Police in Spain have arrested three people on suspicion of belonging to the Base, a global neo-Nazi terrorist group that incites and trains members in techniques to overthrow governments and bring about a race war.
The group, which has been designated a terrorist organisation by the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is part of a worldwide “accelerationist” white power movement that prepares its cells to carry out violent and destabilising attacks.
In a statement on Monday, Spain’s Policía Nacional said the three arrests, made in the eastern province of Castellón, had enabled them to dismantle the first accelerationist terrorist cell detected in the country.
Officers seized two firearms, replica guns, ammunition, knives and tactical military training gear, as well as accelerationist material and neo-Nazi paraphernalia.
The trio are accused of belonging to a terrorist organisation; recruiting, indoctrinating and training for terrorist purposes; and illegal possession of weapons.
The investigation into the cell started at the beginning of this year, when anti-terror and anti-radicalisation officers came across an individual whom they described as “very radicalised and aligned with the supremacist, terrorist beliefs of the Base”.
They then learned of the other two members of the cell and discovered that the trio had undergone tactical training using paramilitary techniques and materials.
“The officers also established that those arrested used social media to recruit new members, to praise the violent actions of other terrorist organisations and to share accelerationist audiovisual content,” the police statement said.
Over recent months, it added, the trio had stepped up their radical rhetoric, “exhorting violent attacks and even openly revealing that they were prepared to wage selective attacks for the cause”.
The police also determined that the leader of the Spanish cell had been in direct contact with the US founder of the Base, Rinaldo Nazzaro, who recently called on cells around the world to carry out attacks designed to bring about the collapse of western democratic institutions.
Officers arrested the three suspects on Tuesday 25 November, while also carrying out five searches in Castellón. A judge at Spain’s highest criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional, has ordered the leader of the cell to be remanded in custody.
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the Base as “an antisemitic, white nationalist network that trains members in survivalism and paramilitary skills to prepare them to mount an armed resistance against the government”.
Accelerationism is a term used broadly to describe ideologies that seek to instigate radical social change. In recent years, the label has found favour with the far right, which has used it to describe efforts to destabilise communities and democratic institutions through violence.
Nazzaro is a former Pentagon contractor and analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, now based in Russia. He has been accused by alleged former members of the Base of being a Kremlin spy.
