A neo-Nazi terror cell enmeshed in the US Marine Corps made plans to attack the power grid last fall, hoping to set the stage to carry out assassinations in their quest to create a white ethno-state, according to a new indictment issued last month. Arrests in the government’s takedown of the terror cell, whose members called themselves “BSN,” began in October 2020, starting with founders Liam Montgomery Collins and Paul James Kryscuk, and gradually expanding to include three others through June 2021. Collins and Kryscuk were initially charged with surreptitiously manufacturing and transporting firearms for profit, but in November 2020, a superseding indictment charged them with manufacturing and shipping firearms, including suppressors, “with the intention that they be used unlawfully in the furtherance of civil disorder.” As has previously been reported, members fantasized about shooting Black Lives Matter protesters in Boise, Idaho in the summer of 2020. The most recent indictment, handed down on Aug. 18, adds a new charge of conspiracy to sabotage an energy facility. The purpose, according to the government was “to attack the power grid both for the purpose of creating general chaos and to provide cover and ease of escape in those areas in which they planned to undertake assassinations and other desired operations to further their goal of creating a white ethno-state.” (…) Collins, Kryscuk, Duncan and Maurino discussed using homemade thermite — described as “a combination of metal powder and metal oxide which burns at temperatures over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit” — to “burn through and destroy power transformers.” The government also alleges that Collins, BSN’s acknowledged leader, asked Hermanson and MW to Tannerite, a brand of binary explosive that is an ingredient in thermite. The government alleges that Kryscuk had a list of transformers, substations and other components of the power grid at about a dozen different Idaho and neighboring states on Oct. 20, around the time of his arrest. (…) Liam Montgomery Collins and Paul James Kryscuk, the two earliest members of BSN, met on Iron March, a neo-Nazi online forum founded by Russian nationalist Alexander “Slavros” Mukhitdinov, in 2011. The forum shut down without explanation in November 2017. Two years later, anonymous researchers leaked the entire history of chats, and a website associated with the @JewishWorker Twitter account was set up to provide a searchable database of the contents. In its day, Iron March provided a forum to connect violent racists and allow them to meet up in real life. Participants in the forum, including future members of AtomWaffen and Vanguard America, embraced an accelerationist strain of white supremacy that rejects political solutions and calls for violent insurrection to bring about a race war. AtomWaffen is tied to multiple murders. A man who rallied with Vanguard America at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist marchers, murdering Heather Heyer; a splinter group from Vanguard America rebranded itself as Patriot Front.
via rawstory: Ex-Marines in neo-Nazi terror cell planned to attack power grid as precursor to assassination campaign: government