The Base: Exporting Accelerationist Terror
A Hatewatch investigation has revealed that the U.S.-centered accelerationist white power group The BaseĚýhad a sprawling international network of recruits and overseas cells that was even more extensive than that revealed in a recent BBC investigation.
After BBC TVâs âPanoramaâ 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 Baseâs own internal chats show that the network, led by Rinaldo Nazzaro (who operated online under the pseudonyms âNorman Spearâ and âRoman Wolfâ), had some success in exporting both itsĚýideology and organizing model to Europe and settler cultures such as Australia.
The materials show that the group made significant inroads into parts of Australiaâs far right, and in particular the Lads Society, a white nationalist group that once invited Brenton Tarrant, the Australian who murdered 51 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, to be a member.
They also show how local Australian far-right activists acted as virtual franchisees for The Base, finding fresh recruits in the ranks of the Lads Society, a local white nationalist network, and also vetting a man who had previously run for election to Australiaâs parliament as a member of a right-wing populist party.
âNorman Spearâ: Rinaldo Nazzaro and the beginning of The Base
In late 2017, under the alias âNorman Spear,â Rinaldo Nazzaro began promoting an idea with a long history among white supremacists: that the Pacific Northwest could secede from the United States to create a white ethnostate.
The proposal had previously been associated with white supremacist Harold CovingtonĚýand 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 âButler Plan.â
Covington, who died in 2018, had a long historyĚýin the organized white power movement. By the time of his death, however, his Northwest Front organization was largely inactive, and Covingtonâs main activity in the movement was writing propagandistic speculative fiction, some of which touched on race war and the establishment of an ethnostate in the Pacific Northwest.
In his 2007 novel âThe Brigade,â Covington set out a scenario in which a guerrilla group, the Northwest Volunteer Army, is carrying out insurgent warfare against the administration of President Hillary Clinton, who has commenced a plan of âwhite genocide.â In the novel, the Northwest Volunteer Armyâs motto is âEx Gladio Libertas,â Latin for âFreedom comes from the sword,â which The Base Ěýin online recruiting materials.
In podcasts and social media posts at that time, âNorman Spearâ praised Covington and the âButler Plan.â He did so in an episode of Lone Wolf Radio, a podcast hosted by British white nationalist Chris White, in December 2017. White introduced Nazzaro as a Northwest Front activist and ânorthwest migrant.â
Also in late 2017, âSpearâ released a series of videos spelling out a theory of ârevolutionary struggleâ with the stated aim of âcoercing the system and making it capitulate to political demands.â Topics included âlone wolf operations,â âleaderless resistanceâ and guerrilla warfare. He advocated for guerrilla struggle wherein âlone wolvesâ would carry out acts of violence as a form of âpropaganda of the deed,â and an above-ground leadership would negotiate with âthe systemâ to achieve its military goals.
The argument was for acts of terrorism, which would bring about a condition of âsiegeâ as the state imposed unsustainable condition of martial law, at which time it would negotiate with guerrilla leaders. âVictory isn't inherently dependent on physically defeating the enemy,â âSpearâ said in the video. âGuerrillas win if they donât lose,â and the central aim was to carve off sovereign territory from the state.
âSpearâ 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 in the âRead SIEGEâ group on white power-friendly âalt-techâ 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 âBase Global,â Nazzaro Ěýthree 10-acre blocks of undeveloped land in remote Ferry County, Washington, but maintained his principal residence in Russia.
Spear also Ěýfrom imprisoned members of the accelerationist neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen DivisionĚý(AWD), one of the groups that sought to put Masonâs 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 Baseâs inner circle that in truth, The Base was an âaccelerationistâ 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.
The Base and accelerationism
In most of the recorded vetting interviews obtained by °Ä˛ĘżŞ˝ą, standard questions for potential recruits included whether they considered themselves national socialists; whether or not they had read âSIEGE,â the compilation of Masonâs newsletters that became the central text of the accelerationist movement; and whether they believed âa political solutionâ could remedy the perceived genocide of white people.
The ideal recruit would answer, respectively, yes, yes and no.
The final question, on the feasibility of âpolitical solutionsâ to so-called âwhite genocide,â marks a defining characteristic of The Base, and the accelerationist ideology to which it adhered.
