Joshua Bates – Atlanta Antifascists

Update 12/10/2018: Since the publication of this article, Joshua Bates has made a series of public statements renouncing the white supremacist movement and his past. We hope Bates’ statements are sincere. Only time will tell.

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A network of anti-fascist activists from coast to coast have obtained the chat logs of a neo-Nazi organization calling itself “The Base.” Anti-fascists infiltrated the Base in order to investigate and identify its members and disseminate this information to the public.

In an ongoing series of articles, the coordinating anti-fascist network will publish revealing information about this group and profile its members. You can follow all these articles by following the hashtag #DeBasedDoxx.

Anti-fascism is fundamentally a localized movement of working-class peoples. We are not paid for our work and we take great risks every day: not for fame or money, but to protect our communities.

Email the network at [email protected] with your tips or inquiries.

As part of an ongoing anti-fascist research series on a neo-Nazi paramilitary group called “The Base”, we are exposing The Base member “Brandon Hitt” as Joshua Brandon Bates of Grovetown, Columbia County, Georgia. Joshua Bates’ involvement in The Base is notable because Bates is a well-connected participant in the Alt-Right, especially through his work as a web developer and his writing under the alias “Jossur Surtrson”. Bates was active in The Base’s online chats from late September until his sudden disappearance from the server in mid-November.

About The Base

The Base is a white supremacist networking platform which aims to prepare for and accelerate the balkanization of the United States, and to carve out whites-only states under such a scenario. The Base’s platform offers members several manuals about weapons and planning terrorist attacks. As discussed in an earlier article in this series, members of The Base “operate in regional cells of 3-7 people which include current and former military personnel, eco-fascists, preppers, and youth under the age of 18 who have been drawn into the online communities of Nazism.” While it is not clear whether the reference is deliberate, it should be pointed out that “Al Qaeda” translates to “The Base” in English. Continue reading “Exposing Joshua Bates (AKA “Brandon Hitt”), Georgia Participant in “The Base””

White supremacist and far-Right nationalist movements are nothing new, especially in the American South. Since Trump’s induction into the oval office, however, the US has seen these movements evolve into something younger and more contemporary.

Far from the stereotype of old, cantankerous Klanners, the “Alt-Right” and its organizations such as Identity Evropa advance their cause with approaches that are modern, polished, and deceptive. They use memes and retro aesthetics to make their hateful message more palatable. Prioritizing anonymity and information security, until recently the “Alt-Right” has relied on its internet presence combined with occasional public speaking events by white-collar “leaders” such as Richard Spencer to advance its cause. (The movement was also helped by the existence of the watered-down “Alt-Lite” and figures such as Milo Yiannopoulos, which helped popularize Alt-Right themes without explicitly signing off on white nationalism.) For most of its existence, what the Alt-Right’s internet trolls and “Identitarian” white nationalists had in terms of propaganda reach, they lacked in street presence and physical interaction. This is where one of the Alt-Right/Alt-Lite’s strangest offshoots comes in–Cue the “Proud Boys.”

proud boys georgia twitter — *Proud Boys Georgia Twitter page*

Continue reading “Breakfast-Cereal Bigots: The “Proud Boys” Have Arrived in Atlanta”