As Texas Antifascist Found “Not Guilty,” Billionaire GOP Mega-Donor Reportedly Bankrolling Lawsuit for Fascist, Anti-Semitic Group

On Thursday, August 8th, Chris “Big Tex,” was found not guilty by a jury in a criminal trial on charges of “assault on a police officer,” following a mobilization in the spring of 2023 in defense of a drag event at a brewery in Fort Worth, Texas in response to threats from fascist groups.

In a message to supporters on the Free Tex website, Chris wrote:

On April 23, 2023 the Fort Worth Police attacked me and beat me for standing on a corner and preventing Nazis from filming people entering a drag show. Hours after my arrest the police in partnership with the elected district attorney spuriously developed a claim that I assaulted them, a claim they did not mention across 24 reports and supplemental reports. The chief integrity officer of the county took a case that spanned 2.5 seconds of my life, to invent the largest of conspiracies: that I am a terrorist, the leader of a criminal street gang, that I paid people to engage in unlicensed security, that cleaning water off my umbrella was a “secret antifa signal,” you name it. She tried to cloud 2.5 seconds with two years of lies and the jury saw through it from the start.

I don’t want to mince words here. We watched for days as cops took the stand to lie, consistently contradicting each other and more wildly often misrepresenting and lying about the very things we were all watching together on screen. We watched as the accusations that Christian-fascists have long levied against me were methodically broken down to the lies they were. Here is an archive of daily trial updates for all four days. Please read, it is impossible to communicate the absurdity to anyone that wasn’t there.

After four full days of enormous tension Tarrant County sealed their fate when they marched a wall of cops into the courtroom to stare down the jury while they read my charge. After less than 45 minutes, I heard those beautiful words: Not Guilty. 

I am eternally grateful to my legal team who saw this blatant political persecution for what it was from the start and their ferocious commitment to justice while helping me feel like a person who mattered throughout. I will never forget their righteous anger and commitment to the truth. I am so grateful to my wife and family both blood and chosen, whose unending well of hope and strength pulled me through the darkest days. I am so grateful to the journalist who spent every moment of those long four days in the courtroom alongside my family so my story could be told. And I am so grateful to the Quakers for standing at my side from beginning to end and keeping me level and centered.

I never wanted this to be about me, never wanted the attention or the soapbox, but I’m grateful for all that listened and pleased more than I can articulate to have the next twenty years of my life back.

The real danger has passed, but the lawsuit against me by New Columbia Movement financed by their billionaire donor is still very real and in that suit I am defending myself. I will be back in civil court on August 13th to defend myself once again and as before, the truth will set me free.

I am beset with an overwhelming amount of expenses to recover from two extra days of trial, investigative prep, and expenses related to fighting the civil suit. If you’re able to help, please send a few bones my way.

One of the leading bigots who came out to protest the event was Kelly Neidert, a self-described “Christian fascist” who has called for “rounding up” people who attend Pride celebrations and reportedly is a member of the fascist group, the New Columbia Movement. Neidert has organized a variety of anti-LGBTQ+ protests, which have been attended by both Trump supporters and outright neo-Nazi groups that have waved swastika flags. According to the Daily Beast, “Kelly has also received support from former Proud Boys lawyer Jason Lee Van Dyke,” who as VICE reported, attempted to join the paramilitary neo-Nazi group the Base, only to be rejected.

Testifying during trial proceedings was Kyle Randle, a former member of the New Columbia Movement, who took part in the far-Right rally outside of the brewery in Fort Worth, TX. According to Alexandra Edwards, who reported from the trial, Kyle is also suing Chris and “his co-plaintiffs are Joshua Finecy and Anthony Long…[also former] members of New Columbia [Movement]…”

Edwards went on to report that during the trial, it was revealed that billionaire real estate mogul and Republican mega-donor Monty Bennett, publisher of The Dallas Express, is in fact funding the fascist group’s lawsuit. Beyond massive donations to Donald Trump and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Bennett is most well known for swindling tens of millions in PPP loans during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and pushing a variety of attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and public education.

The New Columbia Movement is known for melding European fascism with authoritarian Catholicism and American nationalist symbolism. As Steve Monacelli wrote, the group embraces a form of “Carlism, a semi-fascist Catholic pro-monarchist ideology, [that] emerged in 1800s Spain and played a part in Franco’s brutal regime.”

