Southern Poverty Law Center - Neo-Nazi

��Ҵ�ý analyst’s work helps spur Maine law restricting paramilitary training

rudy.isaza_2663 — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 19:31:16 +0000

Hopewatch

��Ҵ�ý analyst’s work helps spur Maine law restricting paramilitary training

When I started investigating a neo-Nazi camp in Maine last year, I did not expect my reporting would eventually lead to the state restricting paramilitary training.

However, that is what happened this month when the governor signed such a bill into law. It is now possible for the Maine attorney general to seek a court injunction to stop such training designed to create civil disorder. Charges can result in a one-year jail sentence, The Associated Press reported.

When I initially exposed a neo-Nazi’s plans to establish a paramilitary training camp, I knew that at best I only helped to delay his plans. But now I’m more hopeful. Elected leaders in Maine stood up against hate and sent a clear signal to white supremacists that training to harm diverse communities is not welcomed in their state.

The road to this point was a long, tedious one that required research and long hours on my part as well as that of people in the community dedicated to exposing hate and extremism.

The leader of the neo-Nazi Blood Tribe, Christopher Alan Pohlhaus, never hid the fact that he purchased land in Maine, nor did he hide his intentions. He envisioned using the land as the headquarters for his group and to provide his followers a place to train, strategize and network. But it wasn’t until I saw a video on social media of Blood Tribe members berating what appeared to be a young mother and her daughter outside a drag show in Wadsworth, Ohio, in March 2023, that I started to search property records to locate the camp.

The search was a tiresome process. Even with a tip that helped narrow the search to Penobscot County, the property records did not include an address, just a lot number and subdivision name. After more digging and comparing different versions of hand-drawn maps of subdivisions – and learning that the names of roads changed in the 1990s – I was able to conclusively show the camp’s location in my report published in July 2023.

What happened next was a humbling experience.

Local journalist Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli of the Bangor Daily News picked up where my report left off. She traveled to see the camp for herself and talk to area residents. In August and September, her articles captured the reactions from communities and the building and permitting challenges Pohlhaus faced. Her stories also dug into Pohlhaus’ local supporters. Local TV news outlets interviewed Pohlhaus and covered the rise of antisemitic incidents and attacks against LGBTQ+ civil rights that neo-Nazi groups like the Blood Tribe encourage.

This is what I and my colleagues at the Southern Poverty Law Center like to see – our work being used by others to help expose hate and extremism in a community. The warning within my original article was not only reported by others but amplified by their subsequent work.

Last October, Pohlhaus and the other owner sold the property. In a post to Telegram, a social media platform popular with white supremacists in the U.S., Pohlhaus mentioned he sold the property partly because of the increased media and political scrutiny he faced in the state. I initially laughed when I saw the post because I knew I had played a role in spotlighting his hateful activities.

However, our work at the ��Ҵ�ý took on a life of its own as others investigated the issue, and I’m pleased to see that Maine recognized the danger of such groups within their state. Communities must come together to effectively combat hate and extremism. And as Maine demonstrated, the results can be powerful.

Jeff Tischauser is a senior research analyst for the ��Ҵ�ý’s Intelligence Project.

Photo at top: A law signed by Gov. Janet Mills restricts paramilitary training in Maine in response to a neo-Nazi who wanted to create a training center for a Blood Tribe group. (Credit: AP Images)

Jeff Tischauser

April 26, 2024

��Ҵ�ý, local journalist expose, derail plan for neo-Nazi enclave in Maine

rudy.isaza_2663 — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 19:35:54 +0000

Features and Stories

��Ҵ�ý, local journalist expose, derail plan for neo-Nazi enclave in Maine

Content warning: This article contains graphic language.

It takes a lot to surprise Jeff Tischauser.

A research analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project who works to expose the growing normalization of far-right extremism in the United States, Tischauser is used to hardening himself against the activities of the purveyors of hate he tracks.

But when known neo-Nazi Christopher Pohlhaus took his penchant for online harassment live, the cruelty particularly stood out for Tischauser.

The pivot point came in March, when Pohlhaus marshaled members of the violent “Blood Tribe” he founded to hound children and families attending a drag brunch fundraiser for the LGBTQ+ community in small-town Ohio, screaming obscenities and pursuing a call to “give them PTSD.”

“I realized this guy is actually more for real than I thought he was. He’s not just an online podcaster. He’s getting people out into the streets. He is seemingly driven to provoke his perceived political enemies. And that includes children … apparently,” Tischauser said. “Not a lot of things shock me anymore, but they still can turn my stomach. When I heard that, it made me want to find where this guy is so that he can at least be stopped or at least kind of track his activities a little bit more closely.”

With determination typical of the research analysts who work for the Intelligence Project to bring extremists out of the shadows, Tischauser trained his investigative skills on Pohlhaus.

In July, the Intelligence Project published an exposé in its Hatewatch blog showing that Pohlhaus had purchased 10.6 acres deep in the pine forests of northern Maine. The purpose was to build an armed white supremacist training ground for the group he calls “Blut Stamm” – German for “Blood Tribe.” Unnoticed by many people in the community, Pohlhaus had been clearing land he bought in March 2022 and was traveling the country to recruit followers to broaden his network of extremist connections. Soliciting cryptocurrency donations on Telegram, an encrypted messaging board often used by white supremacists, he was using the money to build and stock the enclave, where he flew a giant Nazi flag.

The painstaking ��Ҵ�ý investigation led to media exposure as well as proposed changes in statewide policy around extremists. In October, Pohlhaus sold off the land, went quiet and appears, at least for the time being, to have abandoned his plans in Maine.

Mundane and revelatory

“I had to move somewhere, you know? You guys are so weird,” Pohlhaus said in a voice message responding to a request for comment Tischauser sent via Telegram during his investigation.

“Google, ‘Breaking News: Nazi Buys a Piece of Property.’ Tell everybody. Run the presses: ‘He Owns Property,’” Pohlhaus said. “What the f--- do you expect me to do? Where do you expect me to go? You want me to go to your neighborhood? Why are you guys so g------ awkward. This isn’t a news story.”

But of course, it was. Tischauser’s research demonstrates, as does the ��Ҵ�ý’s latest Year in Hate and Extremism report, that white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups are becoming significantly more aggressive, more mainstream and more of a threat to local governments and community institutions. And the result illustrates how, through deep collaboration, groundbreaking investigations employing cutting-edge data science and intelligence techniques and old-fashioned gumshoe reporting, the ��Ҵ�ý is combating the rise of hate and extremism and its seepage into the political discourse of the United States.

The work of the Intelligence Project builds on half a century of investigative expertise by the ��Ҵ�ý, which has continued to sound the alarm about the dangers of far-right extremists even when most policymakers and the public believed them to be fringe groups fading in influence.

“The ��Ҵ�ý’s Intelligence Project hopes to change extremists’ behavior by exposing their activities,” said Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director of research, reporting and analysis for the Intelligence Project.

“The resources and expertise and time that it takes to unearth the people who want to remain in the shadows, and most importantly their plans, their strategies and tactics, is something that the ��Ҵ�ý has been offering since our founding,” Carroll Rivas said. It is a tool “that communities can use to throw the paper on the podium and say, ‘This is real, this is organized and it’s intentionally harming us.’ It is information necessary to interrupt and organize and bring litigation against these groups, and it’s a time-consuming and deep project.”

‘A needle in a haystack’

It was September 2021 when Tischauser said he first became aware of Pohlhaus – a tattoo artist who calls himself “The Hammer” – and the group he founded. Pohlhaus has ties to the neo-Nazi Nationalist Social Club (NSC-131) and convicted Jan. 6 rioter Riley June Williams. But while Pohlhaus has claimed associations with other neo-Nazi activists and publishers around the country, he had previously been believed to confine his activities to online provocation.

However, Tischauser picked up online chatter from Pohlhaus claiming to be moving to Maine to set up a headquarters for his group. Not knowing anything more, he began combing through property records in Maine county by county.

He was looking, he acknowledged, for “a needle in a haystack.”

