The Base, according to sources who spoke online and in person with Nazzaro, is an “accelerationist” project whose purpose is to hasten the collapse of American liberal democracy into civil war and bring about a white ethnostate. In encrypted chats, members discussed the methods and efficacy of such tactics as sabotaging infrastructure and guerrilla warfare. There is no suggestion that any of the Australian recruits have participated in these activities or had any plans to carry out terrorist activities in Australia.

But the leaked audio makes tangible the threat lurking in Australian suburbs while also laying bare what philosopher Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil”. Some of the potential recruits still live at home, haven’t managed to actually read the key texts that inform The Base’s ideology, or say they will have to take the bus to militant training events because they are about to lose their driver’s licence.

‘Sell myself to the devil’

Smith at times in his vetting interview sounds nervous and unsure, as if he’s trying to convince himself of his views as he describes them to The Base’s leaders. He offers a potted summary of his 12-month descent into extremism via his One Nation membership, his doomed tilt at an unwinnable political seat in Federal Parliament and his entry into Perth neo-Nazi group, the Society of West Australian Nationalists, which is run by former Liberal Party volunteer David Donis.

“Being around that sort of party structure and political structure in Australia, I sort of lost faith in the whole thing. And then I decided to take more direct action, and then got pushed onto the Society of West Australian Nationalists,” he said.

His loss of faith in Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, and then SWAN, led him to The Base as he “became more and more extreme and passionate about my views and it was harder and harder to speak out about it for fear of losing my political career”.

“And I thought, well, I have to sell myself to the devil to have a career in politics, or I can leave my career in politics and live an authentic life. And I think that, you know, leaving politics behind is a much better option,” he said.

All The Base’s Australian applicants describe, to varying extents, the same frustration that society and the political system has failed them; some say “direct action” may be the only solution.

Three Australian Base applicants (Smith is not one of them) described supporting Brenton Tarrant’s murderous March 2019 mosque rampage in New Zealand. One of them, a 23-year-old calling himself “RooReich”, says of Tarrant: “They’re saying he’s an alt-right fascist Nazi, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, ‘Well, if that’s what he is then, OK. I’ll just be that. If you want me to be the boogeyman, I guess, I’m the f...ing boogeyman’ ... There is no political or democratic solution at all. We’re not voting our way out of this.”

Follow the leader

Nazzaro, The Base’s Russian-based leader, began advertising his group in July 2018, trying to recruit members. He was also active in the “Read SIEGE” group on the white power-friendly “alt-tech” platform Gab. The group was dedicated to promoting the work and ideas of neo-Nazi James Mason, author of the book, Siege, who advocated terrorism as a means of creating a white ethnostate.

In autumn 2018, early recruiting material for The Base stopped short of explicitly advocating for terrorism. However, in most of the recorded vetting interviews, standard questions for potential recruits included whether they considered themselves national socialists and whether or not they had read Siege, a compilation of Mason’s newsletters that became the central text of the accelerationist movement. Recruits were also asked whether they believed “a political solution” could remedy the perceived genocide of white people.

The ideal recruit would answer, respectively, yes, yes and no.

While The Base was operating, Nazzaro reiterated its emphasis on action. He demanded that members engage in training and meet-ups, and that potential recruits detail any skills they could bring to the group or teach other members via communications on encrypted apps.

Fertile recruiting grounds

Eventually, some members of the group began acting on the hate that The Base fostered. Former members in New Jersey and Wisconsin stand accused of conspiring to vandalise synagogues; the Georgia cell is accused of plotting an assassination.

Charging documents for the cell based in Delaware and Maryland allege the men discussed firing at random into a pro-gun rally in Virginia in January 2020.

In late October 2019, members of The Base’s vetting committee received a bundle of identically formatted PDF documents from five Australian men.

They had been emailed to Nazzaro from a sixth Australian, who operated under the alias “Volkskrieger” and who acted as a virtual local franchisee in bringing these recruits forward. Volkskrieger is a German word that means “people’s warrior”.

