This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we talk to Hannah Gais [Twitter]. Hannah is a senior researcher and journalist with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the co-author (with Jason Wilson) of Leaked Chats, Documents Show Atomwaffen Founder’s Path to Terror Plot, Hatewatch (SPLC), February 23, 2023:
Leaked chats, documents and online materials have revealed that Atomwaffen Division (AWD) founder Brandon Clint Russell was secretly but tirelessly active as a white-power propagandist and organizer between his release from prison in 2021 and his arrest on charges of plotting terror attacks.
The materials show Russell, 27, of Orlando, Florida, encouraging others to commit similar crimes to those he is now accused of, and advocating armed attacks on electricity, water and transport infrastructure.
Like other white-power accelerationists, Russell promoted the strategy of attacking public infrastructure in the belief that it would trigger a crisis that would cause the collapse of “The System” – a term that accelerationists use for the status quo political order.
The new charges were outlined in the criminal complaint filed by the FBI on Feb. 2 and unsealed on Feb. 6. The complaint accuses Russell and Sarah Beth Clendaniel – his alleged accomplice and apparent girlfriend – of planning and equipping themselves for attacks on electricity infrastructure in Maryland.
Their trial on these charges is ongoing in Maryland’s federal court.
We spoke to Hannah about Russell, AWD and accelerationism, Telegram and social media, neo-Nazi terrorism’s international links and more.
• As noted, ‘Russell’s chats were obtained and provided to Hatewatch by the White Rose Society, an Australian antifascist research collective’, so props to them.
• While Atomwaffen Division (National Socialist Order) is a proscribed terrorist organisation in Australia, it was born on defunct neo-Nazi online forum Iron March (IM), which also spawned Antipodean Resistance. Following its collapse, members of AR eventually joined Tom Sewell’s European Australian Movement (EAM)/National Socialist Network (NSN).
• Currently, the EAM/NSN operates out of Tim Lutze’s Legacy Boxing Gym in West Sunshine. On February 25, a protest against the nazi gym took place. See : Hundreds march against Nazi gym in Melbourne, Brendan Stanton, Red Flag, February 28, 2023.
See also : sitting ducks. easy prey., Hannah Gais, Posts from Underground, February 23, 2023 | Brandon Russell: Leader of neo-Nazi Atomwaffen group charged with Baltimore power grid plot, BBC, February 6, 2023 | Woman Accused of Stealing Nancy Pelosi’s Laptop Appears in Video Making Nazi Salute, Robert Evans, bellingcat, February 24, 2021 | Yeah Nah Pasaran! #041 w Hannah Gais on Russia & laundering fascism : October 22, 2020 (October 20, 2020).
4.30pm, Thursday, March 2, 2023 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website
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