Young Nazis obtain weapons and honour terrorists: Are we facing a new wave of nazi terrorism?

Recent years have seen several serious cases of Nazis preparing and planning violent, armed attacks. These days, two new serious cases are on their way to court - one with a terrorism charge. Behind the scenes, older Nazis are lurking, and it all connects to a book published in 1978.

Publiceret den 15. marts 2023

He wore a gold ring on his finger, engraved with a large swastika. According to the indictment, the Ukrainian Nazi D.C. sought knowledge on how to make firebombs and instructions on knife fighting before going to ‘Café Sappho’ in Aarhus a few days later. The café is, in their own words, an “association and social meeting place in Aarhus for LGBTQ people”. During the trip, D.C. was armed with a knife. He took photos of the café’s facade and a rainbow flag hanging in the window. He shared the pictures on the nazi organisation NMR’s Telegram chat channel.

The incident took place in November last year and the following day D.C. was arrested. The case has been conducted behind closed doors and only came to public attention when the official charges were filed in early March.

When several major media outlets published a Ritzau telegram about the case, it appeared that the prosecution was seeking the deportation of the accused, which led users on several social media sites to speculate that it might be a militant Islamist. Redox deny this, based on the evidence given. The defendant in the case is a young Nazi with Ukrainian citizenship. According to his own statement, he has lived in Denmark since May last year.

Chatted about knives and Molotov cocktails on NMR channel
Ukrainian Nazi D.C. was arrested on 25 November last year after an intense week in which, according to the indictment, he had both asked for instructions on how to make a Molotov cocktail (a firebomb, ed.) and posted a video online of him wielding “a piece of wood with nails in it”.

Both happened in a chat channel on the social media platform Telegram. The channel belongs to the Nazi organisation Nordic Resistance Movement, better known as NMR. Here, the Ukrainian Nazi was active under the alias ‘Caesarion’.

It was also on the NMR’s telegram channel that the young Nazi posted a photo of a switchblade with the caption ‘there is an old but proven method’. According to the indictment, this happened at about the same time as he walked past Cafe Sappho in Aarhus.

At the time, he had been active in the NMR’s telegram channel for several months. He chatted with, among others, the then NMR leader Jacob Vullum Andersen, who recommended that the now accused Nazi should apply for a membership, which he refused on the grounds that he only speaks Ukrainian and Russian. The defendant also called for the possibility to buy NMR stickers, which the organisation’s leader confirmed would soon be possible.

In the NMR channel, he also posted photos of demolished election posters from the Free Greens party (Frie Grønne) in connection with the parliamentary elections last year, as well as a photo of an election poster showing Alex Vanopslagh (Liberal Alliance) with a swastika scratched on his forehead.

In the week leading up to his arrest, when the now accused Nazi asked for instructions on how to make a Molotov cocktail on the NMR’s telegram channel, he attached two photos of Café Sappho. A senior member of the NMR replied “it’s not something to be discussed here”. He did not distance himself from the request on how to produce Molotov cocktails.

The prosecution has brought charges of both attempted arson and attempted aggravated assault, both with the aggravating circumstance that, according to the prosecution, they were ‘committed fully or partly on the basis of someone’s sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, gender characteristics or similar’. D.C. is also charged with offences under the Weapons Act and his switchblade knife is to be confiscated.

The preliminary hearing was held behind closed doors, but the accused is not in pre-trial custody. Although charges have been brought, no court hearings have yet been scheduled in the case. It is therefore unlikely to be decided this side of the summer holidays.

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Terrorism case starting now
Another case that will be decided soon is the case against a now 16-year-old man, N.T., who is currently being held in surrogate custody in a youth institution. According to Redox, the case against him is based primarily on material obtained from chat channels on Telegram. The court case started earlier this week, on March 14th.

He is accused of violating terrorism legislation by being “recruited to the terrorist organisation Feuerkrieg Division by, among other things, on 11 December 2021, sending an application form for enrolment in the Feuerkrieg Division, in which the defendant stated that he had weapons training and knowledge of explosives as well as knowledge of the ideology behind the Feuerkrieg Division, and then assumed a leading role in the Feuerkrieg Division,” as it reads in the indictment.

AWD and FKD

The Atomwaffen Division (AWD) is a network consisting of a number of terrorist cells around the world. The AWD is inspired, among other things, by ‘The Order’. Founded by Brandon Russell in 2013, AWD emerged from the Nazi forum Iron March, which closed down in 2018.
The Atomwaffen Division wants to break down society and bring about a kind of apocalypse, and then build a new fascist society based on ‘white supremacy’. They do not believe that it is possible to achieve this goal through mass movements. Instead, they believe that individual acts of violence and terrorism, especially against ethnic and religious minority groups, are the only ways to create a different society from the existing one.
AWD has attracted mainly younger men, many of them with a military background. They have declared that their members cannot simply be activists in the digital world, but instead must carry out acts of violence in the physical world.

