DOCUMENTING HATE IN THE USA AND IN OUR MILITARY 2018
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
OCTOBER 27, 2018


https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/
Watch full episodes of FRONTLINE, the PBS documentary series, and explore news investigations from FRONTLINE's award-winning journalism team.

THE FILM – “DOCUMENTING HATE: CHARLOTTESVILLE”
PRODUCERS A.C. THOMPSON AND KARIM HAJJ, WGBH/FRONTLINE


TODAY’S NEWS ARTICLE ON THE AFTERMATH OF THE RIGHTIST GATHERING IN CHARLOTTESVILLE IS IN MY REGULAR BLOG FOR TODAY, BUT I WANTED TO FEATURE MORE ON THE SUBJECT. WHY DID OUR POLICE FAIL TO INTERVENE? IS IT COWARDICE OR SYMPATHY WITH THE NEO-NAZIS, A VERSION OF THE “BLUE FLU, PERHAPS? WE MUST PONDER SUCH THINGS AS WE WORK AGAINST THE RIGHTIST POLITICIANS WHO ARE BEHIND THIS UPSURGE OF FAR RIGHT PHILOSOPHY.

AT THE TIME THAT THE DISTURBING EVENTS AT CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA, POPPED UP IN FRONT OF MY EYES ON THE NEWS, I WAS STARTLED. I HAD KNOWN THAT RIGHTISTS WERE AFOOT IN THE FORM OF MILITIAS, A FEW REMAINING KKK MEMBERS, AND MANY SIMPLE-MINDED MACHO DOOFUSES, BUT NOT “THE ALT-RIGHT,” OR A LARGE NUMBER OF ACTUAL NEO-NAZIS. I CERTAINLY DIDN’T EXPECT TO SEE THEM WITH THEIR WELL-KNOWN TORCHES WALKING IN FORMATION AND CHANTING.

THE BEST WAY TO DESCRIBE HOW I FELT AT THE SIGHT IS TO USE AN OLD-FASHIONED TERM – “MY HEART SANK.” IT BECAME CLEAR TO ME THAT AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL HAS A TERMINAL DISEASE IF WE DON’T GET A HANDLE ON IT. OUR COUNTRY WAS FOUNDED BY MEN WHOSE GOALS WERE LOFTY, WHOSE EDUCATION WAS MUCH BETTER THAN OURS TODAY. THE RESULT WAS A GOOD PRODUCT. NOW OUR EDUCATION IS DEGRADED OVERALL, OUR MORAL TRAINING IS MINIMAL, AND THE INBORN COMPETITIVENESS HAS RESULTED IN MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL TRIBALISM.

THE MORE I LOOK INTO IT, THOUGH, I FIND THAT THOSE PEOPLE ARE RECEIVING PLENTY OF FLAK FROM AMERICANS OF ALL STRIPES. IN THIS COUNTRY OUR LAWS ARE WRITTEN TO PROTECT THE RIGHT TO FREE THOUGHT, SO I WILL GIVE THEM THEIR FREE SPACE IN WHICH TO BE DEAD WRONG. MOST OF US DO NOT MARCH DOWN THE STREET AND SHOUT STRANGE NAZI SLOGANS LIKE “BLOOD AND SOIL.” THE “BLOOD” MEANS THAT OH-SO-PURE GERMAN NORDIC BLOOD, AND THE SOIL IS THE SOIL OF THEIR HOME COUNTRY WHERE THEY TOIL TO RAISE THEIR CROPS WHERE THEIR FOREFATHERS LIVED BEFORE THEM.

THAT’S ALL VERY LOVELY, BUT IT IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE EXCUSE TO ABUSE ANYONE OF ANY TYPE OR SKIN COLOR IN ANY WAY. YES, THIS IS “THEIR” AMERICA, BUT IT’S MINE, TOO, AND EVERYONE ELSE’S. WE ARE A TRUE “MELTING POT,” AND THAT’S A GOOD THING. THAT DOESN’T MAKE ME ANGRY. IT MAKES ME HAPPY. IT MAKES ME THINK I’M PART OF SOMETHING BENIGN. I AM GOING TO BE WATCHING THEM, THOUGH, AND WRITING ABOUT THEIR ACTIVITIES WHATEVER THREAT THEY SEEM TO POSE. IF OUR CURRENT RIGHTISTS IN THE GOVERNMENT AT ALL LEVELS DON’T BECOME MORE ACTIVE AND OVERT, I WILL FEEL REASONABLY SAFE. IF THAT ISN’T THE CASE, I WILL LOOK TO THE POSSIBILITIES OF GROUP ACTION AGAINST THEM.


https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/4-members-of-violent-white-supremacist-group-face-riot-charges-federal-authorities-say/
4 Members of Violent White Supremacist Group Face Riot Charges, Federal Authorities Say
OCTOBER 24, 2018 / by A.C. THOMPSON ProPublica

PHOTOGRAPH -- A still from "Documenting Hate: Charlottesville" that pictures Robert Rundo on the right.