About a month after the drag show, Tischauser got a break. An anonymous message came in on an ��Ҵ�ý tip line that Pohlhaus had joined a gym in Penobscot County, Maine. Tischauser began focusing his search on the northern Maine county whose seat is Bangor.

After more than 20 hours of work, Tischauser found records on a database maintained by the Penobscot County Registry of Deeds identifying Pohlhaus and fellow white supremacist and convicted felon Fred Boyd Ramey as the buyers of a property outside a town on the northern edge of the county, Springfield, population 409.

‘What community journalism is all about’

Meanwhile, a local newspaper reporter was also picking up concerning signs. Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli had moved to Maine three years before from New York with her husband and taken a job as a staff writer with the Bangor Daily News. A reporter and photographer with an investigative bent, Phalen Tomaselli had a track record at her previous reporting jobs for exposing white nationalist groups. As a reporter at the Reading Eagle and now-defunct Reading Times in Berks County, Pennsylvania, she had written about the East Coast headquarters of the Aryan Nations group.

Phalen Tomaselli said her inquiries about chatter she had seen that a neo-Nazi planned to build “an ethnostate” in Maine were meeting skepticism and hitting dead ends. Until, searching for anything she could find on Pohlhaus, she saw Tischauser’s story on the ��Ҵ�ý website.

Phalen Tomaselli had an advantage Tischauser did not. She lived within two hours of the site the ��Ҵ�ý researcher had identified, and she was able to draw on the knowledge of residents to find its exact location, which had no listed address. Early one August day, she set off in search of the property on her own.

Off a narrow, remote, dirt and stone road in the middle of dense pine forest with no cell service, she spotted a blur of white. It was a dilapidated white trailer that matched the photos of a trailer in videos Pohlhaus had posted of the camp online. Surrounding it, according to Phalen Tomaselli, were acres of nearly cleared land.

Pohlhaus had begun recruiting men to prepare to build cabins for Blood Tribe followers. In multiple Telegram postings, Pohlhaus said they were camping in tents in the winter and training to become Blood Tribe soldiers. He frequently posted clips of his inner circle initiation ritual. In it, men pierce their palm with a spear to draw blood and then wipe it on the spear handle over the blood of the others.

“I’ll be honest, it was a little scary,” Phalen Tomaselli said.

Putting her fear aside, she took photographs from outside the property, took notes and shared what she had seen with both Tischauser and her readers in an article published Aug. 7.

“If a Nazi is trying to set up a military training camp in your community, you should know,” Phalen Tomaselli said. “It’s our job. For me, it’s my responsibility to do this for the people, for the public, I guess. It’s what community journalism is all about.”

Phalen Tomaselli’s story, and others that followed, drew the attention of residents, community leaders and politicians. The Planet Fitness location in Bangor – the gym where Pohlhaus had been spotted – banned him from its facilities. After the owner of a Maine rental home wrote an opinion piece in the Lincoln News in support of Pohlhaus, who is a frequent guest, her listings were removed from the Airbnb booking platform. Community leaders, including officials at a local Jewish synagogue, expressed alarm about Pohlhaus’ plans. World War II veterans interviewed by Phalen Tomaselli said they worried about history repeating itself.

‘A blight on the community’

As the community concerns grew, several Maine lawmakers proposed legislation to beef up Maine’s anti-militia laws and to outlaw paramilitary training encampments. Among them was state Sen. Joe Baldacci of Bangor, who drafted legislation that would make it a criminal offense to offer training in firearms, explosives or other tactics with the intent of causing a “civil disorder.” The prohibition would not apply to training for law enforcement, self-defense programs, military science students, firearms instruction on safe use of guns or any legal shooting sports.

After Baldacci spoke out and introduced the legislation, Pohlhaus posted an online image of an assault rifle with the words, “Baldacci isn’t gonna stop us.”

“He’s a scary guy,” Baldacci said of Pohlhaus.

“Wherever [Pohlhaus] is he’s a blight on the community that he’s in,” Baldacci said. “It was a blight that I thought was unacceptable in Maine.”

The community response, the proposed policy actions and the media coverage of Pohlhaus’ plans are emblematic of the ��Ҵ�ý’s mission to work in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, Carroll Rivas said.

“Communities know what is happening to them,” Carroll Rivas said. With its investigative resources, the ��Ҵ�ý “can help put together in a national picture the pain and harm they are experiencing from hate groups.”

Despite the success they have had in foiling Pohlhaus’ plans, Tischauser and Phalen Tomaselli worry that Maine, the whitest state in the country, and one with a deep tradition of both gun ownership and conservative politics, has not seen the last of the white supremacist. They vow to keep tracking him and others of his ilk.

“We’ve been sounding the alarm bells about these really violent people in our communities and trying to shine a light on their activities,” Tischauser said of the ��Ҵ�ý’s efforts. “And we wish people would listen. Because when you let in a Nazi to your dinner party and there’s one Nazi at that dinner table, it’s now a Nazi dinner party. And more Nazis are going to come next time. And then guess what? Pretty soon that whole table is going to be full of Nazis.”

Illustration at top: The flag of Maine is outlined in a map of the state, with crosshairs on the town of Springfield, where known neo-Nazi Christopher Pohlhaus was planning to build a white nationalist “ethnostate” until an investigation by the ��Ҵ�ý and a local reporter exposed it. (��Ҵ�ý)

Esther Schrader

January 05, 2024

Far-Right Kyle Rittenhouse Propaganda 'Not Factually Based,' Says Kenosha Militia Participant

chris.heller_1541 — Mon, 14 Sep 2020 21:31:10 +0000

Hatewatch

One of the militia members who joined Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, told Hatewatch that far-right propaganda praising the 17-year-old accused murderer is harmful and said that he was not part of a “well-regulated militia.”

Far-Right Kyle Rittenhouse Propaganda 'Not Factually Based,' Says Kenosha Militia Participant

Ryan Balch, the Wisconsin man who Hatewatch reported was immersed in white supremacist propaganda before joining Rittenhouse in Kenosha on Aug. 25, reached out to Hatewatch by phone. He offered additional context about what happened that night, when Rittenhouse allegedly killed two people and injured another. Balch, 31, described the militia contingent that descended on the city in the midst of civil unrest there as being “small groups of friends who went together” in separate groups. He called the groups “ad hoc.” Balch also told Hatewatch that Rittenhouse lied to him that night, claiming that he was 18 years old and an EMT, both of which were untrue.

Kyle Rittenhouse (left) walks with Ryan Balch in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, Aug. 25. (Photo via Adam Rogan/The Journal Times via AP)

Referring to the culture war surrounding the violence that gripped Kenosha in August, Balch told Hatewatch in a phone call:

I think that the propaganda around Rittenhouse is not factually based, which I mean, it’s propaganda, so of course. But … it’s really damning [when looking at] the facts of what happened. And, I think them lionizing him is only going to hurt him down the road. It’s only going to [make] the divide bigger. Myself personally, I don’t lionize him. Rittenhouse was a kid who lied to the people he was with. Anybody who was in proximity to him, he lied to us.

Rittenhouse has been celebrated as a hero by many far-right commentators. Fundraising efforts for his legal defense have pulled in around $1 million. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson defended Rittenhouse on his show after his arrest on homicide and gun charges. A channel on the messaging app Telegram associated with the street-brawling Proud Boys published a propaganda video featuring images and video of Rittenhouse, glorifying him to the tune of the song “A Real Hero” from the soundtrack to the 2011 film “Drive.” President Trump also appeared to defend Rittenhouse during a press conference.

Balch dismissed the credibility of a potential criminal defense of Rittenhouse using the Second Amendment’s description of a “well-regulated militia,” which is what his lawyer apparently intends to argue on his behalf in court.

“There was not a whole lot of communication [that night], and that was even within the protesters themselves,” Balch told Hatewatch. Asked what he would need to call a militia well-regulated, Balch said, “There would have to be some organization.” Hatewatch reached out to Rittenhouse’s lawyer, John Pierce, for a comment on this story, through his firm Pierce Bainbridge. Pierce did not immediately respond.