The Feuerkrig Division is a direct offshoot of the Atomwaffen Division (AWD) and was founded in 2018. It has the same ideological foundation as the AWD. The group’s gathering point is primarily the internet, while members call on each other to carry out acts of violence in the physical world.
In their online forums, members share terrorist manuals, texts on fascist ideology and lists of potential targets. The group has particularly attracted very young boys. An underage Estonian boy who called himself ‘The Commander’ was arrested in 2020 for planning attacks on Jewish schools and the killing of Jewish children.
The sharing of terrorist manuals and members’ support for terrorist acts has led to both AWD and FKD being listed as terrorist organisations in the UK.

He is also charged with attempting to recruit a friend of a similar age into the Feuerkrieg Division, which failed when the two were arrested.

The third and final charge under the terrorism section is “promoting the activities of the terrorist organisation Feuerkrieg Division”. This relates to six different situations where, in the period from December 2021 to April 2022, he repeatedly shared links to folders containing bomb and weapons material and ‘militant extremist material’, as well as instructing others on how the Feuerkrieg Division should organise itself in a cell structure. He also, still according to the indictment, contributed to the preparation of the Feuerkrieg Division’s internal handbook, which, among other things, deals with the group’s operational security and contains “incitement to commit terrorism”.

In addition to the three counts of violation of terrorism legislation, N.T. is charged with possession of a dagger with a 16-centimetre blade.

During the search of his family’s home, several ammunition boxes were found containing, among other things, neckties, rope, camouflage clothing, a compass, Nazi flags, Nazi armbands, Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf and the book Turner Diaries, which can best be described as a right-wing terrorist manual. We will come back to that.

The then 15-year-old boy also had a Feuerkrieg Division flag lying around.

N.T. and his friend were both arrested in April last year and brought before a preliminary hearing. However, the friend was not kept in custody and has not been charged in the case.

The trial against N.T. started on Tuesday 14 March and will run until the end of May. When the case is finalised, he will have been in custody for just over a year.

The manual
The fact that the book The Turner Diaries was found at N.T. is not a big surprise if you are familiar with the radical right. It has a cult status among the most militant nazis.

The Turner Diaries is a fictional novel written by neo-Nazi leader William Luther Pierce and published under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald in 1978. The author was active, first in the American Nazi Party and later in his own organisation, the National Alliance, which called for the genocide of Jews and other minority groups. Pierce was an active Nazi until his death in 2002.

The novel, written in the form of a diary, describes the actions and thoughts of the protagonist, Earl Turner, about a fascist uprising in the United States. Among other things, Earl Turner’s group attacks the US Parliament, an episode that in many ways resembles the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters in January 2021. Earl Turner describes that the violent attacks are intended to mobilise other supporters of an ethnically homogeneous white nation and ignite a fascist revolution and a global genocide of minority groups and political opponents.

As both the United States and several European countries experienced a wave of Nazi terror in the nineties, The Turner Diaries was a key source of inspiration, promoted by the Blood & Honour network, among others. Since then, the book has had a quiet existence, but in recent years it has been revitalised and is frequently shared on Telegram channels and other social media sites.

Since its publication, the book has inspired numerous fascist terrorist attacks and hate crimes, so much so that the FBI has referred to it as ‘the bible of the racist right’. For example, in the 1995 Oklohoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh, in collusion with Terry Nichols, detonated a car bomb in front of a building housing several government agencies. In Timothy McVeigh’s car, extracts of the Turner Diaries were found. 168 people were killed by the car bomb. Both McVeigh and Terry Nichols were military veterans.

The American Nazi terror group The Order was also inspired by the book. The group was active in 1983-1984 and was based on a mixture of Christian fanaticism and Nazi ideals. The group’s name was originally ‘Brüder Schweigen’ (The Silent Brotherhood), but due to its similarities to the organisation ‘The Order’ in the book Turner Diaries, the organisation became widely known as The Order.

