After publication of this article, Triad Martial Arts removed Ian Elliott and stripped him of any rank from the school. The school states that it firmly stands against bigotry.
Concealed Tactical has not made any public statement but quietly removed Elliott’s profile from its instructors page. We will update our story if Concealed Tactical clarifies its stance.
On Saturday, December 4, Patriot Front rallied in Washington, DC. Video footage from the event shows Ian Elliott sticking close by Patriot Front leader Thomas Rousseau, seemingly serving as his personal security.
Elliott on rightElliott on leftIan Elliott protects Patriot Front leader Thomas Rousseau, Washington, DC, December 4, 2021.
Ian Michael Elliott of Harvest, Alabama is a member of the racist and fascist organization Patriot Front, going by the alias of “Norman AL” within the group. Elliott is also highly active in martial arts: he trains at Triad Martial Arts in Huntsville, Alabama and teaches at Concealed Tactical, a Krav Maga school in Madison, Alabama. In the neo-Nazi “Church of Aryanity” Telegram channel, Elliott – using the alias “Varangian” – states that he spends most of his time “traveling, and training, with White Nationalists”. By sharing his martial arts skills with racist associates, Elliott helps white supremacists prepare for violence against their enemies.
Ian Michael Elliott
Comment as “Varangian” in the “Church of Aryanity” Telegram channel
Caleb Petersen, at the time a Mechanical Engineering graduate student at Auburn University in Alabama, was the president of the unofficial “White Student Union” on campus from 2017-2018. The white nationalist/Alt-Right “Union” spread antisemitic propaganda on Auburn’s campus in the lead-up to racist leader Richard Spencer’s speaking event there. The group continued until 2018, when Petersen was exposed as its leader.
Twitter and Caleb Peterson don’t want you to see this old Tweet. The website mentioned in the text is archived here.
On December 1, 2021, Twitter used its new “private media” policy to lock the account of our organization, until we deleted a 2018 Tweet about Petersen. Petersen seemingly does not want people talking about his leadership of an antisemitic, white power group. Too bad. Twitter working to protect white nationalists from exposure and public scrutiny is reprehensible.
Petersen was featured in a 2017 documentary on Richard Spencer and the Alt-Right, produced by Channel 4 in the UK. Although he did not provide a name and his face was blurred, the “White Student Union” leader talking about “the death of our [white] race” is clearly Petersen, who will be recognizable by voice to anyone who has met him.
Images of Caleb Petersen from Channel 4 documentary.
Petersen may be currently pretending to be respectable and not a white supremacist. He has made no amends for his racist and antisemitic agitation, but seems interested in burying the truth about it.
We are not going to forget. Please reach out if you have further information on Caleb Petersen or any of his political associates.
Update 9/2/2021: Organizers have officially canceled the far-Right conference.
Update: On the site for his District 14 labor commissioner run, Georgia State Senator Bruce Thompson confirmed he is speaking at the “Christian Veterans United” conference.
Warning: This article contains descriptions of rape.
Daryush “Roosh” Valizadeh, a notorious far-Right antisemite, misogynist, and rape apologist, is a featured speaker at the upcoming “Faith and Freedom Men’s Conference” organized by Christian Veterans United. The conference is scheduled to take place on September 10th and 11th, in or near metro Atlanta. Two venues, Peachtree Road United Methodist Church in Buckhead and the First Baptist Church in Woodstock, have so far canceled use of their spaces after learning of the event’s true nature. Organizers are vowing to go ahead with the event but have not publicly announced their new venue.
Conference promotional image
Daryush “Roosh” Valizadeh
GA State Senator Bruce Thompson
As well as Valizadeh, the Christian Veterans United website lists Jesse Lee Peterson, a rightwing commentator who bemoans women’s suffrage, and Bruce Thompson, Georgia State Senator representing District 14, as event speakers. By appearing alongside Valizadeh, perhaps the world’s most notorious women-hating propagandist, State Senator Thompson would normalize Jew-hatred and violence against women.
At the time of publication, Thompson has not responded to a request to confirm his appearance at the Conference, though his name and image feature on the event’s website. We will update this article if Thompson issues a clarification.
Update: the far-Right gathering was canceled at the last minute due to organizer Rachel Tsimmerman experiencing a medical emergency.
On the weekend of August 20-22, “76 Fest Georgia” will be held at pioneer camp site 04 of F.D. Roosevelt State Park in Harris County, Georgia. All three advertised speakers for 76 Fest have ties to the far-Right American Populist Union (APU), with one being APU’s co-founder and vice president Vince Dao.
76Fest promotional image
APU is a Generation Z-centered, ultranationalist organization founded earlier this year. APU aims to push the US conservative movement even further right on social issues. In this regard, APU closely resembles the “groyper” movement of white nationalist and Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes. The primary difference between APU and Fuentes’ America First/“groyper” movement is optics: APU believes that Fuentes has acquired too much stigma from being an open racist. APU, by contrast, strives for a more respectable public face. As Political Research Associates point out, APU positions itself as being in dialogue but also in tension with Fuentes’ “groypers”. Fuentes for his part swipes at APU for being a poor imitation of his original.
76 Fest LLC business registration (address is a private mail box business)
Booking information at F.D. Roosevelt State Park
76 Fest advertises itself as “bringing America First values to youth nationwide through an outdoor experience.” 76Fest LLC was registered as business in South Carolina this June, with Jackson L. Avery listed as its agent. Jackson Lee Avery is the College Republicans chairman at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. (Avery grew up in South Carolina.) Avery also helped organize a “Conservative Coachella” event held in Maryland this May, which featured APU figures Vince Dao and John Doyle as speakers. “Conservative Coachella” was a precursor to 76 Fest; following the Georgia gathering, a “76Fest Delaware” is now advertised for September.
Jackson Avery
76 Fest calls itself “uncancellable,” stating that “we do not engage in cancel culture” at its events. No matter how far-Right someone is, they are welcome at the gathering. The festival website also claims that some of the event speakers will not be livestreamed or broadcast, meaning that these speakers can freely express their racism, misogyny, and other bigotry to a receptive crowd without those words coming back to haunt them.
Racist and antisemitic anti-vaxxer Christopher Mark Head, who had promoted the rally and who we exposed before the event, did not show up at Piedmont Park on the day.
The “Worldwide Freedom Rally” at Piedmont Park was advertised with posters trivializing the Holocaust (by comparing it to health measures) and featuring the slogan “Save the Children” – a QAnon reference.
“Sailing to Denver”
Eugene Owens (AKA “Kilgore Rand”) of “I Do Not Comply” and rally organizer Karen Denise Cortes Hernandez (AKA “Kay P”). Read more here about Eugene Owens’ far-Right networking and his rock band Faithless Town’s COVID-19 disinformation efforts.
Summary: Christopher Mark Head of Locust Grove, Georgia, promotes and helps organize for local versions of the July 24 anti-vaxxer “Worldwide Rally for Freedom”. He also disseminates anti-vax propaganda under the “White Rose” name in Metro Atlanta. Online, Head networks with Nazis and helps radicalize anti-vaxxers into extreme forms of antisemitism and racism. Head travels around Metro Atlanta as a Turf Masters employee, leaving far-Right propaganda in the communities he visits. We assess the threat level of Head’s network to marginalized communities and conclude with a call for additional monitoring of the intersection between anti-vaccination, antisemitism, and white supremacy.
Picture shared to “White Rose North GA” telegram channel.
Introduction
When far-Right movements lack a strong figurehead and common target, they infight. The electoral defeat of Trump and the slow-motion implosion of the QAnon conspiracy theory have brought a period of infighting, but also of recomposition. New figures step into the disarray, attempting to bring order and to “unite the right”. One of these figures is Christopher Mark Head from Locust Grove, Georgia. Through his work with the “White Rose North GA” anti-mask/anti-vaccination group, Head builds alliances with everyone from explicit neo-Nazis to more mainstream anti-vaxxers.
Head’s political agenda goes far beyond anti-vaccination campaigns and COVID-19 conspiracies. His aim is to politically impose his version of Christian Fundamentalism, and to purge society of alleged “anti-Christ” influence—he is, in other words, a Christofascist. Although Chris Head occasionally criticizes Nazism, he also considers neo-Nazis as allies against his greater enemies.
This year, Head has been increasingly involved in on-the-ground activism and placing propaganda stickers across Metro Atlanta. In recent weeks, Head has also been planning and promoting anti-mask/anti-vaccination rallies in our state. These rallies are scheduled for Saturday, July 24. Head is one of the most active participants in the “Worldwide Georgia” channel on Telegram for the anti-vaxxer rallies. Through his efforts for the July 24 mobilization, Head hopes to meet allies and draw them closer to his far-Right politics. With the publication of this article, “Sir Christopher”/Chris Head will at least no longer have the cover of anonymity.
