In the summer of 2018, longstanding racist leader and Atlanta attorney Sam Dickson traveled for weeks in Russia. According to an interview with “The Political Cesspool” white nationalist radio show not long after his return (broadcast August 11, 2018), “several other people” accompanied Dickson on his trip in Russia. The July 2018 trip centered around attending a commemoration for the 100th anniversary of the execution of the Romanov family by Bolsheviks, and Dickson claims to have met with several “Russian nationalists” while in the country.
Our organization has discussed Dickson at length in other articles. He’s a key figure in the white nationalist movement, with a history spanning several decades. Dickson has talked at every conference for the “suit-and-tie” racists of American Renaissance since the first one in 1994. Dickson is listed as a Director for the shadowy Charles Martel Society, which publishes the Occidental Quarterly – an attempt to provide white nationalism with a veneer of respectability and intellectualism. By providing seed money for the National Policy Institute, the Charles Martel Society also helped to create the modern “Alt-Right.” Dickson mentors and seemingly employs younger white nationalists in the Atlanta area.
The 2018 Russia trip was “only the second time I’ve been in Russia,” Dickson remarked in a follow-up appearance on The Political Cesspool (broadcast September 1, 2018). In March 2015, Dickson gave a speech at the “International Russian Conservative Forum” (IRCF) in St. Petersburg. Dickson’s longtime political associate Jared Taylor of American Renaissance also traveled to the IRCF and talked. In total, the IRCF attracted approximately 150 representatives from far-Right organizations and parties in Russia, Western Europe, and the US.
Here, we identify another member of Dickson’s group who traveled to Russia in July 2018: Atlanta attorney Michael A. Dominy. We discuss Dominy’s political connections, Dickson and Dominy’s apparent main contact in Russia, and that contact’s involvement with the state.
Michael A. Dominy
Michael Alan Dominy is a lawyer specializing in family law who practices from an office on Piedmont Avenue in midtown Atlanta. Dominy was admitted to the Georgia State Bar in 1985. His long-deceased father directed the Georgia Department of Public Safety. According to the website for the Dominy Law Firm, LLC, two of Michael Dominy’s brothers are also attorneys. Dominy converted to Orthodox Christianity a decade ago. He has made several trips to Russia before the most recent one. In 2016 Dominy published a video from Moscow “last year” and commented that: “This was the most recent of my many trips to Russia. They’ve become more like pilgrimages.”
As suggested by his social media, Dominy is sympathetic to the Russian state and far-Right politics. On Facebook, Dominy circulates stories from RT, Sputnik News, SouthFront and The Duran, all of which issue pro-Kremlin propaganda. Other posts shared by Dominy this year include a story about “Soros […] conspiring against humanity” as well as materials from the anti-immigrant “Voice of Europe”.
Dominy is part of white nationalist Sam Dickson’s circles in Georgia. Fulton County Superior Court records show that Dominy was twice a co-plaintiff with Sam Dickson in filings regarding real estate property in 2000 and 2002. Dominy also knows Dickson’s friends and associates. For example, Dominy’s Facebook profile is connected to white supremacist John C. Hall, Jr. of Dublin, Georgia, who has also worked as an accountant for Dickson. Another Facebook friend of Dominy’s is John Weatherman, an antisemite who we have discussed before. In addition, Dominy is connected on social media to Carol Barfield O’Toole, the wife of Marietta attorney and Sons of Confederate Veterans – Georgia Division spokesman, Martin K. O’Toole. Martin O’Toole does not have a Facebook profile himself. He is the President and Chairman for the Charles Martel Society and has an earlier history promoting Holocaust denial alongside Dickson.
We were surprised to see Dominy’s account linked to Justin Stephen Owens, a participant in the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. We wrote about Justin Owens in 2018, when we exposed a Georgia cop’s pro-KKK social media activity. Dominy and Owens do not appear to be close. While Dominy was traveling in 2018, Justin Owens posted that he would like to finally meet Dominy “after all these years of hearing about you.” Dominy probably knew of Owens’ Klan sympathies, and he certainly knows of them now. This year, Justin Owens posted a picture of a young man wearing a “The Klan wants you!” t-shirt and posing in front of a burnt cross. Dominy “liked” the image.
