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Nov 2, 20

This Week in Fascism #81: Libertarian Presidential Candidates Cozy Up to the Boogaloo Boys; Cops Caught Quoting Hitler

Welcome fellow antifascists!

This week as we approach the 2020 election dumpster fire, we have stories on the Libertarian Party’s embrace of the Boogaloo Boys, police getting caught quoting Adolf Hitler in their training manuals, the American Identity Movement going down with the ethno-state, and lots of news, doxxes, and more!

With so much to cover, Iet’s jump in!

News

Libertarian VP Candidate Jeremy “Spike” Cohen Uses Boogaloo Boys as Private Security During Last Minute Campaign Events

On the heels of news that the Proud Boys have been working as security for Trump rallies, another election security issue comes to light. Libertarian Presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen and her running mate Jeremy “Spike” Cohen are catering to a very specific hard-Right Libertarian population. Though little attention has been paid to them, it’s worth noting that Cohen now has a crew of self-described Boogaloo Boys providing him personal security, according to a recent report from Right Wing Watch.

As we’ve discussed, Boogaloo Boys are a loosely organized movement of like-minded, primarily white men, wearing floral Hawaiian shirts and have been showing up armed to 2A and Re-Open protests. The Boogaloo references an acceleration of armed struggle that culminates into a race/civil war or “boogaloo.”

Journalist Kristen Doerer writes in an article for Right Wing Watch:

In a private Boogaloo group chat on the social media platform MeWe, user Zakk Mando shared a photo of Cohen standing next to five men in Hawaiian shirts—the signature uniform of the Boogaloo movement—last Thursday. After sharing the photo, Zakk Mando followed up with a message to the group (some of whom hail from Missouri) a minute later, “Hung out with Spike at Waffle House last night.”

Two days prior, Mando posted that he and other Boogaloo Boys planned to work security for Cohen.

“Me and my Missouri bois will be working security for Spike Cohen tomorrow. Get your local goons and train. The time.is long gone for shitposting to be effective. If you hsvent found a group of guys you can get face to face with by now, you’re behind the curve and the rest of us think you’re a cosplayer,” he messaged the group.”

This doesn’t come as any particular surprise given the growing connections between State and auxiliary far-Right groups. Just last week we reported that Proud Boys were observed providing security at a Trump rally in Tampa, Florida, and then again at a “Pro-America” event in Milton, Florida featuring Congressman Matt Gaetz. This follows Trump’s comments urging the Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by,” during the first presidential debate on September 29th, 2020.

As journalists with Left Coast Right have also documented, Jeremy “Spike” Cohen and others within the Libertarian Party have embraced the Boogaloo movement; appearing on their podcasts, speaking alongside them at rallies, and refusing to condemn the movement. This embrace of hard-Right politics is not new for many Libertarians: white nationalist and former Proud Boy leader Augustus Invictus has attempted to carve out a following within Libertarianism for years, while so-called anarcho-capitalists have long held leadership roles within the Party, pushing for alliances with the far-Right against the Left and autonomous social movements.

According to The Guardian:

Libertarian party presidential candidate, Jo Jorgensen, has appeared on a podcast associated with the anti-government “boogaloo” movement just days after an adherent of the movement was arrested for allegedly murdering two law enforcement officers.

One of the other people on the podcast also runs a Facebook page which is strewn with memes that reference insurrectionary violence, and appear to invoke white nationalist and neo-Nazi imagery and subject matter.

The continued tolerance toward far-Right organizing out in the open by the State is especially alarming given the recent round of charges leveled at neo-Nazi, militia, and Boogaloo groups – as well as the amount of violence and death these movements have carried out. As we’ve previously reported, Steven Carillo was arrested for killing Federal Protective Services Ofc. David Patrick Underwood in Oakland in late May, and then Santa Cruz Sheriff Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller a week later. At the beginning of September, two other Boogaloo Boys, Michael Robert Soloman and Benjamin Ryan Teeter, were arrested for plotting to overthrow the government by providing material aid to foreign extremist organization Hamas. Then just last week, self-professed leader of the Boogaloo Boys in South Texas Ivan Hunter was charged with crossing state lines to incite a riot following the murder of George Floyd. He and his crew fired shots from their assault rifles into the burning 3rd precinct as it was being looted, while protesters were still inside.

It says a lot about the current state of affairs that hundreds of people face hardcore federal charges following the George Floyd rebellion, yet a group directly tied to the murder of law enforcement and the attempted killing of elected officials is being welcomed by political parties and the police with open arms.

