The leader of terror group the Base once worked for an agency tasked with coordinating the U.S. government’s counterterrorism efforts. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed it once employed an American neo-Nazi terror leader now based in Russia after he posted what he said were letters of appreciation that DHS and the Pentagon sent him thanking him for his service. Earlier this month, Rinaldo Nazzaro, 47, founder and leader of the Base, one of the most violent American domestic terror groups in years, posted three undated letters from U.S. agencies lauding him for his service. One was from DHS—an agency tasked with thwarting terrorism in the U.S.—and two were on Marine Corps letterhead. All spoke glowingly of Nazzaro. Since late 2019, nine members of the Base, the group he founded, have been arrested in the U.S. for alleged crimes as wide-ranging as an assassination plot, ghost-gun making, plans for train derailments, and a mass shooting. The Canadian government has designated it as a terrorist group. While it wouldn’t authenticate the letter addressed to Nazzaro, DHS verified he had worked with the department in the past. “I can confirm that Rinaldo Nazzaro worked at DHS from 2004 to 2006,” said a DHS spokesperson. VICE News previously reported that Nazzaro was said to have worked with U.S special forces on the Pentagon’s dime. (Previously, the BBC reported that Nazzaro was an FBI analyst and had been a contractor with the Department of Defense.) The confirmation that Nazzaro worked for DHS is indicative of a significant problem American law enforcement and counterterrorism officials are facing: Some veterans and people who have worked for the government during recent wars, with real tradecraft and understandings of insurgency, now see that government as the enemy. “Your outstanding service has been greatly appreciated,” says a letter Nazzaro posted, claiming a DHS official had addressed it to him. (…) In a May 2019 conversation in an encrypted chat room, Nazzaro told other members of the Base that he had worked with the military during the aughts as a contractor.  “[I did] multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan over five years,” said Nazzaro in an encrypted chat room with his followers. Nazzaro continues to maintain that the Base is no terrorist organization, but a “survivalism and self-defense network for nationalists.” Long dubbed a “fed” (short for federal informant) by some neo-Nazis, he seems to have anticipated that the documents would not go over well among his followers. After the documents were uploaded, he posted he “didn’t mean to break your hearts,” but wanted to be transparent.

via vice: Department of Homeland Security Confirms Neo-Nazi Leader Used to Work For It

By <a href=”//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:John_Banks_Trent&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1″ class=”new” title=”User:John Banks Trent (page does not exist)”>John Banks Trent</a> – <span class=”int-own-work” lang=”en”>Own work</span>, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Serbia has expelled Robert Rundo, the “American neo-Nazi and founder of the notorious right-wing extremist Rise Above Movement,” the Serbian daily Blic reported on February 11. According to unofficial information published in the Blic article, Serbian police escorted Rundo to the Trbušnica-Šepak border pass, which connects Serbia to Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the evening of February 10.   Last November, the investigative reporting platform Bellingcat alerted the public to Rundo’s presence in Serbia, drawing attention to the videos he’d been publishing from the country. These included a clip in which the 30-year-old native of Queens, New York, brags about helping local neo-Nazis restore Serbian nationalist graffiti that had been defaced days before by local anti-fascist activists. (… ) Bellingcat’s analysis of the videos posted by Rundo indicated that he has been living in Serbia since at least March 2020, while also traveling around Central and Eastern Europe, including participating in a march in Ukraine and speaking at a neo-Nazi rally in Hungary. Rundo had opened a clothing company called Serbon in Serbia, featuring products with white supremacist symbols and “anti-antifa” slogans. The Serbon YouTube channel features rap videos in Serbian glorifying street fighting. Founding the company allegedly enabled Rundo to acquire an annually renewable permit for temporary stay in the country as a foreign investor. Rundo is a convicted felon who served time in his home country for a gang attack on a 13-year-old boy, and whose racist exploits have been covered by the Daily Beast, PBS, and the New York Review of Books. He is not technically a wanted person in the U.S. at this moment. In 2019, a federal judge released Rundo after he dismissed charges against three Rise Above Movement (RAM) gang members indicted for their roles in violent rallies across California in 2017, saying the federal statute used to prosecute them was unconstitutional. (…) RAM is an alt-right gang from Southern California that uses martial arts to recruit young people and has been described as “a loose collective of violent neo-Nazis and fascists,” who are white nationalist, white supremacist, and far-right. According to a 2020 report on right-wing extremism by Serbia’s Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, neo-Nazis in Serbia have been focusing their recruiting efforts on children, drafting their “stormtroopers” from the ranks of boys attending middle and high school.

via globalvoices: Serbia expels US neo-Nazi after investigative website Bellingcat outed his location

siehe dazu auch: Bellingcat 11/2020: An American White Supremacist’s New Home in Serbia. Robert Rundo’s latest video opens with the 30-year-old native of Queens, New York, showing off Serbian nationalist graffiti adorned with a Celtic cross, a well-known white supremacist symbol. “So we’re out here in Belgrade, you know, cleaning up the neighborhood,” says Rundo, pointing to what he calls some “beautiful artwork from the locals” behind him. These locals are apparent far-right comrades of Rundo’s, repainting white supremacist graffiti that had been defaced days before by local anti-fascist activists. Rundo is the co-founder of the Rise Above Movement (RAM), an American white supremacist gang that saw three of its members imprisoned for violence at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017; two are still incarcerated. A separate federal case against Rundo himself for similar violence in California was dismissed in June 2019. Since then, he has been a free man, although federal attorneys have sought to challenge this outcome and an initial appeal hearing took place this week.