The Base Tapes: Inside a neo-Nazi recruitment drive in Australia – ABC News

A composite image showing Rinaldo Nazzaro, founder of The Base (centre), and two men targeted for recruitment who did not join The Base.(

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Secret recordings reveal how a global white supremacist terror group actively targeted young Australian men for recruitment, including a One Nation candidate for federal parliament.

On a highway south of Perth, an Australian man known only by his online moniker "Volkskrieger" hops onto a group call while driving towards Bunbury.

He connects with three other men spread across Western Australia, California and Russia through an encrypted messaging app called Wire.

Warning: This article contains content that may offend some readers.

The group is uneasy. One remarks they might be in "deep shit" with law enforcement. One of their US associates has been arrested by the FBI and rumours are swirling he was running his mouth off to federal agents.

Volkskrieger's mentor, Rinaldo Nazzaro, warns them to be on their guard.

Nazzaro: "They're going to keep trying to get informants or tap our phones or whatever the hell they're going to. They're using obviously every trick up their sleeve. So this is a period of time where we really, really got to be careful what we say. Just don't say shit you're not supposed to, just let it be a reminder of that and let's just press on."

Little did they know their group had already been infiltrated and this conversation, along with more than a hundred others, was being covertly recorded.

The men in the recording are senior members of The Base, a global white supremacist group founded in the US, which is "prepping" for a race war to establish a white ethno-state.

Background Briefing and Nine newspapers have obtained hours of vetting interviews The Base conducted through encrypted channels with Australians in late 2019 and early 2020.

Background Briefing

Last month, The Base was listed in Canada as a terrorist organisation and its members in the US stand accused of federal hate crimes.

The secret recordings reveal how The Base attempted to recruit young Australians, including Western Australian man Dean Smith, who ran for the federal seat of O'Connor as a candidate for Pauline Hanson's One Nation in 2019.

"I've distanced myself quite a bit from them [One Nation], mostly because they're all race mixers and it really turns my gut upside down," he says in the call.

Mr Smith, who didn't proceed with his application to join The Base, can be heard in the calls praising National Socialist (Nazi) ideology and pledging to do anything to "save the race".

A Canberra teenager was also among the six Australian males targeted for recruitment.

The recordings, which have never been heard in public before, reveal how the neo-Nazi terror network conducted a methodical search for Australian recruits with access to firearms, security licences, combat training and a commitment to racial purity.

AdvocateCannibalism: "I got more enjoyment watching Saint Tarrant do his thing, but I've eaten several meals watching that."

DeanSmith: "It was harder and harder to speak out about it for fear of losing my political career."

Sherman: "Well National Socialism is the worldview of the eternal truth."

Rooreich88: "I've seen and experience and talked to enough Muslims to just know I f***ing hate them."

Nazzaro: "So what's your ethnicity?"

AdvocateCannibalism: "Master race."

"This is a threat that is present and imminent and needs to be taken seriously," said federal Labor MP Anne Aly, who sits on the joint committee on intelligence and security.

"There's no more time to prepare for when it comes. It's already here."

A calculating voice pervades the calls while revealing little about himself. At the time of the recordings, The Base's secretive founder Rinaldo Nazzaro was known publicly only by his online aliases "Roman Wolf" and "Norman Spear".

Before he was unmasked in January 2020 as a former security contractor living with his wife in Russia, and The Base was pushed underground, Nazzaro was actively recruiting to form cells in Europe, South Africa and Australia.

"We have barely a toehold right now in Australia, we need to change that to a foothold," he says.

Australians had joined The Base before, only to drift out of the group. But this time Nazzaro had a new strategy, and central to that plan was Volkskrieger.

Little is known about Volkskrieger other than that, at the time of the recruitment drive, he was living in Perth.

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And his dedication caught Nazzaro's attention.

In 2019, Volkskrieger started out making his own flyers for The Base and distributing them on social media.

Then he took it to the next level.

In the dead of night, Volkskrieger put posters for The Base in Perth's Hyde Park emblazoned with the words "we are here", then shared photos of his work online.

The posters offered the chance to "train" and "fight" with the group and a QR code directing people to a propaganda video of survivalist training camps in the US.

Nazzaro soon took Volkskrieger under his wing, offering him a role as chief recruiter for The Base in Australia, a plan they discussed in a call on October 20, 2019.

Nazzaro: "So appreciate you accepting this role. You know, you have been real solid for us, even though you're out there in Australia, kind of on your own for a while. You stayed committed to The Base and, you know, youve done things actively. I mean, you postered."

Volkskrieger: "Yeah its only been one spot so far, but I didn't want to push myself too far while there's no-one applying, you know what I mean?"

In the call, Volkskrieger affirms his dedication to the mission of building a cell for The Base in Australia, and Nazzaro starts laying out how he plans to do it.

It's almost like setting up a company they discuss creating an Australian email address, mocking up graphics, branding, rollout plans and strategies to reach a younger audience.

What makes joining The Base different to many other far-right groups is its meticulous process.

Recruitment involves several preliminary email exchanges, written applications and record-keeping before the first phone call is ever made.

Applicants are given a standard set of questions about their ethnicity, physical fitness, ideological pathway and any experience in engineering, combat or weaponry.

They are asked whether they've read Mein Kampf and another neo-Nazi manifesto which the ABC has chosen not to name.

Volkskrieger soon proves his worth as a recruiter, completing the initial written vetting of five potential members. Background Briefing has obtained four of those calls.

On November 3, 2019, a 17-year-old boy from Canberra, who identifies himself as Sherman (not his real name) logs onto an encrypted chat service.

