Tracking and Countering the Far Right since 2016
Based on our experiences and reports from international antifascists, we made this video to dispel misinformation around conflict in Ukraine.
Key take-aways:
A .pdf version of the presentation is available here.
Dalton Russell Woodward (“Jesse AR”) is the current “Interview Coordinator” for Patriot Front (PF), a white supremacist organization operating across the US. Atlanta Antifascists first exposed Woodward as a white nationalist in 2019, while he was an active-duty Georgia National Guardsman stationed in Afghanistan. Following media attention and the return of Woodward’s unit to the US, the National Guard eventually removed him. Woodward currently lives in Chester, Arkansas.
As Patriot Front’s national Interview Coordinator, Woodward organizes the initial interview sessions in which applicants submit to questioning by trusted PF members. These first interviews are conducted over a voice call and aim to identify potential infiltrators and to ensure ideological consistency. If a prospective member passes this first test, an in-person meetup is scheduled for further scrutiny, including a physical search and examining the contents of their phone. Woodward’s work as Interview Coordinator is a key part of PF’s security structure and is crucial to maintaining PF’s internal culture of fascism, white supremacy, and antisemitism.
In January 2022, the Unicorn Riot media collective published a trove of internal Patriot Front communications, documents, images, and video footage. Soon after this leak, we received a tip linking Dalton Woodward to a PO Box in Chester, Arkansas that “Jesse AR” provided in a message. Leaked video from PF further confirms that Woodward is “Jesse AR.”
Before Patriot Front leader Thomas Rousseau announced Woodward as the organization’s new Interview Coordinator, Woodward held another prestigious role in PF: leader of the “vanguard” shield section for its December 2021 national rally in Washington, DC. Woodward’s military background is presumably one reason PF chose him for this role.
Woodward’s high-level position within Patriot Front is particularly concerning because of his ties to accelerationist neo-Nazism. Accelerationist neo-Nazis aim to collapse society through infrastructure sabotage and mass casualty events in the hope of building a new fascist order from the ruins. Although PF shares its origin with accelerationist groups like Atomwaffen Division (through the defunct Iron March forum), PF is not an accelerationist organization. This is a deliberate choice by Thomas Rousseau for PF’s short-term survival. Woodward, in his role as Interview Coordinator, ostensibly screens for candidates who seem over-eager for violence. Rousseau considers such individuals to be magnets for state repression. However, a review of leaked interview decisions across multiple PF regions shows that rejecting an applicant for violence is less common that rejecting an applicant for being insufficiently racist. Woodward’s prominent role within PF further suggests that the distance between the group’s membership and accelerationist circles is smaller than the group admits publicly.
Continue reading “Dalton Woodward, Patriot Front “Interview Coordinator,” is an Ex-National Guardsman and Friend to Accelerationist Neo-Nazis”In mid-January, three men in Georgia – Luke Austin Lane, Jacob Kaderli, and Michael Helterbrand – were arrested as part of a broader national sweep against “The Base”, a neo-Nazi group attempting to spark a race war. The Georgia trio were arrested on charges of participating in a criminal gang as well as conspiracy to commit murder. According to an affidavit supporting the Georgia arrests, the three were preparing to murder a couple who they believed to be members of Atlanta Antifascists, and murder any children they may have had. The couple were also selected for assassination out of convenience, since they did not live far from one of The Base members.
The couple targeted for murder by The Base are not members of our organization. However, one family member targeted by the murder conspiracy had been listed in a series purporting to expose “Georgia Antifa[scists]”, published late 2018 on the white power Occidental Dissent website (OD). The header for the five-part series on OD was an image of Atlanta Antifascists’ Twitter account, suggesting that those being profiled were part of our organization. Instead, the site mostly listed unaffiliated third parties, attendees of leftist meetings or anti-racist rallies, and people who had interacted with our social media or who were involved in anti-racist cultural efforts. Unlike anti-fascists, who expose white supremacists in order to stop their violence against marginalized groups, white supremacists have no concern for accuracy when they publish enemy lists or kill lists – precisely because their goal is to terrorize entire communities.
The webmaster of OD, Bradley Dean Griffin of Eufaula, Alabama (AKA “Hunter Wallace”), has an extensive history of harassment campaigns against perceived enemies. In late October 2018 – while the “Georgia” series was being published on OD – white supremacist Robert Bowers killed eleven people and wounded six in an attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Bowers had earlier offered Griffin an address for an anti-racist blogger targeted by Griffin. Brad Griffin also worked with white nationalist Daniel McMahon (AKA “Jack Corbin” and “Pale Horse”) against opponents. McMahon spent years harassing anti-racists – especially women – but was finally arrested last year for cyberstalking, threats, and interference against a Black candidate for office. In addition to his associates Bowers and McMahon, Griffin is active in the white supremacist/Southern secessionist League of the South and was a major promoter of 2017’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (which he attended). Court documents and journalist sources both indicate that The Base member Brian Mark Lemley had earlier been a member of Griffin’s organization, The League of the South.
Occidental Dissent is hosted by Bluehost with its domain name registered through GoDaddy (NYSE:GDDY). Cloudflare (NYSE: NET) also provides “reverse CDN” services for the site. Bluehost is now owned by the Endurance International Group (NASDAQ:EIGI). After the Tree of Life massacre by Griffin’s associate Bowers, both Bluehost and GoDaddy were warned about OD. The companies completely ignored concerns about their assistance for a major white power propaganda site. In their efforts to keep OD and its lists online, these companies almost contributed to the brutal murder of a couple.
Continue reading “Notorious White Power Website Led Georgia Neo-Nazis to their Targets”Three members of the white supremacist group The Base have been arrested in Georgia, as part of a broader sweep against the organization. The Georgia arrests were revealed Thursday, January 16.
The Georgia arrestees were allegedly plotting to murder a couple who they believed to be “Antifa”. They also allegedly planned to kill another member of The Base who helped hatch the murder plot but who they considered incompetent. Read The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the Georgia arrests here.
One of those arrested, Luke Austin Lane of Silver Creek, Georgia, went by the online alias “TMB” and was the main recruiter for The Base in our state. On the Fascist Forge website, Lane/TMB’s profile was connected to that of Matthew Ryan Burchfield, a neo-Nazi we exposed last year and who is currently in Ukraine.
Atlanta Antifascists are following this situation closely. See our Twitter and Facebook pages for updates.
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””