Balch, who voted for Trump in 2016, expressed disappointment with the incumbent president’s response to Kenosha and America’s cultural divisions in a broader sense. He described Trump’s use of federal agents in response to civil unrest as being “too heavy handed” and said he would be voting for Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen in the upcoming presidential election.

“It’s a clear violation of the Constitution,” Balch said, referring to Trump’s use of federal officers in response to unrest.

Disavowals and disconnect

Balch, who described himself as an Iraq War veteran with an interest in militia culture that dates back to 2014, first contacted Hatewatch on Sept. 2 to clarify the intentions behind his social media presence. On Facebook and on Twitter, Balch referenced the far-right boogaloo movement, retweeted white nationalist Richard Spencer and tweeted a link to a website hosting a Nazi-propaganda video cut with Hitler speeches. Balch also used Twitter to troll Parkland mass shooting victims and a gun control-supporting rabbi, while using esoteric, antisemitic slang. Balch confirmed to Hatewatch that he operated those social media accounts.

Balch made incongruous statements to Hatewatch while seeking to distance himself from far-right extremism. He said that his posts were made at a time when he sought to “infiltrate” the white supremacist friendly “alt-right” movement. Hatewatch asked Balch to explain the motivations behind his infiltration effort, and he sent screenshots posted from a Facebook account called “Alt Right Autismos on Parade” that mocked Nazism. Hatewatch was unable to verify a direct connection between that account and Balch, and he declined to provide any evidence after being asked. The screenshots he sent were also dated in July 2016, roughly half a year before he retweeted Spencer. When asked why he used his own name on his supposedly satirical Twitter account, Balch said he created it at a time when that company disallowed people from using pseudonyms. Twitter, however, has never held the policy he described. Balch also acknowledged having made “past endorsements of national socialism and racism” in a Facebook post he published Sept. 2.

“Understand that these views were not and have never been my own,” Balch wrote separately in an email to Hatewatch. “I tried to use humor to combat them. And my methods were at times hurtful to innocent bystanders. I deeply and sincerely apologize for that. As it was never my intention. Thank you for allowing me to clarify this publicly.”

In the same Sept. 2 Facebook post in which he mentioned national socialism and racism, Balch also disavowed the boogaloo movement, which has been linked to an increasing number of crimes. On Aug. 27, police arrested a person affiliated with the movement for sending threatening messages to a Santa Clara, California, health official. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice charged two adherents of the boogaloo movement with attempting to become assets for the Sunni fundamentalist group Hamas. Those stories add to a list of crimes associated with that mostly far-right, antigovernment movement, including alleged murder.

“I Ryan Balch disavow any affiliations with the boogaloo movement. Either implied or assumed. Past or present,” Balch wrote on Facebook.

Michael Edison Hayden

September 15, 2020

As White House Contemplates Coronavirus Asylum Ban, Hate Groups Urge Trump to Seize the Moment

chris.heller_1541 — Fri, 20 Mar 2020 15:53:48 +0000

Hatewatch

The Trump administration took steps to block asylum seekers from entering the U.S.-Mexico border amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This nativist policy course has been pushed by anti-immigrant pundits and hate groups from the time the crisis started to unfold.

As White House Contemplates Coronavirus Asylum Ban, Hate Groups Urge Trump to Seize the Moment

The White House first began to weigh tightening controls on the U.S.-Mexico border last month, according to a report published by Reuters on Feb. 29. At that time, a group of 11 Republican House lawmakers issued a letter to the president seeking such a move, noting that “any outbreak in Central America or Mexico could cause a rush to our border.”

The Trump administration, which has been criticized for its handling of the COVID-19 (also known as coronavirus) pandemic, moved beyond weighing the option of tightening border restrictions to starting the negotiating process for a policy of turning away asylum seekers who arrive at the U.S. border “without any detainment and without any due process,” according to a March 17 report in The New York Times. The Times story noted that confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Mexico stood at 82 at the time the decision was made, which represents only a fraction of the 5,600 cases confirmed in the U.S. at the same time.

The effort to block the asylum-seeking process at the U.S.-Mexico border follows a pattern established early on in Trump’s tenure of cracking down harshly on non-white immigration into the U.S. and is expected to be applauded by anti-immigrant far-right activists, who have repeatedly urged the administration to exploit the crisis along racial and ideological lines. Many white nationalist and neo-Nazi websites, as well as anti-immigration think tanks, have contributed to this call.

VDARE, a white nationalist website created by anti-immigration activist Peter Brimelow, has produced a deluge of propaganda related to the pandemic. A round-up of the site's writings, which was published to their website on March 21, listed some 110 posts on the topic that were circulated as far back as January. Additionally, VDARE produced nearly 50 posts related to the pandemic on their site between March 16 and March 23, dominating the framing of the group’s anti-immigrant propaganda overall.

VDARE published a column from nativist pundit and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan on Feb. 27, for example, encouraging President Trump to use COVID-19 to further his anti-immigrant agenda. The column preceded Reuters’ reporting that the Trump administration was considering such measures by two days.

“Like Trump’s America, all nations, in this crisis, are going to put their own people first. As they should,” Buchanan wrote.

VDARE’s word may carry weight within the Trump White House. Stephen Miller, Trump’s de facto immigration czar, forwarded a link from VDARE to Breitbart News in October 2015 regarding the subject of Temporary Protected Status for refugees while serving as an aide to then-Senator Jeff Sessions, as Hatewatch previously reported. Under Miller’s stewardship on immigration, America has significantly rolled back rights for people seeking emergency refuge on its shores.

Buchanan, whose nativist 1992 presidential campaign was an ideological forerunner to Trump’s foray into politics, observed in his column that the COVID-19 crisis was an opportunity to expose the shallow popularity of the so-called “‘open borders’ ideology,” noting that “the globalists are taking a beating” due to the spread of the virus. He followed it up on March 12 with another post on VDARE, commenting that the COVID-19 pandemic might trigger a “deathblow to the New World Order” of globalization.

“Is not the case now conclusive that we made a historic mistake when we outsourced our economic independence to rely for vital necessities upon nations that have never had America's best interests at heart?” Buchanan wrote. “Which rings truer today? We are all part of mankind, all citizens of the world. Or that it’s time to put America and Americans first!”

As far back as Feb. 1, VDARE encouraged its readers to view the COVID-19 crisis through the lens of race. One piece on the site, titled “Do You Know All Coronavirus Victims Appear To Be Chinese? Thought Not!” analyzed the crisis through speculative, unproven race science, and used the virus as evidence in support of the white nationalist refrain, “race is a biological reality.” The same author followed up that post by writing on Feb. 15, “The disease apparently does indeed discriminate by race.” Even COVID-19’s first American victim, he wrote, was clearly not someone who had “descended from people [who] arrived on our shores in the Mayflower.” (In reality, cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and elsewhere have spanned across lines of race and ethnicity.)

Kevin DeAnna, a white nationalist who contributes to VDARE and other white nationalist publications under the pen name “James Kirkpatrick,” praised Italy’s Matteo Salvini when he called for a shutdown of Italy’s borders. DeAnna prodded Trump to follow Salvini's lead. On March 15, DeAnna encouraged the president to “ban legal immigrants and refugees.” But above all, he continued, Trump shouldn’t let the opportunity fall by the wayside, provided that it “proves that nationalists have been right all along.”

Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigrant hate group that’s the brainchild of the late John Tanton and a favored think tank of Miller, has also written about COVID-19 with a nativist bent. The group published blog posts describing the virus as the “Wuhan Flu” while urging Trump to close borders in response to it. In one post titled “The Wuhan Wakeup on Immigration and Border Security,” published March 13, senior fellow Andrew R. Arthur referenced the threat of “alien terrorists” multiple times, while proposing a legal framework for drastically restricting immigration. Center for Immigration Studies’ fellow Dan Cadman also wrote of the pandemic in a post issued March 16, expressing concerns that undocumented “replacement workers” would be used to replace people who fell ill.