A recorded conversation between Nazzaro and Volkskrieger in May 2019 captures The Base leader telling his Australian point man that “we need someone dedicated, who can really lead the charge and handle and keep the guys that do come in the door, keep the morale up and keep them motivated”.

Volkskrieger responded: “That’s fine. Yeah. I’m, I’m happy to do the role.”

The Australian then asked Nazzaro about FBI attention and whether one of the more strident Base members who had been arrested had become a police informant.

“If you go and talk all that talk and then suddenly when the heats up you crack like a f---ing egg, that’s pathetic,” Volkskrieger is recorded saying. The Age and Sydney Morning Herald have identified him as a young Perth tradesman living with his parents.

Among the biggest insights provided by the leaked tapes is the way Australian local neo-Nazi groups who publicly disavow terrorism, such as The Lads Society (which has morphed into the National Socialist Network) and David Donis’ SWAN, were viewed by The Base as recruiting grounds.

Volkskrieger told The Base’s leadership cell he was “trying to suss out members in the group and see which ones I could potentially bring up to The Base … there’s definitely blokes that I can slowly pull over”.

Between Volkskrieger and the five applicants he brought to The Base, four claimed some involvement in The Lads Society or SWAN, including one who claimed to be The Lads’ Queensland chapter leader, Grant Fuller.

Fuller denied trying to join The Base, while Volkskrieger did not respond to efforts to contact him. Donis also declined to comment, although there is no suggestion he knew SWAN’s members were “double-patching” behind his back. There is also no suggestion that Donis, Fuller or Smith support domestic terrorism.

The ‘organised resistance’

As each of the applicants were tested by Nazzaro, they seemed eager to impress him. “RooReich”, a Brisbane neo-Nazi, explained he “sort of joined The Base” because he was readying himself for societal collapse and the militant response needed to realise The Base’s vision of white supremacy.

“If it came to the cops, interrogation and stuff like that, I already have lies in my head already at what I’m going to say to them. And I can remain pretty consistent and confident in those sort of lies,” he told The Base’s vetting committee in late 2019.

A Perth-based applicant calling himself “James Jameson” impressed on Nazzaro that “I know how to f--- people up with minimum physical exertion” and that he got “enjoyment watching” the Christchurch massacre of March 2019. “I’ve eaten several meals watching that,” Jameson explained, while outlining his vision for an Australian “group of networked survivalists across the country with access to firearms” to act as an “organised resistance”.

Asked if The Base was a terrorist organisation, Nazzaro said it was an “entirely legal survivalism and self-defence network”. He also denied it was a neo-Nazi group. He had started a group in Australia because it aimed to be “an international network of mutual support”.

When the leaked vetting calls and social media records were obtained in early 2020, The Base had recruited two Australians, was preparing to vet two more and had interviewed another two, including Dean Smith, who withdrew their applications for their own reasons.

According to internal sources who asked not to be named, Smith discontinued his application, choosing to remain with SWAN, which does not allow so-called “double-patching”.

As groups such as The Lads expand and fracture, they soak up more and more ASIO resources (the agency has said 40 per cent of its caseload is dedicated to ideologically motivated extremist groups). State police are also keeping watch, with Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Mick Hermans on Friday telling a media briefing how right-wing extremism activity had “probably doubled in the past 18 months” and was in a “purple patch”. He also cautioned that while The Base wasn’t operating as “an entity” in Australia, its ability to connect with Australians remained.

In October 2019, Nazzaro asserted that a dozen people in total had applied but his vision was for many more recruits to join.

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While The Base’s progress has been slowed by police attention in the US and its listing as a terrorist group in Canada, Nazzaro, from his home in Russia, remains active on social media. He recently delivered a critique of developments in Australia’s neo-Nazi networks.

“We think that there’s a lot of potential there,” Nazzaro said of Australia in late 2019. “And there’s obviously a lot of like-minded individuals in Australia. It’s just trying to get them plugged into one network, to where we can collaborate.”