Front Burner - What is the militant neo-Nazi group ‘The Base’?

Episode Date: August 23, 2019

An army reservist from a town near Winnipeg is being investigated by the RCMP and the Canadian Military for suspected ties to a shadowy militant neo-Nazi group called “The Base.” Today, we’ll talk to VICE national security correspondent Ben Makuch and VICE senior reporter Mack Lamoureux about the tactics and inner workings of the group, including its similarities to al-Qaeda. We’ll also touch on the Canadian military’s stance on extremism in their ranks.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Pussow. Music SWAT team just pulled up to a house across the street from me. Screams Holy sh... So what you're hearing right there is a raid that went down on Monday night in a rural town just east of Winnipeg. An RCMP tactical unit seized a number of firearms from the home of Master Corporal Patrick Matthews.

He's an Army reservist. Corporal Patrick Matthews. He's an Army reservist, and he's being investigated as a possible recruiter for a global neo-Nazi hate group called The Base. Matthews is refusing to comment on the investigation, but Vice Reporters Mack Lamoureux and Ben McCoo have been investigating The Base since 2018, and this week they got their hands on what seems to be a propaganda training video from the group. Today, they're both here with me to explain what we know so far about the base and its recruiting tactics. This is FrontBurner. Mac, Ben. Thanks for having me.

Thanks so much for joining me. So I've got Ben in New York. Mac is right across from me here in Toronto. And Mac, maybe we could start here. Okay. What do we know so far about Master Corporal Patrick Matthews? Monday night, in this video circulating on social media, the RCMP were seen surrounding Matthew's home. Police seized firearms but say no one is in custody.

So what we know about Master Corporal Patrick Matthew, he's a 26-year-old man. He's from the Winnipeg area. He joined the military, the CAF, about eight years ago in 2010. He's a Class A soldier. It's important to note he's in the reserves. He's not an active duty soldier. He was last active in May, where he took part in about two parades. CAFS spokesman said that this activity took about six hours.

So not like the most active guy within the military. He's scheduled to kind of be active again in September. So he's a combat engineer, and he's had what military have said, quote-unquote, is a rudimentary understanding of explosives. But they kind of said that he could only access weapons and explosives during kind of hard training regiments. He couldn't pull them out at any time.

Master Corporal Matthews has no ability to obtain explosives through the military, and he has no access to weapons. And what do we know about why he's suspected of being involved in the base in the first place, recruiting for this organization? So we're all here because of a very impressive investigative report by a Winnipeg Free Press reporter named Ryan Thorpe. Very impressive. It was a great story. I'm blown away by the amount of access that he was able to get. It began with emails back and forth with the group's founder

in the U.S. where they were posing a lot of questions and I essentially had to simultaneously conduct research online so I could pare back white nationalist talking points. Ryan was able to get past the neo-Nazi vetting that these guys have,

which is, Ben and I did that similarly about a year ago, and it's very difficult. So he was able to get through that. He was able to pass kind of like the interviewing process, and he was actually able to meet the Winnipeg recruiter of the base. And they met in a park, right? They met in a park, yeah. These groups are the most extreme radical fringes of the extreme right. This is kind of as hardcore as it gets.

They promote an ideology that's like this bizarre blend of like Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson. They idolize these mass murderers and spree killers. So before this, Ryan was tipped off to this because there's been a massive kind of global international recruiting drive by the base. It's an international kind of fraternity of neo-Nazis. And in Winnipeg, they were putting up posters. And I've got a copy of this poster here. It's sort of like a skeleton kind of with a hood. He looks like he's in front of a ship sort of.

And then there are. A suspension bridge. A suspension. Oh, it's a suspension bridge. Okay. And at the bottom of the poster, it says survivalism and self-defense network. The base. Learn, train, fight.