Michael Lewis Lawrence
A potentially more important contact is Michael Lewis Lawrence, who keeps in touch with Dominy on social media. In the late 1980s, Lawrence was a founding member of the Confederate Hammerskins gang. Lawrence was among five Hammerskins convicted for vandalizing a synagogue and for attacks against Black and Latino people, for which he served a sentence of almost five years. After the Hammerskins, Lawrence went on to form the Christian Guard, which promoted racist and antisemitic “Christian Identity” theology. In 2007, Lawrence entered Volksfront, another racist bonehead group, and stayed until that organization disbanded five years later. Although Lawrence was disillusioned with neo-Nazi bonehead groups by the end of Volksfront – describing them as attracting “pedophiles, sociopaths, misfits and retards” – he did not leave the racist cause but rather changed approaches. During roughly the same time period, Lawrence shifted religion from Christian Identity to a “Folkish” (i.e. racist) version of Orthodox Christianity, as seen on the “Kindred Apostolic Orthodox Ministries” blog. [1]
At the end of 2015, Lawrence was listed under the alias “Mike Romano” as one of the Directors for the World National Conservative Movement (WNCM) following “a conference held over the Internet”. WNCM had been announced earlier in 2015 as an alliance of parties, organizations and individuals fighting the values of “liberalism, multiculturalism and tolerance.” WNCM has its genesis in the 2015 “International Russian Conservative Forum” in St. Petersburg, the same event attended by Dickson and Jared Taylor. A driving force behind the WNCM was Yury Lyubomirsky, then of the St. Petersburg branch of the Rodina (“Motherland”) party, working closely with the Russian Imperial Movement. Lyubomirsky was also the primary organizer of the IRCF.
Lawrence/“Romano” was one of only two US individuals listed on the Board for the WNCM, the other being now-disgraced neo-Nazi Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Worker Party. Several US far-Right organizations, such as the Council of Conservative Citizens, American Renaissance, and the American Freedom Party were also mentioned as participants in the Movement. Lawrence/“Romano” was listed as a representative of the “Society of St John the Goth” (AKA “Society of Saint John of Gothia”). [2] After the initial push, the WNCM does not appear to have gone far, although its page on the Russian-language VKontakte network still circulates materials. Some people and groups from MNCM still cooperate. [3]
Michael Dominy: Recap
We don’t know the details of any common political work by Dominy and Lawrence. However, their interactions suggest a similar political outlook and agenda. Klansman Justin Owens stating that he heard about Dominy for “years” also suggests something about Dominy’s political milieu.
More importantly: Dominy is doubtless part of Sam Dickson’s circles in Georgia. According to his Facebook profile, Dominy is acquainted with white supremacist accountant John C. Hall, Jr. of Dublin; antisemite John Weatherman of Atlanta; Carol Barfield O’Toole of Marietta, the wife of Charles Martel Society president Martin K. O’Toole; as well as Dickson himself.
We will now discuss how we know that Michael Dominy was part of Dickson’s party traveling in Russia.
2018 Trip to Russia
Dominy posted video and photos from his 2018 travel in Russia to Facebook. When we compare Dickson’s account of his 2018 trip to Russia, with Dominy’s online comments and images, it is apparent that they were both traveling together as part of a single group.
On July 3, 2018, Dominy posted an image of himself in San Francisco, California, to which Carol O’Toole replied: “Not in Beijing yet?” Carol O’Toole must therefore have known the itinerary.
In discussion accompanying a picture from Beijing, Dominy announced: “on our way to Russia!” Commenting again on the San Francisco picture, Dominy informed John C. Hall that “We will be crossing the border at 4:17 am tomorrow [Monday, July 9, 2018]”. Dominy’s first photograph of that trip from inside Russia was a picture of the sunset at Lake Baikal in Siberia, which Dominy noted was from July 10. According to an online schedule, the Westbound Trans-Manchurian Express train departs from Beijing on Saturday, arriving at the China-Russia border at 4:17AM local time on Monday. On Tuesday evening, the train reaches Irkutsk in Siberia, described by one travelers’ guide as the “obvious” stop for Lake Baikal. Dominy posted other pictures from Irktusk. One could have some days’ rest in Irktusk and still arrive at Yekaterinburg in time for the mass commemoration for the Romanovs on the night of July 16-17. Dominy published brief footage from this commemoration to Facebook.
On his first Political Cesspool appearance discussing his 2018 trip, Dickson stated that he took the Trans-Siberian Railway from Beijing to Yekaterinburg for the same commemoration. Dickson mentioned going through a China-Russia border control. This means that Dickson must have traveled on the Trans-Manchurian Express, which is the only route that does not pass through Mongolia. The Trans-Manchurian Express is now incorporated within the overall Trans-Siberian Railway system. Unless he wanted an additional week – not just a few days off the train – at or before Yekaterinburg, Dickson must have been on the exact same train from Beijing as Michael Dominy.
Dominy and Dickson also returned to the United States at approximately the same time. Dominy told Justin Owens on Facebook that he would be back on the 29th and would be happy to meet up after then. On July 30th, 2018, Dickson posted to Twitter that he was “just back from 30 days in Russia”. Dickson’s claim about the number of days in Russia does not match the rest of his account of the journey, which would fit twenty or so days in Russia and perhaps thirty days of travel total. [4]
According to Dickson’s podcast account of the journey, the group proceeded from Yekaterinburg to Moscow. (There’s some evidence of a stop in Kazan.) In Moscow, Dickson “met with a person I know there, who is an aide to the Duma and who showed us around.” Dickson mentions being brought to the Central Armed Forces Museum by his guide, as well as revisiting the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. We will discuss Dickson’s friend in the next section. The group seems to have ended their trip in St. Petersburg, since on July 26 Dominy posted that “We have traversed the continent” and had arrived there.
