Three members of the white supremacist group The Base have been arrested in Georgia, as part of a broadersweep against the organization. The Georgia arrests were revealed Thursday, January 16.
Georgia “The Base” arrestees L-R: Luke Austin Lane of Silver Creek, Michael John Helterbrand of Dalton, and Jacob Kaderli of Dacula.
The Georgia arrestees were allegedly plotting to murder a couple who they believed to be “Antifa”. They also allegedly planned to kill another member of The Base who helped hatch the murder plot but who they considered incompetent. Read The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the Georgia arrests here.
One of those arrested, Luke Austin Lane of Silver Creek, Georgia, went by the online alias “TMB” and was the main recruiter for The Base in our state. On the Fascist Forge website, Lane/TMB’s profile was connected to that of Matthew Ryan Burchfield, a neo-Nazi we exposed last year and who is currently in Ukraine.
Atlanta Antifascists are following this situation closely. See our Twitter and Facebook pages for updates.
Update 1/19/2020: According to a new article, Matthew Ryan Burchfield is currently in Ukraine.
Burchfield’s 2019 profile on the Fascist Forge networking site was connected to the profile for Luke Austin Lane, who has now been arrested with other Georgia members of “The Base” for an alleged murder conspiracy.
Introduction
A Savannah-area couple are heavily involved in white nationalist networks, ranging from Christian far-Right organizing to apocalyptic neo-Nazism. Arieana K Love, who is currently studying pre-Medicine at Georgia Southern University and was a member of the Georgia National Guard , and Matthew Ryan Burchfield, who moved to Georgia from Virginia last year, are well-connected in regional and national far-Right channels. Love is a member of Legio Christi, an antisemitic and far-Right “traditional Christian” group, while Burchfield describes himself as an “Esoteric Hitlerite” – someone who couches his devotion to Nazism in mystical terms.
Matthew Ryan Burchfield and Arieana Love
Both Love and Burchfield are friends with Haralson County jailer Trent East, whose racist involvement and neo-Nazi affinities we recently documented. Online photos show Ryan Burchfield engaging in what appears to be racist paramilitary training with East.
Photo from Brandon Trent East’s Instagram account, March 2019. L-R: Matthew Ryan Burchfield, Arieana Love, Trent East and East’s fiancée Madison French.
Both Arieana Love and Burchfield are connected to internet profiles for Dalton Woodward, Trent East’s associate in the whites-only “Ravensblood Kindred” of the Asatru Folk Assembly. Another figure who was linked to both Love and Burchfield on social media is Corwyn Storm Carver, an active duty Army member and ideologue of the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group linked to at least five killings.
Profile for Corwyn Carver, a Satanist and neo-Nazi, linked to both Matthew Ryan Burchfield and Arieana Love (profile as “Katherine Ludwig” in screen-capture).
Although they have friends and political associates in common, Love and Burchfield also operate in somewhat different spheres. For example, Arieana Love declares herself to be a Catholic rather than a racist heathen (East and Woodward), a neo-Nazi Satanist (Carver), or a Hitler devotee (Ryan Burchfield). This difference does not diminish Love’s racist and far-Right commitments, but it does give her white nationalist activity a slightly different character. We will discuss Catholic antisemite Arieana Love first, then her Hitler-worshipping boyfriend Ryan Burchfield.
