Yeah, it's not ridiculous. The Base, which you reference, was almost certainly an FBI honeypot. I actually spent a lot of time reading their chats when they first started making headlines. There was a lot that was suspect from the get-go. For an organization planning violence, they were laughably lax on their opsec and advertising openly online.

Their leader “Norman Spear” first appeared on the scene literally a month after Charlottesville. I didn’t report my suspicions in the original article, but the whole operation seemed design to lure accelerationist Atomwaffen-style extremists out in the open so they could be better surveilled. It’s nevertheless very odd for an organization that’s ostensibly modeled on groups like the Order and the NSLF, which advocated small cell formations, to be advocating for strangers to meet up and train.

For example, Norman was offering to distribute Base patches to people but they had to meet him in person “as a badge of courage.” Jason Wilson’s report in the Guardian added some more evidence to this theory by showing that Rinaldo Nizzauro (Norman’s real name) was some sort of intelligence contractor with a home in the Washington burbs.

There are other examples that I can’t find right now, but the feds have set up entire Neo-Nazi organizations in the very recent past, and most existing organizations are heavily infiltrated with either agents or informants.

So it is very plausible.

Anyways, I think you fundamentally misunderstand a lot of the points he’s making. While it’s certainly possible that genuine, sincere neo-Nazis planned to kidnap Whitmer, the other scenario is just as plausible. But the bottom line is that 6 militia yahoos plotting to kidnap a governor isn’t a putsch, which is what he’s saying.

Saying that you shouldn’t overestimate something isn’t the same as saying you should underestimate it. It’s making the case for having a clearer understanding of a phenomenon, which is necessary if you want to accurately address it.