The Order was responsible for a series of robberies and later at least two murders: one on the nazi Walter West, who they believed to be an informer, and the other on the Jewish journalist Alan Berg. Alan Berg was a radio host who was outspoken in his criticism of the activities of far-right groups. After the killing of Alan Berg, police found a list of other targets of the group, but The Order was stopped before they could carry out any more attacks.

it is a book from which National Socialists can learn much

The Turner Diaries has gained popularity in recent years, including in several Danish Nazi telegram channels. However, the book is also celebrated in more formal contexts. In June 2020, the Nazi organisation NMR, which outwardly has made much of an effort towards being a legal and legitimate organisation – despite the fact that leading members of the organisation have been convicted in several serious cases – published a review of the book. Among other things, it said:

“In addition to being a well-written and exciting story full of precise political analysis and interesting ideological reasoning, it is a book from which National Socialists can learn much. The first is how the Organisation operates: There is an outward-looking part that deals with popular education and open recruitment. This part of the Organisation doesn’t come across very well in the book, as Turner and the people he lives and works with don’t really have much to do with it. They belong to an underground, militant part of the Organisation, living in small fighting groups in the shadows. These groups have no contact with the open part and very limited contact with each other. Orders come from the top of the hierarchy, often without further explanation or motivation as to why a particular mission needs to be carried out. In more than one case, Mr Turner is actually very critical of the orders he receives. Despite this, he is unquestionably loyal, and eventually, when he sees the effects of these activities in their entirety, he realises their necessity.”

The review on the NMR website was published under the headline ‘The white race strikes back’.

Telegram as a safe harbour
That far-right and Nazi groups have used the internet and social media as primary recruitment tools since the turn of the millennium is well documented and needs no further introduction.

What has happened in recent years, however, is that most major social media platforms are cracking down harder on the spread of racist and Nazi propaganda on their platforms. As a result, major platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are rarely the preferred choice when neo-Nazis want to gather digitally. Similarly, they have, to a certain extent, been removed from many other platforms, such as WhatsApp and Discord, which have been popular with the far-right in recent years.

As a result, Telegram has recently become the main platform for sharing motivational quotes from Hitler, anti-Semitic memes and terrorist manuals. This is true both internationally and in Denmark.

In Denmark, there are somewhere between five and ten active channels on Telegram, where mainly young neo-Nazis and sympathisers gather and chat. What is common to the different channels is an open fascination with violence and weapons, a positive view of Hitler, the Holocaust and genocide, and a desire to do something. The channels are run by different individuals – in the case of the NMR channel, an organisation – who from time to time have conflicts with each other. Some users are even bullied by other users, but there is an overlap between the different active channels. Many users are active on several or most of the Telegram channels.

In addition to the NMR channel, two of the central channels are ‘Danmarks Nationale TG’ and ‘Fædrelandsfronten’. Both channels have recently been closed and have been reopened under new names.

“I have a recipe for a bomb”
Fædrelandsfronten has existed since December 2022 and consists mainly of very young men and boys who openly want to use violence in their fight against, among others, Jewish and Muslim citizens, who, along with the LGBTQ community, are identified as some of the ‘enemies’.

I am willing to kill a Jew if I am paid 1000 dkk

For example, 15-year-old A.L. wrote in a debate in Fædrelandsfronten during the Christmas holidays:

“Maybe we should have the 6 million gassed as they say we have already done”.

Six million refers to the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust. He continues: “I am willing to kill a Jew if I am paid 1000 dkk”.

However, A.L. is not alone in his extreme hatred towards Jews in the group. The user Palladius is also an active participant:

“I have a recipe for a bomb if we need it”.

Frederik Søe Antvorskov Larsen hides behind the username Palladius. In 2021, he completed his military service in the Royal Guard. There he received the basic training of the Danish Defence, which includes training with firearms and explosives.

Later, both Frederik Søe Antvorskov Larsen and A.L. share pictures of themselves on the Telegram channel, partly masked, doing the nazi salute. A.L. subsequently posts another photo of himself; a dagger with the Star of David on it. The caption reads:

“Weapons reavel so they know to be afraid”. (It should probably read ‘reveal’).

In February this year, he did a week’s internship in the armed forces, specifically at Naval Station Frederikshavn.

On Telegram, he writes that he “became a Nazi when I was 13” and “I have been a racist all my life”. A.L. is a 15-year-old boy from North Jutland. Redox is aware of his identity, but due to his young age and the fact that, according to our information, he is already in contact with the authorities, we have chosen not to publish his full name in this article.

It’s better to go to jail than to be victimised

However, this is not the only time knives are mentioned in the chat channel. For example, user “Sir John” encourages A.L. to carry a knife. He writes: “You might as well start carrying a knife. It’s better to go to jail than to be victimised”. To this, A.L. replies that he already carries a knife occasionally.

