Update 12/13/2019: Collins is now no longer an employee of Jasper County Fire-Rescue.
Update 12/12/2019: Jasper Collins is now employed by Jasper County Fire-Rescue in South Carolina. Read our statement here.
This is the first of two articles on far-Right employees at Chatham Emergency Services, a not for profit company which provides Fire, Emergency Medical and Security services in Chatham County (in and near Savannah, Georgia). For our second article, see here.
Jasper Daniel Alexander Collins – a firefighter with Chatham Emergency Services (CES) – is a supporter of the far-Right and antisemitic organization Legio Christi who openly celebrates Adolf Hitler. Collins also heroizes Corneliu Codreanu, the founder of the fascist Iron Guard in Romania. On social media, Collins rails against Jewish people and sexual minorities. Although Collins is now working as a firefighter, Collins was previously in the Georgia National Guard and may still be a reserve member.
Jasper Collins has multiple ties to Legio Christi (LC), a far-Right antisemitic organization purporting to be “traditional Christian”. As we explained in a recent article, LC’s propaganda features typical white nationalist fantasies, for example that Boers in South Africa face “genocide” and that the United States government is controlled by a Jewish conspiracy. LC seemingly involves far-Right racist Catholics as well as Orthodox Christians.
Collins, an Orthodox Christian, signed up on LC’s web forum in April 2018 as “Kadek Vandire”. (Like many other LC participants, Collins never actually posted on the forum after registering.) Collins also follows the official account for LC on Twitter. Collins used his main Twitter account to share a LC propaganda image about the alleged “genocide” of white Boers in South Africa – a popular conspiracy theory among white nationalists. Collins added that alleged injustices against whites in South Africa must be met with “furious force.”
We discussed LC in greater depth in our recent article about Savannah-area white nationalist Arieana Love, a Catholic member of that organization. Jasper Collins may have played some role introducing Arieana Love to LC, since Collins and Love were in a relationship until January 2018. The relationship did not end well.
As with his ex-girlfriend, white nationalist Arieana Love, Jasper Collins was a member of the Georgia National Guard. An online photo shows that Collins enlisted in April 2016. Collins is not active duty, but since the military requires an eight-year commitment, Collins may still be a reserve member. A picture from December 2018 on the CES Facebook page shows Collins as one of a dozen people who “took their Firefighter Oath […] and became the newest full time members of Chatham Fire”. A March 2019 photo shows Collins in uniform with firefighters from CES’s Islands Division.
Politically, Jasper Collins describes himself as a “Legionnaire”: that is, someone following the ideology of the Iron Guard. The Iron Guard was a 20th Century fascist movement in Romania known for its extreme antisemitism, pogroms, and martyrdom cult among adherents. As well as being a fascist political movement, the Iron Guard was religiously Orthodox. It is worth noting that Jasper Collins, a wannabe Legionnaire, proclaims himself to be Orthodox Christian.
Beyond his Legio Christi profile, Collins also expresses his admiration of Corneliu Codreanu and the Iron Guard elsewhere. On Collins’ main Twitter account, he shared an image of Codreanu, painted in the style of a religious icon. Collins’ secondary Facebook account under the name “Kadek Vandire” features a picture of Codreanu and the Iron Guard’s symbol.
The Iron Guard has a cult following in white supremacist and neo-Nazi circles: the now-defunct Traditionalist Worker Party celebrated Codreanu and the Iron Guard, as does the current Legion of Saint Ambrose. When a building at the Highlander Center in Tennessee burned down earlier this year, an Iron Guard symbol was found nearby. This same symbol was also painted on a firearm used by the Christchurch, New Zealand mass murderer.
As well as Codreanu, Jasper Collins praises Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. On his “Kadek Vandire” Facebook account, Collins shared a link to a YouTube video that has now been deleted. An online archive reveals that the video was titled “Adolf Hitler – Why We Fight” and was uploaded by “Zonwending” – a channel which has now been “terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy prohibiting hate speech.” Although the third-party archive shows that a video named “Adolf Hitler – Why We Fight” was uploaded by “Zonwending” at the URL provided by Collins, this archive does not include the actual footage. However, the full video can easily be located elsewhere on the web. The video contrasts present-day Europe – portrayed as a multicultural dystopia – to Hitler and the Third Reich, which are portrayed in heroic terms.
Sharing “Adolf Hitler – Why We Fight” is not Collins’ only endorsement of Hitler and Nazi Germany. On his main Facebook account in his own name, Collins shared a meme suggesting that sympathy toward Hitler is understandable as a natural reaction to queer and trans visibility. On Twitter, Collins suggests that fighting against Hitler was a bad idea:
If the men who fought in WWII could see what became of their countries today they would’ve thrown down their weapons and fought for the Germans.
Collins believes that white people worldwide are facing “genocide”, writing that “Anyone defending white genocide can fuck off”. Collins also hates Jewish people, caricaturing them as pushing “diversity”, homosexuality and Marxism, while they incessantly complain about imaginary persecution. Collins endorses the antisemitic myth that Jewish people secretly manipulate society through banking. He writes:
The only “crime” of a truly sovereign nation, free of Jewish influence, is the casting out of privately owned banks and the use of one nations [sic] own strength and finance.
On Facebook, Collins recently added a pseudo-ecological spin to murderous anti-immigrant politics, writing, “save bees – drown refugees”. Another group hated by Collins is gay people, who Collins (on an alternate Twitter account) singles out to blame for spreading AIDS.
Given Collins’ racist and fascist politics, it is highly unlikely that he will protect all members of the public equally as a firefighter. Indeed, Collins has posted online that the “public [is] a bitch” and – sharing the “Disaster Girl” meme of a house burning down – suggests that he will not go out of his way to protect most people. Residents of Chatham County should not have to trust their lives to this bigot and Hitler-sympathizer, who jokes about his contempt for the public and his unwillingness to protect them, even as this public pays his salary. A pro-Nazi firefighter cannot be trusted to protect the community of Chatham County (or any community, for that matter).
If you are concerned about Jasper Collins, we encourage you to reach out to Chatham Emergency Services (be sure to call their office, not dispatch). You may want to read our second article about another far-Right member of Chatham Emergency Services before calling, so you can raise concerns about both employees at the same time.
If you have further information on Jasper Collins or other far-Right organizers in our region, please get in touch with Atlanta Antifascists.