The European Union announced on Friday that it was adding the neo-Nazi group ‘The Base’ to the EU Terrorist List.
The group, founded in 2018 by Rinaldo Nazzaro, has been responsible for multiple terrorist attacks, the EU stated in a release on the matter.
Nazzaro is an American who is now based in Russia.
Through designating the group, the EU is now able to freeze its funds and other financial assets or economic resources in EU member states. The group is also now unable to acquire funds in those countries.
The group is already designated as a terrorist organization in Canada.
Belief systems of the group
The neo-Nazi group believes themselves to be vigilante soldiers defending the “European race” against a broken “system” that has been infected by Jewish values, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
The Base believes that a race war is coming and reportedly engages in “Hitlerian ideology.”
Violence is both accepted and encouraged in the group to overthrow the current status quo. “Members of The Base consider themselves survivalists focused on self-defense and preparing for imminent chaos,” the ADL noted in 2019.
In 2018, a high-ranking member of the group post on X, then Twitter, that the “Majority of White Americans are mentally )ewish [Jewish] so even if all genetic & spiritual )ews [sic] expelled USA would still have a )ewish [sic] problem—unfixable in time available.”
A number of antisemitic posts have since followed. However, the group has now been suspended from the platform.
Attacks orchestrated by ‘The Base’
Nathan Weeden, a 24-year-old member of the group from Michigan, was found guilty of defacing the Jacob Synagogue with Swastikas and symbols associated with his white supremacist group in June.
Weeden was convicted on one count of conspiring to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in the exercise of their rights and one count of intentionally defacing, damaging, or destroying religious property because of the race or ethnic characteristics of individuals associated with that property.
Weeden, along with two fellow The Base members, in September of 2019, sent encrypted messages about targeting the synagogue in an operation dubbed “Operation Kristallnacht” (Night of Broken Glass.) The operation’s name is in reference to attacks on Jewish synagogues and businesses in Nazi Germany.
In 2020, the ADL said that three Georgian men tied to the group were arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and participation in a criminal gang.
In 2021, Michael John Helterbrand, a former member of The Base, was arrested and currently awaits trial for his alleged role in an attempted murder plot, according to the ADL.
Helterbrand and six others have since been accused of stabbing, sexually assaulting, and burning another inmate.