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From the street to the chat
Nazi interest in weapons and explosives is nothing new. In the nineties, there were several serious cases regarding bombs and weapons in Denmark, the worst of course being the letter bomb that murdered a young socialist in Nørrebro on 16 March 1992. In 1997, the Combat 18 terrorist group from Copenhagen sent three letter bombs, all aimed at its enemies. However, the bombs were intercepted by the police.

In the 2000s untill the mid-2010s, the Danish Nazi movement was very much focussed on taking to the streets. Both in the form of demonstrations and actions, but also to have confrontations with political opponents on the left and to attack minority groups. For a period of 20-25 years, the majority of Nazi violence consisted of street attacks and vandalism.

Since the mid-2010s, there has been a slow shift, which has so far culminated in the years during and after the coronavirus lockdowns. Neo-Nazis are much less likely to take to the streets as a group, but instead gather online. From there, some of them are radicalised and inspired to prepare or commit extremely violent crimes.

the most likely right-wing extremist terrorist attack in Denmark is an attack carried out by a lone terrorist

In March last year, PET’s Centre for Terror Analysis (CTA) published a new and comprehensive analysis of the risk of terrorist attacks in Denmark. Among other things, the report states:

“CTA assesses that the most likely right-wing extremist terrorist attack in Denmark is an attack carried out by a lone terrorist, but it may also be carried out by a small group of individuals (…) CTA assesses that the right-wing extremist terrorist threat in Denmark reflects the general development among right-wing extremists in the West, insofar as it primarily derives from individuals on the periphery of or outside the established physical right-wing extremist organisations and groups, whose radicalisation primarily takes place in virtual communities of interest. It is less likely that a terrorist attack will be planned in connection to the physical far-right organisations and groups in Denmark.”

The March 2022 CTA analysis comes on the back of the far-right terrorist attacks that hit several locations around the world from 2019-2021, for example Christchurch in New Zealand, Halle in Germany, as well as a number of other locations.

Fascination with terrorism
“Whatever is gonna happen I will just say that I have been honoured to have been here on Telegram with you. I have talked with young and old. Experienced and unexperienced. I have talked with the oldest and most experienced in this struggle – The most respected. I have been a part of creating white unity among our people, better than any jew could ever hope to network with any other jew! I hope this chaos of life will continue and you here.
White revolution starts with you… Network!”

This is what Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac wrote on Telegram in October 2022. For the past handful of years, he has been active on the far right, where he has had dealings with several different organisations. Today, he runs one of the largest far-right Telegram channels, where he regularly shares Nazi material.

Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac became active in the far-right movement in Denmark in 2017, when he helped Rasmus Paludan and Stram Kurs (“Hard Line”) distribute election material during the municipal elections that autumn.

The following year, he was arrested in a major police operation. There were fears that he would carry out a school shooting at Sydkystens Gymnasium, a high school in Ishøj, because he had written “Calm before the storm” in a Facebook post. Heavily armed police officers arrested him, and in the subsequent trial he was convicted of racist threats against a teacher at the high school, but not of planning school shootings – he was neither charged nor indicted for that.

The threats involved him using a fake Facebook profile to comment on a photograph of the teacher with the text: “No, they are fucking “perkere” (Red. a Danish derogatory term for people from the middle east) and they must die”. He was sentenced to 40 days in prison.

Since then, Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac has been involved in several organisations, including the Nordic Resistance Movement and the newly founded right-wing radical association Folkets Flamme.

However, his main activities take place online.

Today, Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac runs a number of Telegram channels where he has shares everything from speeches by Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring to Nazi rock and propaganda for Nazi terrorist groups.

For example, he has shared a number of videos from the terrorist organisation Atomwaffen Division and tribute songs for the Combat 18 terrorist group. He has also shared glorifying images and texts about Timothy McVeigh, who was responsible for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, and the German Nazi terrorist organisation NSU, which was responsible for numerous racially motivated killings.

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On the Telegram channel, Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac also shares summaries of what he calls “White Terror”, listing Nazi and racist terrorist attacks. Among other things, he indicates which weapons were used and how many people were killed in the attacks.

Many of the posts on the Telegram channel are accompanied by disclaimers in which he formally disclaims responsibility for the content of his posts and states that he does not incite violence:

“This channel and every one associated with it, DON’T encourage white terror or mass murder. We simply share this content for purpose of documenting history, satire & art”.

