The Base
Not to be confused with Al-Qaeda, a militant islamist organization with a name that translates from Arabic as "The Base".
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| “ | Most of our members are National Socialists and/or fascists, although we also have some run-of-the-mill white nationalists. We have a strong revolutionary and militant current running through The Base. Most of our members are pretty hardcore in that sense. You’re going to be stepping into probably the most extreme group of pro-white people that you can probably come across. | „ |
| ~ Rinaldo Nazzaro to a prospective recruit, August 2019. |
The Base is a neo-Nazi, white supremacist and accelerationist paramilitary hate group and training network associated with the Alt-Right, formed in 2018 by Rinaldo Nazzaro and active in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Europe. It is considered a terrorist group in Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
Nazzaro, who used to work for the FBI and the Pentagon, moved to Russia around the time he created The Base, and directs the group's activities from there. In November 2020, a feature-length interview with Nazzaro was broadcast on Russian state television.
History edit
The Base was officially founded in July 2018, but Rinaldo Nazzaro began building a name for himself within extremist circles well before then. He amassed a following on Twitter, where he began posting about white separatism and offering advice for aspiring white supremacist guerilla fighters in November 2016 under the name “Norman Spear.”
Most of the white nationalist movement saw President Donald Trump’s 2016 election as a victory for their movement and, for some, his election provided proof that the so-called “alt-right” could become a viable insurgent political movement. Nazzaro felt differently. “Politically-speaking [sic],” he wrote in a typical Twitter post, “we’re already beyond the point of no return to vote our way out of this mess unfortunately.”
When The Base launched in mid-2018, its online application asked potential recruits about their training in the military, science and engineering. The group views members with military experience, firearms training and knowledge of explosives as especially valuable.
Nazzaro was frustrated with other white supremacist groups who chose to focus on creating online propaganda while forgoing real-world training. Potential Base recruits needed to be willing to meet up with fellow members. “It’s essentially a networking platform to try to get people who are likeminded and who want to be more active in real life,” Nazzaro said on a 2018 podcast. “We want to build a cadre of trainers across the country and eventually, if possible, develop some formalized training courses.”
Even with their real-world focus, the internet was the primary medium through which The Base organized. Nazzaro launched chat rooms on Riot, an encrypted messaging app, where members could meet, discuss ideology and access white supremacist texts. The chat included a library with PDF copies of books on guerrilla warfare, building firearms and chemical weapons, “escape and evasion,” “psyops,” “survival” and other topics. Recruits had to be vetted by group members before being allowed to join the chat.
Members also set about propagandizing on other platforms such as Twitter and Gab, hoping to lure new recruits. During meetups, members posed for photos wearing skull masks, which they later posted to social media.
Nazzaro made the rounds on white supremacist podcasts to drum up support for his group, receiving high praise from the likes of neo-Nazi Billy Roper, who called him “the most extreme of any guest that I’ve ever had on my podcast.” “We like to say that there’s nothing to our right except the wall and this guy maybe has us beat,” he said of Nazzaro. Despite such praise, The Base leader always came with a disclaimer. “I don’t espouse violence,” he said on Lone Wolf Radio, only moments later telling listeners, “if the Fourteen Words” – a common white supremacist slogan – “really mean something to you, as much as people say it does, then sacrifice is gonna be required one way or the other.”
Members made their intentions clear in the Riot chat. “This shit gets me pumped,” the user Poilu said after an alleged white supremacist named Robert Bowers killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018. “I’m all about violence, but I want to gather with people and plan something out,” the user Rimbaud wrote in response. “Maybe some form of bombing, or something a bit more destructive.”
“It doesn’t need to be zero or zyklon,” Nazzaro told other members in the chat. “For now we need non-attributable action but that will send a message and/or add to acceleration [of the downfall of the state] as much as possible.”
But just as The Base was beginning to build its membership, reporters at Vice acquired screenshots of the group’s internal chat and, in November 2018, published an article detailing the group’s inner workings. After they were contacted by reporters, Twitter removed Nazzaro – who was going by “Norman Spear” – on their platform.
The Base regrouped, moving its internal chat to Wire, another encrypted platform. Returning to social media proved easy and Nazzaro started a new account on Twitter in January 2019, this time going by the name “Roman Wolf.” But as they were finding their way back onto social media, antifascist activists began doxing members of the group, further hindering Nazzaro’s efforts to recruit men into his network.
In response, Nazzaro spent much of early 2019 obsessively focused on doxing antifascist activists and making thinly veiled threats. “Antifa is an unofficial extrajudicial militia of the repressive globalist anti-White ruling elite,” he wrote on Twitter that February. “We must take matters into our own hands to neutralize Antifa intimidation and harassment.” He created a network map supposedly showing the connections between antifascists – who are, in reality, a small and loosely organized network of activists who employ a variety of tactics to counter fascist movements. He posted photos of their social media profiles, homes and workplaces, calling it #OpRedKarma.
Even with their sloppy security, The Base was well positioned to grow their network. Their online propaganda – which featured high-contrast images of men in skull masks and three Eihwaz runes that served as their logo – attracted those in the extreme right looking to commit to a group, and press exposure got them name recognition.
But the landscape of the far right was also shifting in their favor. White supremacists had become increasingly disillusioned by President Trump, who had failed to act as decisively on issues like immigration as they had hoped. The “alt-right” coalition was weakened by other factors, including the backlash following the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville and their own infighting. The white power movement was grappling with its failure to become an insurgent political movement and, in response, one faction began arguing that working through traditional political channels was useless. What they needed was revolution, they claimed, and that meant violence.
