A New Face of White Supremacy: Plots Expose Danger of the ‘Base’
A secret domestic terrorism investigation revealed that the violent neo-Nazi group was recruiting cells across the United States
The plans were as sweeping as they were chilling: “Derail some trains, kill some people, and poison some water supplies.”
It was the blunt, bloody prescription for sparking a race war by a member of the Base, a white supremacist group that has come under intense scrutiny amid a series of stunning recent arrests.
Federal agents, who had secretly recorded those remarks in a bugged apartment during a domestic terrorism investigation, pounced on seven members of the group last week in advance of a rally on Monday by gun rights advocates in Richmond, Va. Three members of one cell in Maryland affiliated with the group plotted attacks at the rally, hoping to ignite wider violence that would lead to the creation of a white ethno-state, law enforcement officials said.
The “defendants did more than talk,” Robert K. Hur, the United States attorney for Maryland, said after a detention hearing on Wednesday in federal court in Greenbelt, Md. “They took steps to act and act violently on their racist views.”
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