Black Sun Rising: How a Nazi terror plot led to an American being held in Brazil

“Terrorism for accelerationism, then we get the military supplies to everyone and start war,” a group chat leader wrote on the encrypted platform Signal in October 2024, to almost 150 members spread across Europe, the United States and Australia.

“People need to see lone wolves acting to become empowered,” he continued.

Using a slur, the chat leader added that the conspirators needed to set an example by carrying out acts of violence against Jews.

He also suggested “attacking mosques” to “make Muslims more angry.” If Muslims were agitated, he reasoned, it would only serve to radicalize more white people.

The screed also included a list of chemicals, with the advice that lye would work well for burning the faces of Jewish people.

“Need to spray them with some water to dissolve the powder, but not too much to dilute it (so we want maximum flesh eating),” the post read.

Promoting a longstanding white supremacist conspiracy theory that Jews control the governments of Western democracies, the chat leader wrote: “We must weaken them, spread them out, create chaos for them, destroy their infrastructure, their media, raid their military depots, bomb their banks, we must be smart and destroy them using the edges that we have.”

The Signal group was named Black Sun Rising Militia. “Black Sun” refers to the sonnenrad, an ancient European symbol used by the Nazis during World War II.

Written on Oct. 12, 2024, the Signal messages were meant to rally group members for what was described as a planned coordinated strike against targets across Western Europe and the United States, to take place four days later.

A target list posted in the group shows that the leader was preoccupied with terrorizing Jewish people, while seeking to strike at institutions that underpin Western democracies.

Target categories included “all synagogues”; “all Jewish centers and schools”; “all Israeli embassies and consulates”; “all mosques”; “all migrant centers/camps/housing”; “all big banks/finance companies”; “all big pharma companies”; “all big tech companies”; “all big media/news companies” and “all Western government buildings.”

But on Oct. 14, after advising one group member that he would “basically be slicing necks,” the leader suddenly went quiet.

With the planned attack only two days away, chat members grew nervous.

“Surprising to see members here don’t know much about the owner and leader of this group,” one wrote on Oct. 15. “Meaning if he’s arrested or dead, black sun militia dies.”

Another member waved off such concerns.

“Why would it die?” they wrote. “The members keep it alive.”

“No worries,” they added. “Tomorrow in the US will be some fun, but not for Jews. You can be sure you will hear from him tomorrow. That will be nice.”

As it turned out, the leader — a man named Vincent Weidlich, in his mid-thirties, raised in America — had gone quiet for a reason. He had been arrested in Brazil.

A double life

Weidlich appeared to have led a double life. While assembling a network of violent Nazis preparing for a global race war, he was also pursuing a career as an academic researcher focused on artificial intelligence and neuroscience.

Raised in California by parents from Germany and Brazil, Weidlich obtained a bachelor’s degree in business management from Kingston University in London in 2020, according to his Academia profile.

Beginning around 2023, he began to intensify his work on artificial intelligence by enlisting contributors for an academic paper, forming a company and sharing ideas with global counterparts through the gaming platform Discord.

Few if any of his research associates appeared to have known of his other life, which culminated in his arrest in Brazil.

Michele Prado, a special advisor to the public prosecutor’s office in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, confirmed to Raw Story that Weidlich was charged with terrorism following an investigation by Brazil’s Federal Police Cyber Hate Crimes Repression Unit, as first reported by the Swedish public broadcaster SVT Nyheter.

Weidlich had previously been identified by freelance journalist My Vingren in a 2023 story for Expo, a Swedish organization that combats racism, after Vingren infiltrated an online group called the Nordic Federation that Weidlich organized while living in Norway.

SVT Nyheter reported that Weidlich was convicted in São Paulo of “planning and preparation for acts of terrorism and for publicly inciting genocide.”

Weidlich’s lawyer, according to the report, argued that he could not be held criminally liable on the basis of insanity. The outlet reported that Weidlich was sentenced to “forensic psychiatric care indefinitely.”

Weidlich's legal proceedings are subject to a judicial secrecy order issued by the Brazilian courts, said Flávio Rolim, head of the Brazilian Federal Police Cyber Hate Crimes Unit, which handled the initial phase of the investigation.

As a result of the secrecy order, Rolim told Raw Story he was unable to "provide information regarding the investigation or the status of the judicial proceedings."

Raw Story reached out to Weidlich’s lawyer in Brazil, but did not receive a response.

Reached by phone, Georg Weidlich, Vincent’s father, denied that his son was convicted on terrorism charges.

“All slander,” he told Raw Story, before warning of “legal action” and cutting off the conversation.

A thwarted attack

Vingren, the journalist, alerted the Swedish Security Service about the planned terrorist attacks before Vincent Weidlich was arrested in Brazil, SVT Nyheter reported.

