'Militant Neo-Nazi Group Actively Recruiting Ahead of Alleged Training Camp'
A neo-Nazi group focused on providing paramilitary-style training to far-right extremists has been conducting a massive recruitment drive and claims to have already conducted live-fire training with its members.
The Base, which is connected to extreme-right groups the Atomwaffen Division and the Feuerkrieg Division, has been promoting its growth on social media with photos announcing its presence in major cities across North America, including New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle, and in Europe, South Africa, and Australia. The images often include a small contingent (typically one to three) of masked, camo-clad men holding weapons standing in front of The Base's flag, a black flag with three white lines running down the centre.
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For Joshua Fisher-Birch, a research analyst at the Counter Extremism Project, a U.S.-based terrorism watchdog, The Base presents a "significant threat" because it is attempting to build a network with "individuals in different groups, or those with slight ideological differences." According to Fisher-Birch, the group has "combined online recruitment efforts with real-world efforts" including supporiting "lone-actor violence" and "shared terrorist tactics."
"The Base is particularly dangerous because of [its] focus on developing and sharing skills useful for terrorism and guerilla warfare, such as ambushes, weapons training, and making explosives," Fisher-Birch said. "This is a radical group that not only wants violence, but is preparing for it."
The Base was founded by Spear in early 2018. Before this, Spear was a follower of the teachings of Harold Covington and the Northwest Front, a neo-Nazi group that wants to create an Aryan ethnostate in the Pacific Northwest. Spear appeared on several white nationalist podcasts and YouTube livestreams in which he preached theoretical violence as a means to an end and complained about the lack of a cohesive white supremacist movement.
The Base is seemingly his attempt to solve these issues. The group counter-intuitively states it does not endorse violence, regardless of its members' frequent postings relating to taking down the current "degenerate system," and rejects charges that The Base resembles a terrorist organization. Interestingly, "The Base" is the English translation of "Al-Qaeda," the jihadist terror group responsible for the 9/11 attacks.