Atomwaffen Division
The Atomwaffen Division, also known as the National Socialist Resistance Front, was an international far-right extremist and neo-Nazi network. Formed in 2015 and based in the Southern United States, it expanded across the United States and several other countries worldwide. Atomwaffen was described as "one of the most violent neo-Nazi movements in the 21st century".
It was listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and it was also designated as a terrorist group by multiple governments, including the United Kingdom and Canada. Members of the Atomwaffen Division have been held responsible for a number of murders, bombings, planned terrorist attacks, and other criminal actions.
History
In 2015, the group's creation was announced by founding member Brandon Russell, on the Neo-fascist and Neo-Nazi web forum IronMarch.org, which, prior to its shutdown in 2017, had been linked to several acts of Neo-Nazi terrorism and violent militant groups such as the Nordic Resistance Movement, National Action, CasaPound, and Golden Dawn. In its initial posts, the group described itself as a "very fanatical, ideological band of comrades who do both activism and militant training. Hand to hand, arms training, and various other forms of training. As for activism, we spread awareness in the real world through unconventional means."As of 2017, the group's membership was mostly young, and it also recruited new members on university campuses. Its campus recruitment poster campaigns urged students to "Join Your Local Nazis!" and say "The Nazis Are Coming!". It posted recruiting posters at the University of Chicago, the University of Central Florida, the Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and Boston University. Atomwaffen Division had recruited several veterans and current members of the U.S. Armed Forces who trained the organization's members in the use of firearms and military tactics. A U.S. Navy officer was expelled for allegedly recruiting 12 members for the group and four affiliated US Marines were charged with trafficking and manufacturing firearms for the group. Atomwaffen members also sought to train with the Azov Battalion and Russian Imperial Movement. In October 2020, Ukraine deported two Atomwaffen members who tried to join Azov for inciting murders and terrorism.
As of 2018, Atomwaffen had ties to [|various affiliated neo-Nazi groups] and the fascist Satanist Order of Nine Angles, an organization which advocates rape and human sacrifice. Through their shared interests in Nazism and occultism, AWD member John Cameron Denton met Joshua Caleb Sutter, the founder of the esoteric Satanist group the Tempel ov Blood, a nexion of the ONA. The ToB infiltrated and effectively took over the AWD, beginning in 2017. Following the arrest of the AWD's original founders, they were succeeded as leader by John Cameron Denton. Denton was close to Sutter and influenced by the ToB and changed the direction of the group to be more similar to the ToB. Denton made Sutter's books required for new initiates and approved them for reading for members. Sutter's influence became controversial among AWD members who despised the Satanic and violent direction the AWD took, which led to several members leaving.
During an investigation in 2018, ProPublica obtained 250,000 encrypted chat logs written by members of the group. It was estimated in early 2018, that Atomwaffen had 80 members, while ProPublica estimated as many as 100. According to International Centre for Counter-Terrorism the group has a large number of "initiates" in addition to 60 to 80 full members.
On March 14, 2020, American neo-Nazi James Mason claimed that the Atomwaffen Division had disbanded. However, the group was believed to be on the cusp of being designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the State Department, and the Anti-Defamation League stated that "the move is designed to give members breathing room rather than actually end their militant activities". An intelligence brief distributed by federal law enforcement warned that Atomwaffen and its branches had discussed taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 25, 2020, a Missouri man affiliated with Atomwaffen allegedly planned to destroy a hospital treating coronavirus victims with a car bomb and died in a shootout with the FBI.
According to counter-terrorism experts, the group remained active and it continued to established affiliates in Europe. On May 31, 2020, it was announced that a new Atomwaffen cell had been uncovered in Russia. Local security services had also just previously uncovered a cell in Switzerland, confirming the suspicions of the German officials that Switzerland served as the linchpin of Atomwaffen's German operation, allowing them to evade law enforcement. European security officials have asked their U.S. counterparts for assistance in combating these cells and urged designating them as terrorist organizations.
In August 2020, months after the claimed disbanding, the group resurfaced yet again, announcing having reorganized as the "National Socialist Order" on the American Futurist.
On April 22, 2021, the British government announced its banning of Atomwaffen/National Socialist Order as terrorist organizations. Similar actions were undertaken by Canada and Australia, which outlawed local Atomwaffen branches in sweeping bans against far-right organizations.
On September 12, 2022, former NSO members released a blog post on their website claiming to start a new organization, the "National Socialist Resistance Front."