As Political Research Associates reported:

In a manifesto published on its website, the group…calls the notion of equality — or at least what they consider “unnatural equality” — “evil,” describes democracy as a “failed experiment” and advocates for a “Roman” model as the solution to “America’s cultural diversity,” in which “Subjugated peoples” would be allowed to “retain their personal culture,” but only under “a High American Culture” based on “Christian morality, rule of law, and the common good.”

In YouTube videos, New Columbia Movement leaders have referred to Elliot Rodger, the incel mass shooter who killed six people in Santa Barbara in 2014, as “the supreme gentleman”: a self-aggrandizing term Rodger used in his last pre-massacre video, which has since become a common term of endearment on far-right forums like 4chan. Leaders also traffic in antisemitism, as when one leader asserted on a 2021 livestream entitled “The Sexual Revolution and its Consequences” that Jews “do in fact have a very tight stranglehold on the porn industry” as well as “a huge hold on Hollywood.” Another leader then added, “This can turn into a ‘J.Q.’ podcast real fast!” — a reference to the alt-right and neo-Nazi abbreviation for “the Jewish Question.” Movement social media posts also regularly denigrate Jewish religious texts such as the Talmud, and one Instagram post captioned an image of ancient Israelite Jews as “the most dangerous enemy in the world.”

In the group’s first livestream broadcast in July 2020, its co-founders, SK Nicholas Chimera Jr. and Nicholas Haas — both of whom claim to be fourth-degree members of the Catholic fraternal organization Knights of Columbus — detailed their ideological journey to the far right. When the two met in college, Haas explained, SK “was borderline national socialist wignat” — a reference to an online neo-Nazi subculture — and frequented neofascist online forums, while Haas described himself as “basically the definition of a Three Percenter militiaman.” SK, who professed his admiration for the former fascist regimes in Italy and Spain, added that “both of our positions lacked God. That’s the thing. Once we introduced God into it, we were fine.”

Members of the New Columbia Movement routinely rally alongside neo-Nazi groups which openly flaunt Nazi imagery. Social media posts made by the New Columbia Movement push anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and directly attack Jews. In January of 2024, members of the New Columbia Movement were filmed shaking hands and rallying alongside members of the neo-Nazi group Patriot Front at an anti-abortion march in Washington DC. Patriot Front is a re-brand of Vanguard America, a group which marched in Charlottesville in 2017, where a member of the group murdered antifascist protester Heather Heyer after driving a car into a mass of protesters. Members of Patriot Front have called for “ethno-state rape gangs” and filmed themselves giving Nazi salutes.

The fact that a billionaire capitalist and GOP mega-donor is backing a self-identified fascist group which pushes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and rallies alongside neo-Nazi groups shows the degree in which the elites want to crush grassroots opposition to their anti-working-class and white supremacist policies.

Bennett’s funding of the New Columbia Movement’s lawsuit is also only the latest example of the Republican Party in Texas having direct links to neo-Nazis and white supremacists. In the fall of 2023, the Texas Tribune reported that “Jonathan Stickland, the ultraconservative leader of a group that has donated millions of dollars to high-profile Texas leaders, hosted prominent white supremacist Nick Fuentes and other right-wing activists [such as Kyle Rittenhouse] for several hours…” In May of this year, Texas governor Greg Abbott also pardoned Daniel Perry, a far-Right Trump supporter found guilty for the murder of “Garret Foster…in Austin, Texas, during a Black Lives Matter demonstration following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.”

This whole ordeal also exposes how the various forces, ranging from street level fascists, to the governor of Texas who tweeted his praise of the police for arresting Chris, all the way to billionaires like Bennett who are financing a lawsuit for a literal fascist group and employing journalists at the Dallas Express who write pieces attacking antifascists – are all working towards the same goal: crushing communities standing together. It’s up to us to push back, showing that our solidarity is indeed, a weapon.

For more info on how to support Chris in his continued fight in court, go here. Another comrade, Aeshna, is also fundraising for another case stemming from the same protest. More info on how to support, here. For more updates on the upcoming lawsuit brought on by the fascist group the New Columbia Movement, go here.