Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) is facing a lawsuit from Denny Loudermill after the lawmaker wrongly accused the Kansas man of being an "illegal alien" and committing a mass shooting.
The defamation lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Kansas and pointed to a social media posting Burchett made following a mass shooting at the Super Bowl victory parade,
the Tennessee Lookout reported.
Following the mass shooting, Loudermill said he was detained by police for "moving too slow." He was later released, and no charges were filed, according to the report.
Burchett posted an image of Loudermill in handcuffs and said he was an "illegal alien" who committed the crime. The post on X was eventually deleted. Burchett replaced the post with another explaining the mistake. The
new post included an image of Burchett's original.
"Defendant published that Plaintiff was an 'illegal alien' and a 'shooter' at an event in Kansas City, Missouri celebrating the Super Bowl victory of the Kansas City Chiefs," the lawsuit said. "Plaintiff is not and never has been an illegal alien, having been born and raised in the United States of America. On February 14, 2024, Plaintiff was not the 'shooter' and was not in any way involved in the shooting."
The filing said Loudermill had received death threats following Burchett's post. Loudermill asked for $75,000 in damages for "willful, wanton, reckless and malicious" acts.
"Sometimes I'm afraid to go outside of my house," Loudermill
explained to the Missouri Independent, "or think that somebody who's going to come into my house because some people probably don't even see that I was innocent."
Burchett's office declined to comment.
"Our office is not able to comment on pending or active litigation," a spokesperson for Burchett told the Lookout.
As United States Postal Service letter carriers face increasing violence and assaults on the job, the police officers who could protect them have been sidelined by the government, a new Raw Story investigation revealed.
With letter carrier robberies skyrocketing by 543 percent between 2019 and 2022, the issue has spurred a bipartisan group of Congress members to introduce legislation aimed at providing more secure mailbox equipment and better protecting letter carriers.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), who introduced the Protect our Letter Carriers Act last week, said Raw Story's investigation should urge Congress to turn the bill into law.
“The concerns highlighted in this story only increase the urgency needed in Congress to pass the bipartisan Protect our Letter Carriers Act," Fitzpatrick said in a statement to Raw Story. "The United States Postal Service must have the resources to update its outdated arrow keys and harden mailboxes. We must also increase the prosecution and lengthen sentences of individuals arrested for assaulting and robbing letter carriers. I will do whatever is necessary to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass this crucial piece of legislation.”
A 2020 statute reinterpretation by the Postal Service curtailed uniformed postal police officers' ability to patrol the streets where mail crimes typically occur, restricting them to working on postal property such as post offices and distribution centers. Meanwhile, the number of postal police officers overall has shrunk from a high of more than 2,600 in the 1970s to about 450 officers today.
In a phone interview with Raw Story, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said mail theft is "rampant" in her district and is an issue she's heard about across the country from her colleagues. Postal police officers aren't currently "doing any good being confined to postal property," Norton said.
"The spike in mail crime only reinforces my notion that we need to have postal police go wherever the crime is," Norton said.
If postal police officers began patrolling the streets again, there would be "a better chance of restricting crimes for the Postal Service," said Norton, who is a co-sponsor of the House version of the Postal Police Reform Act alongside Reps. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), Ken Calvert (R-CA) and Bill Pascrell (D-NJ).
"I think the bill has a good chance of passing not only because of what we're experiencing in the district but because this issue is nationwide," Norton said.
There's a Senate version of the Postal Police Reform Act, as well, introduced by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Susan Collins (R-ME), along with 10 other co-sponsors, including Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD).
“Postal carriers routinely deliver lifelines to Marylanders and others across the country. They should not be left vulnerable to dangerous situations that leave them and mail recipients in potential danger – from theft and the lost items," Cardin told Raw Story in a statement. "This is a growing problem that Congress should address, preferably in partnership with the USPS.”
LEVITTOWN, Pa. — Three people were killed by gunfire in a Philadelphia suburb on Saturday morning and the suspect was on the loose following a carjacking, local media and the police reported.
Police in Middletown Township, just north of Philadelphia, confirmed on their Facebook page that shots had been fired in nearby Falls Township, leaving "several gunshot victims."
