Fayetteville, GA: Anti-racists Expose “Vanguard America” Neo-Nazi Organizer in Community

The following anonymous report comes from the state of Georgia, and details a community outreach campaign to out a neo-Nazi organizer in the town of Fayetteville, we reprint it below.  

On the night of Sunday, February 4, anti-racists put up approximately forty posters around Fayetteville, Georgia, warning about local neo-Nazi organizer Donovan Stai, a senior at Whitewater High School who lives in the Jeff Davis Plantation neighborhood. The day before posters went up, anti-racists mailed two hundred local addresses with a flyer about the white power organizer in their midst.

Donovan Stai is an 18-year-old member of Vanguard America, a self-described “fascist” organization whose members have been photographed with Nazi flags and who believe in the same “blood and soil” ideology promoted by the German Nazis. Donovan Stai ran the Twitter account for Vanguard America in Georgia, and he appears to be the organization’s state leader.

Vanguard America is notorious as the racist organization that James Alex Fields, Jr. stood with at the “Unite the Right” rally at Charlottesville, Virginia in August. Later on the day of “Unite the Right,” James Alex Fields, Jr. killed one person and wounded dozens more when he rammed his car into a crowd of anti-racist counterprotesters. (Vanguard America denies that James Alex Fields, Jr. was a member of their organization.) In a Vanguard America organizing forum, Donovan Stai celebrated the murder at Charlottesville.

Donovan Stai — commenting under the name “The Don GA” in a leaked Vanguard America organizing forum — also glorifies Dylann Roof, the white supremacist responsible for the massacre of Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. Other posts from Stai show his approval of vandalism against Jewish community centers and synagogues.

All these claims are further documented in a lengthy article on the Atlanta Antifascists website, which also features over three hundred pages of archived Twitter posts from Donovan Stai and the “Vanguard Georgia” account. The article shows that last year, Donovan Stai actively harassed a professor for speaking out against organized racism. Donovan Stai also sent an animated strobe-light image to a Jewish journalist who is diagnosed with epilepsy, with the hope of causing a seizure.

In 2017, Atlanta Antifascists exposed a teacher at Donovan Stai’s school, Joshua David Hitson, as a white supremacist organizer. This eventually led to Hitson leaving his job at Fayette County Schools. Donovan Stai and Joshua Hitson’s white power propaganda accounts were linked online.

“As antifascists we believe in confronting fascist organizing and exposing fascists to the broader community,” says one member of Atlanta Antifascists. “Through his neo-Nazi organizing, his glorification of violence, and his acts of harassment, Donovan Stai poses a real threat. Now, residents and Whitewater High students have the information they need to keep each other safe.”

For more information on Donovan Stai, see the Atlanta Antifascists website at: atlantaantifa.org