Brandon Russell, a US neo-Nazi who was charged this year with conspiring to attack the Maryland power grid, appears to have shared instructions on how to carry out such an attack months earlier in an Australian far-right channel on Telegram.
Leaked chats show Russell posted extreme right propaganda and interacted with known Australian neo-Nazis on the encrypted messaging platform last year.
Russell is the founder of Atomwaffen Division, which was proscribed by the Australian government as a terrorist organisation last year.
The organisation, now known as the National Socialist Order, “advocates the use of violence to initiate a ‘race war’ to accelerate the collapse of western society and establish a ‘white ethno-state’,” the government’s listing said.
In 2018 Russell was convicted of possessing bomb-making materials and sentenced to five years in jail. He was released in August 2021 but within months began creating and sharing propaganda and tactics online. This began with a series of “prison essays” published to a US fascist website in early December of that year.
In February 27-year-old Russell and his then-girlfriend, Sarah Beth Clendaniel, were charged with conspiracy to destroy an energy facility in Baltimore, Maryland. Clendaniel said the pair wanted to use sniper attacks on five electricity substations to “completely destroy this whole city”, it was alleged in court documents. Russell and Clendaniel have pleaded not guilty to the charge.
Allegations from the FBI in court documents supporting the criminal complaint against Russell and Clendaniel refer to a user called Homunculus posting in encrypted app chats in 2022, and identify him as Russell.
In separate leaked Telegram chats, seen by the Guardian, someone with the username Homunculus entered a chat associated with a channel called Australian Meditations 51 on 6 May 2022 (51 refers to the number of people killed in the 2018 Christchurch terrorist attacks).
Members of the Australian Meditations channel include individuals on the Australian far right. It is unclear whether Australian users of the channel were aware who Homunculus was.
Homunculus was also active on another telegram channel called Caucasian Coaching, administered by a member of the Australian National Socialist Network, the group that performed Nazi salutes outside the Victorian parliament in Melbourne last month.
It was in this channel that Homunculus shared a link to an extreme right document called Make it Count, which includes instructions for a plot similar to the one Russell and Clendaniel are accused of attempting to execute.
The link was unsolicited, and no Australian responded to the post. There is no suggestion that anyone has attempted to act on the instructions in Australia.
Researchers from the White Rose Society, which tracks neo-Nazis online, said exchanging information across national borders had been crucial for Australian neo-Nazis learning to organise in new ways.
One researcher, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “The neo-Nazi scene is very porous to outside influences and also seeks to establish an international reputation.”
The first post from Homunculus in Australian Meditations on 6 May read: “Hey guys, hail victory from America.” It was welcomed by group members, including one going by the username JC, who responded with a sticker of the Australian neo-Nazi leader Thomas Sewell giving a Nazi salute.
Homunculus then entered a discussion about the 1992 Australian film Romper Stomper between JC and another member. Set in Melbourne, the film tracks the downfall of a violent neo-Nazi group and its charismatic leader, Hando, played by Russell Crowe.
The next day Homunculus forwarded a post from another Telegram channel, Menace, calling on members to “murder your enemies”. He also posted quotes from Heinrich Himmler and a meme about genocide of Jews.
On 28 May Homunculus shared an infographic about how to accelerate “revolution”, including “sabotage” and “electrical failure”, and a letter written by the white supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof.
He also shared a link to a book which detailed how urban snipers could kill people and disable infrastructure anonymously.
Lydia Khalil, a senior research fellow at Deakin University and the Lowy Institute who studies transnational extremism, said the documents were an important example of international communication and cooperation between extremist groups and individuals.
“Extremists have always cooperated and communicated across borders despite the perception that white nationalist groups in particular are nationally and locally focused,” she said.
“They perceive a common global enemy – they believe that there is literally a global elite cabal that is trying to impose a new world order. Therefore local action is not enough, they must coordinate and cooperate globally to meet global challenges.”
The BBC has reported that investigators in the US are looking into several additional alleged attacks on power installations, including in North Carolina, Oregon and Washington state.
The executive director of the US-based Peace and Justice Studies Association, Michael Loadenthal, said Russell had been a leader for “a generation of disaffected individuals born and existing on the internet and coming of age during a pandemic and emboldened by a newly mainstreamed white nationalism”.
Loadenthal said he was not surprised at attempts to communicate far-right beliefs and methods across borders. In the modern extreme right, he said, “We see recruits emerging from dozens of nations eager to link up with other likeminded militants.”
