The former Michigan cell leader of the neo-Nazi terror group the Base, who was out on bond awaiting trial, turned himself in yesterday after violating the terms of his release and being ordered by a judge back to jail.
In October 2020, Justen Watkins, 25, who was at one point overall leader of the Base, was arrested for a series of terrorism-related charges, including ones related to a botched death threat against an antifascist podcaster in 2019.
Chat logs and other internal materials obtained by VICE News show that Watkins was a particularly violent and outspoken member of the Base who once bragged that if police came to his door to arrest him he would open fire with one of the many firearms he had access to.
Watkins was also at the center of a wider conspiracy among hardcore accelerationist neo-Nazis—the type who worship an insurgency manual called Siege (penned in the the 1980s by a hardcore neo-Nazi author) and plan acts of terrorism to hasten the collapse of society—to build an all white, fortified compound in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan, where they could launch the so-called race war.
The FBI has carried out a years-long nationwide crackdown against the Base since the fall of 2019, with nearly a dozen members total of the Base having been arrested in the U.S. for alleged crimes as wide-ranging as an assassination plot, ghost-gun making, plans for train derailments, and a mass shooting. Recently the Base, along with the Atomwaffen Division, a parallel group connected to five stateside murders and a slew of other crimes, were designated as official terrorist organizations by the Canadian government.