The Putin government has long cultivated relationships with domestic neo-Nazi militants, sending them to fight as private armies in Ukraine and aiding their networking with global white power groups. The Russian Imperial Movement, for example, which the U.S. State Department lists as a terrorist organization, is based in St. Petersberg and is known for providing paramilitary training to European neo-Nazis. 

An Alaska neo-Nazi prison gang leader and his associates were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole over a racketeering scheme that involved the kidnapping and murder of a member on the outside, reported NewsOne on Friday.

"According to the DOJ, Timothy Lobdell, 46, who legally changed his name to 'Filthy Fuhrer' (Lobdell); Roy Naughton, aka Thumper, 46; Glen Baldwin, aka Glen Dog, 41; Colter O’Dell, 30; and Craig King, aka Oakie, 57, were convicted at trial of racketeering conspiracy, kidnapping resulting in death and kidnapping conspiracy," said the report. "But the charges didn’t stop there. Baldwin, O’Dell and King were also convicted of murder in aid of racketeering, and Lobdell and Naughton were hit with an additional two counts each of kidnapping conspiracy, kidnapping and assault in aid of racketeering."

The men, who ran a prison gang known as "1488" — a reference to the "14 words" anthem of white nationalism and a letter-to-number abbreviation of "Heil Hitler" — were first convicted by an Alaska jury last May, under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, a statue designed to go after organized crime.

"While in prison Lobdell ordered members of the gang to commit violent kidnappings and assaults in the 'free world' outside of prison," said the report. "As part of a plan to impose greater organization and structure among non-incarcerated members, Lobdell insisted on punishing members that he perceived to be defying the 1488 code of conduct, which he believed diminished the power, influence and reputation of the gang. Lobdell sent out a trusted lieutenant with a list of directives, which culminated in the kidnapping and assault of two lower-level gang members April 2, 2017 and July 20, 2017, and the kidnapping, assault, and murder of 1488 member Michael Staton Aug. 3, 2017."

This comes amid a ramp-up of law enforcement against white supremacist gangs. Over the past few years, federal prosecutors have nabbed members of a widely spread neo-Nazi terror cell known as "The Base."

The Base – which is an approximate English translation of “al-Qaida” – began recruiting in late 2018. The white supremacy group, which has regional and international cells, extols the virtues of an all-out race war while specifically targeting African Americans and Jewish people.

Using encrypted apps, members of the highly organized group planned terror campaigns; vandalized synagogues; established armed training camps and recruited new members.

The US attorney for Maryland, Robert K Hur, speaking after the recent arrest of three members of the Base, said that they “did more than talk – they took steps to act and act violently on their racist views”.

Property record searches revealed that three 10-acre blocks of undeveloped land were purchased in December 2018 for $33,000 in the name of a Delaware LLC called “Base Global”. In a telephone conversation in late November, Manke confirmed that this was the block of land he had been referring to.

The location of the land is consistent with “Norman Spear’s” advocacy of a white supremacist strategy called the Northwest Territorial Imperative (NTI), which was promoted by the deceased white supremacist Harold Covington.

The strategy argues for the creation of a separatist ethnostate in the Pacific north-west and encourages white supremacists to move to the region.

In one of “Norman Spear’s” first public appearances, on a far-right podcast recorded in December 2017, he was introduced as a Northwest Front (another white supremacist separatist group) organizer and went on to spell out a four-state plan culminating in “achieving independence, realizing the ultimate goal which is an independent nation state in the Pacific north-west, an ethnostate”.

The plan, he said, would trigger the relocation to the Pacific north-west of the white population in the United States.

Under the motto “there is no political solution”, the Base embraces an “accelerationist” ideology, which holds that acts of violence and terror are required in order to push liberal democracy towards collapse, preparing the way for white supremacists to seize power and institute an ethnostate.

Atomwaffen Division (AWD) is a terroristic neo-Nazi organization that formed out of Iron March.

In Their Own Words

“What we are creating here is something that James Mason attempted to put into form but because of circumstance it never was implimented [sic] until the year of 2017 when Atomwaffen Division discovered and met James Mason. Ryan and Vincent Snyder both agreed to help him publish his works, but through the development of the website we have decided to take the proper course of action with SIEGE. Too long has the movement trapped people into a mindset of chasing their own tail. Those of you who are in here, perhaps, will create history. That is our intention.”

A significant aspect of Iron March and AWD’s legacy then is that none have done more over the past decade to reinvigorate federal law enforcement’s interest in infiltrating and investigating white power groups after neglecting the threat of white supremacy for so long. In this way, AWD’s impact within the white power movement is equal to that of the deadly Charlottesville riot in August 2017.

AWD and those flowing from the wellspring of influence that was Iron March believed they were co-creating “the forge of the 21st century fascist.” Instead, like some within the movement’s militant vanguard in the 20th century, many AWD members have now ended up in behind bars. The mere act of holding a firearm, so crucial to AWD’s video propaganda, will constitute a crime for those found guilty. Such impositions have not proved a deterrent for so many within the white power movement through the years, and the federal prison system — an inherently violent and deeply bigoted environment — is not a forum for reliable disengagement or deradicalization from hateful beliefs, as AWD’s once-imprisoned leader Brandon Russell has demonstrated. 

And still Ron DeSantis continues to panded to them.