Only months after an FBI crackdown and announcing its disbandment, ex-members of the Atomwaffen Division formed a new group. Months after claiming it was disbanding, the neo-Nazi terror group formerly known as the Atomwaffen Division (AWD) has re-emerged under a new leadership structure and name, according to one of its leaders and an online statement reviewed by VICE News. The new group, operating under the banner of the National Socialist Order (NSO), says it draws from a cadre of former AWD leaders who avoided jail time after a sweeping nationwide FBI operation earlier this year led to the arrest of several of its members. The NSO statement said “much good came out of AWD”—which is linked to five killings in the U.S.—but that the new organization has learned from the mistakes of its predecessor. Though this may appear to be nothing more than yet another brigade of internet Nazis making threats, the founding of the NSO illustrates how violent accelerationist organizations continue festering online despite the FBI’s concerted efforts to arrest far-right militants. (Beyond the AWD round-up earlier this year, The Base—a parallel organization—was dismantled through a series of raids by the bureau in January, thwarting an assassination plot in Georgia and a mass shooting in Virginia.)
VICE News spoke to a former AWD cell leader now jointly heading the NSO, who said the group will take advantage of the disarray wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, rampant unemployment, and near-unprecedented political polarization in the U.S. The leader said NSO is a “political and paramilitary group” focusing on “recruitment and propaganda” claiming it did not intend to carry out violence in the near term.
via vice: Neo-Nazi Terror Group Atomwaffen Division Re-Emerges Under New Name