Which is, it's like sort of unclear what that is. What exactly it is. When you're looking at this poster. But I know that because you and Ben have done so much work on the base. It's sort of unclear what that is when you're looking at this poster. But I know that because you and Ben have done so much work on the base, you have a much better understanding of what this organization is. And Ben, I'm going to throw to you for a second. Let's get into the base and what this organization is. So basically, it's designed by somebody named Roman Wolf or Norman Spear, who is this fixture online among the far right militant neo-Nazi crowd. So this involves groups like Atomwaffen Division, which is an American hate group, death cult, domestic terror organization that's an alias which we sort of confirmed with American sources that I have here that's not actually his real name it's it's more of an

allusion to various neo-nazi white supremacist lore but what he was trying to do or what he is trying to do is two things unite this sort of fractious group of hardcore militant neo-Nazis online to a more centralized Al-Qaeda, ISIS-styled terrorist organization, and also is trying to create the online neo-Nazi movement, which is massive, as we know, and make it in the real world. So he's trying to organize these people into a group to get paramilitary training. So for a while, they were heavily trying to recruit military men and people who have training in various real combat experiences. So when you look at someone like Patrick Matthews,

while he is a reservist, you do get weapons training. You do get some basic understanding of explosives you do go through actual training that is much more extensive than you know a regular civilian so the base was trying to create it is trying to create that exact system where around the world and around the united states and predominantly europe at this point, as well as, as we know, through Mack and I's reporting, South Africa and areas in that vicinity, where they create paramilitary camps for people to not learn just survivalism. I mean, the stuff that they're advertising span from how to evade a drone following you, to we found weapons training, biological weapons manuals, explosive manuals. And you found all this online, in sort of online chat rooms.

In their online chat rooms, in the library, inside their library that they've shared widely. So really what this group's been trying to do is professionalize and also structure the militant neo-Nazi movement within the United States and Canada and Europe. In some of the posters that actually went up, that Ben and I found, I can't remember exactly where this one was, but it had a QR code. And if you scan that QR code, you are taken to a video by the base on BitChute,

which is kind of like a far-right alternative to YouTube. The videos that are too extreme to get onto YouTube kind of go there. Okay. And what does the video show you? Is it as coded as the poster? It's way more allusive to what they're really about. While they say they're just kind of about survivalism and everything, at the very end of this video, which is

entitled What is the Base?, it has the lines Together we will create a future for our race, which is a very big allusion to the 14 words, which is a very big allusion to the 14 words, which is a very famous neo-Nazi slogan. I'm not going to recite it here, but essentially the general gist is we need to secure a future for our white children. Right. So while the base on these posters you can see are kind of saying,

yeah, it's just like a survivalism and a self-defense network. When you get inside it and when you start to look and you look past kind of the very shallow details, it's far more insidious. And what kind of things were you seeing when you were in all these online chat forums when it came to sort of these neo-Nazi white supremacist views? So we, I mean, we saw a whole gamut of things besides just, you know, an innumerable amount of just hideous things said about people of color, Jewish people, immigrants. I mean, stuff about cannibalism based on those types of people. What? A lot of it's shock and awe, but also just reading some of this stuff is, you really have to, it's dark, but also you have to be a very hateful person.

But beyond that, there was also real discussions about future actions and something called accelerationism and trying to accelerate a race war, And something called accelerationism and trying to accelerate a race war, accelerate the decay of society when something called when shit hits the fan. It's this whole concept that, you know, there's going to be an apocalyptic moment. And that's when these neo-Nazi militants will seize upon creating their sort of pure race country. So one of the things that we actually were able to find through our initial story is that Norman Spear kind of came from a movement before he founded the base called the Northwest Front. The Northwest Front essentially wants to seize some land

within the Northwest United States and Canada and basically create a small white ethnostate there. So accelerating towards a race war in order of them to seize land and create kind of a white homeland is central to kind of what the base is all about. Is all about. And Ben mentioned earlier these sort of paramilitary camps that they're holding. Is that what we're talking about here? Yes. I mean, what they really want to do is also create terroristic actions. So they discuss a lot of these sorts of things in the forums that we read. That's why you hear this sort of thin veneer from Norman Spear, from other members of the base, that they're not a militant

organization. When we saw those chats and we were inside of them and we're watching them play out in real time, they were discussing things like finding World War II munitions in Germany and creating IEDs out of them. One individual talked about his experiences killing civilians in Afghanistan as a soldier and how it would help in any future actions. Somebody else commented on the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter who horrifically killed countless civilians. It's very sad. It's a very sad day. We always said never again. But it did happen again.

This 11 people lost their life just because they are Jews. And said, you know, this person could have done a lot better and I want to do a real action. Let's talk. And by better, I mean more casualties. It speaks to kind of the gamification we're seeing in mass shooters lately. One of the things that we did find when we were looking in the chat was they were discussing what kind of actions to take and they were kind of ramping it up. Spear, he was kind of smart about it where he was saying, take actions you know you can get away with.