Boogaloo Boys are entirely opportunistic and have notoriously tried to co-opt the recent uprising following the police murder of George Floyd because it fits nicely into their accelerationist fantasy. They show up to protests under the guise of wanting to fight police violence and State repression but a little digging reveals much darker motives: manufacturing an armed conflict to advance their far-Right agenda. Providing security to political candidates is simply another tool in the Boogaloo Boy’s toolbox and is nothing new for far-Right militia groups, as such a relationship seems to have become a permanent fixture in so-called conservative politics.

The Kids Are Alright: Student Journalists from duPont Manual High School in Louisville, Kentucky Discover Local Police Training Manual Quotes Hitler

duPont Manual High School students and reporters for the Manual Redeye, Satchel Walton and Cooper Walton wrote and published an article on October 30th bringing to light alarming information after receiving a copy of the Kentucky State Police training slideshow. In addition to blatant calls for violence, the training also quotes Adolf Hitler a total of three times throughout the slideshow, the most quoted person in the training, according to the Manual Redeye. The Kentucky State Police are the second largest police force in the state of Kentucky and “urges cadets to be “ruthless killer[s]” and quotes Adolf Hitler advocating violence.”

“The slideshow was included in KSP documents obtained via an open records request by local attorney David Ward of Adams Landenwich Walton during the discovery phase of a lawsuit. Ward requested KSP materials used to train a detective who shot and killed a man in Harlan County, and Ward shared the presentation with Manual RedEye.” This training comes to our attention following a summer of protests in response to police violence and police murdering Black people like George Floyd and Louisville, KY’s Breonna Taylor.

Slides throughout the slide deck utilize quotes directly from Adolf Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf, a work that is central to most neo-Nazi and far-right organizing, and place them squarely into the context of modern-day policing in Kentucky. One of the quotes, “the very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence,” was used on a slide titled: “Violence in Action” and linked to a Goodreads page of other quotes by the fascist and antisemitic dictator.

The training pulls much of it’s content from Dave Grossman’s highly sought after and incredibly problematic “Killology” training. “Killology” has been questioned and condemned by members of the public throughout the country, especially in the wake of The Uprisings in response to racialized police violence but continues to be perpetuated through the power and persuasion of police unions, who will often pay for their members to attend. In an interview with PBS Frontline, Grossman speaks to the efficacy of his training, “Modern training makes you kill without conscious thought. …We’re making it possible for people to kill without conscious thought. And frankly, at the moment of truth, they need to be able to do that.”

Though not entirely surprising given the continued overlap between policing, racialized violence, and far-Right organizing, this training slideshow indicates yet another unabashed connection between fascism and state violence. As we have documented with regularity over the course of the last two years, antifascist researchers who are tracking the far-right are releasing the identities of members of law enforcement with far-right ties. This extends to the extrajudicial killing of Michael Reinoehl, a leftist activist who shot and killed Aaron Danielson, a member of the far-right group Patriot Prayer. Reinoehl’s murder was both ordered and celebrated by Trump. The growing concern of fascist policing has metasticized throughout the country and into local law enforcement agencies. A 2006 FBI threat assessment report states, “In addition, white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement can result in other abuses of authority and passive tolerance of racism within communities served.”

The Manual Redeye also reports, “A closing slide of the Powerpoint simply states “Über Alles” in large text. The phrase, which was previously part of the German national anthem, translates to “above all” or “above everything else,” commonly used to signify national superiority. Modern Germans heavily associate the phrase with the Nazis.”

With this kind of blatant connection to fascism, it’s hard to look the other way. Though given the tenor of fascism already present in the way our government operates, it appears that some agencies don’t care to remain covert. Instead, the ideology behind their efforts exists entirely in the forefront, almost as if its something to be proud of.

ProPublica Releases New Video of Shooting Involving Michael Reinoehl

Investigative outlet ProPublica has released a new video showing a new perspective on the the shooting death of Jay Danielson of Patriot Prayer, a neo-fascist organization in the Pacific Northwest, involving Michael Reinoehl. The video shows Reinoehl being confronted by Danielson, who then lunges forward and shoots a can of bear mace at Reinoehl, who then responds by firing a pistol, twice; within minutes, Danielson was dead.

Hours prior, Danielson along with hundreds of members of far-Right groups and Trump supporters had flooded into Portland to attack people on the street with projectiles and other weapons while driving trucks emblazoned with Trump and Blue Lives Matter flags. In an interview with VICE released several days after the shooting, Reinoehl claimed that he was acting in self-defense by firing on Danielson. The same night that the interview aired, Reinoehl was shot and killed by US Marshalls and local law enforcement, with many witnesses claiming that police did not identity themselves before shooting and Reinoehl did not fire upon them. Both Bill Barr and Donald Trump have celebrated the political assassination of Reinoehl in official statements and in speeches.

