Obscure neo-Nazi Satanist group Order of Nine Angles becomes latest domestic terror threat: CIA and FBI fear extremely violent group is making inroads among supremacists'
The National Counterterrorism Center has raised the alarm about an obscure neo-Nazi Satanist group which intelligence officials believe could have a growing influence over violent extremist movements.
A recent internal NCC report obtained by Yahoo News describes the Order of Nine Angles (O9A) as 'a largely decentralized group that advocates a violent extremist interpretation of Satanism' and promotes white supremacist ideologies.
The report warns that O9A could be 'exacerbating' conflicts among racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists , increasing the likelihood of violence by those groups.
It followed an October assessment from the Department of Homeland Security which concluded that violent white supremacists pose the 'most persistent and lethal threat' to the United States.
Some experts have criticized the NCC for its newfound focus on O9A, citing a lack of reliable information about the group.
The National Counterterrorism Center has raised the alarm about an obscure neo-Nazi Satanist group called the Order of Nine Angles which intelligence officials believe could have a growing influence over violent extremist movements. The group's logo is shown above
O9A was founded in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, according to the NCC report dated November 12, which was shared with intelligence agencies including the CIA and NSA.
The group 'advocates for the destruction of civilization and urges adherents to undertake violent acts as a way to gain mystical insights', the report states.
O9A captured media attention this past summer when a US Army private, Ethan Melzer, was accused of plotting an attack on his own unit and sharing details about the unit's movements with O9A.
The report cites the Melzer incident as evidence that a 'small subset of RMVEs have been influenced by O9A to participate in or enable others to participate in ideologically motivated violence'.
However the report has drawn criticism from some experts who say that the NCC doesn't appear to have enough information about the O9A to label it a credible threat.
'It's problematic the same way so many of these so-called intelligence reports regarding terrorism are,' Mike German, a former FBI agent and current fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program, told Yahoo.
'It identifies some obscure ideology, defines it very poorly, implies it has some causal effect on violence but doesn't say it, gives far too few examples and doesn't really provide suggestions for law enforcement who receive it.'
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Garrow echoed German's concerns about the lack of specificity in the report.
'My most cynical reading would be that they're trolling the web for suspicious content and they've come upon this stuff but that they really don't know who it's coming from or how many people are following or reading it,' Garrow, who has studied the FBI's investigations into the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr in great detail, told Yahoo.
Even the authors of the NCC report acknowledged the dearth of credible information about O9A.
'We lack reliable reporting on the number of O9A adherents, the extent of the group's international presence, and whether it has a defined leadership structure,' the report stated.
Despite holes in its understanding of O9A, the NCC report still recommends providing information about the group to social media companies so they can potentially censor its materials.
It also suggests that former members of O9A 'may be candidates for participation in disengagement programming'.
The experts who spoke to Yahoo said the NCC's focus on O9A is part of its increasing proclivity to label racist groups as terror threats in recent months - a potentially dangerous overreach.
'Are there six people who believe this and committed crimes or six million people who believe this?' German asked of O9A.
Geoffrey Stone, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who was appointed by President Barack Obama to review the NSA's data collection after the Edward Snowden leak in 2013, questioned whether the NCC had jurisdiction to investigate O9A.
'To what extent does there have to be an international connection in order for these agencies to have jurisdiction?' Stone asked in an interview with Yahoo.
'Nazis in the US are an interstate organization, no question about that. The question is whether they're international.'
Stone also questioned potential First Amendment violations with the focus on O9A.
'You don't want the government investigating organizations because you don't like their ideas,' he said.
'There's no right to engage in terrorism, but there is a right to advocate for it.'
O9A captured media attention this past summer when a US Army private, Ethan Melzer, was accused of plotting an attack on his own unit and sharing details about the unit's movements with the group. A book with the O9A logo was found among Melzer's belongings
Order of Nine Angles: Nazi occult group which dreams of creating a 'Satanic Empire' through heinous violence
Behind its absurd fantasies of dominating the solar system, lurks a terrifying Nazi-Satanist group which is finding followers across the world.
The Order of Nine Angles, believed to have been founded in the UK in the 1970s, deifies Hitler and the Third Reich.
The Mass of Heresy, which is written in the group's Black Book of Satan, is spoken before an altar shrouded in a banner of the swastika, with a framed photo of Adolf Hitler and Mein Kampf on top.
The followers chant: 'We believe Adolf Hitler was sent by our gods to guide us to greatness. We believe in the inequality of the races and in the right of the Aryans to live according to the laws of the folk.'
Their rituals involve the eating of cannabis cakes, drinking wine, sexual acts performed by a priestess and the sacrifice of animals, according to UK-based pressure group Hope Not Hate.
The order's Black Book is considered so dangerous its three volumes are kept vaulted in a special section of the British Library.
The book asks for the Spring Equinox to celebrated by sacrificing a human being and suggests this could be 'a Nazarene, such as an interfering investigative journalist.'
The group believes that the world is controlled by a Zionist Occupation Government, an anti-Semitic term used by neo-Nazis during the 1980s to describe Jewish control of the state.
The order aims to subvert society by urging its followers to commit random acts of violence, rapes and to 'cull' victims.
There are believed to be 'Nexions' throughout the world amid fears that online trolls are seeking out the most extreme positions possible.
O9A aims to recruit a 'certain type of rebellious young person' who is prepared to take action and incite others to commit violence.
The order seeks to surround itself in mystery and make its aims obscure and terrifying to outsiders.
Hope Not Hate described it in a 2019 report as 'unquestionably the world's most extreme Nazi Satanist group.'
The NCC report focused heavily on Melzer, the 22-year-old Army private who pleaded not guilty to plotting an attack on his own unit in July.
The Department of Justice accused Melzer of using an encrypted app to send his unit's planned movements to members of O9A and a related group called the 'RapeWaffen Division'.
Acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss called Melzer 'the enemy within,' and prosecutors said the Louisville, Kentucky, resident hoped to cause mass casualties through what he and co-conspirators labeled a 'jihadi attack'.
'Melzer was motivated by racism and hatred as he attempted to carry out this ultimate act of betrayal,' Strauss said.
Melzer enlisted in the Army in 2018, joined O9A in 2019, and began planning the attack in April after learning of a new foreign deployment for his unit, prosecutors said.
Federal prosecutors allege that on or around May 23, Melzer used an encrypted messaging app to 'solicit assistance for a mass casualty attack on his US Army unit once it deployed to Turkey'.
Melzer is alleged to have 'provided confidential and sensitive information to a user of the app about his unit's size, anticipated travel routes in Turkey, its weaponry, and its defensive capabilities'.
Federal prosecutors said Melzer understood that this information would be used to 'facilitate' a 'mass casualty attack' on the unit.
Read the NCC's report on O9A:
