Michael David Weaver (also known as Michael David Carothers) is a violent neo-Nazi who has been active since he was a teenager. Currently, he lives in Cartersville and is engaging in a campaign to spread hate in Georgia. Since late last year, Weaver has distributed copious amounts of antisemitic propaganda, mainly for the antisemitic Goyim Defense League but also for other white supremacist groups. Weaver also holds one-mandemonstrations with antisemitic signs outside the Bartow County Courthouse. Weaver has a long history of ideologically driven harassment and violence, including an assault on a Black man in Columbus, Georgia for which Weaver served a one-year sentence. Continue reading for more info on Weaver and actions which community members can take.
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)
Update: in a statement on December 21, American Patriots USA leader Chester Doles claimed that he expelled Dickenson from the organization.
Robert Timothy Dickenson is the chaplain of north Georgia’s American Patriots USA (APUSA), an organization founded by white supremacists in 2019. Led by Chester Doles, APUSA has tried to build broader alliances on the far-Right. Dickenson attended APUSA’s founding meeting on December 14, 2019 and has remained a key participant at least up to its last major event, a “Back the Blue” fundraiser this September in Dahlonega.
Tim Dickenson (3rd from left) in Dahlonega, Georgia, September 12, 2020. Also pictured (L-R): Chester Doles, Michael Boggus, Jim Higginbotham (of “Justice Mulisha”).
In an earlier article, we highlighted that Dickenson was a member of the Original Knight Riders, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan circa 2015. We noted that last year Dickenson accompanied an American Patriots USA float in Dahlonega’s Gold Rush Days parade while wearing a sweatshirt for a different Klan group, the International Keystone Knights of the KKK.
Here, we provide further documentation on APUSA’s chaplain. We have documented that APUSA’s overall leader, Chester Doles, participated in 2017’s violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia with a contingent of Hammerskin Nation gang members. Robert Tim Dickenson also took part in the bloody Virginia rally, marching alongside and later posing for photos with the League of the South, a white supremacist and Southern secessionist organization. Earlier in 2017, Dickenson was photographed at a rally by the Nationalist Front – a now-defunct coalition of white power groups – in Pikeville, Kentucky. Dickenson attended the April 2017 Kentucky event as a member of the Original Knight Riders, showing that his membership in that Klan group continued beyond 2015.
Dickenson with League of the South members after “Unite the Right”, 2017, posing with anti-racist banner that was grabbed during clash. Dickenson is on right holding rifle.
Our original article also discussed a racist church which we provisionally linked to Dickenson. A 2018 business filing in South Carolina confirms this earlier analysis.
Starting Wednesday 11/18/2020, the #StopTheSteal coalition of Trumpist, far-Right, and white nationalist groups began to rally at the Georgia Capitol in a last-ditch effort to stave off certification of the election results in which Trump narrowly lost Georgia. Because of heavy promotion and the presence of InfoWars, the preeminent far-Right conspiratorial outlet led by Alex Jones, the events attracted right-wingers throughout Georgia and beyond. The #StopTheSteal movement in Georgia culminated in a large event on Saturday in which there were so many right-wingers that several city blocks were shut down and cordoned off by police.
Update 8/11/2020: Marjorie Taylor Greene won in the GA14 Republican runoff and will likely head to Congress. Matt Gurtler was defeated in GA09.
On August 11th, Georgia Congressional candidates Marjorie Taylor Greene (14th District) and Matt Gurtler (9th District) will compete in runoff elections for their Districts’ Republican nominations. Greene faces John Cowan for the 14th District nomination, while Gurtler is competing against Andrew Clyde in the 9th District. Both the 9th and the 14th Districts lean heavily Republican, so whoever wins the GOP nomination for each of these districts is likely to take a seat in Congress. Both Greene and Gurtler have ties to American Patriots USA, an ostensibly pro-Trump organization with roots in the neo-Nazi and Klan undergrounds.
Chester Doles video with Marjorie Greene sign in background
We have covered the “American Patriots USA” (APUSA) organization in north Georgia since it was formed last year, in the wake of a September far-Right rally in Dahlonega. That rally’s organizer and APUSA’s leader, Chester Doles, has a history spanning decades in the white supremacist movement. Doles led a Ku Klux Klan group, operated the Georgia unit of the neo-Nazi “National Alliance”, and more recently supported the violent Hammerskins racist gang. Other white nationalists are also involved with APUSA, and Doles has boasted that there is no “Jew loving [… in] this Crew”. The organization has also built tactical alliances with some far-Right people of color.
