Summary
For years, Zachary Johnson of Alpharetta has quietly but constantly worked for the white nationalist cause. Zac Johnson is mostly active in writing, social media, and especially graphic design for the racist movement. He also travels to white nationalist conferences and organizes with “Alt-Right” circles regionally. Using an online alias, Johnson is clear that he admires Adolf Hitler, who he refers to as “uncle.” When promoting his custom bird house business or trying to rent his vacation cabin in the North Georgia mountains, Johnson is less upfront about his beliefs. We believe that key players in the white power scene deserve public scrutiny. Zachary Van Johnson is one such figure.
Introduction
Anyone who spends enough time investigating “Alt-Right” white nationalism on the internet will eventually run across the Twitter account @J_Enoch_Powell/“Alt-Right Enoch” (previously known as “Enoch Was Right”). This internet propagandist designs materials for the white power movement, decries “white genocide” conspiracies, and praises Hitler, who he fondly refers to as “Uncle.” For this online work, J_Enoch_Powell has even been praised by other racists as “the Alt-Right’s premier propagandist.” Although that praise seems somewhat exaggerated, J_Enoch_Powell certainly has produced a steady flow of racist and Jew-hating propaganda in recent years.
Zachary Van Johnson, the Alpharetta, Georgia, resident responsible for streams of racist propaganda, also assists white nationalists with their local and regional organizing efforts. Until now, Johnson has not been publicly identified as “Alt-Right Enoch” and seemingly tried to guard his offline identity.
Internet Personas
There are many reasons to believe that Zac Johnson is Twitter user J_Enoch_Powell. Before discussing this, more detail about the user’s posting history and multiple internet personas is necessary.
The J_Enoch_Powell account on Twitter was established in November 2015. It has now logged over two thousand tweets. The account name refers to Enoch Powell, a Conservative politician in the UK notorious for his 1968 speech warning that “much blood” could flow on the streets due to the country’s immigration policy. Some on the far-Right now consider Enoch Powell not as a scaremonger, but as a prophet.
A careful look at the pictures posted on the J_Enoch_Powell Twitter account shows that in mid-2016, the account posted multiple images promoting MeinVolk.com, a now-inactive white power website. MeinVolk.com had its own Twitter account, @MeinVolk, which was launched in September 2014 and has not posted since June 2016. The main MeinVolk.com website was launched in August 2014, with its domain name registered via Domains By Proxy to easy avoid identification of its registrant. The MeinVolk website had a gallery of propaganda images, mostly US propaganda posters from World War II with text modified to put forward a white nationalist message. These poster designs were circulated on the MeinVolk Twitter account and later republished on the J_Enoch_Powell account.
That the same person who now uses the J_Enoch_Powell account was once responsible for MeinVolk is clear not just from overlaps in the materials posted, but also evident from patterns in his “White Genocide” online activism. (“White Genocide” is the theme, popular on the racist far-Right, that white people are being targeted by a shadowy – usually Jewish – conspiracy aiming at their eradication via multiculturalism, immigration, and the like.)
“Mein Volk” appeared as a guest in early episodes of “This Week in #WhiteGenocide,” a podcast aiming to popularize the “white genocide” conspiracy theory. With Episode 5, “Mein Volk” was gone but “Enoch”/@J_Enoch_Powell was suddenly listed as a new guest. Lookalike images promoting “White Rabbit Radio” — responsible for the “This Week in #WhiteGenocide” podcast and other projects – appear on both the @MeinVolk and @J_Enoch_Powell accounts. Notably, a series of photos of “white genocide” signs placed outdoors by MeinVolk in March 2015, were republished by the J_Enoch_Powell account in August 2016, when the rest of the world had forgotten about them. (MeinVolk.com featured an article about participating in the March 21, 2015 day of “white genocide” activism, the article featuring an image of one of signs placed in public.)
Using the handle “ShadowPriest,” the person responsible for MeinVolk was also a user on Stormfront.org, which at the time was the internet’s premier white nationalist website. In August 2014, his “North Georgia New Guy” introductory thread, “ShadowPriest” took responsibility for recently launching the MeinVolk site. In October of that year, “ShadowPriest” posted “looking for a ladies perspective regarding commentary about race [sic]” for MeinVolk, again indicating that he was behind the site.