Dmitry Oveshnikov
Although attending the commemoration for the Romanovs was the focus of the 2018 trip and the group did some sightseeing, Sam Dickson reports that he met with a number of “Russian nationalists” while in the country. Dmitry Oveshnikov (Дмитрий Овешников), the person who showed the group around Moscow, is one such person.
Oveshnikov knew both Dickson and Dominy before the 2018 trip. On Dickson’s website, a message for Easter 2017 stated that “I was fortunate to visit the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour [in Moscow] with a true Russian Dmitri O. who acted as my guide.” If one accepts Dickson’s claim that 2018 was only his “second time” in the country, the earlier visit to Moscow must have occurred in 2015, either before or after the IRCF in St. Petersburg.
The Facebook account for Oveshnikov (“Dmitriy Aweshnikov”) is linked to both Dickson and Michael Dominy. Dominy must have known Oveshnikov prior to his 2018 travel in Russia, since Oveshnikov tagged Dominy in a 2016 social media post.
Oveshnikov is the main promoter and seemingly organizer of a website named Cezarium, which describes itself as a “geopolitical portal” discussing “politics, economics, technology, culture and military affairs.” The site favors expanded Russian geopolitical power to offset – as one English-language article puts it – the world threat from “American neo-Trotskyist world utopia” (which Trump is celebrated as opposing) [5]. The Cezarium domain was registered at the end of 2015. Historical domain records show a probably bogus name. While a handful of English-language pieces appeared on the site this year, Cezarium is mostly in Russian. One of Oveshnikov’s contacts, Kris Roman of “Euro-Rus” in Belgium [6], described Cezarium’s slant and its creators:
“Cezarium is created by patriotic and conservative Russians with ‘nice higher connections’.”
Roman may have exaggerated Cezarium’s “higher connections” to boost his own sense of importance. However, Dmitry Oveshnikov definitely has some.
In February 2014, Dmitry Oveshnikov was interviewed on Public Television of Russia as a “political expert” about Crimea, during the crisis but before Crimea’s annexation. The next month, an article quoted Oveshnikov as a political analyst involved in the Federation Council’s working group on Ukraine, with Oveshnikov characterizing new laws accompanying the change of power in Ukraine as illegitimate. A 2017 regional government statement listed Oveshnikov among notable attendees of a “Slavic Unity” festival held in Klintsy. Oveshnikov was noted as a “leading consultant” to the Federation Council’s Committee on Foreign Affairs. The mentions of Oveshnikov working as a consultant or analyst for the Federation Council (upper house of the Federal Assembly) suggest that Dickson got it wrong when he described his friend as an “aide to the Duma” (the lower house). Oveshnikov is also connected on Facebook to Konstantin Kosachev, who heads the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Federation Council.
Yury Lyubomirsky, the coordinator of the 2015 IRCF in St. Petersburg and a main organizer of the WNCM, is also linked to Oveshnikov on Facebook.
Analysis
Dickson shared some interesting details from his 2018 Russian trip. For example, he stated that the far-Right nationalists had two major criticisms of Putin: that Putin did not have a clear successor, and that Putin had failed to control popular culture. The Russian far-Rightists Dickson talked to were apparently disturbed by Black people appearing in popular media. Other details from the trip remain unknown: for example, the identities of the other “Russian nationalists” who Dickson met and the extent to which Michael Dominy and the rest of the travelers were present during these additional discussions.
Beyond Dickson’s comments, we do not know the content of these meetings and discussions. But the fact they occurred at all is significant. A few months before the trip, one US writer claimed that “Russia’s interests in American white supremacists” had “effectively dried up”. Good reasons supported this claim. Two US racist leaders who had consistently pushed for an alignment with the Russian state – Richard Spencer and Matthew Heimbach – were suffering reversals of fortune post-Charlottesville, with Heimbach especially disgraced. The Alt-Right, and other white nationalists adjacent to it, were in disarray. Yet when Dickson and company traveled to Russia, members of far-Right groups wished to meet with them.
Further, Michael Dominy and Sam Dickson’s friend Dmitry Oveshnikov serves Russian state interests. Oveshnikov works as a consultant for Russia’s parliament, apparently for the upper house’s Committee on Foreign Affairs. In early 2014, Oveshnikov gave interviews in which he promoted regime talking points, for example by reducing events in Ukraine to the involvement of “neo-Nazis from the ‘Right Sector’”. [7] While Oveshnikov’s “higher connections” can be exaggerated, they exist.
