal that it also had success in expanding to a society whose settler history parallels the U.S.: Australia. Recorded vetting interviews, application documents, social media posts and The Base’s own internal chats show that the network, led by Rinaldo Nazzaro (who operated online under the pseudonyms “Norman Spear” and “Roman Wolf”), had some success in exporting both its ideology and organizing model to Europe and settler cultures such as Australia. (…) The proposal had previously been associated with white supremacist Harold Covington and his Northwest Front organization. Before him, another influential advocate was Christian Identity preacher and Aryan Nations founder Richard Girnt Butler, who until 2000 occupied a compound at Hayden Lake, Idaho. Butler was associated so closely with the idea of a white ethnostate in the Pacific Northwest that it is sometimes known as the “Butler Plan.” (…) The argument was for acts of terrorism, which would bring about a condition of “siege” as the state imposed unsustainable condition of martial law, at which time it would negotiate with guerrilla leaders. “Victory isn’t inherently dependent on physically defeating the enemy,” “Spear” said in the video. “Guerrillas win if they don’t lose,” and the central aim was to carve off sovereign territory from the state. “Spear” thus synthesized the Butler Plan with some of the ideas for destabilizing and defeating liberal democracy put forth by the neo-Nazi who had the most influence on the accelerationist movement, James Mason. Nazzaro began advertising The Base in July 2018 and trying to recruit members. He was also active in the “Read SIEGE” group on white power-friendly “alt-tech” platform, Gab. The group was dedicated to promoting the work and ideas of neo-Nazi author Mason, who advocated terrorism as a means to creating a white ethnostate. In December 2018, through a Delaware LLC called “Base Global,” Nazzaro bought three 10-acre blocks of undeveloped land in remote Ferry County, Washington, but maintained his principal residence in Russia.
Spear also posted messages from imprisoned members of the accelerationist neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division (AWD), one of the groups that sought to put Mason’s ideas into practice. In fall 2018, early recruiting material for The Base stopped short of explicitly advocating for terrorism. Sources who spoke online and in person with Nazzaro, however, say Nazzaro told The Base’s inner circle that in truth, The Base was an “accelerationist” project: Its real purpose was to hasten the collapse of American liberal democracy into civil war, and bring about a white ethnostate in at least part of its current national territory. In encrypted chats, members discussed the methods and efficacy of tactics such as sabotaging infrastructure and the finer points of guerrilla warfare.
via splcenter: The Base: Exporting Accelerationist Terror