The false belief that a conspiracy exists to carry out âwhite genocide,â or to effect a âgreat replacementâ of white Americans through mass immigration, is widely prevalent across the racist far right, from outright neo-Nazis, to so-called âidentitarianâ groups, to influential Republican officials. Many white nationalists hold, again falsely, that this âgenocideâ or âreplacementâ has been orchestrated by Jews.
As Hatewatchâs primer on accelerationismĚýdetails, this belief has allowed white power movements to portray their own violence as a matter of racial self-defense. White power movements are necessarily violent because their various political projects, such as the creation of a white ethnostate, cannot be achieved without violence. But before accelerationism gained momentum, many groups and individuals sought to downplay or obfuscate this violence.
In 2016 and 2017, some did this successfully enough to reach the threshold of mainstream politics.
During and immediately after Donald Trumpâs successful run for president in 2016, many so-called âalt-rightâ groups â which included white nationalists with such conspiracy-minded racist beliefs â felt emboldened by the victory of a politician who they considered to share at least some of their values, and who they felt they had played a part in electing.
Some were enthused enough to promote their beliefs more openly, using tactics associated with mainstream forms of political advocacy in liberal democracies. Throughout 2016 and 2017, groups such as Identity EvropaĚý(now called the American Identity Movement) openly participated in rallies, street protests, campus recruitment and publicity campaigns. Many had platforms on mainstream social media services.
Others decided that the âpolitical solutionâ was a false promise. Some of them came to believe that pluralist, multiracial democracy was headed for inevitable collapse, and that they should help it on its way by joining one of the burgeoning neo-Nazi accelerationist groups.
Atomwaffen Division was the template for accelerationist neo-Nazism. Following the ideas of Mason, whom they adopted as a kind of spiritual patriarch, Atomwaffen advocated terroristic violence as a political tool. Having abandoned electoral politics and the mainstream political process as futile, âopticsâ were of little concern.
Just as accelerationism was gaining influence, Nazzaro appeared on social media in the guise of Norman Spear.
Before The Base was formed, Nazzaro raised his profile in far-right spaces online by claiming he had served in the military and had experience with intelligence work. While The Base was operating, Nazzaro reiterated its emphasis on action. He demanded that members engage in training and meet-ups, and that potential recruits detail any skills that they could bring to the group or teach other members.
This practical orientation, his embrace of ideas important to survivalist and apocalyptic prepper movements, the openness of the network to members of other organizations, and his adoption of Covingtonâs project of a white ethnostate in the Pacific Northwest made Nazzaroâs offering distinct from Atomwaffen Division and other emerging accelerationist outfits.
The Base struggled early on after leaks from its chats on an app called Riot were exposed by an antifascist group operating in the Pacific Northwest. The group gradually reestablished protocols for internal communication and vetting for new members using the encrypted messaging platform, Wire.
Its brand â though drawing heavily on U.S.-specific white supremacist movements â proved highly exportable to white power individuals and groups around the world.
The Base eventually recruited members in Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and Australia.
Eventually, some members of the group began acting on the hate The Base fostered. Former members in Ěýand Wisconsin stand accused of conspiring to vandalize synagogues, the Georgia cell with plotting an assassination. Charging documents for the cell based in Delaware and Maryland allege that the men discussed firing at random into a pro-gun rally in Virginia last January.
Nazzaroâs claim that the group had no formal member list, and even no formal existence, allowed a tolerance for âdouble-patchingâ â or dual membership in another white supremacist group. The Base was designed as an umbrella that could draw in people who had been radicalized in other groups, like Atomwaffen Division.
Richard Tobin, 18, one of those arrested in relation to the desecration of synagogues in Michigan and Wisconsin, was a member of both neo-Nazi accelerationist groups.
Volkskrieger: The Australian connection
Late in the groupâs active history, it began recruiting in a country whose history of indigenous dispossession, white supremacy and xenophobic politics is on a parallel track with the U.S.
In late October 2019, members of The Baseâs vetting committee received a bundle of identically formatted PDF documents from five Australian men.
A sixth, who operated under the alias âVolkskriegerâ within The Base and elsewhere online, appointed as Australian recruiter for the group in 2019, had acted as a virtual local franchisee in bringing these recruits forward for the group.