As we documented in our May article, Doles has now built bridges to Republican candidates. In late February, Doles and other members posed with Marjorie Taylor Greene behind an APUSA banner. In March, State House Representative and current GA09 candidate Matt Gurtler talked to an APUSA meeting and posed for a group photo.
Update 7/19/2020: The III% Security Force, an Islamophobic far-Right militia headed by Chris Hill, yesterday reversed its earlier position and stated it will rally at Stone Mountain on August 15th.
On August 15, 2020, far-Right demonstrators will rally at Stone Mountain Park outside Atlanta. The August 15 rally, held at the birthplace of the modern Ku Klux Klan, is being promoted and partially organized by figures tied to neo-Nazism and the white supremacist movement. Although some organizers claim to represent “Heritage Not Hate”, a closer look at who is mobilizing shows that August 15 will bring an influx of racists to the surrounding community.
Chester Doles heads Ku Klux Klan demonstration in Maryland, 1992
Last night, State House Representative and candidate in the Republican primary for the 9th Congressional District, Matt Gurtler, issued a statement decrying “sleazy attacks” and the “fake news media”. These comments arrived two months after Gurtler talked to a meeting of American Patriots USA (APUSA) – a white nationalist front group founded by Klansmen and neo-Nazis – and two days after the story broke in the media.
In his comments to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Matt Gurtler doubled down by calling APUSA a “pro-gun, conservative group that supports President Trump”. At the March meeting, Gurtler portrayed the organization as a positive response to “socialism on the rise”.
Matt Gurler at American Patriots USA meeting, March 14, 2020
The core members of APUSA are committed white supremacists. Founder Chester Doles is an unreformed neo-Nazi who continues to network within the racist scene and circulate its propaganda. Another key APUSA member, Michael Carothers AKA Michael Weaver, maintains the “White Information Network” site, where he asks readers to support terrorists such as “Olympic Park Bomber” Eric Rudolph.
Militant white nationalists have led
a wave of terror in recent years, with outrages such as the Tree of Life
synagogue mass shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018; the Christchurch, New Zealand
mosque attacks last year; and August’s racist massacre in El Paso. While
Gurtler mouths empty catchphrases such as, “Racism doesn’t have any place in
our community”, his actions embolden the racist movement.
It is reprehensible for Matt Gurtler to hide behind his “Mexican-American” wife after supporting white supremacists. His wife’s ancestry is irrelevant to Gurtler’s political decision. Gurtler’s response is particularly obscene since APUSA founder Chester Doles has targeted and scapegoated Latino communities in north Georgia for twenty years.
Instead of admitting poor judgment,
Gurtler howls for his critics to “Bring it.”
If you oppose antisemitism and white supremacy, speak out when they are normalized.
8/10/2020: update on Matt Gurtler and Marjorie Taylor Greene here.
As this report was being prepared for publication Thursday evening, far-Right militiaman and 9th Congressional District candidate Michael Boggus released a video on Facebook, stating that he is the new State Director for American Patriots USA. Since neo-Nazi Chester Doles and the white supremacists around Doles remain in the organization, we assume this is a shell game.
Summary: American Patriots USA (APUSA) was formed last year in north Georgia by Chester Doles, a longtime neo-Nazi. As documented in this and earlierreports, the organization is a thinly disguised front group for white supremacists. APUSA has spent the last few months building a broader front of “constitutionalist” Republican candidates, including several people of color, which it uses to mask its agenda. The white power organization even hosted a current State House Representative, Matthew Gurtler, at their March meeting. We document APUSA’s “Trojan horse” effort and highlight the complicity of GOP candidates and networks in normalizing white supremacist organizing.
Chester Doles (circled) at “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville, VA, 2017 – footage here.
Paul L. Townsend, a resident of LaFayette in north Georgia, born in 1964, is an active member of the League of the South (LoS), a white supremacist and Southern secessionist organization. Townsend attended the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia with the LoS contingent that was at the forefront of violence that day. Following the Charlottesville rally – in which one counter-protester was murdered and dozens more injured – Townsend stated that he was “proud that I participated in the Charlottesville rally” which he “knew […] would be epic.”
Townsend set up a profile on the Russian social networking site VKontakte (VK) the month before 2017’s “Unite the Right”. On VK, he is connected to many LoS members and other white supremacists. Townsend posted a photo of his younger self in camouflage fatigues in a desert environment, suggesting that decades ago he was in the US military.