“But why would anyone think that the replacement workers – especially given the strong likelihood of their being in the United States illegally, and quite possibly recent border-crossers from who-knows-where – would be coronavirus-free?” Cadman wrote.

Neo-Nazis, representing the hardest edges of the anti-immigrant far right, have made similar calls for closing the border in response to the crisis, but expressed pessimism that Trump and his cohorts would follow through on it. “Wild Rich,” a neo-Nazi who has in the past praised acts of terrorism in the name of building a country for only white non-Jews, published a post on the subscription content service Patreon on March 17 called “Open Borders Caused the COVID-19 Pandemic,” writing that he has “zero faith that our elites will make any considerable changes to the law or public policy in the aftermath of this event.” The piece was reposted under the name Richard Houck at Counter-Currents and, later, at the American Renaissance site.

“As it stands, there is nothing to prevent a disease that pops up in any corner of the globe from making its way right into your favorite bar, grocery store, your university, your parent’s or grandparent’s nursing home, or your child’s school,” he wrote, while calling to use the crisis to build a “real White nation.”

Andrew Anglin, the editor of neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, expressed similar pessimism, while working characteristic notes of racism and misogyny into his analysis.

“Well, if anything good comes of this, maybe we will reinstate borders in white countries? Haha, no,” Anglin wrote March 18, referring to a report about asylum seekers in The New York Times. “I doubt they will even close them in the first place, let alone keep them closed afterward. If they are closed, it will be a massive celebration when they are reopened, with white women out in the streets cheering the return of the brown flood.”

Advocates of immigrant rights, who have expressed concern about the Trump administration’s potential willingness to exploit the COVID-19 crisis to pursue a nativist agenda, are unlikely to be reassured by this increase in hateful rhetoric from the more extreme elements of Trump’s base.

“It is unbelievable that amid this global crisis, [the White House remains] consumed by this effort, using the pandemic as an excuse to turn back asylum seekers,” Melissa Crow of Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project wrote in a March 18 statement. “Denying asylum seekers their rights will do absolutely nothing to solve this pandemic.”

The flurry of hate group activity related to the subject of border closings comes on the heels of Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual Year in Hate report, which found an 18% increase in anti-immigrant activity and a 5% growth in white nationalist activity, despite a slight decrease in the overall number of hate groups in the U.S. in 2019.

President Trump connected the pandemic to the subject of immigration again on the morning of March 23, writing to his 75 million Twitter followers, “THIS IS WHY WE NEED BORDERS!”

Michael Edison Hayden and Hannah Gais

March 23, 2020

Suspected Atomwaffen Member Arrested, Charged With Gun Possession

chris.heller_1541 — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 20:48:19 +0000

Hatewatch

Federal authorities continued a crackdown on the violent neo-Nazi organization Atomwaffen Division by indicting a suspected member on gun charges.

Suspected Atomwaffen Member Arrested, Charged With Gun Possession

A federal magistrate judge in Lubbock, Texas, last week ordered Aiden Bruce-Umbaugh held in jail pending trial. Bruce-Umbaugh, 23, of Olympia, Washington, pleaded not guilty after being indicted on a count of possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of a controlled substance.

Hatewatch has identified at least 11 arrests of those with ties to Atomwaffen Division since 2017. Others have faced federal and state charges involving weapons possession, murder and possession of child pornography.

Aiden Bruce-Umbaugh mug shot from Lubbock County, Texas, Sheriff's Office.

Bruce-Umbaugh’s attorney, Michael L. King of Lubbock, did not return an email or a phone call seeking comment.

The arrest comes two months after the Department of Homeland Security released a strategy document aimed at assisting law enforcement in assessing and dealing with the threat of violent white nationalism.

Atomwaffen subscribes to the theory of “leaderless resistance,” meaning small groups of individuals work on their own, which makes determining national leadership problematic. The neo-Nazi organization – Atomwaffen means nuclear weapons in German – has been tied to suspects in five killings since 2015, according to a New York Times report last year.

Authorities arrested Bruce-Umbaugh during a Nov. 4 traffic stop in the Garza County, Texas, town of Post, about 40 miles southeast of Lubbock.

Bruce-Umbaugh was passenger in a car driven by Kaleb James Cole, an admitted Atomwaffen member authorities have identified as the Washington state cell leader.

Police, in the arrest report, said Cole and Bruce-Umbaugh wore tactical clothing. According to the criminal complaint, when asked if there were weapons in the car, Bruce-Umbaugh said, “Oh yeah, we have rifles in the back.”

Police searched the vehicle and said they found a small amount of marijuana and THC oils, a Sig Sauer firearm, a 9 mm pistol, an AR-15 rifle, two AK-47 rifles and 1,500 to 2,000 rounds of ammunition, according to the criminal complaint.

Bruce-Umbaugh admitted to law enforcement that the firearms, marijuana and THC oils belonged to him, the criminal complaint said. The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported that Cole was ticketed and released.

Police said the two men were headed to Houston from Seattle to “meet with some friends,” according to the complaint.

Prosecutors alleged Bruce-Umbaugh, during jail phone calls, referred to being affiliated with “the group” and talked about a photo of himself and another group member at the Auschwitz concentration camp, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Texas.

KING-TV in Seattle reported that Bruce-Umbaugh and Cole traveled to Eastern Europe and posed together at the camp in Poland.

Seattle police in October obtained a court order to seize guns and a concealed carry permit belonging to Cole, who reportedly goes by “Khimaere.” Police, in filing for an emergency protection order, said they were “increasingly concerned” about Cole’s access to firearms given his involvement in a “known terrorism group.”

During a protection order hearing last month authorities made the case that Cole belonged to a group seeking a “race war.” The petition to seize his weapons described Cole as a “self-admitted” member of Atomwaffen and the Washington state chapter’s cell leader. He poses “a serious threat to public safety,” according to the petition.

“He had an enormous amount of ammunition,” Seattle police Detective Joe Stankovich said during the Oct. 8 hearing.

“Considering the number of firearms he had … it seemed like it was more than just a hobby.”

Police also said Cole organized “hate camps” to train Atomwaffen Division recruits. At those camps, prosecutor Kim Wyatt said, Atomwaffen members shouted “race war now” and “gas the k----” while undergoing tactical training.

The FBI also weighed in during the October hearing. “The Atomwaffen Division is a neo-Nazi group, and they promote violence and the stockpiling of weapons among their members in preparation for a race war,” FBI Special Agent Kate Murphy testified.

Canadian authorities also banned Cole from their country because of his association with the group, according to the Seattle police petition.

Cole has not been charged with a crime in Washington state related to the weapons. He did not appear at last month’s hearing.

Another high-profile Atomwaffen arrest involved Brandon Russell, a 24-year-old member from Tampa, Florida.

Police arrested Russell in May 2017. CBS reported that law enforcement found a skull mask, binoculars, two rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in his car, citing court documents.

Russell pleaded guilty in September 2017 to possession of an unregistered destructive device and unlawful storage of explosive materials.

He’s serving a five-year prison sentence at a medium-security facility in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Photo illustration by ��Ҵ�ý

Brett Barrouquere

November 18, 2019

Daily Stormer Website Goes Dark Amid Chaos

chris.heller_1541 — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 20:31:19 +0000

Hatewatch

The website for the Daily Stormer, the white supremacist, neo-Nazi and antisemitic racist group, has lost access to a critical piece of web infrastructure that allows the general public to access its hate propaganda easily.

Daily Stormer Website Goes Dark Amid Chaos

This infrastructure ensures the Stormer, the most read hate site in the world, attracts and maintains website readers and protects it from malicious attacks. But in a hectic 24 hours, Andrew Anglin, the website’s founder, took to Gab.com on Tuesday and told his readers the Stormer was down, and then somehow found an alternate way to keep the site going on the dark web.

The Stormer has lost its main access because it hasn’t paid for the service that allows audiences to view the content, Rob Monster, founder and CEO of Epik.com, told Hatewatch in an email. Epik.com runs BitMitigate, a content delivery network, or CDN, that ensures a site’s content becomes visible online.