The group had had several Australian applicants and had accepted some as members. But until late 2019, according to audio recordings, none had been as dedicated as Volkskrieger, who according to open source materials and internal communications obtained by the °Ä˛ĘżŞ˝ą, lives in the vicinity of Perth, Western Australia.
After Spear and other Base members were banned from Gab after , Volkskrieger was one of the few left to carry the groupâs banner. On Gab, in May 2019, he posted Western Australia-specific advertising for the group, advising potential recruits to contact the groupâs main email address.
In June, he posted photographs showing that design being used in a poster run in Perthâs Hyde Park. At this time, as revealed in a voice chat with The Baseâs leadership recorded on Oct. 20, 2019, he was the only standing Australian member of the group.
Apart from poster runs, Volkskrieger claimed to have used more active methods, and his existing network of white supremacists in Australia, to find recruits.
In chats on the encrypted messaging application, Wire, Volkskrieger claimed on May 28, 2019, that he was âmeeting some West Aussie NatSoc [National Socialist] group today, if all goes well I might be able to send some guys our way.â
Eventually, this dedication to the cause was rewarded. In the October voice chat, Nazzaro, other senior leaders, and Volkskrieger discussed his new role as The Baseâs lead Australian recruiter.
In that conversation, Nazzaro told Volkskrieger, âYouâve been really solid for us,"Ěýspecifying that âYouâve postered, youâve produced some content for us, youâve postered on Gab.â
Nazzaro expressed dissatisfaction with the progress made in Australia up until that point, saying, âWeâve had 7 Australians come and go,â and âWeâve probably had a dozen apply,â adding, âWe think there is potential there,â and âWe need someone to lead the charge.â
Later in the call, Volkskrieger mentions collaborating on a promo image for an Australian Base cell with with âMatthias,â a California-based admin of an accelerationist website, FascistForge.
He also said that at that time, there were new Australian members in FascistForge who might be recruited for The Base.
In the call, the men agreed to establish a separate email account for the Australian cell, and Nazzaro and others coached Volkskrieger on methods of email vetting.
Within two months, Volkskrieger presented the group with five applicants who were ready for vetting calls, along with his own commentary on the quality of the recruits and their pathways into neo-Nazi accelerationism.
The applications and vetting interviews reviewed by Hatewatch showed that the men who applied for Base membership came from other white nationalist groups, after growing dissatisfied with those groupsâ unwillingness to embrace more extreme tactics.
The Base and the Lads: Connecting with Australian white supremacists
In the May voice call, Volkskrieger describes his involvement in a series of groups on Australiaâs fractious far right.
He explains that he needs to conceal his Base membership from his comrades in the Society of Western Australian Nationalists (SWAN), which does not allow dual patching.
SWAN is a regional breakaway from the Lads Society, a national network of white nationalists founded in 2017 by prominent local far right activists previously associated with the anti-Muslim United Patriots Front, including Blair Cottrell, Neil Erikson and Thomas Sewell.
They were soon joined by other local extremists including Jacob Hersant, who was Ěýof local neo-Nazi accelerationist group, Antipodean Resistance.
Like Atomwaffen Division, Antipodean Resistance Ěýof the IronMarch forum, which helped shaped the development of accelerationist ideology and aesthetics.
Between Volkskrieger and the five applicants he brought to The Base, four claimed some involvement in Lads Society or SWAN, including one who claimed to be the Queensland chapter leader. Of the remaining two, one came to group via FascistForge, and another heard about the group on the âGoy Talkâ website, one of a number of online hubs for the alt-right.
Lads Society has conducted a range of activities â both public and private â aimed at building a cadre of white nationalist activists and injecting their talking points into mainstream Australian political debate.
Away from the public eye, the group has operated underground âfight clubsâ and maintains clubhouses in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
In 2018, reporters Ěýthe Lads Societyâs involvement in significant far-right infiltration of the youth branch of the conservative National Party.
But the group â and especially Cottrell and Sewell, its figureheads â have also sought the media limelight with rallies and stunts.
In 2019, Ěýon St. Kilda Beach, in the midst of a Ěýabout the supposed activities of âAfrican gangsâ in the city of Melbourne.
Cottrellâs, Eriksonâs and Sewellâs previous organization, the United Patriots Front, was Ěýduring anti-Muslim mosque protests in the Australian city of Bendigo.