Raw Story also reviewed the Signal chats. Shortly before Oct. 16, 2024, Raw Story passed the information on to an intermediary believed to have contact with federal law enforcement and global security personnel.

After Oct. 16 saw no reports of significant terrorist attacks, the Black Sun Militia chat descended into squabbling.

One member suggested the leader’s disappearance showed the project had been nothing more than a charade. Others insisted everyone should feel empowered to carry out strikes on their own.

“It’s true that he hasn’t been online for a while,” another member wrote, “but I don’t think we should go crazy over it. We just need to do our thing. And today is the day!”

At least one splinter cell appears to have continued to plan. Three members set up a separate Hungarian “branch” with its own Signal group.

“You don’t have to worry about Hungarians bro,” one member posted in the general group. “We are doing what we want. Relax.”

Black Sun Rising Militia members discuss plans for a coordinated attack on Oct. 16, 2024, in Signal posts obtained by Raw Story

One week after Oct. 16, six Hungarian “young people” armed with “airsoft and deactivated weapons” were detained by authorities, suspected of planning an attack targeting “protected persons,” according to Index, a Hungarian news outlet.

It’s not clear that the planned Budapest attack was linked to the neo-Nazi terror plot, but at least one member of the Black Sun Rising Militia seemed to think so.

“It seems that the Hungarian group is quiet for a reason,” a member posted on Oct. 23, adding a link to a story about the arrests.

Index reported that Hungarian authorities had received a notice from the U.S. Secret Service about two weeks earlier, warning of an attack on Oct. 23, the anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Soviet Union.

Russia links

At the time he launched a neo-Nazi Signal group rife with talk about radicalizing white people and driving people of color out of Europe and the U.S., Weidlich was also cultivating a community of scientific researchers that included individuals from India and at least two Asian students studying at American universities.

In both the Black Sun Rising Militia Signal group and a Discord channel where he convened researchers, Weidlich posted cryptic messages about plans for operations in Russia.

According to Vingren’s report, police who searched Weidlich’s phone at the time of his Oct. 14, 2024 arrest found “a Russian-language land agreement.” In his home, they discovered a stash of chemical precursors for explosives.

Prior to Weidlich’s arrest, Vingren reported, Weidlich had written in the Black Sun Rising Militia Signal group: “We have bought a large piece of land in Russia, and we are building our village now.”

Raw Story found evidence of Weidlich’s interest in Russia in his efforts to build a professional network around AI and neuroscience research.

In September 2023, after Weidlich relocated to Brazil from Norway, the Unlimited Research Cooperative Discord server launched. At least two members — a college student in the U.S. and a high school student in India — would be listed as co-authors with Weidlich and his father on an academic paper. There is no suggestion any of the other co-authors were aware of or endorsed Vincent Weidlich’s neo-Nazi activities.

Entitled “AI-Driven Physics-Informed Bio-Silicon Intelligence System,” the paper describes a project that matches the mission of Synthetic Intelligence Labs, a company Vincent Weidlich incorporated in summer 2024 in Sheffield, U.K. and Palo Alto, California.

On the paper and on the articles of incorporation, Weidlich used a pseudonym: Vincent Jorgsson.

“Envision connecting a rat’s brain to a computer to form an integrated system capable of playing a complex game like Doom,” an AI-generated narrator says in a video on the company’s TikTok channel. “It’s not science-fiction. It’s the reality we’re building.”

A screengrab from the Unlimited Research Cooperative Discord server obtained by Raw Story indicates that in the same month Weidlich incorporated Synthetic Intelligence Labs, he discussed a project in Russia.

“For legal purposes, the off-grid lab community will be under another company that we don’t do business with, due to Russian-western political stuff,” the post reads. “There will be open communication between Synthetic Intelligence Labs and the other company in Russia.”

Vincent Weidlich. Picture: Academia.edu

On Sept. 11, 2024, though, Weidlich said he was leaving the Unlimited Research Cooperative Discord server.

“Things are progressing very well, but the workload is increasing for me,” he wrote. “I will no longer be able to be regularly using Discord, so I am passing the server ownership and running to our assistant.

“Farewell to all, and if you need to contact me for collaboration and research, feel free to send an email. It was great to meet everyone!”

Only two days earlier, a Telegram channel appeared with an invitation to the Black Sun Rising Militia Signal group.

The goal of the militia, an introductory message explained, was to “kill every single Jew in the world” and to send all Black people and people of color “back to where they came from (or kill them if they refuse).

“Attacks start on October 16, and will not stop until we destroy the Jewish infrastructure and every [Jew] that exists on earth.”