Neo-Nazi Group, American Identity Movement Has Officially Disbanded

American Identity Movement, a re-brand of Identity Evropa, which itself was a re-brand of the National Youth Front, the youth-wing of the neo-Nazi American Freedom Party and originally launched by neo-Nazi, Nathan Damigo, has officially disbanded. After helping to organize the neo-Nazi Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Identity Evropa was brought under the leadership of Eli Mosley, who was removed after it became public he was lying about his military service.

Mosley was then replaced with Patrick Casey, a private-school boy who became radicalized by InfoWars and worked for it’s white nationalist analog, Red Ice TV. Casey attempted to rebrand the group under the banner of the American Identity Movement, but the organization was hit by waves of doxxes and defeats. In 2020, a former organizer, “Samantha,” left the organization and came forward to expose a culture of open Hitler worship and rape and death threats against female members.

Arrests

Liam Montgomery Collins, Ex-Marine and Neo-Nazi Charged With Manufacturing Illegal Guns

On October 20th, 20-year-old ex-Marine Corps infantry rifleman Liam Montgomery Collins was arrested for a “federal indictment on charges that he and two other men conspired to illegally manufacture weapons, ammunition, and suppressors,” according to an article published on Task and Purpose.

Collins was a regular of the infamous Iron March forum who’s leaks were published in 2017. According to the Department of Justice, Collins and his co-conspirators (Jordan Duncan, 25, and Paul James Krsycuk, 35) are alleged to have been “manufacturing and selling hard to obtain firearms and firearm parts in a manner that would hide these purchases from the federal government.”

SPLC reports that, “The 1,653 users of Iron March believed they were united across the borders of white majority countries in a fascist struggle of an international scale. These users came to Iron March to debate what they believed to be universal truths about fascism, according to a 2016 podcast that featured one of the site’s founders and another contributing member. Fascism was a subject for which Iron March had a religious reverence.”

Collins could face up to 20 years if convicted.

Anthony A. Raymond, Proud Boy of Dickinson, North Dakota, Arrested for Threatening to Blow Up Polling Station

According to the Grand Forks Herald, “a 33-year-old self-professed “Proud Boy” was arrested Wednesday, Oct. 28, by the Dickinson Police Department on terrorizing charges after sending an anonymous email to The Dickinson Press in which he conveyed a bomb threat, targeting a voting location in the city.”

Dickinson Police Department traced the IP address from where the email was sent to identify the sender. Dickinson Police Sargeant attempted to quell concerns over safety at the polls by chalking up this incident as being isolated and insinuated that mental health issues are the reason for Raymond’s threats, perpetuating a dangerous myth of a link between mental illness and violence. The reality, though, is much more complicated and concerning given that militias and other far-Right organizers are gearing up all over the country to monitor pulling places while armed.

Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, Right-Wing Grifters Indicted for Fraud and Bribery in Multiple States

According to the Cleveland Scene, right-wing grifters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were indicted in Cuyahoga County, OH following an indictment for the same robocall scheme that landed them an indictment in Michigan. The Cleveland Scene reports, “Wohl and Burkman face eight counts of telecommunications fraud and seven counts of bribery and a possible 18 years in prison. (Bribery in this context refers to 3599.01(A)(2) in the Ohio Revised Code: “Attempt by intimidation, coercion, or other unlawful means to induce such delegate or elector to register or refrain from registering or to vote or refrain from voting at a primary, convention, or election for a particular person, question, or issue.”)

Click here to listen to one of the calls. It instructs callers that their mail-in votes will add their personal information to a public database used by law enforcement to track down old warrants, used by credit card companies to track down outstanding debts as well as used by the CDC to check for mandatory vaccinations, among other things. Obviously, all of this is entirely false and a move to keep people from exercising their right to vote or force people to pick between not voting or going to the polls.

The Cleveland Scene also states, “Wohl and Burkman have been removed from social media sites for making bogus claims, including manufacturing sexual-assault allegations against former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg and special counsel Robert Mueller. They also falsely claimed Elizabeth Warren had a sexual relationship with an ex-Marine male escort.”

Doxxes

John G. Dominguez, Proud Boy from Claremont, CA

Antifa Garfield has identified Proud Boy John Dominguez, also known as “Stealthy Steve,” of Claremont, CA. Dominguez is a visual artist who incorporates far-Right and fascist imagery into his work. His white supremacist art is posted publicly on his Instagram profile where he also shares content related to his affiliation with the Proud Boys, suggesting that his friends in the “Western Chauvinist” hate group are tolerant of his Nazi sympathies.