The largest of his Telegram channels is called “JÈRÈMYS BUNKER”. It has existed for two years and now has more than 900 followers. He has posted thousands of videos, photos and songs.

every little thing we do actually accelerates this revolution

In between worshipping historical Nazis and right-wing terrorists, Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac occasionally writes more ideological posts himself. He emphasizes that his readers need to realise that they have a responsibility to change the course of history.

“I sometime think that it is because of the anti-white elite getting afraid, that they allow talk like this, as to “ease” the masses. Also I believe that the overton window is changing generally. All of this is happening because some people started talking about the problems, and that that talk spread. Every true revolution starts from the bottom of a society. It may sound stupid, but every little thing we do actually accelerates this revolution”.

In addition to running his own channels, Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac has also been active in the NMR’s chat channels, Fædrelandsfronten and Danmarks Nationale TG. In Fædrelandsfronten, he has previously shared The Turner Diaries.

He has also counselled the young A.L. on the acquisition of a mask, and when A.L. writes “I will fight to the death”, Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac replies “Yes, but be careful with such statements”.

However, sharing terrorist propaganda has not made Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac popular in all circles. On the Telegram channel “Danmarks Nationale TG”, he has become unpopular with several users who have strongly criticised him, calling him a ‘PET (red. Danish Secret Service) magnet’ and a ‘Fed-poster’, a term used to describe sharing material that attracts the attention of the authorities and may result in repression.

The other members believe that Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac’s sharing of terrorist manifestos, videos and books could lead to increased surveillance and reprisals, which they want to avoid. One person on the channel “Danmarks Nationale TG” wrote directly that Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac was partly responsible for teenagers being charged in court after being inspired by his material. This was in response to an article on the Feuerkrieg Division case, which started Tuesday.

The criticism of Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac turned into personal attacks and outright bullying. He was eventually excluded from the Telegram channel.

the sharing of material has exclusively historical, artistic and satirical purposes

Jérémy replied the following to Redox:

“It’s also a pity for you that you can’t read properly, as when it is constantly explicitly pointed out that the sharing of material has exclusively historical, artistic and satirical purposes. It was one of the first things I wrote about myself and the channels I have on Telegram.”

Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac shared an audio file on Telegram following Redox’s enquiry. It is a kind of far-right radio play called ‘The Diary of Jonni Hansen’, produced by members of the Nazi alt-right. In the clip, Redox editor Simon Bünger is killed by a Nazi.

NMR behind the scenes
The example of Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac shows that it is not only teenagers who are active on the Fædrelandsfronten Telegram channel. User names such as ‘The Nationalist from Denmark’, ‘Oswald Mosley’ and ‘Adolf Eichmann’ also include members of the Nazi organisation the Nordic Resistance Movement, which has branches throughout the Nordic region.

Members of the organisation have been convicted several times in the past for serious violence and murder, as well as for building firearms and bombs.

One of the organisation’s Danish branch leaders has been in prison in recent years, serving a three-year sentence for attempting to build a bomb and a firearm. You can read much more about that case here (The article is in Danish).

In the Fædrelandsfronten channel, NMR members have both asked critical questions and tried to recruit new members. The user Palladius – the one with the bomb recipe – says that he puts up NMR stickers, and he has also described in the NMR channel that he has previously applied for membership of the NMR.

Jacob Vullum Andersen, now the former head of the Danish branch of the NMR, is one of those who have been active in the telegram channel of Fædrelandsfronten, even after he left the NMR in January this year. As recently as February, he used the channel to sell several items, including a bulletproof vest and various Nazi memorabilia.

Reprisals
The chat on the original Fædrelandsfronten telegram channel has now gone silent. A.L. has said that he was called to a meeting with the police after his classmates warned the school that he might commit acts of violence. Subsequently, A.L.’s parents also became aware of his activities and his mobile phone was confiscated. Other members set up a new channel without A.L.’s participation.

Tuesday, the trial against N.T. started at the court in Holbæk. It will take place before a jury, which means that the prosecution will demand a minimum of four years in prison. His lawyer has not responded to Redox’s enquiry.

It has not been possible to contact the Ukrainian Nazi D.C. Neither Jacob Vullum Andersen nor Frederik Søe Antvorskov Larsen have responded to our enquiries. Hanne Kronborg, who sits on the board of Folkets Flamme, does not wish to comment on her or the organisation’s views on Jérémy Trebbien Meilhac’s activities on Telegram.

Thursday this week is 16 March. It is the commemoration day of the bombing in Søllerødgade, which in 1992 cost the young socialist Henrik Christensen his life. To mark the occasion, anti-fascist groups have called for a memorial demonstration in Søllerødgade in Nørrebro. It will take place on Thursday at 17.00.

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