Andrew Anglin

“As for Stormer, they actually never paid us a penny,” Monster wrote. “In August we discontinued the free plans. Stormer, like any other client, had the opportunity to secure a paid plan. They chose to overlook those opportunities which were proactively presented with ample opportunity.”

Anglin could not be reached for comment. But on Gab.com, he made a desperate plea for support and noted that the Stormer website might not survive. He wrote he’s seeking $11,000 in donations to fund continued access to BitMitigate.

“We're searching for a new CDN – Bitmitigate is no longer willing to put up with the level of attacks we bring on a budget we can afford. Daily Stormer is now under an unprecedented level of pressure and we'll have trouble staying online for the future.”

Anglin apparently was referring to web-based attacks that can make the site inaccessible.

He noted that the Stormer is still accessible through the Tor browser, a free program that routes users’ internet traffic through a system of servers as a means of offering increased anonymity. Tor is one of the easiest ways to access the dark web, where many extremist sites have set up shop after they’ve found increasing difficulty in staying on the open web.

Since its inception in July 2013, the Daily Stormer has built its reputation in the white power world by publishing shocking, vulgar displays of misogyny, antisemitism and racism under the guise of comedy. In 2017, the site overtook Stormfront.org as the most-read hate site in the world.

For years, the Stormer was able to stay online, thanks in part to tech companies that seemed indifferent to the extremist content their services enabled. Cloudflare, another company that provides services that help websites stay online, famously resisted removing the Stormer and 8chan from its list of clients, even as concerns mounted about harassment techniques deployed by those sites’ users.

That nonchalance changed in the aftermath of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally. Anglin used the Stormer to praise the death of counterprotester Heather Heyer, and as a result, several tech companies, including GoDaddy and Google, blocked Stormer traffic from their platforms. Perhaps most importantly, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince announced a unilateral decision to suspend Stormer’s access to his company’s services.

The Daily Stormer quickly relocated to BitMitigate, another web infrastructure company that also touts its commitment to absolute “free speech.” Even with access to BitMitigate’s services, Stormer has struggled with intermittent outages, sometimes lasting days or hours. Anglin’s Gab account contains updates about the Stormer’s status, including a March 12 post that noted the site “is down for about 90% of the world on the normieweb right now.”

BitMitigate has drawn criticism for its willingness to provide services to the Stormer and to 8chan, a notorious web forum where manifestos related to three recent mass shootings have been shared.

BitMitigate caters to sites trafficking in extremist content, such as Infowars.com and video-sharing service BitChute. Gab.com, where Anglin made his post announcing the Stormer’s disappearance from the open web, is also hosted by Epik.

Anglin’s posts come amid a series of legal judgments against the Daily Stormer and a messy feud among the white nationalist community that has left the site isolated as it struggles to stay online.

In June, a federal judge ruled against Anglin in a libel suit filed by comedian Dean Obeidallah, whom Anglin accused of being responsible for the bombing of a 2017 concert in Manchester, England. Anglin was ordered to pay $4.1 million in restitution.

More recently, two other federal judges ruled against Anglin in separate lawsuits. The first, filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of Tanya Gersh, a Montana real estate agent, resulted in a $14 million judgment.

The second, a $725,000 judgment, was the result of a “troll storm,” or harassment campaign instigated by Anglin and the Stormer against the first African American female student body president of American University.

It is unlikely that Anglin and the Stormer possess the funds to pay off these judgments in full, though the site has in the past raised substantial holdings in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Monero.

Brad Griffin of the Occidental Dissent blog noted the Stormer’s extensive use of cryptocurrency as part of an ongoing feud among online white nationalists over the Stormer’s webmaster Andrew “weev” Auernheimer.

Referring to a Twitter account that tracks extremist bitcoin wallets, which places Anglin’s holdings at $4,787.57, Griffin alleged that the Daily Stormer has been paid in cryptocurrency to stoke feuds among white nationalists in the aftermath of “Unite the Right.”

John Bambenek runs the Twitter account @neonaziwallets, which tracks the bitcoin transactions of prominent members of the hate movement. He told Hatewatch that Anglin is still receiving cryptocurrency and noted that he received $1,700 by midday Wednesday – one day after his plea on Gab to raise money.

“Daily Stormer has recently gotten several large transactions but for the time being, besides paying weev, [Anglin] seems to be holding on to the funds in other wallets I’m tracking,” Bambenek, a researcher for the cybersecurity and intelligence group ThreatStop, told Hatewatch. “Right now, [it’s] wait and see for him to decide what he plans to do with his bitcoin while judgments pile up against him.”

Michael Edison Hayden contributed to this report.

Photo illustration by ��Ҵ�ý

Hatewatch Staff

September 18, 2019

Jeff Schoep Sheds Neo-Nazi Past but Stays Loyal With Lawyer’s Maneuvers

chris.heller_1541 — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 22:03:31 +0000

Hatewatch

The longtime leader of the neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Movement (NSM) has renounced his antisemitic past, but court records indicate he remains loyal to the organization.

Jeff Schoep Sheds Neo-Nazi Past but Stays Loyal With Lawyer’s Maneuvers

The NSM and its former leader, Jeff Schoep, are among more than 20 defendants in a federal civil suit stemming from the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. Other defendants include the Nationalist Front, an umbrella organization designed to unite various factions of the “alt-right” and racist movements. Hatewatch previously reported the ties between NSM and the Nationalist Front.

Thirteen people hurt or attacked during the rally originally brought the lawsuit in October of that year and sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. Four have since dropped out, leaving nine plaintiffs.

Court filings in the civil suit allege Schoep and his attorney, Edward ReBrook, have used stalling tactics and legal maneuvers to delay the plaintiffs from receiving information their attorneys deem critical to proving their case. For example, the plaintiffs claim ReBrook has “obstinately refused to even inquire who else within the organization, beyond the former leader, possess responsive documents.”

Jeff Schoep (center, with arms folded), then leader of the National Socialist Movement, takes part in an April 2017 white nationalist rally in Pikeville, Kentucky.

While plaintiffs sought emails, phone records and other information from the defendants they say is relevant to their case, ReBrook said the requests stem from a different motive. In an email attached as an exhibit to a motion in the lawsuit, ReBrook said: “It’s clear to me that what your plaintiffs want is to expose NSM’s members and/or donors so that they can be doxed for all time.” Later in the same email, he added, “You don’t like them, and I get that. They’re a bunch of racists.”

Schoep, in an email to Hatewatch, said he doesn’t have anything other than a computer and a cellphone he’s already turned over to the plaintiffs’ attorneys. A motion from the plaintiffs said the former NSM leader had disclosed the phone fell in a toilet, rendering the information on it unrecoverable.

“If I had something, some shred of evidence of wrong doing in Charlottesville coming from the NSM, don’t you think it would have been in my best interest to just hand it over?” Schoep wrote to Hatewatch.

ReBrook did not return repeated phone and email messages seeking comment about what Schoep has, or had, access to and his relationship with NSM and the Nationalist Front.

Amy Spitalnick, executive director of Integrity First for America, which helped the plaintiffs file the civil suit and is backing their legal efforts, told Hatewatch in an email, “For now, we are going to leave it at what’s detailed in our filing.”

The plaintiffs, in the court filings, try to show that Schoep and ReBrook have not been nearly as forthcoming as they should be.

The plaintiffs say that Schoep would not provide evidence for more than a year and then fired his first attorneys the day after a judge ordered him to produce documents in the case. Schoep then hired ReBrook, who the lawsuit says has engaged in “gamesmanship” and has made “half-hearted attempts” to speak to potential witnesses.

ReBrook “fought hard in recent months to take over the representation of NSM and then fought equally hard to shield the organization from having to produce documents from anyone other than Mr. Schoep,” the plaintiffs allege.

In another point of contention, plaintiffs’ attorneys and ReBrook have been arguing over who represents NSM and the Nationalist Front. The plaintiffs note that ReBrook filed paperwork with the court March 18 to represent the two. The plaintiffs insist that ReBrook has an obligation to seek information from other NSM and Nationalist Front members; ReBrook answered via email that since Schoep is the only named NSM and Nationalist Front defendant, he only has to get information from him.