The police said it was unknown whether the shootings were "targeted or random."
But they identified the suspect as a 26-year-old homeless man, Andre Gordon.
WASHINGTON — Weeks before the latest violence broke out in Haiti, the self-described "king" of a Haitian gang was in a US court pleading guilty to smuggling AK47s and a .50 caliber rifle to the Caribbean nation.
"The Justice Department will aggressively pursue every tool at its disposal to hold accountable those who would smuggle U.S.-origin weapons and other controlled goods for the benefit of malicious actors," prosecutors said at the time.
Jury selection began Tuesday in the trial of a Michigan father accused of manslaughter over a school mass shooting carried out by his teenage son.
James Crumbley, 47, and his wife Jennifer, 45, are the first parents of a school shooter to face felony manslaughter charges in the United States for the actions of their child.
Jennifer Crumbley was convicted last month of four counts of involuntary manslaughter and is to be sentenced on April 9. She could face up to 15 years in prison.
Her husband faces the same charges.
Their son Ethan Crumbley is serving a life sentence for the November 30, 2021 shooting at Oxford High School on the outskirts of Detroit which left four students dead and seven other people injured.
The Crumbleys bought their then 15-year-old son the 9mm SIG Sauer handgun he used to carry out the attack and were accused of ignoring warnings that he had mental health struggles.
Jennifer Crumbley testified during her trial that her husband bought their son the gun just days before the attack as an early Christmas present, and she took the boy to a shooting range the next day.
She said her husband was responsible for storing the weapon at their home, and it was for her son "to use at the shooting range only."
The mother said she never had reason to believe her son was capable of carrying out such a violent act.
The Crumbleys were summoned to the school on the day of the shooting, after a teacher was "alarmed" by a violent drawing she found on Ethan's desk.
The parents were shown the drawing and advised they needed to get the boy into counseling.
They allegedly resisted taking their son home and he returned to class.
He later entered a bathroom, emerged with the gun which had been concealed in his backpack and fired more than 30 shots.
Amid a huge number of deadly firearms incidents involving young people in the United States, pressure has been mounting to punish parents who make it possible for their children to get weapons.
The father of an Illinois man accused of killing seven people in July 2022 pleaded guilty in November to misdemeanor charges of "reckless conduct" for helping his son obtain the assault rifle used in the mass shooting.
A Virginia woman whose six-year-old son shot and severely wounded his teacher was recently sentenced to two years in prison for felony child neglect and 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to illegally obtaining the firearm.
Federal prosecutors inadvertently turned over classified information to avowed white supremacist Jordan Duncan, who is preparing for trial on charges related to an alleged plot to attack the power grid and launch a race war, his lawyer tells Raw Story.
Raymond Tarlton, Duncan’s lawyer, made a startling classified material discovery on Feb. 22 when the government turned over a batch of files to the defense team.
“We all of a sudden realized there was classified information produced to us,” Tarlton told Raw Story, explaining that his defense team gave the classified material back to the government. “No one on our defense team has a security clearance … It’s put a big pause in our preparations for them to cure what they call ‘spillage.’
“I did not see this one coming,” Tarlton added.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina declined to comment through spokesperson Katie Holcomb.
The FBI was responsible for reviewing the materials, Tarlton said, explaining that agents were “supposed to spend years combing through the drive, sanitizing the data.”
The FBI Charlotte office, which covers North Carolina, declined to comment, per spokesperson Shelley Lynch.
The fact that the government inadvertently shared classified information with a defendant accused of large-scale violent crimes “could indicate a colossal screwup and government incompetence,” said Edward C. Shaw, a former FBI legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo with national security experience.
“Or it could indicate a lack of resources to review the evidence in a secure manner,” he said. “Which in a way is a form of government incompetence.”
Three-year search for classified information
The government contends that Duncan, a Marine Corps veteran and former military contractor, already possessed classified information — news first reported by Raw Story last year.
But to date, prosecutors have not leveled any charges against Duncan for stealing government secrets or mishandling sensitive defense information.
The classified information was found on an external hard drive that the government seized from Duncan at the time of his arrest in October 2020.
Instead, Duncan was charged alongside three other men with conspiracy to illegally manufacture firearms and with plotting to destroy an energy facility.