Federal authorities announced riot charges against four members of the Rise Above Movement, a violent white supremacist group based in California. The charges relate to assaults carried out at protest rallies in California and Charlottesville, Virginia.

The charges against four men — Robert Rundo, Robert Boman, Tyler Laube and Aaron Eason — come weeks after four other Rise Above Movement members or associates were indicted on riot charges in Virginia, accused of engaging in violent assaults during the infamous “Unite the Right” rally in the summer of 2017. Only Rundo, Boman and Laube had been arrested as of Wednesday afternoon.

The four men indicted in Virginia have not entered pleas in the case.

FRONTLINE and ProPublica have been reporting on the Rise Above Movement since late 2017, and the U.S. attorney in Virginia noted that work.

The government’s accusations, made public on Wednesday against the four men, are laid out in a criminal complaint signed by an FBI agent who specializes in domestic terrorist groups.

“Through my training and experience,” the agent wrote, “I am familiar with terrorist organizations’ methods of operations, including their use of social media to communicate regarding coordination of strategic ideological goals, recruit and radicalize individuals, and coordinate violent extremist activities.”

The complaint then asserts that the four men, as part of the Rise Above Movement, planned and carried out attacks in three California cities as well as Charlottesville in 2017.

“The defendants used the Internet to coordinate combat training in preparation for the events,” the complaint states, “to arrange travel to the events, to coordinate attendance at the events, and to celebrate their acts of violence in order to recruit members for future events.”

Rundo, one of the men arrested this week, had been identified by FRONTLINE and ProPublica as the founder of the group. He is a native of New York City who had deepened his white supremacist leanings during a stint in state prison in New York.

The complaint asserts that investigators used the men’s social media and private communications, as well as videos and other material created by the group itself, to document specific acts of violence in Huntington Beach, San Bernardino and Berkeley, all in California, as well as Charlottesville.

In Huntington Beach, for instance, Laube is accused of assaulting a journalist at the rally; Rundo and Boman are also identified as having punched, kicked or otherwise set upon people at the rally on March 25, 2017.

It was not clear on Wednesday if the four men charged most recently had retained lawyers, and they could not quickly be reached for comment.

Documenting Hate logo

This story is part of an ongoing collaboration between ProPublica and FRONTLINE that includes documentaries beginning with Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, which aired on PBS in August 2018, and the upcoming film Documenting Hate: New American Nazis, which will air Tuesday, Nov. 20.

If you’ve witnessed or experienced hate crimes, harassment or incidents of bias, you can use this form to send information to FRONTLINE, ProPublica and other partners in the Documenting Hate project.


RELATED STORIES
Four Men Arrested Over Unrest During 2017 “Unite the Right” Rally
OCTOBER 2, 2018
Marines Move to Tackle Racial Extremists in the Corps
AUGUST 30, 2018
How We Identified White Supremacists After Charlottesville
AUGUST 7, 2018
Tonight on FRONTLINE: "Documenting Hate: Charlottesville"
AUGUST 7, 2018
Documenting Hate: Charlottesville
FILM:
Documenting Hate: Charlottesville


I THINK WE NEED A PSYCHOLOGICAL TEST TO SPOT INCIPIENT OR WELL-DEVELOPED SADISM. THE POLICE DEPARTMENTS SHOULD BE REQUIRED TO USE IT IN THEIR HIRING, AND THEN USE IT ON SUSPECTS. THIS PHENOMENON OF "FIGHT CLUBS" IS PRETTY SICK IN MY VIEW.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/four-men-arrested-over-unrest-during-2017-unite-the-right-rally/
Four Men Arrested Over Unrest During 2017 “Unite the Right” Rally
In partnership with:
OCTOBER 2, 2018 / by RAHIMA NASA ProPublica

This story is part of an ongoing collaboration between ProPublica and FRONTLINE that includes documentaries beginning with Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, which aired on PBS in August 2018, and the upcoming film Documenting Hate: New American Nazis, which will air Tuesday, Nov. 20.