The Georgia III% Martyrs have recently allied themselves with Chester Doles, a white supremacist and neo-Nazi of long standing. Since last year, Doles has pretended to have left the white power movement, although his social media shows that Doles is still highly networked with Klansmen and neo-Nazis, and that he regularly promotes racist websites and themes. There was conflict between the two parties as recently as last year, when the Martyrs ejected Doles from the Marjorie Taylor Greene campaign event in Ringgold, but their differences have been set aside.
We are exposing known members of the Georgia III% Martyrs in order to warn their communities. The members of this militia are volatile and happy to ally with white nationalists.
LEADER
Names: Justin Bowen Thayer, Justin Thayer, Justin “Slayer” Thayer Born: 1987 Location: Bremen, Georgia Employment: Starr Services Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Thayer7420 (removed) Known arrests: March 2019 domestic violence arrest (media link), November 2019, DUI (police record), April 2020, DUI: (court case)
We are releasing a nationwide membership database for the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), an organization for male descendants of Confederate veterans, which peddles “Lost Cause” narratives and fights to preserve racist monuments. Unsurprisingly, the organization provides fertile ground for more explicit white nationalists. It also has political influence. The SCV membership database we are releasing includes one current member of Georgia’s State Senate and several in the Georgia House of Representatives.
2015 Confederate flag rally at Stone Mountain Park, a month and a half after the Charleston massacre.
The SCV member database here was initially leaked by other parties, appearing online in early 2020. The original web link with this member database is no longer active. As first leaked on the web, the member database included “Nov2019” as part of its file name. However, a careful analysis of the member records shows that the list dates from late 2016 to early 2018, with 2017 being most likely. One email address appears to reference the year 2017; high-profile members who left SCV in March 2018 are still listed with the email addresses for their official roles. Apart from the date originally on the file name, the member records are consistent with everything we know about SCV.
Tommy Benton
Terry England
Alan Powell
Rick Williams
Several Republican politicians in Georgia are listed in the SCV member database. Current Georgia House of Representatives members Tommy Benton (District 31), Terry England (District 116), Alan Powell (District 32) and Rick Williams (District 145) were listed as “active” SCV members circa 2017. Benton is particularly notorious, having publicly argued in 2016 that the Ku Klux Klan “made a lot of people straighten up.” Georgia House of Representatives member James A. Collins (District 68) also appears in the database but was not listed as an active member. Jeff Mullis, Georgia State Senator for District 53, appears as an “active” member. Mullis was the driving force behind SB 77, a Georgia bill designed to protect Confederate/white supremacist monuments, signed into law in 2019.
Jeff Mullis
The presence of politicians in the SCV has no moderating influence and obvious white nationalists are active in the organization. In Georgia, accountant John C. Hall, Jr. of Dublin is the commander of SCV Capt. Hardy B. Smith camp #104. Hall is an associate of white power leader Sam Dickson and, in 2018, appeared in a closed social media group for the white supremacist/Southern secessionist League of the South. Another major white nationalist in Georgia SCV ranks is Marietta attorney Martin K. O’Toole. According to its most recent (2018) IRS filings, O’Toole is the President and Director of the Charles Martel Society (CMS), a secretive but influential white nationalist organization that helped to birth the Alt-Right. O’Toole is also an old friend of UK Holocaust-denier David Irving. O’Toole has been the Georgia SCV’s official spokesman since 2018. Media outlets such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution regularly quote O’Toole without noting his white nationalist history and commitments.
By organizing in the SCV – which disguises its racism behind rhetoric of “heritage” – clear white nationalists can make political connections and gain influence. Nowhere is this clearer than in Georgia, where the state SCV spokesman is a white nationalist, but the organization also counts Republican legislators in its ranks.
We hope that this database is also useful to anti-racist researchers in other states.
As always, please get in touch if you have information on racist organizing in Georgia.
Update: while Jared Huggins remains a co-owner of the Carver Hills house and his vehicle is outside, recently Huggins has been in Denver, Colorado as a Latter-day Saints church missionary. We still encourage Carver Hills neighbors to keep an eye on the house, since this is not the first time that house has been linked to a white nationalist.
