Australian government officials in Canberra on Monday designated the neo-Nazi
group Sonnenkrieg Division (SKD) as a terrorist organization, making it


<[link removed]>
<[link removed]>
Australia Designates Neo-Nazi Sonnenkrieg Division A Terrorist Organization

 

(New York, N.Y.) – Australian government officials in Canberra on Monday
designated
<[link removed]>
the neo-Nazi group Sonnenkrieg Division (SKD) as a terrorist organization,
making it the first far-right group to be banned in the country. Following the
designation, Australian Minister for Home Affairs Mike Burgess stated, “SKD
adheres to an abhorrent, violent ideology that encourages lone-wolf terrorist
actors who would seek to cause significant harm to our way of life and our
country.” According to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
(ASIO), far-right groups accounted for 40 percent of the country’s terrorism
investigations in the past year.

 

SKD formed <[link removed]>
in 2018 as a British offshoot of the U.S.-basedAtomwaffen Division
<[link removed]>
(AWD), a neo-Nazi organization that sought the creation of a National
Socialist government through a violent “white revolution,” and believed that a
race war is inevitable. The United Kingdom banned SKD in February 2020. AWD
disbanded later that year.

 

SKD follows a neo-Nazi ideology promoted by James Mason
<[link removed]>, a former American
Nazi Party member and a follower of cult leader Charles Manson. During the
1980s, Mason wrote a series of pro-Manson and pro-Nazi newsletters that he
calledSiege
<[link removed]> and
later compiled into a book of the same name. Users on the now-defunct fascist
web forum IronMarch formed AWD after discoveringSiege. They based AWD’s
ideology on Mason’s ideas of autonomous terror cells fighting a guerilla war
against “the system.”

 

SKD has not claimed credit for specific violent activities, but members have
been linked to calls for violence. Private messages exchanged online by SKD
group members in 2018 labeled the United Kingdom’s Prince Harry a “race
traitor” for marrying a mixed-race woman and called for him to be shot. In
other private online messages, alleged leader Andrew Dymock called for police
officers to be raped and killed. Group members have also called for white women
who date non-white men to be hanged.

 

To read CEP’s Sonnenkrieg Division resource, please click here
<[link removed]>.

 

To read CEP’s Australia resource, please click here
<[link removed]>.



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