The Decline and Fall of the Atomwaffen Division
By Ryan AW



On March 14, 2020, the Atomwaffen Division was disbanded. Since that day, the amount of misinformation, half-truths, and blatant lies that have been told are quite staggering. As a known and relatively influential member of AWD for four years, I have been asked many times to elaborate on this turn of events, and to provide a measure of clarity about what truly happened.

The story can not be told without mentioning the tragic events of late May, 2017. Two Heroic Atomwaffen members, Jeremy Himmelman and Andrew Oneschuk, were martyred by a traitor who does not deserve to be named. Brandon Russell, our founder and leader, was arrested on trumped-up charges, and was thrown in a system dungeon for more than four years.

These two events alone would have taken out almost any other group- simply look at the long list of organizations, some very solid, who have immediately went to pieces following events that were often much less tragic than the aforementioned events. We, however, recovered, and while under new leadership, soon rose to even greater heights than before.

The Federal Government undoubtedly watched these events with great interest - AWD, while being small, and of no true threat to the kike system, was publishing, promoting, and spreading some of the most radical anti-system messaging out there. We had to be stopped, and they decided to use their tried and true tactic - informants.

They introduced an FBI Informant, who used the alias  Swiss , into our midst. At the time, he seemed to us to be relatively solid, if a tad eccentric. The group plugged along, gaining a slew of members, probably reaching our highest number around November-December 2017. Our propaganda was really coming into its own, well-produced new videos were coming out every month, and large meetups were being held across the country, including a dozen plus members meeting in the midwest.

Around this time, however, a brewing controversy started to reach its boiling point. Many of our members, including our two leaders, were National Socialist Black Metal aficionados, and that crowd has always had a major flirtation with satanism. This, though, was never a main point of our group at all, and was rarely even discussed.

Swiss, the previously mentioned FBI Informant, was a known satanist, and was in fact the leader of a US-based faction of the Order of Nine Angles. To many in the group, this initially wasn t a problem. This soon changed. Swiss, as a known  old-school  NS-type, held a bit of sway over the group leadership. He heavily advocated the promotion of this particular brand of satanism, and soon our group was somewhat inundated with this type of content. He personally authored two very controversial and quite graphic books that became part of our reading list, though many of our members didn't actually read them.

This all boiled over in January 2018. Multiple members of Atomwaffen, emboldened by a smear campaign run by a group of perfidious outsiders, started leaking private conversations, many of which were typical NS joking and kidding around taken completely out of context. These members and outsiders set out to ruin our public reputation, and to a large degree succeeded.

Our membership numbers were badly affected by this. In another example of AWD showing great resiliency in the face of events that would ve taken out many other groups, we rebounded from this, though admittedly not quite as strong as before. 

Throughout 2018, much focus was placed on recruitment, as the loss of Iron March, and the events of the  Satanic Panic  had both damaged our numbers, and hampered our ability to recruit new members. We were largely able to recruit new members, but they didn t seem to quite be of the same quality as the ones who were recruited from 2015-2017.

A great deal of time was also being spent on publishing and promoting the works of one of our heroes, James Mason, who we had found the previous year after a great deal of effort. A website hosting much of his work, and quite a few other great books and articles was founded that same year by one of our leaders.

The year went by, and despite some foolish interpersonal squabbles that don t require mentioning, we were still doing well. Our reputation was at a nadir, but we were rebuilding it, and doing a decent job of it. But, all the while, Swiss was still reporting all of our private conversations and actions to his FBI masters, and they were certainly planning their next move against us.

As 2019 started, we were running into some issues. The old tactic of placing posters at Universities, government buildings, etc. was not netting us nearly as much press coverage as before. We spent much of the year rather fruitlessly discussing how to solve this issue.  Swiss and his handlers now sprung their next move - a new member. This time, rather than a simple FBI informant, they had decided to spew an FBI Agent into our midst. Swiss introduced  Gibson'' as a trusted old friend, and since we trusted Swiss, we welcomed Gibson with open arms. Gibson and Swiss had what, to us, seemed like a great idea. We would meet in Las Vegas, at a large hotel room that Gibson s  employers  had previously paid for. We would watch films, give talks about relevant issues, discuss the group and its future amongst ourselves, and generally have a good time. In fact, the room that James Mason and myself shared was covered by these same  employers !

In retrospect, this sounds like a setup, but at the time, it seemed like a very solid idea. Of course, we now know that we were all under surveillance the entire time, that our rooms were bugged, etc. So, a large number of us gathered in Vegas. We drank, we had fun, but the  Nuclear Congress  of August 2019 wasn t all that productive. At least- not for us.

The FBI, however, had gotten their hooks into multiple members. One member was actually drugged by the FBI Agent. That same Agent also ingratiated himself with one of our leaders, through a shared interest in computers and technology. Only three or so months later, one of our leaders was arrested on ridiculous charges by the FBI. Even prior to the congress, a leader of ours had his firearms confiscated, despite his having committed no crimes.

In January 2020, the two FBI stooges paid a visit to some group leaders located in Texas. They plied them with alcohol, and got them to drunkenly admit to some crimes that they had allegedly had a part in. The pigs now had everything that they needed, and the reckoning was to come later the next month.

On February 26th, our leadership was decimated. The FBI had arrested five of our members, three of whom were members of the  Nucleus , our inner circle. We immediately realized that Gibson was an FBI Agent, but we were far too trusting, and Swiss was kept around. 

As the only remaining member of the Nucleus, I was left as the leader of AWD. Of the non-arrested members, many had simply slipped away, and I was left with only a small number of trustworthy people. I planned to go forward with the group, for better or for worse, and plans were made in regards to the continuation and reorganization of AWD.

So, why was it disbanded only a few weeks later? I ll give you the three largest reasons:

1. High-ranking members of the US Government had announced plans to label AWD as a foreign terrorist organization. While this was obviously a nonsensical idea, no level of idiocy can really be put past the government of the United States. This designation would ve carried with it the potential of 15+ years in Federal Prison for every AWD member, not for any real crime, but simply for membership in a group.

2. James Mason and a former AWD member had both put quite a bit of pressure on me to disband the group. Their reasons were quite valid, but I was still very resistant to disbanding a group that meant a hell of a lot to me, and to a great many people.

3. I asked myself a simple question - if the version of me from 2016 was transferred to March 2020, would he have joined the group? Sadly, the answer was a resounding hell no. The FBI infiltration, the arrests, the sullied reputation, and ten other reasons would ve caused me to run like the wind away from AWD. I thought to myself, if I wouldn t join this group, how the hell can I ask anybody else to? This was the deciding factor.

So, on March 14th, 2020, James Mason announced on our behalf that the Atomwaffen Division had disbanded.

What did we accomplish? All in all, we accomplished not nearly as much as we d have liked, but we accomplished a hell of a lot more than the kikes and white traitors would ve preferred. We, so far, have been the most influential National Socialist group of the 21st century. We spread the message further than almost anyone post-Rockwell, and we created an aesthetic that has been copied many times, but has never been bested. 

We survived events that would have cratered 99% of NS groups, and, at the end, we went out on our own terms, and burned out at a time where we were at our most infamous, rather than fading away. And, of all the things you can say about AWD, we were never boring, never uninspired, and never milquetoast. You either loved us or hated us, and our name is now more famous than it ever was, even though we now only exist in the collective imagination.

Hail the Atomwaffen Division!
And HEIL HITLER!