Rinaldo Nazzaro’s Forever Quest For Validation
Rinaldo Nazzaro, in a brief moment of levity, becomes a cat.
The Base was Born with Cancer
Rinaldo Nazzaro, the founder of the Neo-Nazi terror group ‘The Base,’ is a persistent man. Persistence is one of Nazzaro’s few redeeming qualities. He is a terrible judge of character, allowing multiple antifascist spies and undercover federal agents to infiltrate The Base over the years. He has promoted unhinged homicidal maniacs like Justen Watkins (AK) and Luke Austin Lane (TMB) into administrative roles. His manner of speaking is rambling and monotone, making him an uninspiring commanding officer for his troops.
Nazzaro is also a notoriously bad liar who will make blatant attempts to put a positive spin on even the worst disasters. He said as much in a recent audio clip on his private Telegram channel.
“You want to make even the negative things, negative events seem positive. You want to flip the narrative and try to garner some kind of positive publicity and some positivity from it.”
This pathological rejection of reality is a rhetorical strategy Nazzaro uses in almost every interaction. Once you notice it, you can’t un-notice it. There is no ‘gotcha’ moment for him. There’s only spin and excuses through rose-colored glasses. Maybe Nazzaro isn’t unique in this way. By its very nature, Right Wing political thought requires its adherents to wage an endless war against reality and empiricism itself. They can’t acknowledge what actually happened, so they’ll never grow. Nazzaro embodies this state of permanent arrested development.
So, he’s a bad judge of character, his oratory skills are lackluster, and he is incapable of learning from his mistakes. Still, Nazzaro is persistent! He does not quit
One of Rinaldo Nazzaro’s profile photos on Telegram
After five years of effort, his persistence paid off. He got the thing he always wanted: acceptance from his accelerationist peers. Nazzaro was given a platform to speak on the first episode of the American Futurist (AF) podcast.
For those unfamiliar with AF, they are a Neo-Nazi propaganda house run by former Atomwaffen Division members. In the podcast episode, hosted by a man who goes by “Ryan’, Nazzaro presents listeners with an unsolicited helping of previously unheard information. He talks about how he was raised, his experiences as a leftist philosophy major at Villanova University, his career in the US military, and his political journey from radical leftism as a young man to national socialism as an adult.
Before we dive into a breakdown of his life story and the versions of history Nazzaro chooses to present, here is a brief background on the organization he formed, improperly vetted, and that subsequently collapsed.
A Brief Background on What Happened to the Base
A propaganda image created by one of the Base members
Since The Base was founded in August of 2018, the network has consistently stumbled awkwardly into one disaster after another.
The first three months of activity were cut short after the group was infiltrated and antifascist activists scraped their internal chats. Articles detailing their findings were published in Vice and Unicorn Riot. Members were doxxed in several leftist blogs. The Base social media pages were banned, including websites that commonly fail to moderate the far-right, like Gab. Amid this chaos, most of The Base’s line members fled, leaving only the dregs.
Left: Rinaldo Nazzaro’s screenshot of his permanent suspension from Twitter Center: Gab founder Andrew Torba disavows Atomwaffen Division and The Base Right: Perma-ban notification from Bitchute, posted by Nazzaro
In February 2019, shortly after The Base regrouped and rebooted their chat rooms on Wire, one member accused Nazzaro of being a federal agent. Cameron Shea, aka “Krokodil,” the Washington Atomwaffen Division (AW) cell leader, spearheaded the effort to fed-jacket Nazzaro. In activism circles, fed-jacketing is a term used for maligning an individual with the accusation of being a federal informant.
Krokodil ordered every AW member to leave The Base chats, which they all promptly did. This would likely have been a significant sting of rejection for Nazzaro. The group was never in great shape, and now their soft relaunch had been mired in scandal.
Cameron Brandon Shea’s profile photo during the early days of The Base
Nazzaro had burned through his savings to get The Base up and running with very little return on his investment. He had bought a parcel of land to train on in Washington (that to this day has never been used). Around January 2019, when he traveled from Russia to the USA to meet face-to-face with The Base members, only four people were willing to give him a chance. Hotels, rental cars, and plane tickets aren’t cheap, and other members clearly didn’t anticipate a return on their investment either.
The extra-special treatment he received from the TSA at every airport was also demoralizing. He said in a voice call, “I had to deal with this every time I flew. When I came to the United States. I was, like, interrogated by two Homeland Security special agents.” This, combined with AW’s exodus, understandably gave Nazzaro a chip on his shoulder and something to prove.
