Violent Overthrow: Far-Right Extremist Terror Networks Plan Attacks on Power Grids

In recent years, a worrying trend has emerged in Germany and the United States: terrorist groups increasingly targeting power grids. Take a look at cases from the past several years in the US and Germany to understand the threat and its potential impacts.

Investigations into and charges against far-right violent extremist groups that attempt to use terrorist attacks as a means to overthrow the democratic order are not a new phenomenon in the United States. However, these sorts of cases have only recently become common in Germany. The goal of these groups is to violently overthrow the government by provoking societal unrest and even causing a civil war or race war through acts of violence.

Attacks on Power Grids in the US

Attacks on critical infrastructure like power grids are a central strategy of militant accelerationists. This violent faction of the far-right extremist scene views such attacks as potential sparks to ignite a civil war or race war. In recent years, this strategy has increasingly been the driver behind actual violent plans and attacks. According to a 2022 study by the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, a total of 13 individuals associated with the white supremacist movement were charged with planning attacks on electrical infrastructure in the US between 2016 and September 2022. Of these 13 individuals, 11 were charged between 2020 and 2022 alone. A recent example is the indictment of Atomwaffen Division founder Brandon Russell and his partner Sarah Clendaniel, who are accused of planning an attack on the Baltimore power grid.

In Europe, militant accelerationists have planned similar attacks. On May 22, 2022, a 22-year-old Slovakian man was arrested for attempting to overthrow the political system through sabotage and terrorism. He is accused of distributing instructions for making automatic weapons, explosives, and mines, as well as guidelines for sabotage attacks on communication, water, and electricity infrastructure.

Attempted Overthrow of the Government Using Terror in Germany

Attempts to seize power by triggering a civil war with acts of terrorism, rather than traditional tactics such as party politics or attempting to change politics by pushing culture further to the right, have not been limited to the US-based militant accelerationist subculture. In Germany, there has been a marked increase of similar cases of far-right extremists turning their fantasies to violently overthrow the government into concrete plans for terrorist attacks.

The group “Revolution Chemnitz” was one of the first German groups in the past several years to formulate such a plan to overthrow the government. On October 3, 2018, the group planned and committed violent attacks and armed assaults against fellow citizens they perceived to be immigrants and politically dissenting individuals in Berlin. Their goal was to set in motion a series of violent actions to bring about “system change.” The members attempted to acquire semi-automatic weapons and described the National Socialist Underground as a “kindergarten-preschool group” in compared to their group. On March 24, 2020, eight members of the group were sentenced to several years in prison for forming a terrorist organization, planning a serious attack endangering the state, and violations of weapons laws.

On February 22, 2023, investigators searched six properties in Bavaria as part of an investigation that began in 2022 looking into six suspects who allegedly formed a terrorist organization. They allegedly created a plan in 2020 to cause a widespread power outage in Germany by sabotaging transmission towers to enable other groups to seize power.

Since May 17, 2023, another suspected terror network has been on trial. The members of the group “Vereinte Patrioten” (United Patriots) are charged with founding or being members of a terrorist organization and preparing a treasonous plot against the federal government. They are accused of attempting to cause a long-lasting nationwide power outage by damaging or destroying vital electricity infrastructure, with the intention of triggering civil-war-like conditions in Germany to overthrow the federal government and parliamentary democracy.

Later that year, on November 30, 2023, 11 members of the far-right extremist group “Gruppe S.” were convicted of forming a terrorist organization, preparing a serious attack endangering the state, and violations of weapons laws. The court found that the group was a terrorist organization and had aimed to overthrow the political order in Germany. The group’s plan was to cause a civil war in Germany by attacking mosques.

Worryingly, both the far-right extremist group from Bavaria and “Gruppe S.” considered their deeds to be part of a broader movement. Both were convinced that numerous other far-right extremist groups in Germany are just waiting for the right moment to violently dissolve the country’s democratic order. Notably, these groups allegedly had very well-developed, concrete plans for their attacks. Both the Bavarian group and the “United Patriots” saw targeted attacks on the power network as a suitable means to create enough chaos to make a takeover possible and were advanced in their attack planning.

Concerning Concurrent Development

Except for their preferred social media platform, Telegram, the previously mentioned German groups have little in common with the subculture of militant accelerationists, which is primarily influenced by individuals from the United States but operates and interacts globally through online networks. Groups of militant accelerationists tend to consist of very young members, often minors, who are extremely internet-savvy and actively participate in international discourses on modern far-right terrorism that are primarily driven by forces from the US. In contrast, the members of the German groups are significantly older and more aligned with conspiracy and sovereigntist milieus.

The theoretical influences of militant accelerationists and the German groups also differ. While militant accelerationism refers to writings like “Siege” and “The Turner Diaries,” conspiracy and sovereigntist far-right terrorist groups find detailed instructions for attacks on power grids in the book “Total Resistance: Guerrilla Warfare for Everyone” (“Der totale Widerstand. Kleinkriegsanleitung für jedermann") from 1957 by Swiss Major Hans Hans von Dach. These instructions were shared at least 81 times in German-speaking far-right extremist and conspiracy ideology Telegram channels and groups. One of the posts received over 50,000 views, and the 48 posts in these channels garnered over 192,000 in total.

Taking the Threat of Online Far-Right Extremist Terror Seriously

The attempts of groups in both the US and Germany to pursue the idea of triggering a civil war or race war through attacks on electrical infrastructure are disturbing. Although the notion of societal collapse and an uprising of numerous, militant far-right extremist groups following an attack on a power grid can be considered more of a far-right extremist fantasy than an immediate potentiality, there is a serious risk of significant damage to infrastructure and threat to human lives in the event of a widespread power outage.

The threat posed by far-right extremist terror plans in Germany should not be underestimated. It is critical that security agencies pay increased attention to digital platforms, especially Telegram, to monitor radicalization and the planning of such attacks in order to prevent their execution.