Right now we just need to see what we can push and kind of create chaos is what they were going for. And I should say as well that, you know, that kind of conversation, which we were looking at as early as, you know, August 2018, I started looking at this particular group because they had bona fide connections to Adam Woffin Division, which is, you know, under investigation by the FBI. One of their former members was just arrested last week for plotting a bombing against a synagogue and an LGBTQ friendly club. So this group also has been a proponent of what the Christchurch shooter has talked about, and that's accelerating violence and tit-for-tat violence to create an unsettled environment in which chaos ensues. Right.

The strategy here being that they're trying to accelerate this race war. Yeah. So this is very serious stuff that this group has been engaging with. And of course, you look at someone like Patrick Matthews, and this is someone who does have military training and is part of this, or at least alleged to be part of this group. We're speaking about Patrick Matthews a lot today, and I do want to be clear, he hasn't been charged, and he has not responded to any requests for comment.

Matthews was home today, but he refused to speak to us. Still no comment. All right. Ben, tell me about the paramilitary training camp, and particularly this video that you guys got your hands on this week. So there's something called a hate camp. And this comes directly from Adam Woffin Division, which, as I said earlier, we know that the FBI is investigating this group. We know that it's shown up in actual affidavits by the DOJ.

And this group started holding these things called hate camps where a number of these very militant neo-Nazi individuals would get together with their various firearms and do paramilitary trainings. And ProPublica did a huge expose on this. And we also uncovered a member of this group that was also a Canadian reservist. And there was active duty servicemen within this group. So what they do is they go to a covert location and they shoot guns at targets and they plan things. It's not just simply sitting in the woods and covering yourself in deer piss. They're actually talking about ways to unfold their terroristic blood fantasy. blood fantasy. And the member we uncovered in Adam Woffin Division, who was in the Canadian Reserves, has also completely denied that he's the person we found and was a part of the group itself. Right. And this video that you guys got a hold of this week, I'm looking at a screenshot of it right now. I'm sitting here with Mac. And so, you know, there are about eight men with what look like very

powerful weapons standing in front of a flag. They're all masked. This is very, very scary looking. It's distressing for sure. Yeah. It's definitely distressing. I mean, this is the thing I always go back to when it comes to this type of, and I've covered ISIS and Al Qaeda very closely. go back to when it comes to this type of, and I've covered ISIS and Al-Qaeda very closely. Think of the Toronto 18. Yep. And look at the national crisis it was. We begin tonight with a kind of story most Canadians hoped would never make headlines in this country.

Police say they have foiled a major terrorist attack against targets in southern Ontario. Investigators say the suspects took their inspiration from Osama bin Laden. Police say three tons of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be used to make explosives, were delivered recently to the suspects. I work downtown. Am I fearful to go on Monday? Yeah, I am. It's unsettling that a city that we feel so safe in is a target of terrorism. I am struck by how similar this all looks right like this all feels very familiar yeah here's the thing so one thing we know from the source the

counterterrorism source that that was able to share this with us is that this these this image this video that we received happened likely around the time of this alleged hate camp that happened in Spokane, Washington. And the other thing we can definitely say about this, having, having reported on this group and other groups like it very extensively for the last year and a bit is that this particular video has not shown up on the

internet until this weekend. And that generally means that it happened within close proximity of the data it was published yeah i i suspect that all this is it did come from that hate camp i can't confirm it but but i can also tell you that that's the biggest group of of base individuals i've seen in one place with their firearms which is a very you know very telling sign that this is growing, not shrinking. I do want to get back a little bit to something that you mentioned earlier, that this group is attempting to recruit people from the military. So the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence say they have been taking this allegation very seriously.