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When he joins, there's a man already waiting there for him. Nazzaro, 46, leads the questioning while Volkskrieger quietly listens in the background.

Of Volkskrieger's five candidates, Sherman is the youngest. He's still in high school.

When asked if he has read the neo-Nazi manifesto, he says he's been too busy with homework to get around to it.

But Sherman lays out the rapid progression of his hateful views, from being "apolitical", to a "conservative libertarian phase" and a period delving into messaging forum 4Chan.

Nazzaro warns him The Base isn't mucking around.

Nazzaro: "Were looking for guys who realise there's a degree of risk involved with getting involved with us and they're willing to take on that risk because they feel the mission is important enough and they want to be, you know, participating strongly enough that they're willing to take on that degree of risk."

Sherman: "I understand."

Nazzaro: "Yeah, but how do you feel about that?"

Sherman: "I mean, that's something I'm willing to do."

Sherman is reluctant to talk about any direct action being required in Australia and says the group would be better off just preparing, building fraternities, educating and training.

Jason Wilson, a US-based Australian investigative journalist who first revealed the identity of The Base's leader Nazzaro, says the group has shown no qualms signing up teenagers in the US.

"What [Nazzaro] was doing with this group was talking to people half his age and in a lot of cases, as it turned out, ruining their lives," says Mr Wilson.

"A lot of younger guys who are involved in [The Base] are in the middle of trials for things they've done in this group."

One of the American Base members involved in the Australian recruitment drive, "TMB" real name Luke Austin Lane, 22, from the US state of Georgia would later be arrested for planning the murder of a married couple who were doxxing white supremacists.

An FBI affidavit said Mr Lane instructed two other Georgia Base members to hire a rental car from out of state and to use bags to catch ammo cartridges dispensed from their firearms.

The call ends with a debrief among the recruiters, and all agree Sherman's age shouldn't be a barrier for joining.

Volkskrieger: "He's very young."

Nazzaro: "Right, right. Which just kind of goes with the territory when you deal with guys of that age. It's not always easy. So, it's not like a disqualifier at all."

Volkskrieger: "Yeah it does seem to be the trend. Everyone's young."

Nazzaro: "Right, yeah there's a lot, I mean "

Volkskrieger: "Sometimes that's a good thing because young people are more motivated and ready to make changes."

Not long after this interview, Base member Richard Tobin, 18, was charged with hate crimes in the US for organising the vandalism of synagogues in Michigan and Wisconsin.

Ultimately the Canberra teen's application doesn't proceed it's unclear why but after this interview Volkskrieger takes a more active role in the vetting calls.

It's a blistering hot November day in Western Australia as Volkskrieger joins the next group call while on the road to Bunbury.

The others can barely hear him speak over the whirring of his car's air conditioner on full blast, so Volkskrieger goes on mute as Nazzaro leads the questioning.

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"Tell us a little about yourself," he asks.

"So, I'm an ethno-nationalist from Perth, Western Australia, I'm a licensed firearm owner. I have a clean record with the police. I have been part of several white nationalist movements."

The potential recruit identifies himself as "AdvocateCannibalism", a 36-year-old Perth man with a history of involvement in white nationalist groups, including a WA splinter group of the Lads Society.

In his emailed application prior to the vetting call, he boasted he was "not afraid to bottle a c*** and stab his mates with the leftovers".

In the call, he highlights his job experience as a project manager and recruitment officer, and that he's completing a security course with the intention of becoming a bodyguard.

Nazzaro: "Whats your physical fitness level?"

AdvocateCannibalism: "Oh, about 15kg fatter than I should be.

"I have trained Krav Maga for about four months and also Irish boxing. So yeah, I know how to f*** people up with minimum physical exertion.

"I have a home gym with a bench press, two punching bags and jujitsu mats. I've ordered training knives, I have firearms and access to properties to shoot on."

In the US, Base members attend survivalist training camps and distribute propaganda videos of men engaged in military-style exercises in rural areas.

In 2018, Nazzaro reportedly bought three blocks of land in an off-the-grid corner of Washington state for survivalist training, which a US antifa group labelled a "hate camp".

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Joshua Fisher-Birch, a researcher with the US-based Counter Extremism Project, says these training camps enable recruits with military experience to train others, adding to their threat.

"This very extreme neo-Nazi ideology, the way that they organised and kind of passed these skills onto one another, made them very dangerous," he says.

On the call, AdvocateCannibalism says he can help The Base with a place for weapons training through his contact in another right-wing group.

Aware The Base is looking for recruits interested in the prepper lifestyle, AdvocateCannibalism says he's got "several bugout bags", hunting gear and "plate carriers" vests which can be converted to tactical body armour.

"What I would like to see is basically a group of networked survivalists across the country with access to firearms, legal access to firearms, so there's no questions asked by the alphabets," he says, referring to law enforcement and security agencies like the AFP and ASIO.

Volkskrieger is impressed and discusses a plan to meet up again in Perth.

On December 28, 2019, a Western Australian man in his early 20s who calls himself "Will T Power" moves quickly through the opening minutes of his vetting interview.

He's asked the same stock questions as the others: his ethnicity and his physical fitness level.

Will T Power's interview is laced with hate-filled views on immigrants and praise for the writings of Adolf Hitler, but there's a more troubling topic for Nazzaro.

Will T Power, who Background Briefing can confirm is Dean Smith from Perth, has made a startling admission he once ran for a seat in Australia's federal parliament on behalf of Pauline Hanson's One Nation.

"So I've been a member of One Nation for almost a year now," he says.

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