Source: Politics<\/p>\n
LAS VEGAS, Nevada \u2014 When Conor Climo was winning plaudits for his sharp intellect in Arbor View High School\u2019s class of 2014, no one imagined he would soon be storing bomb-making material in his bedroom closet in preparation for a race war in the name of Adolf Hitler.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe knew every element in the periodic table,\u201d recalled classmate Lexi Epley.<\/p>\n
Climo was a friendly, smart kid but as he grew into a lanky teen with a military-style haircut he became increasingly isolated, angry and \u2014 to some classmates \u2014 unstable.<\/p>\n
\u201dHe was exiled a lot,\u201d said Ebony Humes, who first became friendly with him in 6th grade. \u201cHe would try to make friends, but people most of the time would turn their backs, or act as if he wasn’t there. It kind of broke my heart. He did try, consistently, for years. You could see, in his face, the hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a sweet kid,\u201d echoed Epley. \u201cBut people weren\u2019t very nice to him. He was bullied a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
By 11th grade, Climo was nearly boiling over with resentment. \u201cNo one likes me. I hate it here,\u201d he sobbed in the cafeteria, at one point banging on the table, Humes recalled. \u201cI want out.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was after graduation that Climo, who lived with family at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, found the community he lacked: a violent global movement hidden in the dark recesses of the internet bent on igniting a neo-Nazi race war, according to public documents, court records, law enforcement officials, and fellow classmates.<\/p>\n
For more than a year, reporters from POLITICO, the German newspaper Welt and Insider uncovered the inner workings of this increasingly violent movement, drawn from nearly two dozen chat groups, more than 98,000 text and chat messages \u2014 including photos and videos \u2014 and interviews with members.<\/p>\n
The data offers a rare peak into a burgeoning network of neo-Nazis threatening to kill politicians and journalists, providing instruction on how to build bombs and weapons with 3D printers, and encouraging each other to attack houses of worship, the gay community and people of color. It\u2019s what extremism researchers call “militant accelerationism\u201d \u2014 a movement to spark a war for white power.<\/p>\n
There are dozens of these groups on both sides of the Atlantic with martial names drawn from Nazi propaganda. Many followers have been influenced by the writings of James Mason, the 69-year-old Coloradan who joined an American Nazi party at age 14 and whose books and newsletter are considered modern-day Mein Kampfs for adherents.<\/p>\n
Climo was drawn to The Feuerkrieg Division<\/a>, which translates into \u201cfire war,\u201d a moniker inspired by the torchlight marches at Nazi rallies in 1930s Germany.<\/p>\n FKD is believed to have been established<\/a> in 2018 in Estonia and was thought to have quickly petered out<\/a>. But there\u2019s been a resurgence in the last few years, according to law enforcement officials and experts in domestic extremist groups.<\/p>\n Involvement with the group led Climo to stockpile bomb-making materials in his bedroom. And as he increasingly embraced the cause of establishing a white ethno-state as his own, he was arrested<\/a> after he was suspected of planning \u2014 and scouting out targets \u2014 to blow up a synagogue and gay bar, according to the FBI and court documents.<\/p>\n Climo pled guilty and was sentenced to two years on one count of possession of an unregistered firearm \u2014 specifically, the component parts of a destructive device.<\/p>\n Climo, who court records show was released earlier this year from federal prison and is now on three years\u2019 probation, did not respond to multiple requests for an interview. His family members also declined to speak on his behalf or did not respond to interview requests.<\/p>\n His journey from troubled American teen to neo-Nazi warrior was a wake up call and highlights the growing concerns about a new generation of virulent white supremacists emerging in America\u2019s suburbs or even in the ranks of the armed forces.<\/p>\n While Internet radicalization has been recognized in recent years as a persistent threat \u2014 a handful of American teens have been charged with crimes related to online extremism \u2014 the international nature of the radicalization has been far less appreciated<\/a>.<\/p>\n By some estimates, FKD has just 100 members. But in an era where terrorism and mass violence is increasingly perpetrated by angry lone wolves, the group marks a dangerous evolution in a growing worldwide network of groups plotting in the shadows to enlist followers with military or firearms training to commit attacks on their own or in small groups.<\/p>\n \u201cFKD is particularly alarming right now because it is so decentralized and really only present in online forums,\u201d said Iris Malone, co-founder of the Mapping Militants Project<\/a> and a consultant to the Department of Homeland Security. \u201cThere is no one point of vulnerability where you can take them down. They will have multiple channels on Telegram or other online services where they can communicate with each and they purposely build in redundant channels.