Duncan’s three co-defendants, all alleged members of a neo-Nazi group called BSN, have reached plea deals with the government. Duncan was scheduled to go on trial this month in Wilmington, N.C., until the recent classified information snafu upended those plans.
The classified material originally found on Duncan’s hard drive has repeatedly hampered the defendant’s efforts to review the government’s evidence against him.
Tarlton, Duncan’s lawyer, wrote in a filing last month that federal prosecutors informed him that they could not provide his client with a copy of the hard drive “due to the chance that the government may have missed one or more items of classified information” in its effort to scrub the storage device.
The government has had more than three years since Duncan’s arrest to review material Duncan possessed and determine whether his handling of classified information warrants additional charges. Authorities seized 152 gigabytes worth of data on the hard drive Duncan possessed.
Raw Story is currently suing the U.S. Department of Defense, which oversees the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, for the release of information about the government’s investigation of Duncan for potentially mishandling classified materials.
'Not everything is about guerrilla warfare'
While it’s difficult to assess the risk to national security without knowing the contents of the classified information, Shaw, the former FBI legal attaché, said foreign adversaries might exploit the breach by attempting to hack the defense team’s computers if they thought the information was sensitive.
The task of reviewing a storage device containing 152 gigabytes of data, even with the aid of an artificial intelligence program, requires human eyes, Shaw said.
Unlike other material such as child pornography, for example, only agents with specific authorization can review materials containing classified information. And, Shaw said, the materials can only be reviewed in a secure facility equipped with protection from electromagnetic penetration.
The process is more complicated than merely flagging documents marked confidential, Shaw said. Agents tasked with securing classified materials are often on the lookout for text, photographs or numbers in which the classified markings have been removed. Or classified documents might be chopped up and reconfigured.
The exact contents of the classified materials and their level of sensitivity remains unknown in Duncan’s case. But the government has alleged in a press release that “Duncan gathered a library of information, some military-owned, regarding firearms, explosives, and nerve toxins” that he shared with other members of the white supremacist group.
Any classified materials on the hard drive came from Wikileaks, the website created by Julian Assange to share government secrets, Tarlton told Raw Story, if not directly then through a secondary website. Tarlton added that his client has always maintained that he did not obtain the classified information through his military contract work.
Tarlton has pointed to a statement by Joseph Zacharek — a former member of the white supremacist group Duncan allegedly belonged to — who is expected to testify for the government, to support his contention that Duncan did not abuse his military contracting job to obtain government secrets.
Zacharek, a former Lafayette, Ind., police officer, told the FBI during an interview shortly after Duncan’s arrest that he was not aware of “Duncan using his security clearance to obtain information for the BSN group,” according to a letter from Tarlton to the U.S Justice Department that was obtained by Raw Story.
The government did not address Tarlton’s characterization of Zacharek’s statement in a response filed with the court in February. In any case, the government has previously agreed to not mention the classified information in front of the jury when the case goes to trial.
“We think the classified documents are a relatively small amount of that data,” Tarlton told Raw Story. “The vast majority of it is unclassified — survival and prepper manuals; it’s ideological material about white supremacy that is deplorable but protected by the First Amendment. Not everything is about guerrilla warfare — far from it.”
The government rarely brings charges for mishandling classified information, particularly when prosecutors have the option of charging defendants with other crimes, Shaw told Raw Story. That’s because to prove that the information is classified the government would have to reveal it in open court. Depending on the sensitivity of the information, disclosing it could have severe consequences.
“Let’s say he had information about a U.S. spy that’s in China,” Shaw said. “Well, it’s the name of the spy and his contact. They don’t want to reveal that information because five minutes after the information is revealed, that spy is going to be floating in the Yellow River.”
The fact that the classified information is honeycombed through the evidence that the government plans to use in its quest to convict Duncan for conspiracy to illegally manufacture guns and attack the power grid is complicating the effort to bring him to trial.
Chief Judge Richard Myers II has told the government and defendant they should be prepared to propose new trial dates by Friday.
Speaking with Raw Story, Tarlton questioned whether the government will ever be able to meet its obligation to turn over the evidence — specifically the non-classified kind — to his client.
