Tracking and Countering the Far Right since 2016
A self-proclaimed “tribe” of racist heathens is building a compound on a 122-acre property in Tellico Plains, eastern Tennessee. This group overlaps with Patriot Front (PF), a fascist organization with members nationwide, and the “Church of Aryanity,” a racist cult that refers to Adolf Hitler as “the Great One.” The leader of the Tennessee “tribe” is Brian Culpepper, who spent a decade in the white supremacist National Socialist Movement (NSM) and was its PR Director for several years.
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”We would like to introduce you to Calvin Joseph Stow-Ortiz (born 2003), who is known as “Arthur FL” within Patriot Front (PF). PF is a white supremacist organization founded in the aftermath of 2017’s bloody “Unite the Right” rally, as a splinter from and rebrand of Vanguard America. Recently, the Unicorn Riot media collective published a giant trove of PF documents, video, and internal messages. Not long after the public release of those materials, our inbox started filling with tips that Stow-Ortiz was a Patriot Front member.
Update, July 2022: Patriot Front member “Nathan AR” who participated in the mural defacement has been identified as Devin Wayne Center of Fayetteville, Arkansas.
On the night of September 17, 2021, the racist and fascist organization Patriot Front (PF) defaced a Black Lives Matter / Stop Asian Hate mural in Atlanta’s Reynoldstown neighborhood. The mural was created as a symbol of Black and Asian solidarity in the direct aftermath of the Atlanta spa murders. By targeting the mural, white supremacists aimed to hurt and intimidate still-grieving communities while gaining cheap publicity for their organization.
Before defacing the mural, Patriot Front members stenciled in the nearby Krog Street Tunnel, a well-known Atlanta graffiti spot. Later, the racists dropped a banner promoting their organization at an overpass for I-20. Locals spotted and removed the banner the same night. Other anti-racists located and quickly covered all of PF’s stencil graffiti. Community members later did additional restoration on the damaged mural in Reynoldstown.
Click here for a recording of Patriot Front’s December 10, 2021 national call, which we hope will be of interest to antifascist researchers. We beeped out use of a racial slur in the recording.
For background on the racist/fascist organization Patriot Front, see here.
Recently-exposed PF members:
Alabama: Ian Michael Elliott
California: Ryan Richard Sundberg
Oregon: Casey James Knuteson
Washington: James Julius Johnson
…and more to come!
On July 29 of last year, two members of Patriot Front – a fascist and white nationalist organization – placed propaganda at synagogues in Columbus, Georgia in an apparent attempt at intimidation. We can now identify one of the two people responsible, who we had written about earlier this year but failed to connect to activity in Columbus. As discussed in our previous article, Christopher Skylar Brooks helped place Patriot Front (PF) materials in the Atlanta suburb of Lawrenceville in May 2019. We connected Brooks to the PF materials in Lawrenceville via an online brag in combination with Brooks’ internet handle, location, dress, and other clues. In our article about Brooks, we surmised that he did not last long in Patriot Front. However, he stayed long enough in the organization to target Columbus, Georgia synagogues with another member, a month and a half after the May propaganda run in Lawrenceville.
Summary: Since the end of 2017, the fascist/white supremacist organization Patriot Front has distributed thousands of flyers throughout Metro Atlanta and placed a significant number of stickers and posters throughout the region. Patriot Front’s mission is to rebrand neo-Nazi and white supremacist belief as American patriotism. Patriot Front formed as a splinter group from Vanguard America, after someone linked to Vanguard America murdered a protester at last year’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia – a bloody event which led to a reversal of fortune for organized white nationalists in the US. Although Patriot Front’s existence has been short, the organization has been growing. Political violence is at the center of Patriot Front’s apocalyptic vision of national rebirth from the ashes of “failed” democracy. In Georgia, the heart of Patriot Front is someone who goes by the name of “Chris GA” in online Patriot Front discussion. Through conducting additional research on “Chris GA” we have identified him as Lawrenceville, Georgia resident Aaron Christopher Krueger. This identification was further verified through surveillance on Krueger’s Lawrenceville address.
