When the FBI arrested five senior members of the Neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Divison early in 2020, it seemed that the terror cell was on its last legs. Under sustained pressure from law enforcement, effective doxing by anti-fascist activists, increasingly revealing investigations by journalists and even deadly in-fighting among members, the group was dying a quick death. Its name, however, had become synonymous with the violent right-wing accelerationist movement, inspired by James Mason’s Siege, and seeking to bring about the fall of modern society through acts of violence leading ultimately to a race war. In its short four-year existence, the group had been linked to at least five murders, as well as plots to bomb nuclear facilities, poison water supplies, and cut out power to major cities. The group preached chaos and race-war, inspired by their mentor James Mason. By March of this year, however, it seemed that their short reign of terror was over, and the latest white supremacist threat had been all but neutralized. History has taught us one thing however. The far-right has a habit of shapeshifting. Groups retreat into the shadows and re-emerge with a new name, new look, new leadership, but the same hateful ideology. In the UK and Germany, where groups can be and are legally proscribed by the government, this rebranding tactic is used to avoid prosecution while maintaining ideological continuity, while in the United States it most often happens when a group is decapitated and left leaderless. When Atomwaffen dissipated, it was only a matter of time before a successor emerged, and in late July, the National Socialist Order reared its ugly head for the first time. The newly branded NSO first appeared on Telegram on 25 July, when their first channel was launched with a cryptic message that claimed they were “building networks of proud brothers in enemy lands” alongside the trademark black and yellow Atomwaffen imagery and a picture of the Totenkopf, an insignia used by numerous Nazi SS divisions in World War II. They soon followed up with a warning that they would “build an Aryan, National Socialist world by any means necessary” before briefly recanting the history of the Atomwaffen Division’s demise and eventual dissolution in the United States.
Two days later, however, a new Telegram channel was started, using the same name and same logo of a white sword on a red swastika. This channel, which claimed to be the “only authorized Telegram channel for NSO”, grew quickly in comparison to the original, which soon went quiet, suggesting that two of the founding members of the new NSO had failed to communicate and had both started their own channels. An official announcement was soon made on the fascist ‘American Futurist’ website, where the group claimed to have a strong core of executive leadership, most of whom were apparently also in leadership positions within AWD. The group also attached the NSO program to the American Futurist article, in which they outlined 8 key points upon which their platform is built.
via radicalright analysis: The New Face of Terror in the US