‘Not Your Old-School Aryan Nation Guy’: Army Case Highlights Evolving Threat


https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/885648473/not-your-old-school-aryan-nation-guy-army-case-highlights-evolving-threat

When Army Pvt. Ethan Melzer found out in April that he was deploying to Turkey, U.S. prosecutors say, he began to plot. He allegedly browsed jihadist propaganda, including an ISIS account of attacks on American forces. In it, militants referred to a “harvest of the soldiers.”

But the ambush 22-year-old Melzer was planning, authorities say, was driven by a different ideology. A federal indictment unsealed in June accuses Melzer of passing sensitive military information to fellow members of a Satanic neo-Nazi network, the Order of the Nine Angles. The target: Melzer’s own unit.

While the case hinges on contacts with white supremacists, jihadist references are laced throughout. In May, prosecutors say, Melzer slipped information to someone he took for an al-Qaida operative. Court papers show a conversation where an alleged neo-Nazi asked Melzer if they were “literally organizing a jihadi attack,” to which he replied, “Yes probably.”

“They didn’t draw a distinction, didn’t really see a problem with adhering to tenets of violent white supremacy, Satanism and jihad,” said Colin P. Clarke, a terrorism researcher at The Soufan Center. “The lines are blurrier than ever before.”

Analysts say Melzer’s alleged plot is emblematic of today’s extremist threat, one inspired by a mash-up of radical beliefs. It’s a threat that is international in reach, and nihilistic and violent in nature – part of the destroy-the-system “accelerationist” vein. One researcher noted that the old left-right terrorism spectrum now looks more like a circle. A Justice Department statement described Melzer’s motivations as “a diabolical cocktail of ideologies.”