An active-duty soldier in the U.S. Army is under investigation for his alleged leadership role in a neo-Nazi terror group, a military official has confirmed to HuffPost.
Last month, independent journalist Nate Thayer published an article identifying 22-year-old Corwyn Storm Carver as a recent leader of the Atomwaffen Division, a violent, Charles Manson-worshipping, white supremacist group whose members and supporters were implicated in five murders in 2017.
Carver is a private first class in the 1st Armored Division, stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas.
“I can confirm that Pfc. Carver is an active-duty Soldier stationed here at Fort Bliss,” Lt. Col. Crystal Boring, a spokeswoman for the 1st Armored Division, told HuffPost in a statement. “There is an ongoing investigation into this matter, and per Army policy, additional information cannot be released until adjudication.”
The investigation will likely look into whether Carver’s alleged membership in Atomwaffen violated Army regulations regarding extremist activity and discrimination.
News of the investigation into Carver comes after two recent HuffPost reports identified 11 other members of the military who are currently being investigated for their ties to a separate white nationalist group called Identity Evropa.
The problem of white nationalists in the armed forces is severe: A Military Times poll in 2017 found that nearly 25 percent of people in the U.S. military have encountered white nationalists within its ranks.
Extremism experts and law enforcement officials have long expressed deep concern about white nationalists in the armed services, who they say pose a dangerous threat to civilian populations in the U.S. A 2008 FBI report warned that “extremist leaders seek to recruit members with military experience in order to exploit their discipline, knowledge of firearms, explosives and tactical skills as well as [in the case of active-duty military] their access to weapons and intelligence.”
Just last year, an Atomwaffen leader named Brandon Russell, who was in the Florida National Guard, was sentenced to five years in prison after law enforcement found explosive materials at his home. (They also discovered a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in Russell’s bedroom.)
Having Atomwaffen members in the military is especially alarming, said Keegan Hankes, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Atomwaffen Division, he said, is “a cell-based radical terror group” that is “advocating for violent revolution, so it’s a tremendous concern that [Carver] would get training in warfare from the U.S. government.”
Thayer, the independent journalist, uncovered Carver’s alleged role in Atomwaffen after obtaining the group’s online discussion logs.
He also found social media accounts connected to Carver, including an Instagram account in which Carver posted a selfie wearing a Charles Manson T-shirt. Manson, whom the Atomwaffen Division idolizes, was a murderous white supremacist cult leader who died in prison in 2017. (Carver’s selfie on Instagram matches a photo of Carver posted to the Facebook page of the 1st Armored Division.)
A Tumblr account connected to Carver included what appears to be a photo of himself in a mirror, wearing Army shorts and an Army T-shirt and throwing up a Nazi salute. His face is blocked by a skull-and-bones illustration frequently used online by Atomwaffen members.
Reached for comment, Carver hung up after a HuffPost reporter identified himself. (“He did tell us you called him,” Lt. Col. Boring told HuffPost.) Subsequent text messages to Carver went unanswered.
Thayer reported that Carver used the pseudonym “Vass” in the Atomwaffen message groups.
Those messages as “Vass” often expressed admiration for Nazis and other mass murderers.
“Imagine if young SS members and Hitler youth were given free range by Hitler to go into the country and root out all the old aristocrats (who by in large betrayed the Nazis) and all the old way of thinking,” Carver allegedly wrote in one message. “Would have been great.”
In another message, Carver allegedly wrote that it “would be a nice great thing” if “all the Jews disappeared tomorrow.”
In June 2017, Carver allegedly wrote that Dylann Roof — the white supremacist who massacred nine black worshippers at a Charleston, South Carolina, church — was “kinda low tier lol. Shooting up a geriatrics in a church is soft target shit, the reasoning and action isn’t bad.”
Carver also allegedly posted about his service in the military. “First sergeants are officially all homosexual Jews who will die during the revolution,” he wrote.
Three days before that message, he appeared to make another chilling statement.
“Soldiers, criminals and workers make the best Nazis,” he allegedly wrote. “Just a fact.”