\u201d<\/p>\n In the United States, the FBI and other law enforcement have uncovered numerous ties to the online community in recent years, including a U.S. Army soldier<\/a> who was sentenced to two years in prison for spreading information on social media about building a bomb and the chemical agent napalm.<\/p>\n It is a far more decentralized network compared to larger umbrella groups such as Atomwaffen, now known as the National Socialist Order. \u201cAtomwaffen, originally when it was formed, had members in Florida, or it had chapters in Washington,\u201d Malone said. \u201cHaving a physical organization or a physical address allows law enforcement authorities to go in and essentially be able to arrest or take down these groups.\u201d<\/p>\n But what may be most troubling about the latest tendril is its heavy reliance on wayward teens.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the main characteristics of the Feuerkrieg Division is the average age of the members, most of them being minors, starting from the age of 15,\u201d concluded a 2021 study<\/a> by the International Observatory on Terrorism Studies in Madrid, Spain.<\/p>\n The analysis also concluded that \u201cthe terrorist group Feuerkrieg Division is recruiting again after being disbanded.\u201d<\/p>\n Malone explained that online recruitment makes it especially challenging in the United States, where FKD is not designated a terrorist organization and authorities are faced with the often-competing demands of monitoring potentially dangerous online activities while not running afoul of civil liberties.<\/p>\n \u201cI just don’t think the government has a good handle on the online extremism stuff yet because of free speech issues and social media access,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Arbor View High School, in the Centennial Hills community of Las Vegas, looks like an ordinary suburban American public school campus in a diverse middle-class neighborhood.<\/p>\n Near courtyard tables vandalized with sexually explicit graffiti, the main entrance is framed by a large mural quoting civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: \u201cThe time is always right to do what is right.\u201d<\/p>\n But while people of color make up nearly half the student body, the school also has a history of racial tensions.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was diversity there but it was still very clear in some situations the separations and the tension between different cultural backgrounds,\u201d recalled Humes, who is Black.<\/p>\n In 2019, two students were arrested and another cited after they targeted Black students with racist slurs on Instagram<\/a> and threatened to attack them. One post read, \u201cGod just seeing these n\u2014ers [infuriates] me. I just wanna go Columbine\u2026but only kill the f\u2013king n\u2014ers,\u201d referring to the 1999 mass shooting in a Colorado high school.<\/p>\n Climo\u2019s own journey towards militancy broke out into the open in 2016, when he was working as a security guard.<\/p>\n A local news station featured him patrolling<\/a> his neighborhood wearing a flak jacket and carrying an AR-15 automatic rifle and four magazines \u2014 each containing 30 rounds of ammunition.<\/p>\n \u201cI pretty much stay in constitutional bounds by doing this,\u201d he said, insisting to a family of fleeing neighbors, \u201cI mean you no harm.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI remember thinking that\u2019s the last person who should have a gun in his hand,\u201d recalled Humes, who now works for a local nonprofit that helps people with disabilities prepare to enter the job market.<\/p>\n A few months later, according to court documents<\/a>, Climo was drawn to a question posed on a website called Quora: \u201cWhat are the downsides of multiculturalism?\u201d<\/p>\n Climo, whose profile pic was a picture of an AR-15 rifle, answered by quoting Hitler. \u201cYour most precious possession on this Earth is your people!\u201d<\/p>\n But over time he exhibited a desire to do something more than just post and provoke. \u201cI am more interested in action than online shit,\u201d he later wrote in an online conversation, according to court records.<\/p>\n By then, according to the FBI, Climo was also using encrypted chat rooms like Discord that have come under increasing scrutiny<\/a> for giving a platform to violent incitement where he regularly leveled antisemetic and racial slurs. And it was then he began discussing his violent plans with an FBI informant.<\/p>\n He detailed how to make a \u201cself contained molotov\u201d explosive, according to the FBI. He boasted that he had been training to build an IED, or improvised explosive device. (Some of his fellow students later recalled he had started bragging<\/a> about making bombs while still in high school.)<\/p>\n Climo privately shared with the FBI informant online that he was considering setting fire to a Las Vegas synagogue and that he tried unsuccessfully to recruit a homeless person to help him survey the building.