A New Wave of Nazi Accelerationism

How one group’s influence continues to persist and grow.

Intro

For most antifascists, Atomwaffen is a familiar group name. Active for just five years, Atomwaffen brought about a new approach to Nazism that still holds a tight grip and continues to influence a subset of neo-nazis. This version of neo-nazism took the most violent aspects of the ideology and amplified them, combining accelerationist ideology, military tactics, and lone-wolf terrorism. Along with this came a new visual identity. Although the organization itself collapsed relatively quickly, the ideas and aesthetics it promoted did not disappear with it.

Over the past year there’s been a concerning trend that seems to only be growing steadily. The particular flavor of fascism and nazism that was popularized by Atomwaffen from 2015-2020 has begun to show up more consistently, more often, and more publicly. What this looks like is stylized posters idolizing mass-killers like Dylan Roof being shared, fan-edits using footage from live-streamed mass-shootings like Christchurch or Buffalo being posted publicly, or original content being produced and spread by a handful of accelerationist groups currently active. Nearly every page sharing this content also posts recycled clips originally made by Atomwaffen, usually showing people in skull (siege) masks shooting guns while vocally advocating for a race war.

Once relegated to small telegram channels, this type of content has now spilled onto mainstream social media platforms. This trend mirrors the demographic comprising most newer groups being formed, consisting often of young men / teenaged youth. Some reasons for this can be read about in a previous WWFU article here.

Atomwaffen Division: A Brief History

Atomwaffen Division (AWD) was a neo-nazi group founded in the US in 2015 by a nazi named Brandon Russell. The group quickly distinguished itself from other active neo-nazi groups by embracing an accelerationist philosophy which advocated violence, firearms training, lone-wolf attacks, and militancy.

Central to their position were the writings of neo-nazi James Mason and his 1992 book Siege. In this collection of writings, Mason attempted to establish a new, more extreme brand of nazism. Part of this was the promotion of a fringe philosophy defined as esoteric Hitlerism, in which religious and political identity are merged under a singular, Hitler centered belief system. In this belief system, race war is an inevitably, and it is the responsibility of the individual to carry out actions meant to accelerate this inevitably as a means to honor the spirit of Hitler himself. James Mason also made sure to celebrate lone-wolf terrorists of the past while stating that future lone-wolf terrorists acting in this regard would be immortalized and idolized. James Mason eventually became an advisor to and friend of AWD.

As AWD expanded and grew so did their militancy, as they continually trained in firearms and military tactics. This was achieved partially through their recruitment of both former and active members of the US military, who also helped traffic weapons to the group. At it’s peak, AWD is estimated to have had around 100 active members.

Attributable and perhaps most recognizable to AWD were the aesthetics they helped solidify within contemporary neo-nazi circles. Members wore matching skull masks (often referred to now as “siege” masks), a german military camoflauge pattern called flektarn, and the group’s logo of a nuclear symbol centered on stylized bouche shields popularized by the Nazis during WWII.

Members of Atomwaffen Division.

AWD was also very active in creating and spreading their own propaganda. Posters often featured edited images of members in uniform with firearms and strings of stylized text advocating for things like race war and violence to collapse the system, usually underscored with the text “join your local nazis”.

AWD began to self-collapse after one of their members, Devon Arthurs, murdered two of his roommates / fellow AWD members Andrew Oneschuk and Jeremy Himmelman. The fourth roommate, AWD founder Brandon Russell, confessed to possession of bomb making materials later found in the apartment in which Arthur committed the murders. Shortly after this, a 17 year old named Nick Giampa murdered the parents of his girlfriend after they forbade her to continue seeing him due to his open neo-nazi beliefs, which included the resharing of AWD propaganda. Another AWD member, Samuel Woodward, stabbed to death an openly gay and Jewish college student named Blaze Bernstein in Jan. 2018.

Following these events and others, as well as AWD’s embracing of Order of Nine Angels / Tempel Ov Blood texts as required readings by their replacement leader John Cameron Denton, the group officially disbanded entirely in early 2020.

Though AWD’s existence as an organized entity was brief, their influence was, and is, significant. The ideas they promoted around accelerationism and terrorism spread, leading to the formation of multiple off-shoot groups, such as The Base, founded by Rinaldo Nazzaro in 2018.

Most recently, in June 2026, two teenagers dressed in flektarn camoflauge, siege masks, and wearing AWD patches opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego, killing three, before turning the weapons on themselves. They also wrote and drew on their guns like other neo-Nazi mass-shooters before them, including a drawing of the The Base’s logo on one weapon. More details can be read in a previous article here.