If you’ve witnessed or experienced hate crimes, harassment or incidents of bias, you can use this form to send information to FRONTLINE, ProPublica and other partners in the Documenting Hate project.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday announced they had arrested four members or associates of the Rise Above Movement*, a white supremacist group, over their alleged role in the infamous 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The four men were charged with having traveled to Charlottesville with the aim of inciting a riot and conspiracy to incite a riot, and prosecutors submitted an array of photographs and videos capturing the men pummeling and choking protesters over two days.

If convicted, the men — Benjamin Drake Daley, 25, of Redondo Beach, California; Thomas Walter Gillen, 34, of Redondo Beach; Michael Paul Miselis, 29, of Lawndale, California; and Cole Evan White, 24, of Clayton, California — could face five years in prison for each of two federal riot charges. White has been described as an associate of the group, not a member.

Most of the men charged on Tuesday have been the subject of reporting by ProPublica and FRONTLINE over the last year. RAM, based in Southern California, claimed more than 50 members in 2017 and an overriding purpose: physically attacking its ideological foes. Its members spend weekends training in boxing and other martial arts, and they have boasted publicly of their violence during rallies — not just in Charlottesville, but in the California cities of Huntington Beach, San Bernardino and Berkeley, as well. Many of the altercations have been captured on video.

The charges announced Tuesday are among a number of prosecutions to stem from the notorious Charlottesville gathering that resulted in two days of mayhem and the death of a young anti-racism activist. The charges brought today are unrelated to the death.

Local prosecutors have also brought charges against a handful of other participants in the Charlottesville rally, successfully convicting several men, including activists on both sides of the clashes. And federal authorities have indicted neo-Nazi James Alex Fields, the man accused of killing counterprotester Heather Heyer and injuring more than two dozen others, on some 30 charges, including 28 counts of hate crime.

“This case should serve as another example of the Department of Justice’s commitment to protecting the life, liberty and civil rights of all our citizens,” U.S. Attorney Thomas T. Cullen said Tuesday. “Any individual who has or plans to travel to this district with the intent to engage in acts of violence will be prosecuted and held accountable for those actions.”

Cullen cited ProPublica and FRONTLINE’s reporting during a news conference Tuesday.

“The news organization ProPublica did in my view a fantastic job in piecing together some of the organized activities that occurred on Aug. 11 and Aug. 12, and the work that they did was certainly reviewed by our office as a starting point to understand a little bit about this particular group,” he said.

One of those arrested, Michael Miselis, was a doctoral student at U.C.L.A., with a U.S. government security clearance to work on sensitive research for a prominent defense contractor. He was let go by the contractor, Northrop Grumman, after ProPublica and FRONTLINE identified him as a RAM member who had attacked people in Charlottesville. At the time, Miselis denied involvement in the violent weekend two summers ago.

RAM was founded in early 2017 by Robert Rundo, a Queens, New York, native who served an 18-month prison sentence for stabbing a rival gang member six times during a 2009 street fight. The group’s core membership is small — 15 to 20 young men, according to interviews and a review of court records. Before joining RAM, several members spent time in jail or state prison on serious felony charges including assault, robbery, and gun and knife offenses. Daley served seven days in jail for carrying a concealed snub-nosed revolver. Another RAM member served a prison term for stabbing a Latino man five times in a 2009 gang assault.

A RAM recruiting video posted to YouTube and Vimeo highlights the organization’s heavy emphasis on violence, cutting between choppy footage of RAM members brawling at public events and carefully shot scenes of them sharpening their boxing skills and doing push-ups during group workout sessions.

RAM members are frequently praised as heroes on some white supremacist media outlets.

The group portrays itself as a defense force for a white Western civilization under assault by Jews, Muslims and brown-skinned immigrants from south of the Rio Grande. At rallies, members have waved red-and-white crusader flags and carried signs saying “Rapefugees Not Welcome” and “Da Goyim Know,” an anti-Semitic slogan meant to highlight a supposed conspiracy by Jews to control the globe and subjugate non-Jews. One RAM banner, which depicts knights on horseback chasing after Muslims, reads “Islamists Out!”

ProPublica interviewed one RAM leader last year on the condition of anonymity. He said the gang came together organically. It started when he encountered a few other guys with similar political beliefs, including two active-duty U.S. Marines, while exercising at different gyms in Southern California. They all liked President Donald Trump but didn’t think his agenda went far enough.

