Ruining Confederate Memorial Day: A Report-Back from Stone Mountain, April 30th

Originally published on ItsGoingDown.org.

On the morning of April 30th, 2022 a coalition of civil rights organizations, local community civic action groups, leftist groups, street medics, armed security, antifascists, and other autonomous individuals gathered at a gazebo in downtown Stone Mountain, Georgia. They all shared a common goal: to march on and directly confront the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), a racist organization rallying to celebrate “Confederate Memorial Day” at the “Memorial Lawn” inside nearby Stone Mountain Park.

Protesters give the finger to white power leader Sam Dickson
Continue reading “Ruining Confederate Memorial Day: A Report-Back from Stone Mountain, April 30th”

All Out Against the Sons of Confederate Veterans at Stone Mountain Park, April 30th

Update 4/26/2022: The anti-racist coalition organizing the April 30th counter-protest has moved the meeting time forward to 9AM. This post and flyers have been updated to reflect this change.

The neo-Confederate organization, Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), plans to rally at Stone Mountain Park on Saturday, April 30th. Grassroots anti-racist and community groups will gather in opposition. We encourage everyone to attend the anti-racist counter-protest. The larger the opposition to the SCV, the greater our capacity to demoralize white supremacist and neo-Confederate movements. 

Poster released by coalition organizing anti-racist protest.

The meet-up point for anti-racists is: 9AM, Saturday 4/30 at 922 Main Street in the community of Stone Mountain. (Note: this is outside Stone Mountain Park.) Be sure to bring friends, water, snacks, sunscreen, and signs!

Simple poster to print and distribute: .pdf file here.

The planned keynote speaker at the SCV’s event is white nationalist leader Martin K. O’Toole, who is the Georgia SCV’s spokesperson and has been involved in the organized racist movement for half a century. Presently, O’Toole is the President and Chairman of the Charles Martel Society, a secretive but influential white nationalist group which helped to birth the “Alt-Right.”

Martin K. O’Toole at 2018 American Renaissance white nationalist conference.

For more background on O’Toole’s deep involvement in white nationalist and Holocaust-denial circles, see this thread as well as O’Toole’s tag on our website.

Please spread the word about the April 30th mobilization to your friends, community groups, and organizations. See you on the 30th!

Documentation: Sons of Confederate Veterans Membership (circa 2017)

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.

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. 

Martin K. O’Toole at white nationalist American Renaissance conference, 2018

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.

What is the United Universal Fellowship of Faith?

Introduction

The United Universal Fellowship of Faith is a front for predatory white nationalists active in the Atlanta property market. We have previously discussed white nationalist involvement in Atlanta real estate and gentrification, but until now had not covered the “Fellowship”.

On December 30, 2019, metro Atlanta racist, Jared Huggins – a member of the now-defunct white nationalist American Identity Movement (AmIM, previously Identity Evropa, IE) – received a vacant lot on Bankhead Highway from the “United Universal Fellowship of Faith” (UUFF). The Fulton County property has been appraised at over $400,000. The deed that transferred the property to Huggins was witnessed by another AmIM/IE militant, Patrick Nelson Sharp, and was notarized by antisemite John Legrand Weatherman, whom we have also discussed previously. The deed for the Bankhead Highway transfer states that Huggins received the property for “one thousand dollars […] and other valuable consideration,” so Huggins may have paid less than market value for the property. Two trustees for UUFF, “A.M. Davies” and “C.J. Harper”, provided signatures authorizing the property transfer. “A.M. Davies” is UK far-Right activist Adrian Michael Davies, a lawyer frequently used by Holocaust-deniers. 

United Universal Fellowship of Faith

UUFF has extensive property holdings in Fulton County. In 2016, local alt-paper, Creative Loafing, exposed Adrian Davies’ role as trust administrator for the Beltem Trust, which the paper identified as then owning approximately 20 properties in the Vine City/English Avenue area, as well as other lots throughout the city. A search for The Beltem Trust on Fulton County Board of Assessors site lists roughly the same number of properties (48) as UUFF (47). While some of these records may be outdated, it is clear Adrian Davies’ interests in Atlanta are far from limited to The Beltem Trust. According to the Board of Assessors results, UUFF owns properties in several West Atlanta neighborhoods – for example English Avenue and Westview – as well as elsewhere in the city. 

UUFF properties indicated by yellow dots, according to Fulton County Geographical Information Systems, January 2021. Some of this property info may be outdated.

The majority of UUFF’s properties were received from Vineyard Property Investments, LLC in July 2012. An earlier version of Vineyard Property Investments, LLC was founded in 2007 by white-nationalist leader and Atlanta attorney Sam Dickson; former SS of America member, Joshua Buckley, who was then a Dickson protégé; Atlanta attorney, John Coleman; and Sam Dickson’s brother, Bonneau Dickson. That LLC dissolved in December 2010. However, in August 2012 – one month after it transferred properties to UUFF – “Vineyard Property Investments, LLC” re-registered with the Secretary of State, this time with only Sam Dickson’s brother, Bonneau Dickson, listed as manager. Bonneau Dickson’s name and California address were featured on the July 2012 document that transferred many properties to UUFF. 