<\/p>\n The FBI opened an investigation of Climo for \u201ccommunicating with individuals who identified with the white supremacist extremist group Attomwaffen Division,\u201d according to the court documents, referring to the umbrella group that the Feuerkrieg Division grew out of.<\/p>\n FBI Special Agent Matthew James Schaeffer, a member of the Las vegas Joint Terrorism Task Force, described FKD in an affidavit<\/a> as consisting mainly of white males between the ages of 16 and 30 \u201cwho all believe in the superiority of the white race.\u201d<\/p>\n It pursues a \u201cleadership resistance\u201d strategy that calls for followers, operating independently or in small groups, to challenge the established order and foment attacks on the federal government, minority communities, homosexuals, and Jews, he added.<\/p>\n In online conversations with an undercover agent, Climo also revealed scouting out other potential targets, including the Las Vegas office of the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent anti-hate organization, and a power plant that he referred to as a \u201csoft target,\u201d according to court documents.<\/p>\n By the summer of 2019, the FBI reported in sworn testimony, he revealed he was scouting an area around a bar he said was frequented by homosexuals. He also shared screenshots of what he called a \u201cgroup of Kike synagogues locations in Vegas.\u201d He proposed attacking one of them with a firearm and an explosive device, describing in detail how he would construct the bomb.<\/p>\n A court-ordered FBI search of his bedroom that August found multiple jars of bomb-making chemicals, wires, circuit boards, and his hand-drawn schematics. There were also a number of unregistered firearms, according to the federal indictment.<\/p>\n Climo recounted his activities for the FBI\u2019s Schaeffer, noting that he first communicated with the Feuerkrieg Division toward the end of 2017.<\/p>\n But upon his arrest, he told the FBI that he believed the group\u2019s goals were a \u201crighteous\u201d cause.<\/p>\n \u201cJews suck,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Climo\u2019s case is seen as a harbinger of what might lie ahead as the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement authorities pivot to what they see as one of the biggest domestic terror threats.<\/p>\n \u201cIndividuals subscribing to violent ideologies such as violent white supremacy, which are grounded in racial, ethnic, and religious hatred and the dehumanizing of portions of the American community, as well as violent anti\u2013government ideologies, are responsible for a substantial portion of today\u2019s domestic terrorism,\u201d states the White House\u2019s latest National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism<\/a>.<\/p>\n Increasingly, that also means isolated youngsters who spend lots of time alone and on the Internet.<\/p>\n The Anti-Defamation League recently reported that the Feuerkrieg Division<\/a> is expanding its footprint across Europe \u2014 including Belgium, England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Latvia, Germany and Russia \u2014 as well as North America.<\/p>\n \u201cIn online chats, the group has actively sought out new recruits in Texas, the Great Lakes region, California, the Midwest, New Jersey, New York, and Philadelphia,\u201d it found.<\/p>\n One FKD appeal on 8chan, an online message board that bills itself as a home for free speech but is also known to be a safe haven for far-right extremists<\/a>, reads: \u201cTrain and prepare for the collapse and meet up with fellow national socialist comrades.\u201d<\/p>\n The online nature \u201chas important counterterrorism implications because it means that if the government just bans the organization, that\u2019s practically meaningless,\u201d stressed Malone. \u201cIt is not a physical organization like Al Qaeda was.\u201d<\/p>\n Also fueling the recruitment efforts, she fears, are recent racially motivated mass shootings, including in El Paso, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, which create \u201ca common set of martyr myths.\u201d<\/p>\n But spotting these domestic terrorists in time may not be as easy as suggested by the case of Climo, whose brazen online communication was detected by law enforcement officials. Climo\u2019s federal public defender, Paul Riddle, said after his conviction <\/a>that his client was grateful that he was nabbed before he went down a \u201cvery dark path.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe’s not on that path anymore, and he’s not the same person that was arrested,\u201d Riddle told the Las Vegas Sun.<\/p>\n But Humes said she ran into her longtime classmate just before he was arrested and asked him how he was doing.<\/p>\n She thought, \u201cSame old Conor, he still loves to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n It was shocking, Humes said, to learn of the violent and racist turn he had taken. \u201cI saw him as the sweetheart that I remembered from high school and middle school.\u201d<\/p>\n Bender reported for\u00a0POLITICO\u00a0and Nabert and Brause for\u00a0WELT AM SONNTAG. Nick Robins-Early of\u00a0 Insidercontributed to this report.<\/p>\n\u2018I mean you no harm\u2019<\/h5>\n
New recruits<\/h5>\n