On social media channels, RAM members regularly espouse blatantly anti-Semitic and racist views. They have repeatedly been booted from Instagram and Twitter for offensive postings.

This year, four RAM members attended to a massive neo-Nazi rally in Germany, which was held on Hitler’s birthday, uploading photos and videos from the trip to social media.

A criminal complaint filed in federal court Tuesday cited the group’s racist and anti-Semitic postings online in support of the arrests.

Prosecutors said the four men will be brought to Virginia next week to be arraigned on the charges.

It was not clear on Tuesday whether the men had yet retained lawyers.

“This wasn’t in our view the lawful exercise of First Amendment rights,” Cullen said. “These guys came to Charlottesville to commit violent acts, and this wasn’t the first time they’ve done it.”

Cullen said that charging the men with inciting a riot and conspiracy to incite a riot was more appropriate and likely effective than arresting them on hate crime charges.

Cullen said there are other ongoing investigations, but he would not say more about them.

There’s a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office who has done nothing else but look into these investigations since Aug. 12, according to Cullen.

“We’re not finished,” Cullen said. “We’re going to continue these investigations until we reach a point where we’re satisfied that our federal interests have been vindicated.”


RISE ABOVE MOVEMENT* OR RAM –

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/rise-above-movement

RISE ABOVE MOVEMENT
The “Rise Above Movement,” which claims to have about 50 members, is an overtly racist, violent right-wing fight club that attends rallies around the country to do open combat with counter-protesters.

In Its Own Words
“We had them completely surrounded. I hit like 5 people.”
— RAM member Benjamin Drake Daley, 25, of Redondo Beach, California, referring to the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 in a social media chat on Aug. 11, 2017

“Death to antifa!”
— RAM member Robert Boman on April 15, 2017, in Berkeley, California.

Background

The “Rise Above Movement” is a Southern California-based racist fight club that first rose to prominence on the racist “alt-right” rally scene in 2017 and is often photographed in bloody confrontations with protesters.

In October 2017, the website ProPublica released an in-depth investigation that supplied most of the details now known about RAM’s activities. The report identified RAM leadership and cataloged violence perpetrated by the group at four different rallies in 2017. ProPublica’s investigation revealed that many of the group’s leaders have felonies on their records, and that RAM has recruited members from Hammerskin Nation, the largest skinhead gang in the U.S.

RAM trains members in mixed martial arts, skills they put to use assaulting people at rallies.

In an interview with ProPublica’s reporter, an anonymous RAM leader said the group was not racist. It’s not uncommon for a group like this to make that claim, but in RAM’s case it rings particularly hollow. Members are on video referencing David Lane’s neo-Nazi motto the “14 Words,” and just a sample of leaders’ social-media accounts reveals ugly, racist memes and posts riddled with bigoted sentiments and racial slurs.

Their recruitment strategy, including promotional videos featuring their workout and training routines, is targeted toward men who find the idea of a real-world fight club appealing. White supremacy supplies the justification for violence, but ultimately this group has been about street fighting. They’ve won praise from far-right media outlets that applaud the zeal with which they assault political opponents.

On Oct. 2, 2018, U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen, whose district includes Charlottesville, Virginia, called the group antisemitic and violent in announcing charges against RAM members 25-year-old Benjamin Drake Daley of Redondo Beach, California, 34-year-old Walter Gillen of Redondo Beach, California, Michael Paul Miselis, a 29-year-old Lawndale, California resident, and 24-year-old Cole Evan White of Clayton, California.

“In our view, they were essentially serial rioters,” Cullen said during a press conference at the federal courthouse that stands only a few blocks from where the Aug. 11-12, 2017, rally turned deadly.

According to a Northern California Anti-Racist Action (NoCARA) article:

... the Rise Above Movement, is a loose collective of violent neo-Nazis and fascists from Southern California that’s organized and trains primarily to engage in fighting and violence at political rallies. They have been a central participant in the recent wave of far-Right protest movements in California during the first half of 2017 which have attempted to mobilize a broad range of right-wing constituents under the banners of protecting so-called 'free speech,' unyielding support for Trump, and antipathy toward Muslims, immigrants and other oppressed groups.

The group is inspired by identitarian movements in Europe and is trying to bring the philosophies and violent tactics to the United States.

Online, RAM pitches itself as a positive influence on recruits and members, saying it encourages an “active lifestyle and common values” among young people.