“This inadvertent disclosure of classified information by the FBI,” he said, “shows that maybe there is an issue with whether they have the ability to truly turn over a sanitized version of the hard drive.”
WASHINGTON — A divided U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday on the legality of "bump stocks," simple devices that can allow rapid fire from otherwise semi-automatic guns.
The case stems from the worst mass shooting in US history, in October 2017, when a man fired on a crowd attending an outdoor music concert in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and wounding around 500.
Most of his 22 guns were equipped with bump stocks, allowing them to fire as many as nine bullets a second.
Aaron Houran, a local water quality technician, was summoned to his son’s high school on the North Carolina coastline in November 2022.
A school resource officer had pulled his 16-year-old son, Noah, aside. The FBI was involved, too.
They were concerned, Aaron Houran recounted to Raw Story, about a video that his son posted online purporting to show him burning an LGBTQ+ pride flag. Noah Houran talked of attending an unspecified “rally.”
The online content that caught the FBI’s attention appears to have also involved firearms, based on a reference Noah made in a subsequent Instagram post.
An Instagram post by Noah Houran from November 2023 likely alludes to his interview with the FBI a year earlier. Instagram
“There was an agent who came to school, who was talking to him, just to try to figure out, is this a fantasy, or could it become real?” Aaron Houran recalled by phone to Raw Story.
Noah Houran is one among a handful of white male teenagers who emerged as the national leadership cadre of 2119, a violent neo-Nazi youth group that uses encrypted social messaging platform Telegram to promote hate and recruit new members.
As detailed in a Raw Story report, authorities are investigating attacks targeting Jews and a Martin Luther King Jr. monument that were committed in 2119’s name in New Hampshire and North Carolina, respectively. Four members face felony hate crime charges for a vandalism spree that includes attacks on two separate synagogues, a mosque and a Masonic lodge in Florida.
The national leadership promoted 2119’s hate-fueled attacks through propaganda videos highlighting criminal acts while recruiting new members and expanding across the United States. While encouraging 2119’s active campaign of vandalism, national leaders cultivated a paramilitary aesthetic. They shared how-to manuals promoting mass shootings, industrial sabotage and race war. They aspire to violence.
He told Raw Story that his son makes up stories to fit in with other teenagers on the internet. Whether true or not, Noah claimed in a Telegram chat that he has been a national socialist since he was 13 years old.
“A lot of it was for attention,” he added. “These people find you and pull you into their world, and you’re not lonely. Next thing you know, he’s a leader and he’s important.”
As a result of Noah’s online posts, he was kicked out of school, his father said.
In December, Noah made an announcement on Telegram that his father offered as evidence of his willingness to reform. He said that in January he would be “heading out west for a military academy.”
The announcement wasn’t entirely true: The Tar Heel ChalleNGe Academy in Salemburg, N.C., where Houran is currently enrolled in a six-month program, is only 90 miles from his home on the North Carolina coast.
Aaron Houran said his son’s decision to enroll in the academy, which is described as “a preventive rather than remedial at-risk youth program,” was motivated by a genuine desire to leave the white power movement.
The program, which is sponsored by the National Guard, “targets voluntary participants, 16- to 18 years of age, who have dropped out of school or are not satisfactorily progressing, are unemployed or under-employed, drug-free, and crime free.”
As a condition of his enrollment, Aaron Houran said his son is not allowed to have electronic devices.
It appears that the last post Noah Houran made in his Telegram channel was on Jan. 5 — the day before he left for Salemburg — but the channel remained active after his departure.
Seven hours after Aaron Houran spoke to Raw Story, his son’s Telegram channel switched from public to private. Aaron Houran told Raw Story that he found his son’s password and deleted his Telegram account.
In contrast to Noah Houran, 2119 member Aiden Cuevas, who is 18, has given no public indication that he has any intentions of leaving the neo-Nazi group and he did not respond to requests for comment.
But in a voicemail to Raw Story, Kevin Cuevas, Aiden’s father, gave a taciturn response to questions about his son’s extremist involvement.
He initially attempted to cast doubt by pointing out his Puerto Rican heritage.
But when Raw Story responded with a voicemail presenting evidence of Cuevas’ involvement with 2119, the elder Cuevas responded with an air of resignation.