A small number of UUFF properties were also received from the Hartford Trust, including the Bankhead Highway plot eventually transferred to white nationalist Jared Huggins. Huggins has previously identified the Hartford Trust as his employer. See this article’s appendix for further information on that Trust, which is connected to longtime racist leader Sam Dickson.

Adrian Davies

Adrian Michael Davies, one of the two listed trustees for UUFF (and administrator for the Beltem Trust), is a UK barrister whose history in the far-Right traces to the early 1980s, when he was a personal secretary to Holocaust-denier David Irving. During 1983, Davies also shared a flat with neo-fascist Roberto Fiore, who at the time was a fugitive from Italy for his links to the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari terror group. Since then, Davies has been involved in a variety of far-Right groups. Davies is best known for representing David Irving in Irving’s failed appeal of his libel case, after the Holocaust-denier had famously been trounced in the courts. 

Continue reading “What is the United Universal Fellowship of Faith?”

What You Did Last Summer: Atlanta Attorney Michael A. Dominy, Sam Dickson, and US-Russia Far-Right Networking

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. 

Sam Dickson message on Twitter about 2018 trip to Russia

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. 

Sam Dickson speaking at the International Russian Conservative Forum in St. Petersburg, March 2015

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.

Continue reading “What You Did Last Summer: Atlanta Attorney Michael A. Dominy, Sam Dickson, and US-Russia Far-Right Networking”

“Right-Wing Gentrification Gangs”: White Nationalists and Atlanta Property Development

Update 10/11/2017 here.

Introduction

Since the early 2000s, Atlanta white nationalist attorney Sam Dickson has been accumulating property in Atlanta, making a profit from gentrification and rising property values in our city. Dickson has built a “multi-million dollar business” from purchasing unpaid tax debts, then using them as leverage to obtain properties at bargain prices. Dickson has focused on property in South Atlanta, often in neighborhoods that are historically Black and working class. Dickson has been accused of “bullying” tactics to gain title.

Dickson’s moneymaking from the Atlanta property market was highlighted in a 2006 article published by the state-friendly, anti-extremist Southern Poverty Law Center. Other white nationalist and far-Right figures — currently or recently involved in the Atlanta property market — have received less attention. This article discusses some of these figures, showing how organized white nationalists gain both politically and economically from gentrification in our city.

Sam Dickson

Georgia attorney Samuel Glasgow Dickson has been a major figure on the racist far-Right since the 1970s. In 1978, Dickson campaigned for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia on a segregationist platform, receiving 11% of the vote. A lawyer since 1972, Dickson was known for representing Klansmen. Dickson participated in organizations such as the World Anti-Communist League (which included war criminals and far-Right terrorists) as well as the Council of Conservative Citizens (which traces back to the segregationist White Citizens’ Councils.) Dickson was active in Holocaust-denial circles – he published “Revisionist” materials and hosted events in Atlanta. Holocaust-denier David Irving spent time at Dickson’s property in Key West, Florida while facing criminal charges in Europe.

In 1994, Dickson gave a talk at the first American Renaissance conference, a suit-and-tie-style white nationalist gathering. Dickson has presented at every American Renaissance conference since then. He is also a regular speaker at the “Alt-Right” gatherings of the National Policy Institute. Predictably, Dickson was a speaker at the “Atlanta Forum” gathering in Marietta, Georgia this January, which brought together racist Southern nationalists and “Alt-Right” white nationalists. When Auburn University in Alabama tried to cancel an appearance by white power leader Richard Spencer of the National Policy Institute, Dickson filed a lawsuit so the event could go ahead. Dickson gave a talk when white nationalists assembled in mass in Charlottesville, Virginia on May 13, 2017 – the white nationalists’ evening event was reminiscent of Klan ceremonies. Sam Dickson was again in Charlottesville for the bloody “Unite the Right” far-Right rally on August 12, 2017, where white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. murdered anti-racist Heather Heyer and wounded over a dozen more in a car attack.

dickson charlottesville may 2017
Sam Dickson holding megaphone at white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, May 13, 2017. “Alt-Right” leaders Richard Spencer, Nathan Damigo and Mike Peinovich (“Mike Enoch”) also visible in photo.

While staying active on the white power scene, Dickson has spent over a decade and a half buying up land around Atlanta, frequently using tax liens he has purchased to encourage property owners to sell low. When areas are redeveloped, Dickson stands to profit. Predictably, other white nationalists and far-Right figures now have their names on Fulton County property records, operating at various degrees of proximity or separation from Dickson himself. Continue reading ““Right-Wing Gentrification Gangs”: White Nationalists and Atlanta Property Development”