An article published at www.nocara.blackblogs.org and cited by prosecutors in the Charlottesville charging documents describes RAM as “mostly equal parts Identity Evropa’s flaccid identitarian discourse (itself inspired by fascist organizations like Generation Identity from France) and the fetishization of masculinity, physical fitness, and violence mixed with the shallow anti-corporate and anti-consumerist themes of the film Fight Club.”

The group meets regularly in Southern California parks and trains in physical fitness, boxing and other fighting techniques.

Photos posted on RAM’s social-media accounts frequently show members working out and sparring with each other.

But the workouts are more than just for physical fitness, the FBI and federal prosecutors say.

In the charging documents for the four men arrested Tuesday, prosecutors said RAM actively seeks out violence aimed at people they believe are political opponents and counter-protesters.

A man the FBI identified as Gillen is shown in one picture attacking a counter-protester at a rally in Berkeley, California, in 2017.

Cullen, the Virginia prosecutor, said that’s all part of RAM’s core motivation — seeking out opportunities to commit violent acts.

“This is a group that aggressively subscribes to an antisemitic, racist ideology,” Cullen said. “These guys came to Charlottesville to commit violent acts.”

Editor's note: An earlier version of this profile failed to properly quote and attribute information first reported by Northern California Anti-Racist Action (NoCARA). We regret the error and apologize to NoCARA for not properly citing their work.

Recent News

Far-right skinheads join Proud Boys in assaulting protesters in New York City following Gavin McInnes event

Four members of Rise Above Movement indicted in Charlottesville, one went to Europe to meet with white supremacist groups before 'Unite the Right'

Charlottesville rioting defendant linked to earlier violence in California


THE MARINES ARE PROBABLY THE MOST MACHO OF ALL THE ARMED SERVICES, OR AT ANY RATE THAT IS MY IMPRESSION. THE NAVY IS ALSO SIMILAR, IN THEIR SUPER-SEXUALIZED IMAGE. THEN THERE IS THE DISGUSTING AND HIGHLY ABUSIVE “TAILHOOK* SCANDAL.” THAT TERM SOUNDS PRETTY SUGGESTIVE IN ITSELF. THERE IS A LEGITIMATE ORGANIZATION USING THE TERM. SEE THESE TWO SITES FOR MORE ON WHAT A TAILHOOK IS AND HOW IT IS USED. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailhook_scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailhook

WHAT THE MOST CORRUPT GROUPS I CAN THINK OF HAVE IN COMMON IS AN EXAGGERATION OF MASCULINITY INTO A MENTAL ATTITUDE OF BORDERLINE CRIMINALITY. IT IS MADE WORSE BY A LOW INTELLIGENCE. SUCH MEN ARE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO PHYSICALLY OR MENTALLY ABUSE WOMEN ON GENDER GROUNDS OR EVEN COMMIT CRIMES. I THINK THE PROBLEM IS THAT THEY ARE ENCOURAGED AND EVEN PUSHED TO SHOW HOW MASCULINE THEY ARE, TO THE EXCLUSION OF ANYTHING RESEMBLING SENSITIVITY AND EMPATHY.

WHEN THAT GETS LINKED MENTALLY WITH A STRONG CULTURAL PATRIOTISM, WE GET A MIXTURE OF TRAITS THAT ARE LIKE DYNAMITE, ESPECIALLY WITH SOME MENTAL INSTABILITY AND A DRUG SUCH AS ALCOHOL INVOLVED. AT LEAST THE MARINES, IN THIS ARTICLE, ARE WORKING TO GET THOSE DANGEROUS MEN OUT OF THEIR RANKS. READ THE WORDS OF MAJ. BRIAN BLOCK. WITHOUT BEING ANY LESS A MAN, HE HAS SOME GOOD SENSE.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/marines-move-to-tackle-racial-extremists-in-the-corps/
Marines Move to Tackle Racial Extremists in the Corps
AUGUST 30, 2018 / by RAHIMA NASA ProPublica

This story is part of an ongoing collaboration between ProPublica and FRONTLINE that includes documentaries beginning with Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, which aired on PBS in August 2018.

If you’ve witnessed or experienced hate crimes, harassment or incidents of bias, you can use this form to send information to FRONTLINE, ProPublica and other partners in the Documenting Hate project.

The United States Marine Corps has taken steps to combat racial extremists in its ranks, issuing an updated order emphasizing that participation in white supremacist and other groups is prohibited and encouraging service members to report fellow Marines involved with such groups.

The actions come after an active-duty Marine was documented taking part in last year’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and two others were arrested after hanging a racist banner off a building in North Carolina.