Kevin Cuevas acknowledged that he had asked his son “if he belongs” to 2119, and said Aiden’s response was that “he does not.”
He said his son no longer lives with him since he graduated from high school.
“I have relayed all your messages, and it is up to him now,” Kevin Cuevas said. “I have nothing further to add.”
A friend posted a photo on Telegram that shows Aiden Cuevas riding in the back of a pickup truck. Telegram
Cuevas’ mother is an immigrant from Russia, and his Russian heritage is a point of pride that Aiden often emphasizes in chats with fellow neo-Nazis on Telegram.
Discussing his legal troubles with peers, Cuevas appeared to be especially bitter about the FBI seizing his Russian empire flag and a video game console.
“Took my f—ing Xbox lad,” Cuevas told Houran on Telegram. “They will strip you of everything they can possibly get away with.”
For one 2119 member, family was a prime reason he says he’s quitting the group.
Aaron Alligood cited the risk to his parents and siblings as a reason for leaving 2119,, along with legal peril. Raw Story could not confirm Alligood’s age, but a page on a athletics website indicates that he is now a sophomore in high school.
“It got too hot,” Alligood told Raw Story last month. “I realized that it was leading me to a pathway of destruction. You’ve seen how some of the legal stuff shapes up to this. I don’t want to be a part of it anymore.”
It’s clear that Alligood’s parents disapproved of his extremist activity.
A year ago, in January 2023, he reported to his neo-Nazi associates on Telegram that his parents forced him to burn some white supremacist stickers that he received in the mail. Alligood said he lied to his parents by telling them that he was “tricked” into ordering the stickers, and that in fact he loved Black people.
He said he had wanted to earnestly explain his racist beliefs to his parents, but feared they would disown him.
“Try living with a father that is cuckservative,” Alligood complained last year. The insult he threw at his father — who coached African-American football players for Berrien High School until his retirement in May 2023 — denotes a weak-willed conservative who treats minorities, women and liberals as equals.
Alligood’s parents could not be reached for comment for this story.
Agonizing realization for parents
Teenage 2119 members have quickly radicalized online to commit in-real-life criminal acts targeting minority groups, said Emily Kaufman, the associate director for investigative research at the ADL Center on Extremism, an anti-hate organization.
“Anytime we see the move from online to on-the-ground, it’s concerning,” Kaufman said, adding that the rhetoric they’re using is different from that of a white supremacist groups such as Patriot Front, which might use “some innocuous propaganda with a QR code.
“This is a different strategy of ‘look how far we’re willing to go with the extreme rhetoric,’” she said.
White supremacy and other toxic content is so ubiquitous on the Internet that it’s almost impossible to avoid, said Dana Coester, a professor at Reed College of Media at West Virginia University who is researching youth online radicalization.
Parents often ask her how they will know that their child is being exposed to white supremacy or other dangerous ideologies, and Coester tells them that if the children are online they’re encountering it through memes, game chats and other content.
“My heart goes out to parents,” Coester said. “This is a completely different landscape than the one they grew up under.”
She added that parents need to come with a large dose of humility when they grapple with the online content their children are consuming.
“There are two kinds of parents I interact with,” she said. “The parents in the room with hollow eyes that are saying, ‘Omigod, yes. I’m terrified. I’m dismayed.’ The other kind of parent will be, ‘Not my kid. No, my kid would never do something like this.’ I always feel more concerned about the parents who are so sure rather than the parents who are agonized.”
Raising children to hate
Then there are is a completely different subset of parents — those who are raising their children to hate.
Mathew David Bair is a 34-year-old Marine Corps veteran from Pennsylvania.
Bair is also a father who joined 2119 relatively late in the group’s development, and he’s one of the few members older than 18.
At the end of last year, Bair posted a photo of his 4-year-old son posing in front of a swastika and the numbers “2-1-1-9,” written in graffiti.
A Telegram post by Mathew Bair shows his 4-year-old son posing next to graffiti swastika. Telegram
Asked by Raw Story about the dynamic of a thirtysomething adult organizing with teenagers, Bair volunteered that he wouldn’t be opposed to his eldest daughter, who is 14, dating one of the young 2119 members.
