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National Guard Member Sought Out Extremists, Planned Attack on Police  (Francis P. Harker, Washington Post)
A former National Guard member who admitted in pleading guilty to a weapons charge that he sought out violent extremists and discussed a potential attack on Virginia Beach police was sentenced Monday to four years and nine months in prison. Francis P. Harker, 22, of Norfolk, pleaded guilty to possessing several firearms while he was regularly using LSD and other drugs. He was sentenced Monday based on that offense, but prosecutors said it was “just the tip of the iceberg.” A backpack in Harker’s car trunk contained ingredients for molotov cocktails, prosecutors said, and Harker “admitted to interacting online with members of a group called ‘The Base,’ “ a violent white-supremacist and anti-government group. A magistrate judge found in November that Harker “traveled to Colorado to meet with the leader of a violent extremist group,” but the group is not named in court records.  Harker’s public defenders said he was “vulnerable and isolated,” suffering from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression and drug addiction, and was interested in white supremacism for the shock value and not out of ideological conviction. They had requested a sentence of three years in prison. “His drug use, along with his untreated ADHD, caused Mr. Harker to delve deeper and deeper into a fringe ideology and make increasingly warped decisions, culminating with the choices leading to this prosecution,” his attorneys said in a sentencing brief.

The Proud Boys and the Base Are Now Illegal in New Zealand  (Brian J. Phillips, Washington Post)
New Zealand recently designated two U.S. far-right groups, the Proud Boys and the Base, as terrorist organizations. This puts them in the same category as groups such as the Islamic State and makes it a crime for any New Zealander to support or join the group. In doing so, New Zealand joins a growing trend of Western governments taking far-right violence more seriously. New Zealand’s actions may seem small, but they overlap other actions that make it harder for far-right groups to operate and fundraise around the globe. What does this designation mean? Terrorist designation, also called proscription, is a policy used by many countries to declare organizations as serious threats to security. (Cont.)