From the perspective of either Russian far-Right militants or the Russian state, we see no evidence that discussions in 2018 bore immediate fruit. However, upon his return Dickson appeared on the Political Cesspool podcast [8], praising what he described as a healthy society and a mostly good regime in Russia. For Dickson’s white nationalist listeners, being reminded in mid-2018 that they had international friends may have been a minor morale boost. Dickson’s advocacy suggests that he was encouraged by the meetings in Russia.
Conclusion
We have documented that Atlanta attorney Michael A. Dominy is part of racist leader Sam Dickson’s network and that he accompanied Sam Dickson and others on their 2018 trip in Russia. The trip, centering around a historic commemoration, also involved discussion with members of far-Right movements in Russia. We discussed Dominy and Dickson’s contact in Moscow, Dmitry Oveshnikov, and his connection to state power. The networking which took place during Dominy and Dickson’s 2018 trip is significant not because it achieved big results but as an example of an ongoing project.
It’s important to note that there is no full consensus in the US white nationalist movement around Russia. For example, some members of the white power Rise Above Movement have cultivated links to Azov in Ukraine. Other white nationalists find Putin to be an inspirational figure when it comes to the cultural promotion of nationalism and Orthodox traditionalism. And finally, others don’t pay much attention to either Russia or Ukraine.
As we release this documentation, we want to be clear about our politics. For us, white nationalism is not an issue of “USA versus Russia”. Such framing not only fuels xenophobia, it also suggests a disease metaphor in which the national body begins life as “pure” but is then corrupted or infected from outside. The truth is that racism in the US has been present from the origin of the nation state itself. If one wants to know where the modern white nationalist movement comes from, then the legacy of the Ku Klux Klan, resistance to the Civil Rights movement, or ongoing institutional racism would all be better starting points than Putin.
We also reject any conflation of the Russian state and those ruled under it. When we expose far-Right participants in our region traveling to Russia to network, this is because we see ourselves as part of the same movement as anti-fascists in Russia, who have been harshly repressed by Putin’s state apparatus.
If you have information on racist or far-Right organizing in our region, please get in touch.
Notes
[1] Lawrence used to promote the “Kindred Apostolic Ministries” in his signature on the Stormfront forum, where he was the user “FolkishOrthodoxy” (earlier “VFMike83”). Lawrence’s friend Craig Spaulding – who was in Volksfront with Lawrence and who went on to be a member of the Traditionalist Worker Party – did much of the actual labor for the Kindred Apostolic Ministries site, according to Spaulding’s leaked TWP messages as “John Mosby”. Spaulding was “easttnskin83” on Stormfront.
[2] Lawrence’s friend Craig Spaulding (see Note 1) assembled the Society of Saint John of Gothia site.
[3] Another thing interests us about Lawrence. Online posts allege that Mike Lawrence is a congregant at St. Nektarios Orthodox Church in Lenoir City, Tennessee. One listed address for Lawrence is in nearby Maryville, TN. That residential address appears in Blount County property records as owned by Kristine Duke. Kristine Chloe Duke is the daughter of David Duke, the neo-Nazi and former Klansman who believes that Russia holds “the key to white survival” and who lived for several years in that country. Kristine Duke’s mother, Chloe Hardin Black, is currently married to Don Black, the webmaster of the white power Stormfront forum. Because of this link to the Duke family, it’s important to point out that Michael Lewis Lawrence is different to M.C. “Mike” Lawrence, who was campaign manager for David Duke’s 2016 Senate run but quit before the election.
[4] It is impossible for Dickson to have taken the train route he discussed (which departs once a week), left Russia when he did, and spend exactly thirty days in Russia. To spend closer to thirty days, he would have had to spend a lot of extra time at or east of Yekaterinburg, assuming party’s route did not involve back-tracking. That scenario is very unlikely.
[5] The “neo-Trotskyist” language of that article is based on exaggerating the numbers of ex-Trotskyists in the early Neo-Conservative movement. Since so much antisemitic writing describes communism and Neo-Conservatism as vast Jewish conspiracies – with Trotsky featuring prominently in theories of communism as Jewish plot – the author does not need to mention anything explicitly for target audiences to receive the message.
[6] Roman attended the IRCF in 2015 and at the end of that year was named as a member of the Board for the WNCM. In 2018, Roman was an election observer in the Russia-backed “Donetsk People’s Republic” (in the Donbass region of Ukraine.)
[7] For some useful context on the adoption of “anti-fascist” discourse by the Russian state, see here.
[8] The main host of the Political Cesspool, James Edwards, is Executive Vice President of the Charles Martel Society, where Martin K. O’Toole is President and Chairman. Dickson is listed alongside William Regnery II as a Director.