January 25, 2020
AND YOU THOUGHT THE tRUMPBOTS HATED WHISTLEBLOWERS BEFORE... (slur alert):
Prepping for a race war: documents reveal inner workings of neo-Nazi group (Jason Wilson, 25 Jan 2020, tHE gUARDIAN)
The Guardian studied leaked materials relayed by the whistleblower and pursued other lines of inquiry to exclusively reveal the real identity of the Base's secretive leader as Rinaldo Nazzaro, 46, from New Jersey.Nazzaro is currently living in Russia with his Russian wife. Until the Guardian's exposé little was known about his background and he was only known by the alias "Norman Spear".The exclusive materials show how the group has planned terror campaigns; vandalized synagogues; organised armed training camps; and recruited new members who extolled an ideology of all-out race war. The cache of documents and recordings gives a rare insight into how such neo-Nazi terror groups operate.The Base - an approximate English translation of "al-Qaida" - began recruiting in late 2018 and pushing for both the collapse of society and a race war. Members of the group stand accused of federal hate crimes, murder plots and firearms offenses, and have harbored international fugitives in recent months.It was the very real threat of violence that convinced the whistleblower to infiltrate the Base and stay undercover for months, gaining the trust of other members, only to later contact the Guardian to expose them.The Guardian's source said that in recent months "the pieces were coming together to build the infrastructure for a strong, neo-Nazi militant underground, with places to train, to make connections and expand the network." He felt he had to act to stop it.The source said: "The 'Norman Spear' I spoke with told me in no uncertain terms that the purpose of the Base is to cause the collapse of our society, not survive it."The Guardian's source, an anti-Nazi activist, rose to a position of trust within the group, which allowed him to take thousands of screenshots in chatrooms used by the Base since 2018.In November 2018, those chats were infiltrated by antifa activists, and members were outed, or "doxxed", amid early media reporting. At this point, the Base tightened up vetting processes and moved their chats to an encrypted platform called Wire.Under the motto "there is no political solution" the group embraces an "accelerationist" ideology, which holds that acts of violence and terror are required to push liberal democracy towards collapse, preparing the way for white supremacists to seize power and establish an ethno-state. [...]Although inside the group Tobin was vicious, militant and angry, a custody hearing attended by the Guardian in Camden, New Jersey, revealed the defendant as a pale, nervous, overweight teenager.None of his former comrades had made the journey to the gloomy courtroom in downtown Camden, but he was attended by an older female relative dragging an oxygen canister behind her, several prosecutors, and one man identified as an FBI agent.After the court heard about his fantasies of violence - including "suicide by cop" and machete attacks - and how a mental health crisis and infighting in Atomwaffen Division and the Base had driven him to talk to special agents, he was refused bail.His profile seems to be typical: new recruits are disproportionately younger men. The official age limit is 18 but this is frequently relaxed, and several members are 17. Many are in their late teens and early 20s.
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 25, 2020 8:52 AM