“The order reaffirms the Marine Corps’ commitment to maintaining a culture of dignity, respect and trust in which all members of the organization are afforded equal opportunity to achieve their full potential based solely upon individual merit, fitness, intellect and ability,” Maj. Brian Block, a Marine spokesman, said.

A ProPublica and FRONTLINE investigation this year revealed that Vasillios G. Pistolis, a Marine based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, had engaged in a series of assaults during the Charlottesville rally. Pistolis, who had been a member of the white extremist group known as Atomwaffen Division, was subsequently subjected to a court-martial and forced from the Corps. Pistolis told ProPublica and Frontline that he had left the racist group and that he had not been present in Charlottesville. However, there are photographs, video and text messages that make clear he was indeed there.

Last year, the Marine Corps Times reported that Staff Sgt. Joseph Manning and Sgt. Michael Chesny pleaded guilty to trespassing charges for hanging a banner with a white power slogan from a building in Graham, North Carolina, in May 2017. The two Marines have since been “administratively separated” from the organization, Block confirmed.

Like every branch of service, the Marine Corps has regulations that bar its members from participating in racial extremist groups, but the updated policy clarifies language on prohibited conduct, chiefly by explicitly identifying “supremacist” activity as forbidden. It also consolidates many previous orders, a large number of which haven’t been updated in years, and aims to tighten accountability when rules of conduct are violated. The updated policy encourages service members who see their peers engaging in prohibited behavior to report them through various channels.

Pete Simi, co-author of the book American Swastika and an associate professor at Chapman University in California who has studied extremist groups for the last 20 years, said, “The order is significant only if there is a plan to both root out and prevent folks from taking part in extremist activity.”

The amended order isn’t part of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the federal law that defines criminal offenses under the U.S. military’s legal system.

“As an order, violation of the prohibited activities and conduct is punishable under the UCMJ, but this is not in and of itself a change to the UCMJ,” Block said.



https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-we-identified-white-supremacists-after-charlottesville/
How We Identified White Supremacists After Charlottesville
AUGUST 7, 2018 / by LEILA MILLER Tow Journalism Fellow, FRONTLINE/Columbia Journalism School Fellowships

The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 was the largest public gathering of white supremacists in a generation. Dozens were injured, and it ended in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a counter-protester who was killed after a car crashed into demonstrators.

The violence did not come out of nowhere. It followed a series of increasingly bloody rallies in California, New York City, and even Charlottesville. While city and state officials in Virginia had prepared by mobilizing 1,000 first responders, law enforcement largely stayed back while chaos unfolded.

In Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigate how white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups have been moving from the fringes into mainstream culture. We have worked to identify white supremacists who engaged in violence at these rallies, and our reporting has revealed that one participant at Charlottesville, Vasillios Pistolis, was an active-duty Marine, and another, Michael Miselis, worked for a major defense contractor and held a U.S. government security clearance.

Producers A.C. Thompson and Karim Hajj spoke to FRONTLINE about the film, describing what it was like to cover the violence in Charlottesville, how they identified white supremacists, and their response to those who view their work as unfairly exposing people’s private identities — a practice called “doxxing.”

The Unite the Right rally began the morning of August 12. Many white supremacists wore helmets and carried shields and clubs, and they were confronted by counter-protesters. How did you plan for this rally and what was it like to be there?

Hajj: The word on the street was that it was going to be pretty unprecedented. It was organized months and months and months in advance. All sorts of neo-Nazi, fascist groups were going to be showing up, and that element of it made it pretty uncertain. When we were walking into it we really didn’t know exactly what to expect, because in recent memory there hadn’t really been a gathering like this of these particular groups of this size.

Traditionally, what you have in rallies like this is some sort of erected impromptu fencing with a line of police officers, and the officers are separating the protesters from the counter-protesters, and in an ideal world, preventing them from engaging in violence with one another. In Charlottesville, that wasn’t the case at all. What was happening was that the park itself was intended as the rally site, and the white supremacists were marching into the park in long lines and in groups. In order to get into the park, they were marching directly into crowds of counter-protesters. That meant that the whole scene was very chaotic.

The film describes how a group of white supremacists pushed into counter-protesters while police looked on. Later, white supremacists beat up a protester named DeAndre Harris [a black man – see washington post below] in a parking garage next to a police station. Still, police did not intervene. Why did law enforcement stand back?