In 2023, Vice and The Guardian reported that Atomwaffen Division members have been active "and play key roles" in organizing the Active Club Network, which is a loose association of various neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. A leading member of Atomwaffen's Canadian branch, Patrick Gordon Macdonald, who has been charged with terrorism offenses, was allegedly also a member of Canadian Active Club. Kristoffer Nippak, another founding member of the Northern Order was also a member of the Active Club. According to the director of the University of New Brunswick's Criminology and Criminal Justice Program, David Hoffman, Atomwaffen is using Active Clubs as a cover for organizing where it has been outlawed as a terrorist group.
Although Atomwaffen's ideology stressed opposition to democracy and parliamentarism, prominent Atomwaffen members have also risen to power as prominent members of their local far-right parties. Viljam Nyman of AWD Finland had been member of the Lapland board of the Finns Party, and another Finnish member was a party ideologue, publishing dozens of articles in the Finns party organ. MP Ruuben Kaalep from EKRE was also connected to Atomwaffen members and four affiliates of Atomwaffen Deutschland were also local politicians of the Alternative for Germany.
According to The Guardian, "mass shooters in Buffalo, New York; El Paso, Texas; and Jacksonville, Florida have cited Atomwaffen’s message as their inspiration." The Guardian reported that as of November 10, 2024, Atomwaffen was disbanded.
In February 2023 Russell and a Maryland woman were charged with allegedly conspiring to attack electric substations in the Baltimore area. Russell and Sarah Clendaniel, have been arrested for planning to attack numerous Baltimore electrical substations, aiming to “completely destroy this whole city” in an apparently racially motivated attack. On February 4, 2025 Russell was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility. On August 7, 2025, Judge James K. Bredar sentenced Russell to the maximum 20 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release, rejecting arguments that he was less culpable than Clendaniel.
Ideology
In its propaganda videos, Atomwaffen burned copies of the United States Constitution and flag and advocated for attacks against the federal government of the United States, racial minorities, gay people and Jews. The videos also contained footage of the attacks on said minorities. Atomwaffen Division had engaged in several mass murder plots, plans to cripple public water systems and plans to destroy parts of the continental U.S. power transmission grid. Atomwaffen has also been accused of planning to blow up nuclear power stations. The organization's aim was to violently overthrow the federal government of the United States via terrorism and guerrilla warfare tactics. Since 2017, the organization had been linked to eight killings and several violent hate crimes in the US, including assaults, rapes and multiple cases of kidnapping and torture. Atomwaffen is also responsible for several killings worldwide.The organization explicitly advocated neo-Nazism, drawing a significant amount of influences from James Mason and his publication Siege, a mid-1980s newsletter of the National Socialist Liberation Front. It was published into a book with the same title that was required reading for all Atomwaffen Division members. Mason, a neo-Nazi and a Holocaust denier who advocates murder and violence in order to create lawlessness and anarchy and destabilize the system, was the main advisor to the group. Key ideological influences on the group included Mason, neo-Nazis Joseph Tommasi and William Luther Pierce as well as cult leader Charles Manson.
The AWD was one of the most notable groups who belong to the militant far-right accelerationist movement popularized by James Nolan Mason and the now-defunct Iron March forum. In the context of contemporary neo-fascist politics, far-right accelerationism is a radical approach to societal change which maintains the belief that attempting to achieve such through civilized political activities is ineffective. Instead, it emphasizes using violently terroristic actions to increasingly destabilize a nation until its own government completely loses the ability to maintain fundamental security and development functions. Meanwhile, it is at this point that a revolutionary vanguard party can successfully seize power and rebrand the former democratic government into, in this case, a white ethnostate based upon authoritarian neo-fascist ideals akin to Nazi Germany.
Atomwaffen also drew influences from Nazi esotericism and the occult, and its recommended list of reading materials for aspiring initiates included the works of Savitri Devi and the works of Anton Long, a founding member of the Order of Nine Angles, a British neo-Nazi and a Satanist leader. Some members of the group also sympathized with the Salafi and jihadist forms of Islam. Atomwaffen Division's founder, Brandon Russell, is alleged to have described Omar Mateen, who perpetrated the Orlando nightclub shooting and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, as "a hero". In its propaganda, the group also idolized Osama bin Laden, and it also considered "the culture of martyrdom and insurgency" within al Qaeda and ISIL as something which should be emulated. Atomwaffen promoted White jihad and has advocated for an alliance with Islamic terrorists such as Hamas and its Telegram channels have promoted the group. A member of the Atomwaffen Division, Steven Billingsley, was photographed at a vigil in San Antonio, Texas, for the victims of the Orlando shooting, with a skull mask and a sign which read "God Hates Fags", a motto connected to the homophobic Westboro Baptist Church. Although the Atomwaffen Division was anti-communist, it sympathized and promoted North Korean Juche as a model of racial purity and autarky.