In 2015, members of the group beheaded a dummy mocked up as a crude representation of an ISIS fighter, spilling fake blood on the ground outside Bendigoâs City Hall.
That stunt led to Cottrell, Erikson and another UPF member, Christopher Shortis, being convicted and fined for inciting contempt for Muslims.
After Tarrantâs March 2019 massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, Ěýthat he had contacted Tarrant about joining Lads Society at its formation in 2017. Responding to other membersâ concerns that Tarrantâs attack may have been a âfalse flagâ operation, Sewell said that Tarrant had in fact âbeen on the scene for a while.â
Ěýshowed that Tarrant had been a devoted online follower of United Patriots Front, and Cottrell in particular. When Cottrell and Sewell livestreamed their ecstatic reaction to the election of Donald Trump in November 2016, Tarrant reportedly wrote a series of comments on the groupâs Facebook wall.
âKnocked it out of the park tonight Blair,â he wrote. "Your retorts had me smiling, nodding, cheering and often laughing.
He added, âNever believed we would have a true leader of the nationalist movement in Australia, and especially not so early in the gameâ.
Like Tarrant, many young men would be drawn into the orbit of Sewell and Cottrell, the Lads Society and other groups that overlapped with or broke away from the group.
Andy Fleming, an antifascist researcher who Ěýa number of members of the group, estimated that the Lads Society has around 80 core members, with scores more in the groupâs orbit.
The politician
In one vetting interview obtained by Hatewatch, a panel of Base members, including Nazzaro, tested a recruit Hatewatch has identified as a former political candidate for the right-wing populist Pauline Hansonâs One Nation Party (PHON). Hatewatch determined this using internal materials from The Base, material on the public record and other materials provided by Australian antifascist group the White Rose Society,
His efforts to join The Base suggest that the barriers between anti-immigrant right-wing populist electoral parties and accelerationist terror networks are permeable, and that progress through the stages of radicalization can happen very quickly.
In the interview, a necessary step for new recruits, Dean Smith, under the aliases âWillâ and âWLL2PWER,âĚýdescribed himself as a Western Australian member of PHON who had been a candidate for the party in 2019.
He said that he had signed up for a five-year membership in 2019, and that he was still a member at the time of his vetting interview with American members of The Base.
The interview took place more than a month after the first member of The Base was arrested. Richard Tobin, 18, of New Jersey, made international news after he was Ěýon Nov. 19, 2019, with federal hate crimes for allegedly orchestrating the vandalism of synagogues hundreds of miles away, in the midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin.
This did not deter Smith from seeking access to the network. When he was asked about his political background, he replied that he had âbeen a member of One Nation for almost a year now. I signed up with them in May when I was still believing in the political system.â
âBeing around that sort of party structure and political structure in Australia, I sort of lost faith in the whole thing. And then I decided take more direct action, and then got pushed on to the Society of West Australian Nationalists (SWAN),â he said.
His loss of faith in PHON, he said, was not just due to their slow progress. He told The Base interviewers, âTheyâre all race mixers and it turns my gut upside down.â
But he added that â(SWANâs) progress is too slow on things like demographic change and how the political atmosphere is turning towards our race,â referencing theâGreat Replacementâ conspiracy theory, which holds that mass immigration is a deliberate effort to wipe out the white race.
Smith also described how between joining PHON and SWAN, he had run as a candidate.
âSo I was a member of One Nation maybe two months, three months prior (to joining SWAN). Because I actually ran for the last Federal Election in Australia as a candidate of One Nation.â
He also describes how he âbecame more and more extreme and passionate about my views and it was harder and harder to speak out about it for fear of losing my political career.â
âAnd I thought, well, I have to sell myself to the devil to have a career in politics, or I can leave my career in politics and live an authentic life. And I think that, you know, leaving politics behind is a much better option than going for it,â he said.
In his written application, submitted prior to the interview, Smith described his ideology as âNatSoc (National Socialism)Ěýubermenschnihilism,â a reference to the concept of the âĂźbermensch,â or superman, derived from the work of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Though Nietzscheâs work has been drawn on by a diverse range of thinkers and political traditions, fascists from the 20th-century European interwar period on have made simplified and selective readings of Nietzsche, focusing on his antisemitism, his opposition to democracy and feminism, his anticipation of a superior human type, and his affinity for a warrior ethos to claim him as their own.