The siege mask has become a common identifier among various neo-nazis and white supremacists, being adopted broadly across various subsets of fascists. Many individuals and groups end their names with “waffen” or “division” in order to immediately link themselves with Atomwaffen’s philosophy and aesthetics.

This is the central contradiction of Atomwaffen’s legacy: the organization disappeared, but the template has remained available for anyone willing to pick it up.

A New Wave

One of the newest iterations of AWD copy-cat clubs has been a group calling itself Aktion Division. Founded by a 15 year old we will only refer to as “NB”, Aktion Division (AKD) started as an online X account earlier in 2026, originally calling themselves NSARP (National Socialist American Revivalist Party). Their activity for some time was limited to X posts of self-made propaganda with a wider far-right and NS audience seemingly in mind; simple lettering, general phrases like “We Will Win” or “You Can’t Take Our Guns”, and simple graphics.  It appeared to be another small project attempting to attract attention in an already crowded ecosystem.

Likely failing to grow any type of interest from fellow nazis, in June 2026 they pivoted their messaging and approach. They began adopting the same exact imagery and stylized propaganda that AWD created. They changed their group name to Aktion Division, designed a new logo and flag to resemble AWD’s, created a telegram channel to direct people to, and put out a video stating their newly defined goals. In the video, a member speaks directly to a camera for a punishing three minute monolog dressed identically to a member of Atomwaffen (flecktarn camouflage / siege mask) in front of their group flag.

Their new mission became to pick up where AWD left off. In July 2026 they wrote, “Aktion Division HONORS AWD in the STAUNCH UPHOLDING of ACCELERATIONISM in its ranks. Accelerate Unto Death”. NB posted during this time “I officially announce project AWDII”. In their manifesto published September 2026, they write, “Atomwaffen Division was the blueprint, and it’s time for a remaster. We want to be that remaster. That revamp.” Their manifesto cites AWD multiple times.

Screenshot from Aktion Division’s monolog video.

In AKD’s manifesto they also define a new philosophical / religious framework that themselves have created and hope to build a movement behind for nazis, called Endohyperboreaism. They define Endohyperboreaism as a “revamp” of esoteric Hitlerism, bringing in the spiritual influences of fascist/occultist Miguel Serrano and O9A, in which Aryan blood is divine, and the “material prison” that is our world is controlled by an entity called “the Demiurge”, with the world itself being both imaginary and a punishment inflicted upon us by the Demiurge.

Aktion Division’s pivot toward Atomwaffen aesthetics coincided with a dramatic general increase in AWD propaganda being shared constantly on social media platforms. Posts that were once relegated to small telegram channels and the further corners of Nazi telegram chatrooms began appearing daily on platforms like X. As an example, accounts began making “daily siege posts”, in which they shared old videos made by Atomwaffen shooting rifles in flecktarn camo and siege masks while advocating for a race war (as of this writing, this is still happening). AWD aesthetics started to become a popular template for all forms of white supremacist propaganda, rather than being limited to a once small subset of self-described Nazi accelerationists.

What is worth noting too is that this all follows the San Diego mosque shooting. The amount of Atomwaffen recycled and inspired propaganda being posted publicly after this attack increased dramatically, whether through direct inspiration, algorithmic influence, or some combination of the two. This increase has continued to grow exponentially. AWD and its accelerationist messaging has become nearly unavoidable at this point to anyone fed far-right content in their feeds. Most people coming across it may not even realize the origins. Anonymous accounts now turn nearly any person, event, or piece of content that advances a pro-white narrative into an Atomwaffen-styled meme. It seems likely AKD recognizes this trend and hopes to capitalize on it.

The significance is not simply that old Nazi imagery is circulating again. It is that an aesthetic once associated with a particular organization has become a shared language across a much wider ecosystem.

That ecosystem increasingly overlaps with networks associated with No Lives Matter (NLM), the Order of Nine Angels (O9A), and the True Crime Community (TCC). The boundaries between these communities can be fluid, but together they create an environment where fascist ideology, occultism, violent fantasy, glorification of murder, and accelerationist politics reinforce one another.

The important distinction here is between an anonymous account posting siege-mask memes and a group trying to build relationships with other groups around the same politics.

That distinction becomes clearer with The Order.

The Order

The first banner image released during The Order’s initial formation.

In mid-August 2026 Aktion Division announced their first partnership with a group called White Maniacs Cult (WMC), a group that self-labels itself as a “violent extremist and terrorist organization”. Shortly after, another partnership was announced with a group named Zenithkrieg Division (ZKD). On this partnership, the leader of ZKD shared that it was done out of a “shared commitment to racial purity, hierarchy, discipline, and acceleration of the System’s collapse.” ZKD also says that they “idolize AWD”, among others.

