Ben Makuch

6 days ago | theguardian.com | Ben Makuch

A former Pentagon contractor works with secretive sections of US special forces, then ups and moves to Russia. He gets married, radicalizes and starts popping up on Telegram channels as the leader of a neo-Nazi terrorist group recruiting Americans. Soon, allegations swirl that he is a Russian spy.

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ben Makuch

An extremist blogger, who has become the Trump administration’s so-called “dark enlightenment” sage, is debating a Harvard professor of political philosophy at an unsanctioned event on its campus next week. Curtis Yarvin, who was for a time an obscure darling of Silicon Valley and the broader spectrum of the fringe right wing, has emerged as a major philosophical influence on key Capitol Hill power brokers.

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ben Makuch

A national network of American neofascist fight clubs is endorsing youth-oriented offshoots aimed at grooming the next generation of racist activists. So-called “active clubs” have proliferated across the US and are a combination of fitness and mixed martial arts groups that often espouse neo-Nazi and fascist ideologies, openly taking their historical cues from the Third Reich’s obsession with machismo and European soccer hooliganism.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ben Makuch

Alleged former members of an international neo-Nazi terrorist organization are claiming its Russia-based and American leader is a Kremlin spy, according to online records reviewed by the Guardian.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ben Makuch

As more develops about the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and his repeated disclosures of sensitive military intelligence in unsecured Signal group chats, there are growing concerns his behavior has weakened the Pentagon in the eyes of its foreign adversaries and made him and his entourage a top espionage target. Allies, already concerned by Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs, have also begun to see the US as an intelligence-sharing liability.