The commonalities between Smithâs online, far-right persona and his comments as a candidate helped reveal his identity.
Prior to the leak of the interview, Smith had been identified as WLL2PWR by the White Rose Society, an Australian antifascist group. Their materials were provided exclusively to the °Ä˛ĘżŞ˝ą.
The reference to the philosopher Nietzsche links Smithâs username to his far-right YouTube channel and Twitter account, both of which are also run under the WLL2PWER moniker.
On the Twitter account, Smith has repeatedly expressed disgust at diversity initiatives in a local technical college.
Smithâs social media accounts make frequent references to Nietzsche and Nietzschean philosophy. In Smithâs Ěýin the Albany Advertiser on May 10, 2019, he said he would like to meet âFriedrich Nietzsche, Jesus Christ, Julius Caesar, and Thomas Jefferson.â
In his written application to The Base, Smith says he is in his early 20s, and has skills including âwelding experience, and heavy machineryâ.
In his interview, he says he is 23.
A ĚýˇÉžąłŮłó The West Australian on May 12, 2019, said that Smith had âentered the political contest only a few weeks ago,â and that while âpolitics is a new venture for him, he believes in his partyâs policies.â
In media interviews and in his Ěýearlier in the year, Smith said he was 22 and he worked as a laborer.
Smith made other connections between his WLL2PWR persona and PHON in 2019.
On April 14, 2019, on his WLL2PWR YouTube channel, Smith Ěýfellow PHON WA candidate Tyler Walsh, and gave direct hints in the interview that he was an active PHON member in Western Australia.
At one point he asked Walsh, âWhat inspired you to put your hand up being such a young man like myself to go out there and basically face the world?â
Looking forward to a PHON function in the Perth area, Smith said, âAnd weâve got the meeting tomorrow donât we at Vic Park, is that right?â
He also described the process of joining the party and his interactions with Sheila Mundy, another PHON candidate and influential Western Australian party member.
âI actually personally met Sheila. I think it was February. Iâd just got involved, Iâd just put my membership down for One Nation and then she rang me up three days afterwards and said, âOh hey do you want to catch up and talk about âŚĚýyour local issues,â and Iâm like, âWhat is this, people actually care!ââ
Dean Smith did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the °Ä˛ĘżŞ˝ą.
Ěý
Tyler Walsh, who at the time of reporting was again running for PHON, this time for a seat in the Western Australian parliament, confirmed in email responses to questions that the "wll2pwr" YouTube account belonged to Dean Smith. Walsh denied any close or ongoing relationship with Smith.
"I have not communicated with Mr. Smith since the 2019 Australian Federal Election," Smith wrote. "I am unfamiliar with his personal political positions and beliefs apart from Mr. Smith being supportive of Pauline Hanson's One Nation."
Ěý
Walsh also said that â[Smith] has not had any involvement that I am aware of with Pauline Hanson's One Nation since the most recent federal election.â
Rinaldo Nazzaro did not immediately respond to requests from the °Ä˛ĘżŞ˝ą on his efforts to recruit members in Australia.
After Smith left the vetting call, the Australian white nationalist who had sponsored his application remarked to vetting team members that Smith âhas a mustache that is pretty distinguished.â Smith sported a thick mustache in media and publicity photos during his campaign.
According to internal sources, Smith discontinued his application, choosing to remain with SWAN, who do not allow double-patching.
Exporting racism and violence
At the point in time that the chats, vetting calls and social media records obtained by the °Ä˛ĘżŞ˝ą end, The Base had recruited two Australians, was preparing to vet two more and had interviewed another two, including Smith, who withdrew their applications for their own reasons.
The °Ä˛ĘżŞ˝ą also documentedĚýtwo other Australian men who were fully fledged members who left. In October 2019, Rinaldo Nazzaro asserted that a dozen in total had applied.
The Baseâs success in attracting recruits from Australia, Europe and elsewhere suggests that an accelerationist politics founded on racism, a preparedness for violence, and a contempt for pluralist democracy can be exported, even if its founding tenets are rooted in the history of U.S. white supremacist movements.
