Two masked men are in frame, wearing camouflage and sitting opposite each other. A table is between them and they’re in the middle of what they’re alleging is an American forest.
“You want to be as high up on the chain for modern warfare,” one of the men says under garbled voice distortion, while explaining the finer points of a fantasy insurgency against the US government.
The video, less than 20 minutes, is propaganda from the proscribed neo-Nazi terrorist group the Base.
“You want to have the best weaponry for war; to have the best tactics for war,” the man continues, “especially here in America.”
The video, meant to entice Americans to join its ranks, isn’t on YouTube or even a social media site most people know. Instead, it’s being hosted on Rutube, a Russian-government-sponsored knockoff.
Multiple analysts who follow its movements have noticed that the Base recently migrated much of its online content to Russian-owned sites or services. The move is part of an ongoing theme among the far right when western apps de-platform or moderate valuable accounts used for recruitment: retreat to the free-for-all that Russian sites offer.
The Base relocating its recruitment to safer Russian havens comes at a time when western intelligence services are openly warning that the Kremlin has taken the gloves off, directing their agents to sow chaos in the west. Part of that has included the covert support of far-right extremist groups adjacent to the Base.
Founded in 2018, the Base was the subject of a major nationwide FBI counterterrorism sweep netting more than a dozen of its members for a laundry list of terrorist activities across the US and Europe.
Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, the UK’s domestic intelligence service, publicly stated earlier this month that Russia is responsible for “arson, sabotage” and other “actions conducted with increasing recklessness” on European and British soil.
In a September announcement on SimpleX, a newly adopted encrypted chat service for some far-right extremists, the Base told its recruits to consume their content via its VK account, the Russian version of Facebook, or its Rutube channel.
And in a series of September and October VK posts where it describes the “process for joining the Base in [the] USA”, the group also curiously dropped a new email with a Mail.Ru address – the email provider of a well known ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The Base had previously operated a Proton Mail account (an email company based in Switzerland) as its point of contact.
With cells in Europe and elsewhere around the world, the Base has faced increasing law enforcement attention of late. There were September arrests of members in the Netherlands and it’s now a designated terrorist organization in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and, most recently, the European Union.
“We have seen the Base’s operations move steadily eastward as they have come under law enforcement pressure in the west, which includes their recent listing as a terrorist organization by the European Union,” said Steven Rai, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) who monitors the far right at the extremist watchdog.
“It is likely that they view Russia as a friendly operating environment and one in which they can recruit Americans and other individuals without fear of disruption.”
One of its most suspicious features has always been the Base’s founder and leader Rinaldo Nazzaro, who is believed to be living in Russia with his wife and family.
Since Base’s inception, questions have surrounded Nazzaro’s potential alliance with Kremlin agencies as a quasi-defected American looking to disrupt US politics from afar. Suspicions were made all the more striking when it was revealed Nazzaro not only worked for the Department of Homeland Security, but was a Pentagon contractor serving in some of the most secretive sections of the US military.
Yet Nazzaro has lived unchecked in Saint Petersburg for years, once even telling a Russian state television program in a highly choreographed scene that he has “never had any contact with any Russian security services”.
Rai continued: “The Russian government has allowed the Base’s leader to maintain his international recruitment efforts without much consequence.”
But multiple western government sources in law enforcement and intelligence, who were not authorized to speak to the media, have confirmed that Nazzaro’s links to Russian spy services have long been a point of their interest. While the Department of Justice has yet to lay charges against Nazzaro, he is the subject of an FBI investigation and was once called a DOJ “matter” by a US government official.
“Given that their leader has allegedly resided in Russia for several years while seemingly being able to continue his terrorist activities unfettered,” said Rai, “it is unsurprising that the group has opted to migrate their online presence to a variety of Russian platforms.”
The almost migratory patterns of online extremists has often had a Russian theme. Many terror groups swore off Telegram in September after its Russian founder was charged in France on multiple criminal counts and then agreed to work with authorities. Several then moved to SimpleX, which was founded and created by another Russian national.
“To me, the migration of neo-Nazi groups to SimpleX chat, followed by the latest wave to Russian platforms, likely results from their ongoing search for well-built, privacy-focused platforms for communication,” said Clara Broekaert, a research fellow at the Soufan Center, who focuses part of her work on foreign interference.
Broekaert noted that he faces continued scrutiny from the far-right online, calling him a “fed” or informant, but pointed out that Nazzaro is also “open about his admiration for Putin”.
She explained the Base using Russian platforms “seems to be an effort as well to try and bypass US scrutiny, which would make sense in light of its increased activity as we approach the US election”.