The case took another twist in August when ReBrook asked the court to be relieved as counsel for NSM and the Nationalist Front. ReBrook noted several reasons for the request, including that he did “not believe that the Nationalist Front is a functional entity capable of answering discovery requests” and that he has not “been able to get information from anyone else” at NSM.

The plaintiffs noted that while Schoep has turned over information from personal accounts, he hasn’t produced accounts that may have been created for NSM members with potential NSM documents.

Schoep headed the neo-Nazi group for 25 years. His former organization’s website once demanded “that all non-Whites currently residing in America be required to leave the nation forthwith and return to their land of origin: peacefully or by force.”

But Schoep went public with a disavowal of the far right and NSM, a group known for propaganda, provoking violence and uniforms that evoked Nazi Germany. He left the group in March and now refers to himself as a “peace advocate” on his personal website.

“After wrestling with my conscience, over how to best set things right, I realized that I cannot just sit back while the world continues to burn in the flames of hatred,” Schoep said on his website.

Photo credit: AP Images/Brian Bohannon

Brett Barrouquere

September 11, 2019

El Paso Massacre Galvanizes Accelerationists

chris.heller_1541 — Mon, 05 Aug 2019 19:22:16 +0000

Hatewatch

The domestic terror incident this past weekend in El Paso has energized the growing “accelerationist” bloc of the white power movement, which argues violence is the only way to achieve its goal of creating a white, non-Jewish ethnostate.

El Paso Massacre Galvanizes Accelerationists

Accelerationist online communities, on the heels of an attack that left at least 22 dead, celebrated and called for additional violence while debating one alarming point – should “high-value targets” or “normal people” be the next to die?

“Kill powerful people. Kill important people. Kill the political opposition,” a Telegram user wrote in their channel. “Killing Wal-Mart drones does NOT earn Sainthood.”

“Sainthood” is a designation these communities assign to terrorists, such as the Christchurch and Poway shooters, they believe should be lionized.

Andrew “weev” Auernheimer, who provides technical support for the Daily Stormer, posted in a thread on that site: “Random violence is not detrimental to the cause, because we need to convince Americans that violence against nonwhites is desirable or at least not something worth opposing. There’s no way to remove a hundred million people without a massive element of violence.”

On Saturday, Aug. 3, a lone gunman walked into a Walmart in El Paso and opened fire. More than 20 people died, including at least eight Mexican nationals, and dozens more suffered injuries. Police took one suspect, Patrick Crusius, 21, of Allen, Texas, into custody. Federal officials have labeled the shooting an act of domestic terrorism and will investigate the incident as a hate crime.

The shooting follows a wave of mass shootings apparently motivated by white supremacist ideology.

A federal law enforcement official confirmed that the alleged El Paso shooter wrote a four-page document that states that the attack targeted Hispanics and characterizes immigrants as “invaders.” El Paso, which is just 12 miles from the border town of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, has a population of nearly 80% Hispanic people.

The document, or a “manifesto” as some media sources call it, was posted to the online forum 8chan, as were similar manifestos written by the suspects in shootings carried out in Christchurch, New Zealand, and Poway, California, in recent months. Those attacks targeted Muslim and Jewish houses of worship, respectively.

Accelerationists believe that violence such as these recent mass shootings will eventually cause societal and governmental collapse. Only then, they argue, will they have the opportunity to build the all-white world they desire.

For this collection of white supremacists, violence is then the only possible strategy to achieve their political ends. They believe that white people and white culture are being systematically destroyed, justifying mass murder as self-defense.

“Either the White man fights with everything he has got to flip the table or he simply will be brutally destroyed,” the administrator of a Telegram channel that features stylized, so-called “terrorwave” content posted after the El Paso shooting. Another user on the site insisted that “If your race is under threat, to save it, any action is moral that is useful to that end.”

Accelerationist online communities have been growing in recent months, as has their scorn for anyone in the white power movement who questions the use of violence. These communities glorify acts of violence and “canonize” white extremist killers. Once police identified the suspect in the El Paso shooting, members of racist online communities were quick to deem him a “Saint.”

Among accelerationists, the only subject up for debate is who they should choose to target with acts of violence. In the aftermath of this weekend’s shootings, users on Telegram have been debating whether they should kill “High-Value Targets” or “normal people.”

The administrator of one of the channels weighing in on the debate wrote, “A very intended goal of general terror in common places is that it tells everyday people that terror can happen to them and those around them.” Regarding whether to target politicians and other public figures or public spaces, “You should do both,” the user wrote.

“Both deserve Sainthood.”

Online, white power extremists encourage each other to stop worrying about creating “bad optics” with acts of violence.

“If anyone is concerned if this will drastically change things in the near future, I’m pretty sure the last time this happened the media forgot about it in 2 weeks after some other media scandal happened,” a user with the handle t21488 posted in the Daily Stormer thread.

Others argued that white people are sympathetic to their ideology and therefore are unlikely to care about the murder of non-whites. “I think most whites are so tired of browns that these sorts of violent acts, real or manufactured, do no real harm to our cause,” another user wrote.

Accelerationists hope to encourage future acts of white supremacist violence. That is the primary reason they preserve and disseminate the manifestos of white extremist killers, which have helped to inspire copycat attacks internationally with increasing frequency since 2011, when Anders Breivik killed 77 people in Norway. “First it was every decade,” a Telegram user whose avatar is a picture of the Pepe the Frog character wearing a bandana that reads “Kill Jews” wrote, “Now it’s weekly.” “Goal: daily,” a follower responded.

Andrew Anglin, the administrator of the Daily Stormer, quickly posted multiple links to the El Paso manifesto on his website, which also appear in his post that launched the Daily Stormer forum thread.

For Anglin and others, the El Paso manifesto's origin is of little concern. What matters is that the content and the tragic deaths in El Paso will energize and excite members of his forum and others. “We require more vespene gas,” he wrote under a link to the manifesto, referencing a precious fuel in the game StarCraft.

Certain elements of the white power movement have long openly embraced the use of violence, but the recent growth of the accelerationist wing can be traced back to Iron March. The influential online forum, which was live from 2011 until late 2017, was a place where neo-Nazis from around the world gathered to discuss fascist texts, debate strategies for creating a white ethnostate and, eventually, collectively embrace the use of terroristic violence to achieve their ends.

Since the forum went offline, its ideas have bled into other online spaces, aided by members who have continued to disseminate texts like SIEGE, a neo-Nazi manifesto that encourages followers to embrace the violent compulsions inherent to accelerationism. Today, the largest online stronghold for accelerationist ideas is, perhaps, the messaging app Telegram, a platform they favor because it does not censor racist propaganda, even when the content advocates for terrorism or genocide.

Examples of this kind of violent and exterminationist content are abundant. “Bomb your Jewish neighbor,” reads an image posted in May in a channel that argues there is “no political solution” to the perceived problems facing whites. In another channel, the administrator posted in June, “I am not afraid to say it anymore. If the system won’t prosecute the warmongering, conniving subhumans in Washington DC, The only other option is for those affected by it to take direct action against the state.”

According to a Hatewatch review, dozens of Telegram channels devoted to accelerationism have formed an informal network over the past several months, each cross-posting content from other channels and directing users to follow new channels as they crop up. Contributors to the network include Paul Nehlen, a former candidate for Congress from Wisconsin who has become a prominent online voice calling for white supremacist violence. “Hey k---- I’ve got a message for you: get fukd. [Day of the Rope] real soon,” is just one example of his online posts.

The number of subscribers to accelerationist Telegram channels has grown dramatically over recent months. Nehlen, who had 68 subscribers at the end of May, now has 720. Only hours after the El Paso shooting, another account celebrated the fact that it had grown to over 1,600 subscribers. In less than 48 hours, it gained 134 more.

Another such contributor to this network is “Vic Mackey,” a pseudonymous podcaster who has long expressed reverence for racist murderers such as Dylann Roof, who in 2015 murdered nine worshippers at an African American church in Charleston, South Carolina.