This is not the first time that white supremacist ideas and movements have made their way from the United States to Australia. In the 1980s, groups such as National Action and the Australian Nationalist Movement formed under the influence of William Luther Pierceâs white supremacist novel âThe Turner Diaries.â
Under the leadership of Jack van Tongeren, the Australian Nationalist Movement commenced its activities in 1987 in a similar fashion to The Baseâs Volkskrieger, and in the same city: They plastered hundreds of anti-Asian, anti-immigrant posters around Perth.
Then, between 1987 and 1989, members firebombed six Chinese restaurants in the city, carried out a series of warehouse thefts in order to fortify their headquarters, seriously assaulted an anti-racist activist and finally murdered one of their own members they suspected of being a police informant.
Van Tongeren and other members of the group received long prison sentences in 1990. After his release in 2002, van Tongeren committed arson attacks on three more Chinese restaurants in 2004.
In the 1990s, the Southern Cross Hammerskins were formed in Australia as a chapter of the U.S.-originated white power group.
The success of The Base and earlier neo-Nazi movements should be seen in the context of long-standing white supremacy in these settler societies. Following each countryâs dispossession of its indigenous peoples, both engaged in a transnational political project of creating âwhite menâs countriesâ in the nineteenth century by means of immigration exclusion, which was in each case particularly directed at Asian immigrants amid an earlier wave of âwhiter genocideâ flavored racial anxieties.
Influential white men in both countries discussed the preservation of white supremacy extensively, with each other, creating an âimagined community of white men (that) was transnational in its reach, but nationalist in its outcomes, bolstering regimes of border protection and national sovereignty.â
Whiteness in both places was identified with democracy itself. In his 1894 review of Australian politician, Charles Pearsonâs book âNational Life and Character,â which worried that in the coming century the white race would be âelbowed and hustled, and perhaps even thrust asideâ by other races, Theodore Roosevelt wrote:
Nineteenth-century democracy needs no more complete vindication for its existence than the fact that it has kept for the white race the best portions of the New Worldâs surface, temperate America and Australia. Had these regions been under aristocratic governments, Chinese immigration would have been encouraged precisely as the slave-trade is encouraged of necessity by any slave-holding oligarchy, and the result would in a few generations have been even more fatal to the white race; but the democracy, with the clear instinct of race selfishness, saw the race foe, and kept out the dangerous alien.
Understanding this shared history of white supremacy is necessary when considering a present where anti-immigrant politics pervades even mainstream rightwing parties; and, for those who gravitate towards accelerationism, fears of a future in which men such as themselves are subject to a âgreat replacement.â
The Baseâs success in drawing on members of existing local groups, such as the Lads Society, shows how groups seeking to export accelerationist ideology can exploit existing networks of young men who have already commenced down the path of radicalization.
They are also aided by their use of information and communication technologies, including encrypted messaging platforms, which allow them to build global networks, away (or so they think) from the prying eyes of law enforcement and antiracist activists.
This is a story of mutual influence. Just as Iron March led to the creation of Atomwaffen Division and Antipodean Resistance, and just as The Base exerted its pull on an established Australian far right, Tarrant, an Australian and self-professed accelerationist, inspired by racial anxieties about the extinction of the white race, carried out a racist mass murder that in turn influenced violent white supremacists in the United States.
Like most neo-Nazi accelerationists, Base members celebrated Tarrant for his act of terror. In October 2019, following a synagogue attack by a white supremacist in Halle, Germany, that killed two, Base members discussed it on Wire, judging it a failure due to the killerâs inability to enter the synagogue.
One pseudonymous remarked that âOnly if heâd planned more He could of [sic] been up there with Tarrant.â
Brenton Tarrant cited Anders Breivik in his manifesto. After his attack in New Zealand, he was cited by killers who carried out subsequent mass shootings in El Paso and Poway, and by a man who tried to burn down a mosque in Norway.
The transnational accelerationist network that takes in men like Rinaldo Nazzaro and Dean Smith is no more respectful of national borders than it is of pluralism, democracy or human life. White supremacy and violent extremism are shared, global problems.
Photo illustration by °Ä˛ĘżŞ˝ą
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of a messaging app used by The Base. It is called Riot, not Rocket. The version also misstated the timing of Nazzaro's remarks about membership applications. He made those comments in October 2019, not October 2020. We regret the errors.
