Recently, a woman in my local town was killed by law enforcement after carrying a firearm downtown and was reported to have spoken about an impending race war. A witness suggests her death was a suicide-by-cop, though the police did not follow appropriate body camera operations, so we can’t know for sure.
This death is a tragedy we should strive to learn from. Her mentioning “race war” echoes attacks on police by those popularizing “the boogaloo,” a civil/race war based on anti-police sentiment and the legacy of white supremacist violence, increasing civil disorder to initiate a violent response. Many past mass shooters have promoted similar ideas and actions, their attacks attempting to prompt the confiscation of firearms, leading citizens to defend their second Amendment rights and thus begin the war.
The following represent a number of articles I’ve come across online about the subject that I think are most helpful on the wider topic of .
- The authors writing about the leader of the Base is a great place to start
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51236915
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53128169
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/rinaldo-nazzaro-the-base-norman-spear.html
They reveal how an accelerationist survivalist coalition of cells connected to a transnational fascist white suppremacist network was led by an individual who is a former CIA field agent, FBI analyst, and pentagon contractor advertising expertise in intelligence analysis, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, homeland security, and psychological operations for government agencies, military organizations, and private businesses, remaining eligible for U.S. military contracts while attending Russian government security exhibitions in Moscow as a registered guest.
2. Alexander Reid Ross: https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-america-s-neo-nazi-terrorists-have-a-powerful-new-patron-vladimir-putin-1.8471461
The author reveals the fascist evangelism of Dugin, Limonav, and the rise of ultranationalist paramilitaries and ideological syntheses to promote fascist, authoritarian, and neo-nazi expansionism. It’s worth linking to a few of many other relevant articles here too, for instance https://www.rferl.org/a/dugin-texas-lecture-white-supremacist-ukraine-russia/26975427.html and https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/russia-is-co-opting-angry-young-men/568741/ and https://nypost.com/2016/10/18/inside-the-radical-war-camps-where-russian-fighters-are-born/ as a few examples
3. The Vox and Guardian articles on accelerationism https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/11/11/20882005/accelerationism-white-supremacy-christchurch and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/11/accelerationism-how-a-fringe-philosophy-predicted-the-future-we-live-in
These authors demonstrate the history, philosophy, and psychology of accelerationism and its derailing into the kind of fascist nihilism of the alternative right, with accelerationism becoming a foundational philosophy for those seeking to use violence and terror to take power.
4. Jade Parker and H.E. Upchurch’s work:
http://www.theloopcast.com/e/accelerationism/
and https://heupchurch.github.io/fission
These present an attempt to connect U.S. based accelerationist organizations to a wider transnational fascist network and allude to coordinated campaigns to destabilize the United States through terrorist violence.
5. Jake Hanrahan’s tweets, articles, and podcasts:
This seems like a good time to link to Nate Thayer and Nick Martin, whose work on far right extremism have been helpful in connecting a number of these groups.
6. Bellingcat has a number of great articles worth understanding the wider transnational fascist milieu as well…
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2019/12/19/transnational-white-terror-exposing-atomwaffen-and-the-iron-march-networks/
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/03/18/revealed-the-ukrainian-man-who-runs-a-neo-nazi-terrorist-telegram-channel/
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/02/15/defend-the-white-race-american-extremists-being-co-opted-by-ukraines-far-right/
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/27/the-boogaloo-movement-is-not-what-you-think/
7. I should also probably include some mainstream articles, as for instance where the US gives the Russian Imperial Movement a terrorist designation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/terrorist-label-white-supremacy-Russian-Imperial-Movement.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/terrorist-label-white-supremacy-Russian-Imperial-Movement.html
In Historic First, U.S. Labels Russian White Supremacists a Terrorist Group
Confronting Russia’s Role in Transnational White Supremacist Extremism
https://www.fpri.org/article/2019/05/america-has-a-white-nationalist-terrorism-problem-what-should-we-do/
https://icct.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Jaocb-Ware-Terrorist-Manifestos2.pdf
Connecting transnational fascism to accelerationists in the alternative right movement is critical, and requires more research, especially in light of who and where supply lines of digital content come from.
8. Shane Burley’s work https://www.full-stop.net/2020/02/24/features/shane-burley/how-white-racists-dream-metapolitics-and-fascist-publishing/ points out the publishing groups behind traditionalist, fascist propaganda. War for Eternity is another book worth checking out, though that is more on Bannon, Dugin and other thought leaders and power brokers.
9. This article represents the best description of white supremacist insurrectionary accelerationism I know of: https://www.academia.edu/42910889/_2020_Accelerating_Hate_Atomwaffen_Division_Contemporary_Digital_Fascism_and_Insurrectionary_Accelerationism
In particular, it is an empirically grounded study focused on visual communiques from neo-nazi accelerationists, and how their message spreads and mutates through social media channels. The same others have another article in review I’ve heard, focusing on a shared accelerationist targeting of critical infrastructure
10. Finally, I’d recommend getting on Telegram channels and see the kind of white supremacist accelerationist channels that are driving news events and media coverage, as well as the many anti-fascist outlets and researchers keeping us abreast of the situation.
Perhaps psychological and information operations conducted through memes and misinformation to polarize neighbors is the “new normal” in a brave new war. As I write this, a U.S. Army private is charged with planning a terrorist attack on his own unit, providing sensitive information to a neo-Nazi Satanist group, linked to this wider transnational fascist and white supremacist network, to facilitate a mass casualty event.
The degree to which Sandra Harmon is similarly a victim of foreign operations attempting to polarize Americans and destabilize the United States through violent extremism should be considered, as should the degree to which our own communities are susceptible to these operations. These events mark a failure of local and international trust, and should be responded to with structural change to ensure communities can better stand up to prejudice and division.