On the night of Saturday, March 20th, we placed posters in the Carver Hills neighborhood of northwest Atlanta. These posters warned about Jared Alexander Huggins, a white nationalist militant and associate of racist leader Sam Dickson. Huggins is listed as a co-owner of a McCallie Boulevard home.
Yesterday’s series of deadly shootings in metro Atlanta ended with eight dead and more injured. The killer targeted Asian spas, and six of the victims were Asian women. The mass shootings will have far-reaching effects and cause traumatic aftershocks on a national level.
Today, news is surfacing that the mass shooter may have been a customer at spas he targeted or similar businesses. The Sheriff for Cherokee County – where half of the people were murdered – echoed the murderer’s claim that racism did not motivate his murders of mostly Asian women. A Sheriff’s Office spokesman explained that the murderer was having a “really bad day” and referred to an alleged sexual addiction.
Our group is dedicated to tracking fascist, far-Right, and white supremacist hate. The murderer was not on our organization’s radar. While much remains unknown, there may be relevant distinctions to be made between yesterday’s slaughter and the violence of ideological white supremacists, for example by members of accelerationist neo-Nazi groups. As members of the metro Atlanta community, as feminists and as anti-racists, we wholly reject attempts to depoliticize yesterday’s murders. To act in meaningful solidarity, we must understand that these outrages took place at the meeting point of several structural oppressions.
The murders potentially involve at least four types of hatred. We discuss each in turn and then offer suggestions for countering each type.
Hatred against Asians: in this moment specifically against East and Southeast Asians, which has been whipped up during the last year by conservative and conspiracy theorists during the COVID-19 pandemic. This hatred has been transmitted from the highest political levels down through references to the “China Virus” but was already present in our society, building on more than a century of dehumanization of Asians during times of war. The murderer may or may not have consciously viewed himself as targeting Asian people as Asians, but there is little doubt that growing anti-Asian racism provided a backdrop for his actions. Ideological racists will seize on this moment to further target and heighten the suffering of Asian communities – as is already happening online.
Hatred against immigrants of color: again, whipped up by politicians and media figures. This builds together with anti-Asian racism, as all Asians are assumed to be immigrants. Racists often employ positive stereotypes of Asians to use them as a weapon against other groups, especially Black people. Yet when Asian communities are portrayed as part of an immigrant mass that is an alleged threat to white people, these communities are targeted for racial hatred and violence.
Hatred of women: the misogynist nature of mass shootings mostly targeting women should be clear. Misogyny is also a powerhouse of modern white supremacy. Not only do women-hating movements such as inceldom, “Men’s Rights Activism”, and GamerGate provide pathways for white supremacist radicalization, but mass murders targeting women are often celebrated within white-supremacist culture. Misogyny inflects racism at almost every point. The majority of anti-Asian attacks linked to the COVID-19 pandemic have targeted Asian women.
Hatred of sex workers: This is strongly connected to misogyny and is often shaped by racism. Sex workers are especially targeted because prejudice from the wider society makes them more vulnerable. Sex workers are often blamed for their own victimization and targeted by law enforcement as much as by predators. Whether or not all victims of the spa shootings were sex workers, they are likely to be perceived as such by the public.
Media coverage in the weeks to come will focus heavily on the murderer and his motivations. We would like to encourage people to instead focus on the victims and wider affected communities. Here are our suggestions:
Support grassroots Asian-American community organizations and anti-hate campaigns
Support immigrant organizations, initiatives against ICE, and anti-racist education
Support feminist activism and create interventions in the misogyny recruitment pipeline
Support sex worker peer organizations and fight the dehumanization and criminalization of sex workers.
We also ask our readers to actively fight disinformation, whether from racists, conspiracy theorists, far-Right organizers, or other sources. If you hear someone circulating conspiracy theories, speak out. Report or flag pages spreading disinformation or targeting metro Atlanta communities. If that is not enough, pressure social media companies to act.
We hope to boost fundraisers for the affected victims and their families if these become available. We will relay information on our social media. Keep in mind that some people may become victimized twice, once by the murderer and again by law enforcement. If any immigration cases rise during the investigation, the public needs to loudly demand immunity for the victims.
Here are several local and national organizations to support:
• Red Canary Song (a grassroots collective of Asian & migrant sex workers): redcanarysong.net • The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF): napawf.org • Asian-Americans Advancing Justice: advancingjustice-atlanta.org • The Center for Pan-Asian Community Services: cpacs.org
