Show caption White nationalists chant after marching through the University of Virginia campus with torches in Charlottesville on 11 August 2017. Photograph: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images The far right The neo-Nazi plot against America is much bigger than we realize Lt Christopher Hasson is the product of traditions in white supremacist circles, and experts say there are ‘thousands like him’ Vegas Tenold Sun 3 Mar 2019 05.00 GMT Share on Facebook

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In the early summer of 2017, US coast guard lieutenant Christopher Hasson had an idea. He had been trying to figure out an effective way of killing billions of people – “almost every last person on Earth” – but found himself coming up against the daunting logistics of such a task.

He suspected “a plague would be most successful”, but didn’t know how to get his hands on enough Spanish flu, botulism or anthrax. His idea, he wrote in a draft email from 2 June of that year, would be to “start with biological attacks followed by attack on food supply”. He acknowledged the plan needed more research.

While horrifying in their ambition, Hasson’s plans, gleaned from email drafts, are scatterbrained and bear the hallmarks of a person still trying to figure things out. His tentative plans, outlined mostly in emails to himself, were thwarted when he was arrested last month on firearms and drugs charges and investigators discovered his inner life as a neo-Nazi and his plans for mass murder – along with a huge cache of weapons and a hit list of prominent Democrats and media figures.

What is clear, however, is that Hasson was inspired by others who came before him, and that he is likely very far from alone.

Hasson is the product of both established traditions within white supremacist circles as well as new developments. He was at once inspired by old ideas and determined to go beyond them to create more havoc than any who had come before him.

The year and a half since the Unite the Right far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, ended in mayhem, the death of a protester and political turmoil, has been a rough time for the public facing and ostensibly political arm of the white supremacist movement in America. Those who marched in Charlottesville have to a large degree retreated, fleeing lawsuits, doxxing and personal scandal. Still, while public marches appear to be fewer and fewer, the period since Charlottesville has also been marred by individual episodes of extreme violence, suggesting that the wave of white supremacy that seemed to crest in Charlottesville is not so much receding as just changing in nature.

White supremacist groups clash with counter-protesters during Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on 12 August 2017. Photograph: Michael N/Pacific/Barcroft Images

“I think what we’re starting to see now is people becoming more disheartened and disconnected from mainstream politics,” said Keegan Hankes.

Hankes is a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center monitoring group, and he says they have been following a spike in far-right violence. “We believe we can expect more violence as people become increasingly frustrated and unmoored,” he said.

Increased violence from far-right activists at a time when the administration is friendlier toward their goals is not without historical precedent, said the University of Chicago historian Kathleen Belew, the author of Bring the War Home: the White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. Belew explained that the far right’s affinity for Donald Trump might mean more violence during his time in the White House, not less.

“The last time the movement underwent a major revolutionary turn was under the Reagan administration, during a moment of supposedly friendly state power,” she said.

“That means that whatever people think about the Trump administration’s reluctance to disavow certain types of white power organizing, this is not a moment when we’d expect to see happiness in the fringe. We’re talking about a movement in which many activists want the overthrow of the federal government, the reinstatement of slavery, the genocide of all people of color and a white homeland. These aren’t things that can be pursued politically, even with a sympathetic administration.”

I think what we’re starting to see now is people becoming more disheartened and disconnected from mainstream politics

A report published by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in January supports Belew and Hankes’ assertions. According to the study, every single extremist murder in the US in 2018 had links to far-right ideology, making it one of the deadliest years in recent history. While some of these links were tenuous – the shooter behind the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school had no direct contact with extremist groups but had been known to make racist, white supremacist statements – the numbers paint a picture of a movement that is finding new, violent outlets for its extremism. Some of the incidents – such as a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue – sent shockwaves through the whole country.

“It’s clearly gathering steam,” said JM Berger, an expert on extremism and research scholar at Vox-Pol. “Success breeds success, and we’re seeing people operationalize the self-education process. People are beginning to understand that they can emulate the actions of someone who went before them to work out whatever they want to work out.”

According to documents filed in the investigation of Hasson, he was not only inspired by terrorists who came before him – he is deeply influenced by Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik – but also driven by a loathing for what he perceives as Trump’s enemies as well as a paranoid fear that Trump will be removed from power.

This certainty that evil forces are working against Trump has become prevalent within the far right, breeding conspiracies such as QAnon, which posits Trump is fighting a “deep state” conspiracy that seeks to thwart his patriotic agenda. As such, Trump plays a dual role within the world of rightwing violence: while a “sympathetic” administration can spur a rise in violence, the perceived persecution of Trump – in large part an image created by the president himself – can fuel the paranoid and violent fantasies of people like Hasson.

Both ideas can breed violence, especially if Trump is defeated in the 2020 elections.

A far-right protester takes part in a Patriot Prayer rally in Portland, Oregon on 4 August 2018. Photograph: Kainoa Little/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

“What we’ve seen in the Trump-era is that a lot of the people on the fringes see opportunities for political engagement where they didn’t see it before,” said Berger. “The question is: what happens when that window closes?”

Coupled with increased frustration by the limitations of political engagement comes the rise of more terroristic groups such as Atomwaffen Division, a militant neo-Nazi group linked to several murders. They and others have brought a less hierarchical and more disorderly structure to white supremacist activism, which makes them both harder to track and to control. Known as “leaderless resistance”, it has been a tactic of white supremacists for decades and lead to events such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, but has been made exponentially easier by the internet.

“Leaderless resistance totally changes recruitment strategy,” said Belew.

“No longer is the movement trying to generate a mass protest of uniformed members. This movement isn’t interested in a crowd but in a dedicated cell of 12 people that are going to devote their lives to guerrilla warfare.”

Historically the strategy of leaderless resistance was once confined to the extreme fringes of the white power movement, attracting terrorists such as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Breivik, Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof and others, but recently parts of the movement who have been considered moderate have also embraced the idea.

“Leaderless resistance is becoming ubiquitous on the far right,” says Hankes. “Normally these things come from the extreme parts of the movement and the fact that it is showing up elsewhere shows how deep set these ideas are and how disillusioned the movement is with the White House.”

It is uncertain if Hasson would have acted out his plans of mass murder. “Fantasies of violence occur far more often than violent plots,” said Mark Pitcavage, an analyst of rightwing groups for the ADL. “Which of these categories does Hasson fall into?”

Michael German, a former FBI agent who went undercover with white supremacist groups in the 1990s and who now works as a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, agreed. “We really don’t know much about [Hasson], since there is very little in the public record. The key will be if he had co-conspirators or associations with people outside and if they were aware of his intentions,” he said.

Still, German was not surprised by Hasson’s plot or that he had been concocting it while on active duty. “We know that there’s significant illegal activity happening that the government needs to be aware of, the problem is that the government isn’t collecting information about it in a way that lets us assess how widespread the problem is. The FBI has had concerns about white supremacist activity within the military and law enforcement for a long time, but there’s little evidence of investigations into it.”

What remains an almost certainty is that Hasson is not alone in his desire to commit atrocities for white supremacist objectives. Others are still out there: armed, dangerous and plotting. Some will likely turn their thoughts into actions.