This growing wing referred to themselves as “accelerationists” because of their belief that the collapse of society needed to be accelerated, and it needed to be done through terroristic acts of violence. Two existing groups were already operating under this framework, namely The Base and the Atomwaffen Division (AWD).
Atomwaffen, a neo-Nazi group with its roots in a forum known as Iron March, was established in 2015. By the time The Base came into existence, AWD had already been linked to multiple murders, most notably the stabbing death of gay Jewish teenager Blaze Bernstein by member Samuel Woodward in January 2018.
The group helped popularizing a book called SIEGE, a collection of newsletters written by neo-Nazi James Mason between 1980 and 1986. SIEGE served as a how-to guide for white power revolution, and it became required reading not only for members of AWD, but for members of The Base as well. The Base also borrowed almost wholesale from Atomwaffen’s aesthetic, basing their own propaganda posters on the stark black, white and red images originally created by AWD associate “Dark Foreigner.”
Eventually, Atomwaffen and The Base even came to share members. Unlike many white power groups, The Base allowed members to maintain affiliations with multiple groups. Members of AWD and The Base intertwined on Telegram, where both groups had shifted their propaganda efforts. While many social media companies made some effort (however limited) to de-platform extremists, Telegram branded itself as a techno-libertarian platform that was loath to censor any of its users. It was, at the time, also ISIS’s primary platform.
By early 2019, The Base was ramping up efforts to host meetups and training around the country. On Jan. 20, 2019, “Roman Wolf” posted to Twitter: “Hail comrades! The Base is back!” along with photos of Base members in New York City and Los Angeles. “To our enemies: Thanks for the free promo,” he wrote in reference to a number of recent news articles that had been published about the group. “Recruiting has never been better despite your pathetic attempt to subvert. Remember that doxing works both ways – But unlike you, we won’t rely on the System to do our dirty work for us. It’s personal now.”
By the spring, another cell was announced in Georgia. “Protect your race, join The Base,” flyers read in Rome, a town 70 miles northwest of Atlanta. In early August, at least eight members attended a training camp there, where they practiced tactical training and participated in firearm drills.
More chapters were announced as the year went on – including in the Great Lakes region, Wisconsin, New England and New Jersey. Men from Canada, Europe, South Africa and Australia joined The Base. On Telegram and Gab, the group continued to pump out propaganda. Occasionally they posted videos – some in which Nazzaro’s poorly modified voice described the group’s political project, and others gathered for training exercises.
Despite Nazzaro’s claims to be an expert in security matters, multiple infiltrators found their way into The Base, including a reporter, an activist and an undercover FBI agent. Vetting was done by voice interviews over encrypted messaging apps. The bar to join the group – which consisted of having a convincing narrative about their conversion to white nationalism and/or National Socialism, being able to discuss a few passages from SIEGE and namedropping influential neo-Nazis – was not particularly high. Some men were asked to meet in person before they were allowed in, but it’s not clear if that was a requirement.
In August 2019, a reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press infiltrated the group and published a story identifying 26-year-old Patrik Mathews, then a combat engineer in the Canadian Armed Forces, as a member. Mathews fled Manitoba days after the piece was published, crossing into the United States through Minnesota.
Mathews’ movements were heavily tracked by law enforcement officials after he entered the United States. The resources federal law enforcement dedicated to investigating members of The Base reflected a larger shift in priorities. Though their primary focus had been on the threat of international terrorism in the post-9/11 world, a number of high-casualty attacks carried out by white supremacists forced the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation to recognize the increased domestic terror threat they posed. Roughly six weeks after Patrick Crusius killed 23 people in an August 2019 attack at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart, DHS released a report recognizing white supremacist ideology as “one of the most potent forces driving domestic terrorism.” In February 2020, the FBI announced it had elevated racially motivated violent extremism to a “national threat priority.”
As Mathews traveled the U.S., shepherded by Base members, other members were carrying out what they dubbed “Operation Kristallnacht.” Richard Tobin, an 18-year-old living in Brooklawn, New Jersey, orchestrated the campaign, which involved, in his words, “tag[ging] the shit” out of synagogues. On Sept. 21, 2019, police in Michigan found swastikas and The Base logo graffitied on a Hancock synagogue and, the next day, law enforcement in Wisconsin found similar graffiti on a synagogue in Racine.
In October 2019, FBI and law enforcement officials in New Jersey questioned Tobin, who told authorities he felt consistently “triggered” by African Americans. He described one day at a mall in Edison, New Jersey, when he felt so infuriated by the presence of black people that he wanted to “let loose” on them with a machete he had in his car. He also considered suicide-by-cop, adding that it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to carry out a bombing similar to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. A search warrant revealed that Tobin had steeped himself in extremist material online. He had a video from Christchurch mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant, who livestreamed his attack while killing 51 people on March 15, 2019, set to the song “Another One Bites the Dust.”
While The Base suffered insurmountable setbacks, its members have likely continued to act as part of the white power movement, either as members of other groups or participants in informal online extremist communities.
Views edit
The Base is a neo-Nazi, white supremacist and accelerationist paramilitary hate group and training network. It advocates the formation of white ethnostates, a goal which it believes it can achieve via terrorism and the violent overthrow of existing governments. The group's vetting process serves to connect committed extremists with terroristic skills to produce real-world violence. It organizes "race war preppers" and operates "hate camps", or training camps. The group has links to the Atomwaffen Division and the Feuerkrieg Division, which are far-right extremist groups.
Nazzaro has characterized The Base as a "survivalism and self-defense network ... sharing knowledge and training to prepare for crisis situations", but he denies its connections to neo-Nazism. Nazzaro has stated that his goal is to "build a cadre of trainers across the country."