Base training camp in Rome, GA. They’re about to do a mag dump
Nazzaro’s quest to clear his name and convince his peers that The Base is not a government honeypot has not been an easy one. From his career as a contractor working in US military intelligence to his efforts running The Base from Russia, has raised questions about whether he is a “Russian fed” working for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Participation in any form of government apparatus is seen as suspicious by accelerationists. It means you were once an agent of The System, the enemy.
Different photograph from the same Base training meetup in Rome, GA.
The most damaging moment for Nazzaro’s credibility came in January 2020. After a year of steady growth and increasingly large training meetups, a nationally coordinated FBI sting operation on The Base set back their progress virtually overnight.
The raids led to the arrests of 7 key members across three different cells for a slew of charges, including illegal weapons and conspiracy to murder. After these arrests, Nazzaro was publicly identified in The Guardian by Jason Wilson. The article included details about his sketchy background in military intelligence. To borrow a slang term of theirs, Nazzaro definitely “glowed in the dark.”
Various Base meetups
A couple of days after the article came out, an antifascist infiltrator took over The Base’s main propaganda channel on Telegram, changed the channel’s name to “The Base Is A Honeypot,” and deleted all their propaganda. They have been posting memes mocking the group in the channel ever since.
Left: The description Base’s hijacked and defaced Telegram channel Right: One of many memes posted to that channel mocking the group
It was later revealed that the same infiltrator was a regional cell leader and a long-time member of The Base’s vetting team. He had been recording interviews with prospective members for an entire year, resulting in many more members being publicly identified in various publications. Of all the embarrassing disasters Nazzaro presided over, welcoming an undercover antifascist activist into the leadership cadre of the organization and letting him stay there for over a year was by far one of the worst.
From left to right and top to bottom: Mugshots of Base members arrested in the United States. Richard Tobin, Tristan Webb, Thomas Denton, Patrick Matthews, Michael Helterbrand, Luke Austin Lane, Justen Watkins, Jacob Kaderli, Duncan Christopher Trimmel, Brian Mark Lemley, Brandon Gregory Ashley, Alfred Gorman.
In the ensuing years, more arrests would follow in the US and abroad, bringing the total to around 20 Base members facing charges or serving sentences. The Base has been a disastrous embarrassment for the skull mask-wearing Neo-Nazi accelerationist crowd. Nazis engaged in armed struggle didn’t trust Nazzaro as far as they could throw him, but then something funny happened.
Weird Rumors
Did you know that sloppy rumors/hearsay being treated as fact is not exclusively a problem on the Left? It is insider knowledge that Right-wingers, especially white nationalists, have their own flavor of freewheeling paranoia, purity testing, and circular firing squads. What Neo-Nazis are willing to do to each other makes the Left-wing cancel culture look like a pillow fight by comparison. Nazzaro has most certainly not been spared from this treatment.
Two big rumors about him have circulated widely in white nationalist channels in recent years. The first occurred around the time the Russian invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022. The rumor, spread by a White Lives Matter propaganda channel, claimed that Nazzaro was fighting for the Ukrainians. This gained some traction in NatSoc chatrooms. People said that if he’s fighting on the side of the Ukrainians, he may be an undercover FSB/GRU agent and should be “neutralized.”
Series of Telegram posts in the White Lives Matter Forum accusing Rinaldo Nazzaro of being a Russian fed.
All Nazzaro could really say in response to this was “fake news.”
Nazzaro briefly responded to the allegation in the WLM Forum.
In the minds of the people who already disliked Nazzaro and disliked Russia, this was not enough to convince them that he was not a Russian asset of some kind. The FSB agent rumors persisted and were sprinkled on top of an even weirder rumor that emerged the following year.
Disclaimer: The information surrounding this entire incident is unreliable. To be clear;
NONE OF THESE ACCUSATIONS HAVE BEEN SUBSTANTIATED BY RELIABLE EVIDENCE.
Alleged photo of the girl using the handle “Gigi”
On February 20th, what appeared to be an attractive young woman who went by the handle “Gigi” with The Base’s triple Ehwaz runes next to her name was outed as Rinaldo Nazzaro’s daughter and labeled a “zigger slut” (The word “zigger” is a pejorative term for people who support the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It stems from the usage of the letter “Z” painted on Russian vehicles and combines it with the last five letters of the N-word.) by a Telegram channel called Runic Storm and another called Stop Russian War Crimes.