Identity of MeinVolk/J_Enoch_Powell and Zac Johnson
Bearing in mind that @MeinVolk is @J_Enoch_Powell who is also North Georgia user “ShadowPriest” on Stormfront, it is clear Zac Johnson of Alpharetta is behind all these internet identities, for the following reasons:
(1) “ShadowPriest” on Stormfront is highly knowledgeable about knife and gun culture, discussing black powder rifles in one thread and recommending a custom knife builder in another. Zac Johnson was active as “Van_Deutch” on the AR15.com gun forum, for years ran the 2A-Gear pro-gun clothing/merch company, and later was involved with Knuckle Dragger Tools, a company that manufactured blades and key-fobs-that-are-definitely-not-knuckledusters on an artisanal scale. (Both businesses are now over.)
(2) Zac Johnson does graphic design. Some of Johnson’s design work for 2A-Gear as well as his profile picture on the AR15.com forum have similar design traits as work by MeinVolk/J_Enoch_Powell.
(3) MeinVolk/J_Enoch_Powell frequently posted images with the distinctive rabbit logo used by “white genocide” activists. A photo published by Zac Johnson’s wife Bethany Del Campo Johnson shows Zac wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the same “white genocide” rabbit logo.
(4) The site owner for MeinVolk wrote on April 18, 2015 that his son “just turned seven this week.” Zac Johnson’s son had his birthday earlier that week. The age also matches.
(5) J_Enoch_Powell published a photo on January 7, 2016 of a grey dog, sitting on polka-dot pillows on a couch. The same dog, couch, and polka-dot pillows are to be found in household photographs published by Zac Johnson’s wife. The wall color in the background also matches Zac and Bethany Johnson’s Alpharetta home.
(6) On Stormfront, “ShadowPriest” described his survivalist family escape plan “if things go south.” “Shadowpriest” argued that for whites “off the beaten path is key” since “the non-whites will eventually branch out and start to move into areas around the major metropolitan area.” He added: “I personally plan on going to North Georgia Mountains into North Carolina.” Coincidentally, Zac Johnson and his wife have now purchased a cabin in Blue Ridge, part of the North Georgia Mountains. This cabin is currently being rented to others as the “Bigfoot Blue Ridge” vacation home. The website for Bigfoot Blue Ridge is configured using WordPress, just as MeinVolk.com was. The username for whoever initially configured the Bigfoot Blue Ridge website is “Mein Volk.”
White Power Activity
Zac Johnson does not just type on the internet all day, bemoaning “white genocide,” hating Jews and people of color, and praising “what Hitler did for his country” (to quote one of his Stormfront posts.) Johnson agitates and organizes for white power, on a regional and even national basis. We have already mentioned Johnson’s role in “white genocide” circles, including podcast appearances in late 2015 and early 2016 (as “Mein Volk” then later as “Enoch”). Zac Johnson travels to racist conferences, supplies design work to the Alt-Right — including designs for “fashwave” musical projects — and coordinates with Alt-Right/“Alt-South” militants regionally.
(A) Conferences
Johnson attended his first white nationalist conference in 2014, when he travelled to Tennessee to attend the “Stormfront Summit” in November of that year. This event brought together key white supremacist leaders such as onetime Louisiana state Rep., ex-Klansman and Nazi sympathizer David Duke; Stormfront operator Don Black (another former Klansman); Knights Party/Knights of the Ku Klux Klan leader Thomas Robb; Edward Fields, then in his 80s, whose National States’ Rights Party was linked to bombings and terror campaigns; and Matthew Heimbach, a younger, up-and-coming racist leader who is now at the helm of the Traditionalist Worker Party. Writing as “ShadowPriest” about his experience at the Tennessee gathering, Zac Johnson stated: “I met a lot of GOOD people [… and …] even the ones I disagreed with, I would still welcome them into my house for dinner.” Clearly Johnson felt inspired after his time with Klansmen and diehard neo-Nazis, as he claimed to have spent time on Sunday setting goals for his next year of white power activism.
