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FBI arrests white supremacy leader in extremism crackdown in Michigan
Federal agents on Thursday arrested two men, including the self-proclaimed leader of the Base, a violent white supremacist group, as part of a continuing crackdown on extremism in Michigan three weeks after the FBI said it thwarted a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.A team of FBI agents arrested Justen Watkins, 25, of Bad Axe, the self-proclaimed leader of the Base, and Alfred Gorman, 35, of Taylor, during a pair of raids.
They are linked to a December 2019 incident in Dexter in which a local family was terrorized by the men, who tried to intimidate a husband and wife and shared their address with members of the Base, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement.
The developments continue a string of arrests, raids and operations targeting far-right, anti-government extremists and white supremacists this month. That includes accused members of the Whitmer kidnapping plot and a shootout in suburban Detroit between FBI agents and a Madison Heights man who died 28 years after his family became embroiled in the infamous Ruby Ridge standoff in Idaho.
“I think this shows the range of bad actors that are operating in the United States, which should be a cause of concern,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.
Nessel's office charged the men with several felonies, including gang membership, a 20-year felony, using a computer to commit a crime and unlawful posting of a message. The charges were filed in Washtenaw County District Court, the location of the alleged Dexter incident.
Both suspects were lodge in the Washtenaw County Jail pending arraignment.
“Using tactics of intimidation to incite fear and violence constitutes criminal behavior,” Nessel said. “We cannot allow dangerous activities to reach their goal of inflicting violence and harm on the public. I am proud to work alongside law enforcement agencies at the local, state and federal levels to safeguard the public’s safety from these serious threats.”
State and federal investigators have launched a series of operations this year against members of the Base, a small Neo-Nazi network that started to emerge in mid-2018, Lewis said.
Three men linked to the Base were charged with conspiring to kill members of a militant anti-fascist group, police in Georgia announced in mid-January, a day after three other members were arrested on federal charges in Maryland and Delaware.
“While law enforcement has really disrupted their ability to commit acts of domestic terror, these arrests still show a significant threat to the homeland,” Lewis said.
The Base, operating as a paramilitary organization, has proclaimed war against minority communities within the United States and abroad, the FBI has said. Unlike other extremist groups, it’s not focused on promulgating propaganda — instead the group aims to bring together highly skilled members to train them for acts of violence.
“Members are alleged to have engaged in firearms training at camps similar to what we saw in the Whitmer kidnapping case,” Lewis said.
Robert Snell , Beth LeBlanc | The Detroit NewsFederal agents on Thursday arrested two men, including the self-proclaimed leader of the Base, a violent white supremacist group, as part of a continuing crackdown on extremism in Michigan three weeks after the FBI said it thwarted a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
A team of FBI agents arrested Justen Watkins, 25, of Bad Axe, the self-proclaimed leader of the Base, and Alfred Gorman, 35, of Taylor, during a pair of raids.
They are linked to a December 2019 incident in Dexter in which a local family was terrorized by the men, who tried to intimidate a husband and wife and shared their address with members of the Base, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement.
The developments continue a string of arrests, raids and operations targeting far-right, anti-government extremists and white supremacists this month. That includes accused members of the Whitmer kidnapping plot and a shootout in suburban Detroit between FBI agents and a Madison Heights man who died 28 years after his family became embroiled in the infamous Ruby Ridge standoff in Idaho.
“I think this shows the range of bad actors that are operating in the United States, which should be a cause of concern,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.
Nessel's office charged the men with several felonies, including gang membership, a 20-year felony, using a computer to commit a crime and unlawful posting of a message. The charges were filed in Washtenaw County District Court, the location of the alleged Dexter incident.
Both suspects were lodge in the Washtenaw County Jail pending arraignment.
“Using tactics of intimidation to incite fear and violence constitutes criminal behavior,” Nessel said. “We cannot allow dangerous activities to reach their goal of inflicting violence and harm on the public. I am proud to work alongside law enforcement agencies at the local, state and federal levels to safeguard the public’s safety from these serious threats.”
State and federal investigators have launched a series of operations this year against members of the Base, a small Neo-Nazi network that started to emerge in mid-2018, Lewis said.
Three men linked to the Base were charged with conspiring to kill members of a militant anti-fascist group, police in Georgia announced in mid-January, a day after three other members were arrested on federal charges in Maryland and Delaware.
“While law enforcement has really disrupted their ability to commit acts of domestic terror, these arrests still show a significant threat to the homeland,” Lewis said.
The Base, operating as a paramilitary organization, has proclaimed war against minority communities within the United States and abroad, the FBI has said. Unlike other extremist groups, it’s not focused on promulgating propaganda — instead the group aims to bring together highly skilled members to train them for acts of violence.
“Members are alleged to have engaged in firearms training at camps similar to what we saw in the Whitmer kidnapping case,” Lewis said.
“These guys want societal collapse. They don’t just want to target government folks,” Lewis said. “They want the race war.”
The arrests come three weeks after prosecutors said the FBI thwarted a plot to violently overthrow the government as well as kidnap and harm Whitmer. In all, 14 people have been charged with crimes in state and federal courts, including members and associates of an obscure militia, the Wolverine Watchmen.
The conspiracy was led by anti-government extremists angered by state restrictions on travel and business imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the government. Members of the alleged conspiracy conducted surveillance visits to Whitmer's cottage in northern Michigan, trained with firearms and explosive devices and discussed attacking other politicians, including President Donald Trump and the governors of Virginia and South Carolina.
The arrests Thursday are not part of the Whitmer kidnapping plot.
The arrests came 13 months after unexpected visitors arrived at a home in Dexter owned by Dawn and husband Rich Shea, who had moved into the home in August.
At the time, the couple was unaware their new home address was being shared on a white supremacy message board. That's because white supremacists wrongly believed the address belonged to Daniel Harper, host of an Antifa podcast "I Don’t Speak German,” according to an article in The Informant newsletter.
Threats followed, including in a letter mailed to the home. In December, the couple found two figures dressed in black outside and taking photographs. The photos were uploaded to a social media platform with the message, "The Base sends greetings to Daniel Harper of the Antifa podcast 'I Don't Speak German.'"
Rich Shea was notified of the arrests Thursday.
“Right now, I’m not looking to say too much,” Shea, 45, told The Detroit News. “I want to see how things play out. All of this has been pretty sudden after things had died down for a while.”
Gorman's mother and grandmother were not aware of the charges when contacted by The Detroit News on Thursday. They declined to comment.
The Base, according to Nessel's office, is a white supremacy organization that encourages acts of violence against the U.S. and claims to be training for a race war "to establish White ethnonationalist rule in areas of the U.S., including Michigan’s Upper Peninsula."
"The group also traffics in Nazi ideology and extreme anti-Semitism, at one point requiring its members to read neo-Nazi books that urge the collapse of Western civilization," Nessel's office said in a statement.
The group, which "also traffics in Nazi ideology and extreme anti-Semitism," encourages members to train for "insurgency against the U.S. government" and ran a "hate camp" for members where tactical and firearms training was conducted, Nessel's statement said.
It's so hard to take these edgelords seriously when half of them are troons