“If she would bring home one of you, what is it that I would want as a father?” Bair told Raw Story. “I think this dude saying ‘n—’ online is a lot more of a man than this person pushing sex surgeries. It’s a weird line to draw.”
In the same way that people normalize transgenderism through drag queen story hours, Bair said he wants to see the swastika normalized to “strike fear into people’s hearts.”
Aaron Houran lamented that there are older extremists cultivating children on the Internet. It’s not just Bair, but also older members of neo-Nazi active clubs and racist skinhead crews who have mentored 2119 members.
He might have added that it’s also 16- and 17-year-olds who have been marinating in extreme Internet culture since they were adolescents, and now have the clout and seniority to influence younger children.
“It’s a crazy world with so much going on,” Houran said. “It’s easy to fall into these traps. It’s sad that there are people trying to take advantage of these kids and change them into the same hateful pieces of s--- that they are.”
* * *
About this investigation:This is the second in a two-part Raw Story series about youth neo-Nazi organization 2119. The first part revealed 2119’s violent aspirations and the group’s inner workings. A first-person account about the threats and harassment reporter Jordan Green has received as a result of his coverage of 2119 may be found here.
An attorney for Hunter Biden said government prosecutors could not be taken at their word after he said they misrepresented sawdust as cocaine.
In a 22-page motion to compel discovery in the gun case against Biden, lawyer Abbe Lowell said the prosecution had not fulfilled its burden to turn over documents.
"The prosecution's latest filing amplifies why Mr. Biden and the Court cannot take the prosecution's assertions concerning its discovery production or what that discovery reveals at face value," Lowell declared before calling photographic evidence into doubt.
"The prosecution is flat out wrong — both that Mr. Biden 'took' this photograph and in claiming that it depicts 'cocaine,'" Lowell added in Tuesday's filing. "Multiple sources have pointed out, and a review of discovery confirms, this is actually a photo of sawdust from an expert carpenter and it was sent to Mr. Biden, not vice versa."
According to the motion, the photograph had been provided by Biden's then-psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow.
"The message accompanying that photo was meant to convey that Mr. Biden, too, could overcome any addiction," the filing continued. "Mistaking sawdust for cocaine sounds more like a storyline from one of the 1980s Police Academy comedies than what should be expected in a high-profile prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice."
The Justice Department has also claimed that cocaine was found on Biden's gun holster in charging documents.
An informant who made derogatory claims about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter was recently arrested by the FBI after a grand jury charged him with false statements and obstruction.
Alexander Smirnov, who was identified as a confidential human source in the investigation, was arrested at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.
According to the indictment, Smirnov falsely claimed to FBI agents that executives at the Ukrainian industrial company Burisma told him they hired Hunter Biden to "protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems," at a time when Biden was vice president and bribed both of them for their efforts.
At the time, Biden had been instrumental in pressuring Ukraine to remove prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, which Republicans have claimed was to prevent an investigation of Burisma. But this has been repeatedly debunked; Biden was acting in line with U.S. policy, Shokin was not planning to investigate Burisma, and international observers had accused him of corruption.
Two rabbis sat down for dinner at Chabad Jewish Center in Pensacola, Fla.
The air on this July evening was warm and tranquil. A sense of peace filled the kitchen where the men shared their meal.
Suddenly, something crashed through the window, sending glass flying. The rabbis rushed over to investigate. Scrawled on the brick that lay on their floor: a swastika and the words “No Jews.”
Within days, local police arrested four white teenagers and collectively charged them with 18 felonies — not only in connection to the brick-throwing incident, but also for bigoted attacks on two area synagogues, a mosque and a Masonic lodge.
The group’s reputed ringleader, 17-year-old Waylon Fowler, initially denied responsibility. But he later admitted to an Escambia County sheriff’s deputy that he threw the brick. Fowler is also accused of throwing another brick — marked with swastikas, “SS” symbols and the words “Death to k----” — through the bathroom window at Temple Beth El.
That could have been the end of Fowler’s hate-filled story — the saga of a misguided boy and his friends who, when caught red-handed, vowed to right their ways.
