US neo-Nazi accused of sniper plot appears to have shared instructions with Australian far-right figures

Brandon Russell, an American neo-Nazi who was charged this year with conspiring to attack the Maryland power grid, appears to have shared instructions on how to carry out such an attack months earlier in an Australian far-right channel on Telegram.

Leaked chats show Russell posted extreme right propaganda and interacted with known Australian neo-Nazis on the encrypted messaging platform last year.

Russell is the founder of Atomwaffen Division, which was proscribed by the Australian government as a terrorist organisation last year.

Allegations from the FBI in court documents supporting the criminal complaint against Russell and Clendaniel refer to a user called Homunculus posting in encrypted app chats in 2022, and identify him as Russell.

In separate leaked Telegram chats, seen by the Guardian, someone with the username Homunculus entered a chat associated with a channel called Australian Meditations 51 on 6 May 2022 (51 refers to the number of people killed in the 2018 Christchurch terrorist attacks).

Members of the Australian Meditations channel include individuals on the Australian far right. It is unclear whether Australian users of the channel were aware who Homunculus was.

Homunculus was also active on another telegram channel called Caucasian Coaching, administered by a member of the Australian National Socialist Network, the group that performed Nazi salutes outside the Victorian parliament in Melbourne last month.

It was in this channel that Homunculus shared a link to an extreme right document called Make it Count, which includes instructions for a plot similar to the one Russell and Clendaniel are accused of attempting to execute.

The link was unsolicited, and no Australian responded to the post. There is no suggestion that anyone has attempted to act on the instructions in Australia.

Researchers from the White Rose Society, which tracks neo-Nazis online, said exchanging information across national borders had been crucial for Australian neo-Nazis learning to organise in new ways.

Homunculus then entered a discussion about the 1992 Australian film Romper Stomper between JC and another member. Set in Melbourne, the film tracks the downfall of a violent neo-Nazi group and its charismatic leader Hando, played by Russell Crowe.

He also shared a link to a book which detailed how urban snipers could kill people and disable infrastructure anonymously.

Lydia Khalil, a senior research fellow at Deakin University who studies transnational extremism, said the documents were an important example of international communication and cooperation between extremist groups and individuals.

The BBC has reported that investigators in the US are looking into several additional alleged attacks on power installations, including in North Carolina, Oregon and Washington state.