The plots have repeatedly failed, however, and sociologists say that even if they do succeed, the kind of disasters they seek to create rarely result in members of the population turning on one another — though they could prove both costly and deadly.
In July, two former Marines, both active in an online neo-Nazi community, were sentenced to prison for a plot in which they stole military equipment from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina as part of an intended attack on a power substation in the Pacific Northwest.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said the plotters, Liam Collins and Paul Kryscuk, “conspired, prepared, and trained to attack America’s power grid in order to advance their violent white supremacist ideology.”
The year before, officials said they foiled another, similar plot, this one targeting the grid in Baltimore. The two alleged plotters, Sarah Beth Clendaniel and Brandon Russell, were described by the FBI as “racially- or ethnically-motivated extremists,” and officials said they targeted Baltimore in large part because of its status as a majority-Black city.
Many plots of this kind are specifically motivated by accelerationism, the belief that creating conflict and unrest will hasten a broader societal clash, said Molly Conger, a researcher based in Charlottesville, Va., who covered the Collins-Kryscuk plot on her podcast, “Weird Little Guys.”
“What they think will happen is that, if there’s a crisis, it will provide cover for violence, but it will also force normal people to engage in violence. And that’s not what will happen,” Conger said.
Instead, she said, “All that will happen is old people who need their oxygen machines will die, and it will cost the energy company a billion dollars.”
Read more at TheHill.com.