In a recent podcast episode, “Vic Mackey” instructed listeners, “You’re gonna have to kill your way to an ethnostate. Blood is gonna have to be shed. The blood of all non-humans and all traitors is going to have to be shed. … Gallons of it.”

Photo credit: AP Images and Getty Images

Cassie Miller and Hatewatch Staff

August 05, 2019

Far-Right Extremists Are Calling for Terrorism on the Messaging App Telegram

chris.heller_1541 — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 20:07:09 +0000

Hatewatch

Neo-Nazis, white nationalists and antigovernment extremists are publishing volumes of propaganda advocating terrorism and mass shootings on Telegram, a Hatewatch review of hundreds of channels on that app reveals.

Far-Right Extremists Are Calling for Terrorism on the Messaging App Telegram

Hatewatch examined publicly visible posts on the messaging app in which channel moderators urge their followers to “destabilize the US,” "kill the cops," "shoot lawmakers" and attack synagogues, mosques and other houses of worship.

Hatewatch notified tech companies that distribute Telegram about the content on that platform that appears to advocate terrorism. During that time, a minority of the channels flagged by Hatewatch were rendered inaccessible on devices created by Apple and Microsoft, but not Google. Hatewatch, as of this writing, was able to view the majority of channels we found advocating terror on all devices that support Telegram.

People in the same Telegram channels reviewed by Hatewatch frequently post memes glorifying terrorists such as Anders Breivik, the man who killed 77 people in a Norwegian terror attack in 2011, and Dylann Roof, a South Carolina man who murdered nine black churchgoers in 2015.

Telegram users also praise Robert Bowers. Bowers has been charged with federal hate crimes after 11 people were killed in a Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018. The same Telegram users also typically praise the man who stands accused of killing 51 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019. Authorities have asked the media not to use the man’s name, which is why Hatewatch chose not to publish it in this story.

Telegram has multiple channels devoted to so-called terrorwave, which refers to internet-based propaganda that glorifies political violence through the use of heavily stylized, cyberpunk aesthetics.

One meme posted to a group like this on June 17, the fourth anniversary of Roof’s murders, showed a photograph of the book SIEGE by neo-Nazi James Mason. Mason encouraged his readers to embrace terrorism in the name of destabilizing Western countries, which he believed would give rise to a new country for only white, non-Jews. Words are layered on top of the book that say things like “READ SIEGE” and “HAIL TERROR.”

“One last hail to Saint Roof,” the channel moderator wrote on the anniversary of Roof’s murders. “May today and everyday be a pleasant one for him. He’s earned it.”

Paul Nehlen, the former GOP candidate for Congress in Wisconsin turned advocate of political violence, posts imagery in his channel that glorifies white terrorists, alleged or otherwise, as “saints.”

The producers of the podcast “Bowlcast,” named after the style of haircut worn by Roof, operate a channel that posts similar imagery as well as personal information of activists and reporters, including addresses and phone numbers.

Jared Wyand, a Georgia-based white supremacist, appeared to advocate a race war on a Telegram channel he operates. Wyand amassed over 100,000 followers as a Pro-Trump Twitter persona before being suspended from that site in December 2016 for posting antisemitic commentary.

“Men, you have one simple task in the immediate. Arm yourselves. Train proficiency with your firearms. Build a stockpile of ammo,” Wyand wrote to his Telegram followers June 7. “If you’ve already done this, push the men you know to do the same. Everyone is asking what can be done. This is step one. You owe it to me and all White men to be capable and ready the day you’re asked to join ranks and take up arms.”

Telegram users in channels that promote terror also discuss weaponry, including the subject of building guns with 3D printers and homemade methods. A Telegram channel moderator in a group that mentions Mason’s book SIEGE in its title posted instructions on how to build a “slap gun,” which he described as being a makeshift replacement for a shotgun.

“It’s easy to 3D print a firearm,” the user wrote, before sharing an instruction manual for the device and a demonstration video shot in the Ukraine. “It’s easier to make a shotgun using two lengths of pipe, a nail, and a bit of welding.”

Telegram tracks the number of people who see a particular post with a small tracker, marked with an eye. Over 2,000 Telegram users viewed the gun-making instructions within 48 hours.

On June 20, a pseudonymous Telegram user going by the handle “Choke Me Daddy” posted a picture of a man wearing a skull mask, which is associated with contemporary neo-Nazi culture. The man pointed to what looked like a series of power lines across a metal fence. The language in the post offers an example of how some white supremacists appear to endorse violence and terrorism while also couching their words in irony and in-jokes based around negating that sentiment.

“Please note,” Choke Me Daddy wrote. “Do not do any of these things. Especially do not cover your face and destroy the many, and largely unprotected, power stations and cell towers. Electricity is a ghost, but one you can catch and kill. Do not do that. Do not become the sort of person who is really good at blowing up power plants without getting caught.”

Brandon Russell, the founder of Atomwaffen Division, a contemporary neo-Nazi group, allegedly sought to blow up power lines and places of worship before being convicted for building explosives in January 2018.

Moderators of neo-Nazi groups shared Choke Me Daddy’s post widely across their channels, and as a result, over 1,000 Telegram users viewed Choke Me Daddy’s post within 24 hours of it going live.

Following ISIS’s lead toward a say-anything platform

Critics have raised alarms about groups like ISIS employing Telegram to organize and spread propaganda for years, but the influx of far-right content advocating terrorism is far more recent, according to Hatewatch’s analysis.

An extensive report on ISIS’s Telegram usage published by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism in June suggests the Islamic terror group was using the messaging app for similar purposes as far back as 2015.

Following ISIS-led attacks in Paris in November 2015, Telegram also shut down hundreds of channels linked to the group on the app. ISIS remains active on Telegram, according to the findings of George Washington University researchers.

Andrew Anglin, the editor of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, first made a public pitch to his audience to embrace Telegram as an alternative to the gaming platform Discord in an Aug. 31, 2018, story called “Please Stop Using Discord. The ��Ҵ�ý is Monitoring You” – three years after ISIS embraced the app. The post appears to be among the first high-profile endorsements of Telegram within the white supremacist community, based upon Hatewatch’s analysis.

Anglin portrayed Discord, an app which grew popular with the white supremacist “alt-right” movement in the lead-up to the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as being infiltrated by antifascist activists, the media collective Unicorn Riot, Southern Poverty Law Center and others. He put forth Telegram as a more trustworthy alternative to Discord:

[Telegram] does require a phone number, but you can either buy a burner phone or get a Google Phone number for free.

Telegram allows you to have large “channels” with lots of options for meme posting and the ability for custom emoticons. It is great software. You can also keep things private.

There is a phone app and a desktop app, both of which are very polished.

It also allows “secret chats” with end-to-end encryption.

They just refused to give their encryption keys to the Russian government, and got banned in the entire country (using some pretty extreme means) for it. So the secret encrypted chats are safe. The channels and non end-to-end chats are not that safe, but they’re hella safer than Discord.

Anglin refers in his endorsement of Telegram to the company’s conflict with the Russian government over its privacy policies. Russia has attempted with mixed success to block Telegram and has opposed its usage because Telegram offers to protect the privacy of its citizens. The government of Iran has also made efforts to block the app for similar reasons.

Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, was born in Russia but lives in Dubai. In response to pressure from the Russian government, he posed shirtless on Instagram in April 2018. He defied Russian President Vladimir Putin with a statement in that post that said: “News from the front: Russian authorities have blocked 18 million IP addresses to ban Telegram, but the app remains accessible for Russians. Thank you for all the support and love #digitalresistance #putinshirtlesschallenge.”

Durov, who also created the Russian Facebook clone VKontakte (VK), lists his political beliefs on that website as “Libertarian” and his religion as “Laissez-faire,” referring to the attitude of letting the free market function without government interference. VK, it should be noted, also hosts pockets of open far-right extremists on its platform, including Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer of the Daily Stormer, for example, and neo-Nazi Billy Roper.