These partnerships and new direction directly follow a recent article published by ex-Atomwaffen member Ryan Hatfield in which he addresses the visible increase and presence of AWD inspiration. In this article, Hatfield criticizes the amount of AWD clones that never manifest as actual organizations, expresses admiration for groups using AWD as inspiration, and advocates for groups to create a new vision themselves of what nazi accelerationism can be. AKD founder NB shared this article as recommended reading in a now deleted telegram channel for Aktion Divison. These alliances seem to be, in part, following Hatfield’s advice, attempting to break free from a predictable trend of AWD fan clubs briefly popping up to share some propaganda and take a few selfies in siege masks before going offline.

The name is also at the very least a significant historical echo. “The Order” was the name used by a violent white supremacist organization active in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1980s, also known as the Silent Brotherhood or Brüder Schweigen. Led by Robert Jay Mathews, the group sought to establish a white supremacist homeland and funded its activities through armed robberies, counterfeiting, and other criminal activity. Members were also responsible for bombings and murders, including the 1984 assassination of Denver radio host Alan Berg. Mathews was killed in a shootout with the FBI in December 1984, and surviving members were subsequently arrested and convicted on charges including racketeering, conspiracy, armed robbery, and murder. The group has retained a near-mythic status within parts of the white supremacist movement, making the adoption of the name by a new coalition more than a generic organizational choice.

The culmination of group partnerships has currently resulted with the formation of an umbrella organization calling itself The Order. The Order (as of this writing), consists of 11 neo-nazi accelerationist groups spanning across the US and Europe. One member organization, Maniac Murder Cult (MKY), already has a documented history of real-world violence. Its previous leader, Michail Chkhikvishvili, was sentenced in May 2026 on terrorism-related charges and has been linked to at least two murders and a school shooting. The history of MKY and a related entity known as THEÓS, for whom is now the listed group in The Order, is extensive enough to warrant separate treatment.

Another notable group within The Order includes The Sonnenrad Division (SRD), a self-described “accelerationist and apocalyptic organization”, who’s “doctrine centers on the Final War; an apocalyptic confrontation believed to either grant the white race eternal glory or result in total planetary destruction.”

The Order is inconsistent and seemingly unconcerned with the specific beliefs of all its groups. For example, one group within The Order describes themselves as an “anti-extortion” group, while another group claims their basis as an online extortion group that also focuses on other forms of harassment such as swatting and hoax emergency calls. What does unite them all is a shared dedication to esoteric Hitlerism and self-stated goals of societal collapse in order to bring about what they believe is an inevitable race war, after which they envision the creation of white ethnostates. Multiple groups in The Order explicitly state their own, personal mission as being to carry on Atomwaffen’s vision of nazi accelerationism.

The danger with these groups isn’t just in the possibility of their growth, but that the ideas being promoted take just one person to act out and cause real world tragedy. Still at the core of this movement remains James Mason’s book Siege and his advocation of lone-wolf terrorism. During the first week of The Order’s existence, PDFs containing how-to material were shared through Telegram that discussed committing arson and murder. The material also addressed documenting violent acts and preserving the resulting footage. There is no need to reproduce the operational details to understand the significance: a coalition formed around accelerationist ideology is sharing material intended to move people from political fantasy toward action.

Sample page from one of the PDF’s spread through The Order’s (now erased) telegram channel.

This is where online subculture can become something more than subculture. The mythology of martyrdom has long been part of the appeal of accelerationist fascism, and previous mass attackers have been transformed into symbols within these communities. A larger alliance provides a wider audience for that mythology. It can insulate participants from outside criticism while simultaneously surrounding them with people willing to validate increasingly extreme ideas.

As we’ve seen with previous mass-shooters, the mythology of martyrdom has long been part of the appeal of accelerationist fascism, and previous mass attackers have been transformed into symbols within these communities. A larger alliance provides a wider audience for that mythology. It places individuals into a larger community in which members can become increasingly insulated, creating an atmosphere in which any actions will be immediately validated and supported by the circle of aspiring terrorists around them.

The demographics matter here as well. When a handful of young people share and celebrate political violence, the immediate danger may be limited by the small size of the network. When that handful becomes dozens of people connected across multiple organizations, the social environment changes. The presence of participants with greater status or influence within those networks can amplify that effect, providing legitimacy to ideas that would otherwise remain isolated fantasies.