Disturbingly, Dominguez is very active in his local art scene and has illustrated a children’s book. A piece displayed at the Alley Gallery in Pamona featured an “SS” logo. Colorado Springs Antifascists discovered that one of his drawings–a piece featuring a portrait of Adolf Hitler in front of a black-sun “sonnengrad” logo, supposedly inspired by the writings of Nazis Julius Evola and Savitri Devi – was featured in Fish+Zoom art magazine.

Colorado Springs also unearthed a pretty entertaining video of Dominguez getting punched at a Proud Boy boxxing match:

While his exact employer is unknown, Dominguez appears to work for a crime scene cleanup company. Multiple photos on his Instagram appear to have been taken on the job. One shows the Proud Boy holding a found weapon, and another shows a bloody fire escape. In the caption of the latter photo, Dominguez writes about choosing his job based on his desire to “mentally prepare” for the violence and upheaval he expects in the future. Please contact Antifa Garfield with any information about John Dominguez’s employer.

Tristian Webb, member of neo-Nazi paramilitary group the Base, out of Bad Axe, MI

Following the FBI arrest of two Base members in Bad Axe, MI, Antifa Garfield has released the identity of a third Nazi terrorist, and the owner of the group’s compound. According to Antifa Garfield, Tristian Webb is the prospective member called “Erik” referred to in this article about the Base’s vetting calls. Tristian’s mother, a nurse named Jennifer Anne Webb, owns the property where the group’s compound is located. See the thread below for more information.

Trent Andrew Ortner, Boogaloo Insurgent of Hewitt, TX

Twilight Zone AFA has exposed Trent Ortner, a violent militia member based in Hewitt, TX. Back in 2018, Ortner plead guilty to setting a high school’s agricultural barn on fire. In a photo from August, Ortner can be seen posing behind a Boogaloo flag with members of the Texas Guerillas Milita and the United States Boogalier Corps. Ortner recently attended a QAnon rally with known white nationalist boogaloo boy “Jay Rich,” among others. He now runs Hibiscus Society, a splinter group that formed out of USBC.

John Jared Santoro, Goytalk Founder of Springfield, MA

John Santoro of Springfield is a racist, anti-Semitic, far-Right content creator and the founder of the website Goy Talk. Judging by his Goy Talk content, he spends most of his time re-posting far-Right YouTube videos and publishing other Nazi’s Twitter threads as articles. Like so many other fascists, he’s also a rapper, and uses his “skills” to write anti-Semitic, homophobic, white supremacist songs, like the one shown in the thread below. More information here.

Shelby Walman, Back the Blue PDX Leader

Shelby Walman of Portland was one of the organizers of the September 26th Proud Boys rally. According to Rose City Antifa, he frequently works alongside Drew Duncomb, also known as “Black Rebel,” who marched at the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. He was recently photographed alongside COPS NW leader Audra Price, Monica Noble, and Timothy Ryerson, all of whom were identified by Rose City Antifa in recent weeks due to their participation in far-Right demonstrations. On August 22nd in Portland, Walman protested alongside Corey Wyatt, a neo-Nazi with close ties to Aryan Soldiers member Joey Pedersen, who carried out a murder spree in 2011.

Kyle Dean Dornan, Far-Right Facebook Personality of Fairfield, IA

Chicago Antifascist Action has exposed far-Right Facebook group admin “Kahl O’Dournian.” Kyle Dean Dornan runs the Facebook groups “Make Americans American Again” and “Make Women Women Again,” which are full of racism, homophobia, misogyny, and anti-Semitism. As recently as 2016, Kyle self-identified as a libertarian. More recently, he has become a proponent of the fascist “Great Replacement” theory, as well as Holocaust denial and “esoteric Hitlerism.” Dornan lives in Fairfield, IA and attends Maharishi International University, a school founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi that emphasizes the practice of Transcendenal Meditation. Please see the full post by Chicago AFA to learn how you can take action against this dangerous fascist by reporting his social media profiles and contacting the dean of his school.

Thomas J. Louden, Bucks County Civilian Defense Force Militia Leader of Pekasie, PA

AntiFash Gordon has identified Thomas Louden, a volunteer firefighter and director of managed care at Jefferson Health in Philadelphia. He also serves as Batallion Chief of the Sellersville Fire Department and Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator of Hilltown Township, Pennsylvania. This summer, Louden posted about looking to join a militia and hinted that the right should be prepared to violently defend itself from socialists. By September he was head of the Bucks County Civillian Defense Force Militia, posting about recruiting a sniper. Since then, his violent rhetoric has only escalated and he frequently encourages armed responses to leftist activity. Louden is heavily armed, trains multiple times a week, and should be considered a danger to the community. See the full thread below:

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A weekly roundup of the latest and greatest happenings in the anti-fascist world. Each column features a roundup of news, actions, doxxes and current calls to action.

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