Richard Tobin was sitting in his car at the Menlo Park Mall in Edison, holding a machete.

Tobin wanted to "let loose” with the weapon, an FBI agent would later write in court documents. “There were so many African Americans around that it ‘enraged’ him,” the agent wrote.

Tobin - of Brooklawn, Camden County - is a white supremacist “triggered by the state of the country,” federal authorities say. A complaint filed Tuesday charges Tobin with conspiring with a hate group against the rights of minorities, including Jewish people.

The group, which calls itself a “white protection league,” advocates for a country populated only by white people. Its members practice “doomsday prepping" (preparing for the end of the world), and encourage participation in military training. The group’s symbol references a failed 1923 German coup led by Adolf Hitler, according to a complaint against Tobin authored by FBI agent Jason Novick.

An FBI agent said the group's symbol references a failed 1923 German coup staged by Adolf Hitler.Federal court documents

Tobin wanted to do something drastically violent, to go out in a “blaze of glory” like a suicide bombing, authorities said. He Googled “suicide by cop,” and read about creating an IED or car bomb similar to what was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, authorities said.

His internet activity was troubling, but law enforcement were drawn to Tobin while investigating two synagogues defaced in the midwest in September, authorities said. One, in Michigan, was marked with the group’s symbol and swastikas on Sept. 21, the document says. Another in Wisconsin was defaced the next day with those symbols and anti-Semitic words.

Novick did not name the group or the synagogues.

MLive.com reported the Temple Jacob, in Hancock, Michigan, was defaced Sept. 21. News outlets in Wisconsin wrote of a similar incident at the Beth Israel Sinai Congregation in Racine, Wisconsin, the following day.

Tobin allegedly directed the group’s "Great Lakes Cell” from his New Jersey home, ordering an “Operation Kristallnacht,” a reference to Nov. 9 to 10, 1938, when Nazis in Germany burned down synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes and businesses, and killed about 100 Jewish people.

“Tag the s--t" out of the synagogues, he told them, according to the court filing. “If there’s a window that wants to be broken, don’t be shy.”

The midwesterners who attacked the synagogues were not identified in the documents.

Authorities executed a search warrant at Tobin’s home on Nov. 7, seizing his computer, a gaming system, and hard drives. The computer evidence showed the concerning Google searches and an internet history that included several news articles about the synagogues, authorities said.

And there was a video of someone firing at people in a mosque, documents about making plastic explosives, and photos of racist violence, guns, authorities said.

Tobin appeared in federal court in Camden on Friday, according to court records. U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen M. Williams ordered Tobin held before a detention hearing scheduled for next month.

Joe Brandt can be reached at jbrandt@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JBrandt_NJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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