Thompson: I think for us at the time it was a little bit baffling. What we had seen up until that moment was a steady escalation of political violence at these events from coast to coast. Just massive melees and altercations as you had extreme right and fascist rally-goers clashing with anti-fascists and liberal and left counter-protesters. We had seen this over and over and over again. We were a little bit baffled that day why the police hadn’t learned from the lessons of other cities, and why they hadn’t actually even learned from the lessons of their own town where they had two previous white supremacist rallies in recent months.

The city commissioned an investigation after the rally. The investigators heard from two witnesses close to Charlottesville police chief Al Thomas on August 12th: his personal assistant and a police captain. Both witnesses reported hearing Thomas saying that he wanted to “let them fight” because “it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.” For his part, Thomas — who has since retired — offered a somewhat different story: he said he wanted to wait to “see how things played out” before dispersing the clashing crowds.

City and state officials had mobilized 1,000 first responders before the rally. They knew this was coming.

Thompson: I would say that’s one of the most stunning things to come out of the Charlottesville rally and violence. You had Virginia national guard there. You had all kinds of emergency medical personnel. You had Virginia state police. You had the Charlottesville police. They had been planning for months, and they had tons of personnel. The idea that there were not enough law enforcement and emergency personnel to deal with the situation effectively, I believe, is wrong. What is clear is that the planning was insufficient. They didn’t fully take into account how dangerous and how violent things might become.

You looked into a neo-Nazi group called Atomwaffen. How aggressively is law enforcement — at the federal or local level — investigating these groups?

Thompson: Our sense from the reporting that we’re doing is that law enforcement, at least at the federal level, is quite interested in many of these groups, and that they are investigating now.

Hajj: What the FBI will tell you is that they are severely limited, and correctly so, in their ability to police any kind of speech. They have to be very careful not to investigate groups purely for their political orientation. Their only law enforcement mandate is to step in when that speech crosses the line into credible threats of violence. One of the things we’ve heard from law enforcement is actually that these groups are becoming particularly adept at framing their communications both as political speech and also as self-defense.

In the film, a former Orange County probation officer who worked with white supremacists tells you that these groups are moving into the mainstream culture. Members of the Rise Above Movement, for example, have bragged publicly of their violence during protests in California. Why are they leaving the fringes?

Thompson: What we’ve seen over the last couple of years is that these groups have been emboldened and inspired by the Trump presidency, the Trump campaign. When we talk to them, they say that they view him, the president, as an inspiration, as a leader, as a fellow traveler, as someone that at least tacitly supports their movement. The president has said that he doesn’t like or support the neo-Nazis and white supremacists. But they are clearly energized by his leadership.

You identify members of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups that participated in these violent protests. How did you decide who to focus on?

Thompson: We weren’t interested so much in people that just showed up and exercised their First Amendment right and left. We were interested in people who appeared to be engaged in criminal activity. I think what we wanted to do was understand who these people were, what they were doing, and what their connections were to more mainstream institutions.

There’s a lot of reporters covering this subject, and what they do is they go to the leaders of these groups and say “Hey, Richard Spencer [president of the alt-right National Policy Institute], what do you have to say today?” Or they say, “Hey, Matthew Heimbach [leader of the white nationalist Traditionalist Worker Party] what do you have to say today?” They talk to these figureheads of the movement and basically give them a platform to discuss their politics. We weren’t interested in that. We were interested in the people who were sort of staying out of the limelight and staying out of the media spotlight and really engaging in what seemed to be violent behaviors.

Some of the people who you have identified have suffered serious consequences. Michael Miselis, who worked for a major defense contractor, lost his job after you wrote about his involvement in Charlottesville, and the Marines court-martialed and ultimately dismissed Vasillios Pistolis from the Corps after you identified him as a white supremacist. What were you trying to achieve by revealing their backgrounds?

Hajj: Our interest really in identifying these individuals is a matter of spreading the information in the public interest. We’re not interested in doing the job of police officers. The police still need to complete their investigations and find the individuals that are responsible and bring them to justice, as is their mandate. Ours is really to collect as much information on these individuals as possible, who constitute a new front in this movement, which in it of itself is newsworthy, and to put that information out into the world.

There’s been a lot of debate about what it means to “doxx” members of white supremacist groups by revealing their identities. Some might say that you’re doxxing people unfairly and it equates to harassment. What do you say to that?

Hajj: When someone is doxxed, their information is posted online, oftentimes their family’s information is posted online. Personal identifying information that goes far beyond their name – their address, their phone number, their Social Security number, their credit card information – things like that are all posted on the internet with the intent to harass the individual.