On March 5, 2016, Zac Johnson attended the “Identity Politics” evening mini-conference hosted by the white nationalist National Policy Institute (NPI) in Washington, DC. Speaking at this event were NPI leader Richard Spencer, Kevin MacDonald who couches his antisemitism in terms of evolutionary psychology, and far-Right YouTube personality Paul “RamzPaul” Ramsey. (Posting as J_Enoch_Powell, Johnson mentioned meeting rightwing blogger/internet troll Charles “Chuck” Johnson at the NPI event, and also congratulated Paul Ramsey on his speech.) Zac Johnson’s travel to the National Policy Institute event shows him gravitating toward Alt-Right white nationalism at a moment when Trump’s battle for the Republican nomination was building a buzz within that part of the movement. While Zac Johnson’s core politics do not seem to have fundamentally changed from his Stormfront/“white genocide” days, as 2016 went on Johnson would do more and more work promoting the “Alt-Right” as a brand.
(B) Design Work
We have already mentioned some of Zac Johnson’s earlier design work, such as the posters on the MeinVolk website. More recently, Johnson has been doing large amounts of design work in the “fashwave” style favored by the Alt-Right. The “fashwave” genre in music combines electronic synth-wave music with fascist and far-Right themes (expressed in song titles, since the music typically has no lyrics). Visually, the accompanying “fashwave” look combines “vaporwave” retro aesthetics, neon colors and fascist iconography. Fashwave visuals are popular on Alt-Right social media, where they are part of an effort to give a younger, cooler look to white power politics. Zac Johnson has done design work for multiple racist Twitter accounts, including a design incorporating Nazi sculpture for Georgia white nationalist Casey Jordan Cooper’s old account.
Johnson has contributed artwork for actual fashwave releases, such as the “Future Fash” (short for “fascist”) album by Xurious. Others in the fashwave micro-scene, such as the artist Cybern∆zi, also promote Johnson’s visual work and circulate his images.
Zac Johnson’s design work has also been plastered around Georgia campuses and on Atlanta streets. In January to early March of this year, batches of stickers with slogans such as “White America: Who Protects You & Your Family?” and “Join the Alt-Right” were placed at Georgia Tech, Georgia State, and Kennesaw State University campuses, as well as around the Inman Park area of Atlanta. Zac Johnson designed the sticker batch, apparent from a draft of one of these stickers, “Join the Alt-Right,” appearing on the J_Enoch_Powell Twitter in December 2016.
(C) Georgia Alt-Right and “Alt-South” Coordination
The stickers designed by Johnson reveal that he works closely with others in the Georgia Alt-Right, since many of the stickers were placed by other white power militants, not Johnson personally. Zac Johnson may have placed a few racist stickers somewhere, but the overall sticker campaign was a group effort by the Alt-Right regionally — people who Johnson must have coordinated with for the final product to appear on streets and campuses.
A little over a month since the Alt-Right stickers tapered off, Zac Johnson closely followed Richard Spencer’s April 18 appearance at Auburn University, on the day urging a “#TravelTuesday” to Auburn to support the Alt-Right leader. Spencer’s Auburn appearance rallied white nationalists from around the region, with a particularly strong showing from the Georgia Alt-Right. It is unknown whether Zac Johnson appeared at Auburn however, since J_Enoch_Powell later Tweeted about issues with the event livestream.
Income
Johnson’s consistent propaganda, design, and organizing work is made possible by his living situation. His wife Bethany Johnson works as a Performance Manager at vAuto / Cox Automotive, which likely brings in much of the household income. However, the family has other revenue streams. One of them is the Bigfoot Blue Mountain vacation cabin, jointly owned by Zac and Bethany Johnson and rented out to visitors for additional income. Zac Johnson is also the operator of the Gourmet Birdhaus business, which sells custom bird houses. The Gourmet Birdhaus website describes Mr. Johnson as just a “normal guy” who enjoys “reading books about alternative history.” Knowing what we do about Zac Johnson’s less public activities, we have our guesses about what Johnson means by “alternative history.” Finally, Johnson sells a handful of “Fashwave”/Alternative Right t-shirts via the Spreadshirt custom printing site, which may occasionally bring in a few dollars.
Conclusion
For years, Zachary Van Johnson has quietly spread white power propaganda, praising Hitler and stoking up hatred of people of color and Jewish people. Once a committed “white genocide” activist, Johnson is now heavily involved in the visual branding of the Alt-Right. He travels to national white power conferences and organizes with regional Alt-Right militants. Until now, Johnson has done all this away from the public eye. We hope that exposing Zac Johnson’s white power efforts will make it easier to oppose them.
If you have more information on Zac Johnson or other white nationalists in our region, please get in contact.