Further

The Order is just one recent iteration of differing esoteric nazi groups attempting to align under a singular banner. Another recently formed coalition calls itself World Terrorist Coalition (WTC), comprised of larger networks such as No Lives Matter (NLM), 764, and Theos among others. WTC also hosts a dark web forum / marketplace to help facilitate their goals. The forum includes how-to guides for creating explosives, poisons, detonators, and methods of committing arson among other things intended to target victims. Whereas The Order focuses mostly on neo-nazism specifically, WTC brands itself as an arbiter of chaos in general, with their three main positions being defined by neo-nazism, satanism, and anti-humanism, which they provide the manifestos for on their .onion forum. Groups within WTC also require proof of real-life violence and action as prerequisite to join.

The banner image at the top of WTC’s .onion site.

A list of available .PDF’s and categories on WTC’s .onion site.

It’s entirely possible, maybe even likely, that The Order and its sub-groups will fade and burn away before any real-world violence occurs, leaving The Order to exist only as a failed experiment. As with most things, we feel its safer to plan for the worst, anticipating its growth and strategizing resistance to it, while we hope for its own self destruction. The larger these coalitions become, the more people are available to reinforce the fantasy, validate escalation, and transform political violence from an individual act into a celebrated performance for an audience. That does not make violence inevitable. It does make the networks themselves worth taking seriously.

This threat is not something the federal government itself has failed to recognize. The FBI has identified "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists,” including white supremacist extremists, among the primary domestic terrorism threats facing the United States, and has stated that racially motivated violent extremists were responsible for the majority of domestic extremist-related killings in recent years. The Bureau has also warned that these movements increasingly rely on online radicalization, decentralized networks, and individuals or small groups capable of acting without direct organizational command. Those are precisely the conditions in which accelerationist movements have spent years attempting to operate. And yet, even in recognizing these threats in past years, the FBI continues to focus its efforts and resources primarily on antifascists.

In the background of all of this is the U.S. government’s continuing effort to dismantle and criminalize antifascist organizing. The same state whose agencies repeatedly acknowledged the danger posed by white-supremacist and racially motivated violent extremists has also constructed an expansive security apparatus around political dissent, protest, and antifascist organizing. The result is a political landscape in which people confronting fascists can become objects of surveillance and prosecution while fascists are allowed to organize, propagandize, recruit, and network until their activities cross whatever threshold law enforcement has decided is worthy of intervention.

Even when the state recognizes the danger posed by fascist violence, that recognition does not make the state an ally of the people organizing against it. White supremacy is not simply an ideology that exists outside the state, occasionally slipping through its defenses. It has been woven into the history of American law, policing, borders, prisons, property, and political power.

To the US government, people active in the fight against groups of neo-Nazis aligning together under a shared desire for mass-violence constitute a larger threat than those writing the manifestos plastered with swastikas.

A large contingent of contemporary mass shooters have emerged from online ecosystems where far-right propaganda, violent fantasy, and direct communication with other extremists overlap before an attack. The details differ from case to case, and not everyone participating in these spaces becomes violent. But attackers do not necessarily emerge from nowhere. They can emerge from communities that normalize violence, celebrate previous attackers, circulate propaganda, and provide increasingly elaborate ideological justifications for escalation.

We ask, what will the outcomes become when these spheres expand from a small handful of people in a chatroom to dozens of people spread across multiple groups aligning together? That is the question worth asking now, before the answer is written in blood.

An example of the types of conversations being had from a now deleted Telegram chatroom in 2025. AWD styled propaganda was also being spread in this small chatroom.

The task for antifascists is therefore not simply to watch the Nazis. It is to understand the networks being built around them, disrupt their ability to organize, expose the conditions and institutions that enable their reproduction, and build forms of resistance that do not depend on the state becoming something it has never been: a neutral force standing outside the struggle.

We do not need to predict exactly which group will survive. We need to be prepared for what happens when one does.

The coalitions being formed construct the world as a theater, with a stage, an audience, and the tools for a performance, while urging one another to take the stage and perform. The larger these coalitions grow, the question begins to shift from if someone will act to when.

[Far Right Threats: A Reference Guide

A Reference Guide For Recognizing Far Right Groups, Symbols, and Dog Whistles](https://www.wewillfreeus.org/farrightthreats/)[San Diego Attack: Online Extremism and Accelerationism

An analysis of online extremist networks, accelerationism, and propaganda ecosystems linked to the San Diego mosque attack.](https://www.wewillfreeus.org/the-online-ecosystem-behind-the-san-diego-mosque-attack/)

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