What we do is really just public interest reporting. To the extent that we might name the individual or we might reach out to an employer for comment, that work is limited to the way that that individual intersects with the public interest. In the case of Michael Miselis, if you’re an individual working for a large defense contractor with a security clearance, or in the case of Vasillios Pistolis, if you’re an active-duty United States Marine, these are institutions, and the public has the right to ask questions of these institutions: “What are you doing about these individuals who have engaged in violent activity?”

We are very careful and very judicious about who we include in the stories, and the bar is very, very high. We need to have a level of certainty in order to move forward with any kind of published article, and that means multiple sources confirming, multiple sources of video and photo evidence, and so I would really describe what we do as totally distinct from doxxing.

You’ve identified current or former members of the U.S. military who have been in Atomwaffen. Is the Department of Defense screening members effectively for extremist activity?

Hajj: We have reached out to people at the Department of Defense and the Marine Corps specifically to ask what activities they are engaged in in terms of identifying active-duty members who might be members of white supremacist organizations. Their response broadly has been, “This is not a widespread issue. This is an issue we are concerned about at sort of a unit-to-unit or individual basis, but it is not something we view as systemic…” But we have another film coming out in October, and we’ll be looking at that issue substantially over the course of that film.

We’re coming up on the anniversary of Charlottesville. Has that protest affected measures that law enforcement have taken to prevent violence, and how are cities preparing for protests around the anniversary?

Hajj: I would say that Charlottesville was a wake-up call for a lot of people, including law enforcement on the ground in Charlottesville and in the state of Virginia, and also nationally. In the aftermath of the rally, quite a few other rallies which had been planned and promoted by the white supremacist groups that attended were canceled, were modified. The numbers have generally speaking been small. That is not a trend that we expect to continue.

We know from reports that the city [Charlottesville] is actively preparing for any kind of anniversary activity. Jason Kessler, the organizer of the rally, has withdrawn his application for a permit to hold a rally in the city of Charlottesville itself and is instead planning on holding a rally in Washington D.C. on the day of the anniversary. Washington D.C. is a very large city with quite a bit more experience dealing with large protests, and so we expect that the law enforcement response will reflect that.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/local/video-shows-attack-on-black-man-at-unite-the-right-rally-in-charlottesville/2017/08/31/c821702e-8e64-11e7-9c53-6a169beb0953_video.html -- video no longer available 10/27/18


Former FBI agent Mike German tells Thompson he could see it building: “This was not just predictable, but predicted.”

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/tonight-on-frontline-documenting-hate-charlottesville/
Tonight on FRONTLINE: “Documenting Hate: Charlottesville”
AUGUST 7, 2018 / by RANEY ARONSON-RATH

One year ago this weekend, white supremacists and neo-Nazis converged on Charlottesville, Virginia. Our correspondent, A.C. Thompson, was there, and as he describes it, the rally that day quickly became a “crime scene.”

For the past year, Thompson, who is an investigative reporter for ProPublica, has been methodically trying to understand that crime: identifying the groups and the people who carried out the racist violence.

Tonight, in Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, we’ll bring you the results of that reporting journey. It’s a disturbing, important work of accountability journalism and skilled filmmaking, undertaken by Thompson, director Richard Rowley, and producer Karim Hajj, who was also there that weekend, camera rolling.

Some truly groundbreaking reporting has gone into this film, which is part of an ongoing partnership with ProPublica. Thompson follows a trail of court records, social media posts and videos to two white supremacist groups who participated in the rally, to an active-duty Marine, and to a PhD candidate and employee of a major defense contractor – both of whom were captured in videos engaging in violence. He also examines the failures of law enforcement to prevent the bloodshed, despite warnings from federal authorities.

The film traces a pattern of extremist violence that led up to Charlottesville. Former FBI agent Mike German tells Thompson he could see it building: “This was not just predictable, but predicted.”

After confronting some of the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who participated in the Charlottesville violence and shedding light on their groups, Thompson says at the end of the film that “this story is far from over.” And he is right. This is just the first film in a series from FRONTLINE and ProPublica on this subject; the next one – America’s New Nazis – will air later this year.

Don’t miss Documenting Hate: Charlottesville tonight at 10 p.m. EST/9 p.m. CST on PBS (check local listings) or online, and visit our partners at ProPublica.org to read related reporting.

Raney Aronson-Rath
FRONTLINE Executive Producer