Secret recordings reveal neo-nazi group The Base recruiting former military members
'Our mission's very, very simple. It is training and networking, preparing for collapse,' leader reportedly says
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Your support makes all the difference.Secret recordings have revealed that a neo-nazi organisation named The Base is recruiting people with military expertise in the US and Canada, reports say.
The militant white supremacy group seeks to provoke a race war in the US through violent means and specifically targets african americans and jewish people.
The audio recordings, released in a podcast by The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) titled Sounds Like Hate show the group is recruiting deliberately from the US military, NBC News reported.
Secret tapes reportedly reveal calls between the alleged leader of the group, Rinaldo Nazzaro, and more than 100 prospective recruits using the encrypted app Wire.
Mr Nazzaro, who was revealed as the alleged leader of the group in January by The Guardian, reportedly runs the organisation from his apartment in St Petersburg, Russia under the online aliases Norman Spear and Roman Wolf.
"We are survivalism, a self-defense network," the person identified as Mr Nazzaro said reportedly said in one of the recordings. The Independent was unable to contact Mr Nazzaro for comment.
"Our mission's very, very simple. It is training and networking, preparing for collapse. We want to be in a position where we're ready, we're prepared enough, ready enough that we can take advantage of whatever chaos, power vacuum, that might emerge. We want to try and fill that power vacuum and take advantage of the chaos."
The recordings apparently show that 20 per cent of the prospective recruits were active-duty military or had served in the military in some capacity. SPLC said that 80 per cent of the recordings concern guns and the collapse of America.
"A lot of our guys, we have just a pure hatred for modern civilisation and industrialisation," one 20-year-old potential recruit said in the recordings, according to NBC News. "We wish to liberate ourselves, our fellow whites and animals from that system."
"Extremely lethal and dangerous operations that believe in an impending race war like The Base or Atomwaffen make a concerted effort to recruit people with military experience,” Mollie Saltskog, senior intelligence analyst at The Soufan Group, an international security consultancy said.
“Having these types of people in these types of organisations increases their operational capabilities to commit acts of terrorism."
According to the SPLC, Mr Nazzaro organised The Base "not as a hierarchical membership organisation, but as a network of small, underground cells, each with a high degree of autonomy."
A confidential source was said to have provided the recordings to the non-profit organisation unsolicited, and SPLC confirmed their authenticity with subject matter experts and they do not believe the audio has been edited.
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