We have, through our application process, we do do background checks. We have enhanced reliability checks. And we do investigate our members prior to joining. National Defence Minister Harjeet Sejan denounced the actions of hate groups. He said any type of behaviour like this is completely unacceptable. We want to be able to identify it early and let it be known right from the get-go that any type of intolerant behaviour will not be accepted whatsoever. He also recently asked the Canadian military ombudsman to investigate racism in the armed forces. And one incident and one person with these type of viewpoints is too

many for us. And so I wanted to get an independent look. But from the Canadian perspective, the military here has been facing a lot of criticism with extremism experts saying it needs to be more proactive about weeding out white supremacists. There was a study that tracked white supremacism and racism in the military in 2018. And the Canadian military is saying that it identified a total of 53 members, 30 of which are still serving, who are identified as either being part of a hate group or who undertook actions or made statements which could be viewed as discriminatory or racist. But, you know, in a statement that they sent us today, they did point out that this was 0.1% of the total Canadian forces population. What do you make of that, Mac?

Well, of course, it's small and it's definitely something that we shouldn't lose our heads in regards to. But you have to be cognizant of the fact that this is an actual strategy that's being undertaken by more or less the most extreme of the extremists on the far right, ideological, domestic terrorist kind of groupings. There's a few things I would say to them. I mean, if we're going to discuss this, if they're going to lean into this problem as well, there's not that many of them i mean if we're going to discuss this if they're going to lean into this problem as well there's not that many of them that's a that's a it's a null and void conversation because we we know as mac and i have reported we had chat logs from another neo-nazi site that where wherein

several people were discussing wanting to get canadian military reservist training to sort of get the combat experience but not go all the way in so that they could either ratchet up their plans for mass casualty events or be ready for the race war. So we know that. So these are very serious things that are going on.

And I think the downplaying from the CAF is, frankly, I think is a serious problem and it needs to be tackled. If there's 53 members within that military that is part of these types of groups, there needs to be a zero tolerance policy for it. A part of those type of groups or who undertook actions

that could be viewed as discriminatory. They're not saying that they were part. One of the most striking things that I saw recently was during the CAF press conference on Wednesday, when the CAF spokesperson was asked a question by a member of the media about the base, they answered was, I'm sorry, which base are you referring to, Beth? They're not familiar with these groups. Okay, sorry, I was wondering if you were referring to the base in Winnipeg there. That's maybe one of the most worrisome things is that

they're kind of behind the times, or at least not informing their spokespeople enough. Right. A lack of education. That's certainly a criticism that we've heard of our national security intelligence operations as well. Right. That they've been behind in addressing the growing threat of white nationalism, white supremacy, right-wing hate groups. To end this conversation today, Ben, I'm struck by something you said earlier about the public reaction to the Toronto 18. And so what message would you like Canadians to hear today about a group like the base? government based on this. I'm well-versed in jihadist terrorism. And it has been a threat to Canada in the past. It's been a threat to many nations. Right now, the rising threat is not only from them, but it's from these domestic terror groups that are taking very similar steps and, in fact, mimicking many of the operational tactics of ISIS and al-Qaeda knowingly in order to carry out domestic terrorism.

You know, one question I would have for the CAF is if Patrick Matthews was alleged to be actively a part of ISIS or al-Qaeda, what would the reaction be both publicly and from the military? I mean, these would be very, very different conversations. And I think that is something we all need to be mindful of, especially when you look at this from a racial perspective. I think that that also plays into this. Mac? No, Ben nailed it. Okay.

Guys, I want to thank you both so much for coming on this show today. I have a lot of respect for the reporting that you've done. It's reporting that you have been doing well before a lot of other people started. So thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. So last up today, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo paid a visit to Ottawa on Thursday and took aim at China for holding two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, in detention.

He said it wasn't, quote, morally similar to the case of Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei executive arrested in Vancouver at the behest of the U.S. Here's Pompeo talking to my colleague Vashie Capellos. More importantly than my prediction is the effort that we'll continue to make to see that this issue doesn't go away and that we bring every bit of diplomatic effort to this cause on behalf of these two Canadian citizens. That's all for today.

FrontBurner comes to you from CBC News and CBC Podcasts. This week, the show is produced by Jackson Weaver, Shannon Higgins, Elaine Chao, Imogen Burchard, Matt Alma, and Chris Berube. Derek Vanderwyk does our sound design. Our music is by Joseph Shabison of Boombox Sound. This week, the executive producer of FrontBurner was Kathleen Goldhar, sitting in for Nick McKay-Blocos. This is actually Kathleen's last week at the CBC after 17 incredible years here. She's moving to a new job, and we wish her the best of luck. I'm your host, Jamie Poisson.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. See you on Monday. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.