Durov posted a visual ad for Telegram on VK in May 2018, which appeared to portray his users defeating a fascist regime through the help of his app. The ad depicts cartoon bears firing paper airplanes, which Telegram uses as its logo, as flags reminiscent of those used by Nazi Germany during WWII burn in blue flames.

The Proud Boys, which Southern Poverty Law Center lists as a hate group and is also active on Telegram, reposted a message from Durov’s channel on June 25.

“I see 3 million new users signed up for Telegram within the last 24 hours,” Durov wrote in the post shared by the Proud Boys. “Good. We have true privacy and unlimited space for everyone.”

The potential dangers of Telegram vs. other platforms

There are crucial differences between Telegram and other platforms that publish white supremacist propaganda, some of which potentially make the app more dangerous, based upon Hatewatch’s analysis.

For example, Telegram offers both private and public group chats. This means extremists can connect in channels that post publicly facing propaganda and then organize privately on the same app by using its encrypted chat feature, where plans to commit acts of terror can go undetected by law enforcement agencies. Although critics have suggested Telegram’s promises of secure communications are overblown, the app is demonstrably slick, functional and accessible on mobile devices.

Gab, a small social network that has also attracted a wide swath of white supremacist users in recent years, including the alleged Tree of Life synagogue killer Bowers, has been plagued with glitches since its inception. White supremacists have used its direct-message feature to organize, Hatewatch reported in January, but the conversations are not encrypted. Gab has also struggled to promote its social network effectively on mobile devices, due to tech companies dropping its app from their stores.

8chan’s forum “pol” is anonymous and doesn’t allow people who post propaganda to the forum to build the kind of personality-driven culture found on traditional social networks like Twitter or Facebook. Both the alleged Christchurch terrorist and John Earnest, the man who accused of killing one in a synagogue in Poway, California, in April, favored the forum.

Telegram does allow white supremacist personalities who either overtly advocate terrorism or appear to tacitly endorse it to build an audience for their different brands of propaganda, as evidenced by channels belonging to Wyand, the members of “Bowlcast” and Nehlen, for example.

Perhaps the most significant difference between Telegram and fringe platforms like Gab and 8chan, however, is the number of people who use the app on a given day. The company boasted in 2018 that it reaches 200,000,000 active users. Even if the overwhelming majority of those users may likely avoid making contact with channels that advocate terrorism, Telegram is demonstrably mainstream and global. It’s also distributed through stores operated by mainstream tech giants like Apple, Google and Microsoft.

Tech companies choose to respond to or ignore Hatewatch’s findings

Hatewatch reached out to Telegram for a comment on the research conducted on white supremacists appearing to use their product to advocate committing acts of terrorism. Hatewatch attempted to make contact via text, email and finally phone at various times over three weeks without receiving a response.

Google currently distributes Telegram through the Google Play store. Hatewatch reached out to Google by email three times over the same three-week span without receiving a response.

Apple distributes the Telegram app through its app store. Hatewatch engaged in conversations with Apple multiple times across the same three-week span regarding the content we found on the app. Apple requested to review channels in which Hatewatch found evidence of posts appearing to advocate terrorism. During the reporting period, some of the channels Hatewatch flagged, but not all, appeared to be inaccessible to white supremacists on some Apple-branded devices. Apple elected not to issue a statement regarding the content on Telegram flagged by Hatewatch.

Microsoft distributes Telegram through their Microsoft Store. They responded to a request for comment about the content flagged by Hatewatch with a statement:

Microsoft Store offers a platform for developers to provide products to customers worldwide. Content in those products and applications is controlled and maintained by the developers. Microsoft maintains our critically important responsibility to ensure our Store is not abused by people or groups facilitating or glamorizing extreme or gratuitous violence. If we receive and verify a report that an app in Windows Store violates our store content policies, we will ask the developer to remove the violating content. If the developer fails to take appropriate action, we reserve the right to suspend or terminate the developer’s app from the Store. We have informed Telegram of the public posts that violate our Microsoft Store Policies. We have an established history of enforcement against similar issues.

A pseudonymous white supremacist Telegram user complained that Microsoft had restricted access to content in some channels on June 24, writing, “F---, Microsoft phones too. It isn’t just Apple.”

The same person then recommended software that purports to work around restrictions created by tech companies, enabling Telegram users to view the blocked content.

“There is no political solution,” the white supremacist wrote. “They want you alone, depressed, and disconnected with your comrades. We will find a solution.”

Photo illustration by ��Ҵ�ý

Michael Edison Hayden

June 27, 2019

White Nationalist Shieldwall Network Member Arrested in Alleged Anti-LGBTQ Attack Invokes Domestic Terror Ideology on Facebook

chris.heller_1541 — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 16:33:11 +0000

Hatewatch

Three members of the Shieldwall Network (SWN), an Arkansas-based white nationalist group founded by longtime movement leader Billy Roper, were arrested last week in connection with second-degree battery.

White Nationalist Shieldwall Network Member Arrested in Alleged Anti-LGBTQ Attack Invokes Domestic Terror Ideology on Facebook

Police arrested Julian Austin Calfy, Nicholas Randal Holloway and John Andrew Carollo after they allegedly lured a gay man to their Atkins, Arkansas, home. There, police say, the three beat the man before calling law enforcement, claiming the man was a “child predator.”

The Pope County Sheriff’s Office booked the three and photographed them before a bond hearing the following day.

A tattoo beneath the collar line of Calfy’s orange jailhouse jumpsuit appears to represent a white supremacist ideology.

The tattoo is a thin outline that resembles the letter “P” with a horizontal line across it. It is the symbol of the “Phineas Priesthood,” a domestic terror ideology laid out in the 1990s that encourages Christians to perform a “Phineas action,” which refers to murdering “race mixers” and those deemed in violation of God’s law, including Jews, non-whites, multiculturalists and others seen as enemies.

The ideology has previously inspired violent attacks, including a series of bank robberies and bombings, and an attack on a Jewish community center. A man who considered himself a “high priest” fired more than 100 rounds and attempted to detonate propane tanks during the failed attack on the Austin, Texas, police department in 2014. That man, Larry Steven McQuilliams, was shot and killed during the attack.

Calfy has had run-ins with the law in the past. At 16 he was arrested for plotting a “Columbine-style attack” at his local high school. Calfy pleaded guilty to terroristic threatening and criminal possession of explosive material.

Social media posts under the name Julian Calfy are littered with incitements to violence and references to the Phineas Priesthood and other white supremacist terror groups.

On April 11, 2019, the man identified as Calfy posted an image to his Facebook featuring the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division’s logo incorporated into the Imperial German Flag with a Phineas Priesthood symbol in the upper left canton. The post is captioned: “Purge the Noctulian scourge. Christ gang rise up. A spear for every Satanist.”

The spear reference refers to the biblical origins of the Phineas mythos, Numbers 25:7-13, wherein the titular priest murders a mixed-race couple with a spear.

The combination of Nazi, neo-Nazi imagery and Phineas Priesthood imagery is emblematic of contemporary radicalization trends within the white power movement, wherein individuals blend different historical references with overt calls to violence. Atomwaffen Division exemplifies such trends, for example.

Calfy’s profile on the Russian social media site VK lists him as “Shieldwall Network Regional coordinator – Western Arkansas.” A post from Feb. 10, 2019, which begins, “Let me explain something about me personally,” lays out Calfy’s belief in political violence as a solution to white racial grievances:

I want people to be in constant fear, on the verge of homelessness and starvation. I want people to be so far out of the realm of comfort that they have no choice but to pick up their balls and load their rifles. I want the situation to escalate so quickly that all that is left is the choice between Revolution or Death.

Photo illustration by ��Ҵ�ý

Hatewatch Staff

June 27, 2019

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White Nationalist Shieldwall Network Member Arrested in Alleged Anti-LGBTQ Attack Invokes Domestic Terror Ideology on Facebook

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��Ҵ�ý analyst’s work helps spur Maine law restricting paramilitary training

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��Ҵ�ý, local journalist expose, derail plan for neo-Nazi enclave in Maine

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