Screenshots of a message exchange between her and the online shop admin were posted. Things spiraled from there. These posts were shared by some White Lives Matter channels with a decent-sized audience of about 10k.
The first post by the Runic Storm TG account on February 20th, 2023.
Initially, this looked like it could be a big break regarding some of the mysteries surrounding Nazzaro’s identity, his current employment, and his motivations for starting The Base.
As the story developed though, it became clear that this callout was more of a crime of passion. It didn’t seem logical. A video showing Gigi driving with a bearded man who didn’t look like Nazzaro was used as evidence that he’s her father. They say she sleeps with NS guys to get them to join the Base while also saying she does it for money. They call Nazzaro an FSB agent while also saying he’s trying to use the Base to entrap NS guys. There was too much emotionally charged language being deployed in both the callout posts against Rinaldo Nazzaro and the doxxes of the young woman in the photographs to be taken seriously.
Mixed in with all the accusations barely supported by evidence are some new aliases of Base members that we hadn’t heard about before, Bjorn, Szen, Odin, and Dakoto. We suspect that either a language barrier or the regular letter-scrambling of aliases may explain the strangely spelled names “Szen” and “Dakoto.”
Excerpt from a longer post accusing Gigi of working as a Russian spy and doxxing her. Gabriela is one of her other alleged aliases
The most significant issue with analyzing this, including all of these new names and details, is that they are buried underneath an avalanche of hyperbole and ad hominem attacks.
Many of these claims feel like the words of a jealous or jilted ex-lover.
Tristan Webb, former man of the house at The Base’s cell in Bad Axe, MI, was called a Jew because his great great great grandmother was Jewish. The narrative that he used his girlfriend to gather intel for the feds isn’t supported by any evidence. The claim that he sold his land to Nazzaro is also completely false. The house was never his to sell.
Series of posts accusing Nazzaro, Tristan Webb and Gigi of all sorts of things.
There are good reasons to be suspicious of everything Nazzaro says and does, but none of them involve a Neo-Nazi e-girl named Gigi.
These reasons are much more straightforward. When he moved to Russia, Nazzaro brought all his savings with him. This money will eventually run out, and he’ll have to hold down a job doing something to stay afloat. His next place of employment seems like a no-brainer. His skill set is in counter-terrorism. He has over a decade of experience working in US military intelligence, which would make him a very valuable asset for the Russians. It would be financially advantageous for Nazzaro to share this knowledge.
At the heart of his story, this is the real reason people think he could work for the Russians. It’s the logical next step to take for someone in his situation. However, this inductive reasoning is not evidence. What we do have evidence of is what he has done with the group he tried to start, The Base. For this analysis, we will take him at his word that his political journey and motivations for founding The Base are genuine.
Nazzaro, once again briefly denying the allegations.
American Futurist Brings Nazzaro into the Fold
On May 22nd, 2023, the American Futurist Fans of North America channel on Telegram made a couple of posts that tie up that loose end left over from the AW exodus from The Base in February 2019. The first post announces they’re doing a podcast interview with The Base founder Roman Wolf (one of Nazzaro’s aliases).
American Futurist announces their intention to have Nazzaro as a guest on their podcast
Four hours later, AF makes a second post denouncing the now-incarcerated Washington AW cell leader Cameron Shea, aka Krokodil, for many things. The charges include converting to Satanism, acting like a fake tough guy in their chats, talking to journalists, and renouncing his ideology/actions in a written letter to a federal judge in order to be granted an early release from prison.
None of this behavior is out of the ordinary for the kinds of people who join the Atomwaffen Division. None of this behavior is out of the ordinary for Neo-Nazis who get in trouble with law enforcement. The effect this post is meant to have is one of character assassination. Whether Krokodil really had a change of heart or not is irrelevant. What matters is how this looks.
Included in the screenshot below is a copy of Shea’s letter to the judge.
American Futurist character assassination post against Cameron Shea/Krokodil
Here is what these two posts, along with the subsequent publishing of the podcast, signal to the American Futurist’s militant accelerationist audience. It first signals that they are vouching for Rinaldo Nazzaro as a trustworthy comrade with benign intentions. The second is that they disavow Krokodil, the man who dragged Nazzaro’s name through the mud in the first place. Lastly, this signals to their audience that they recognize The Base (what’s left of it) as a legitimate project that aligns with their worldview and their tactical preferences.
On July 15th, 2023, American Futurist published their interview with Rinaldo Nazzaro. We at Glitterpill have taken the time to break down the entire thing and pick out important details so you don’t have to. See you in Part 2.