Instead, the boys began taking an ever-darker path that, in their vision for America, includes a revolution leading to the collapse of the United States and a race war that drives Black people, Jews and LGBTQ+ people out of future whites-only homelands.
It’s a vision that has attracted young neo-Nazis across the country.
Raw Story spent four months investigating the 2119 Blood and Soil Crew, a nationwide network of teenage Nazis. The investigation revealed that Fowler now ranks among the leaders of the network.
In recent months, 2119 members have waged a campaign of targeted terror aimed at Jews, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people and leftists. Their targets include Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Texas and California. In mid-November, 2119’s official Telegram channel suggested the group had expanded to 21 states.
The 2119 gang’s rise as a clandestine network of teenagers who promote and carry out acts of antisemitic and racist violence hasn’t been organic. The group has undertaken a concerted marketing strategy of recruiting children by appealing to their interests, such as online gaming and skateboarding.
Nazi youth associated with 2119 are now under investigation by the FBI, Raw Story has confirmed. The FBI is also actively assisting local police departments as law enforcement pursues crimes committed in the group’s name.
But this legal danger has only emboldened the Nazi teens. They’ve indicated even bigger plans for sowing hate and fear across the country. And they’re recruiting more and more disaffected children to their cause.
The group’s activity comes at a moment when social tension throughout America builds by the day.
Local crime spree, national emergence
Fowler’s neo-Nazi youth group first emerged in 2022 as an under-18 boys auxiliary to the burgeoning “active club” movement — a loose collection of white supremacists united by their interest in fight training, mixed martial arts and white nationalist activism.
After renaming itself Revolutionary White Brotherhood — some bricks that shattered Pensacola windows featured the initials “R.W.B” — the group resurfaced after the arrests of Fowler and his associates as “2119.”
The number is an alphanumeric code. Two represents “B” for “blood,” 1 represents “A” for “and,” and 19 represents “S” for “soil. “Blood and soil” is a slogan dating back to Nazi Germany that invokes a racial claim on land.
Using a newly formed channel on encrypted social media app Telegram, 2119 members gleefully celebrated Fowler’s deeds by circulating an image of the brick used in the Chabad Jewish Center attack. They fashioned Fowler a martyr, circulating a stylized image of him with boyish looks and tousled hair and peppered their communications with the hashtag #FreeWaylon.
The brick quickly became a symbol of action central to the group’s identity. Members in the various Telegram chats associated with 2119 often used the verb “bricking” and referred to themselves as “brickstas.”
A national leadership cadre that had been coalescing since 2022 had now shifted into high gear. Members shared unsettling characteristics: all white boys or young men in their mid- to late-teens who embraced extreme violence against Black people and members of other marginalized groups. They delighted in a catchphrase that encapsulates an extreme aspect of a segment of the hyperviolent, racist internet culture: — “total n— death.”
Other teenage neo-Nazis that gravitated to the 2119 banner steeped themselves in virulent hate and a paramilitary aesthetic that draws as much from the Irish Republican Army and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as the Third Reich.
A still from an October 2023 propaganda video displays 2119's paramilitary aesthetic. Source: Telegram
The exact size of 2119’s membership is unknown. But a source knowledgeable with the group’s internal dynamics said it numbers in the hundreds. While that figure could not be independently verified, Raw Story has confirmed at least 20 self-identified 2119 members that participate in group activities. They live throughout the country, from California to Texas to New Hampshire.
The white power ethos embraced by members of 2119 draws from a loose collective of extreme Telegram accounts known as Terrorgram. Together, they promote acts of domestic terror and destruction that range from mass murder to attacks on the power grid.
A steady diet of gore videos and images — a photo of nude, Black female body missing her head stands out for its depravity — and instruction manuals for industrial sabotage swirl amid unyielding racist discourse.
But while spectacular and devastating, those modes of violence — by the 2119 members’ own admission — rarely allow the perpetrators to stay on the offensive and effectively network with one another.
The 2119 teenage neo-Nazis have instead embraced what’s for them a more scalable and sustainable — although no less disquieting — model of racist criminal violence.
Considered in isolation, the attacks across several states might be classified as acts of youthful vandalism and criminal mischief. Juvenile perpetrators who police catch might expect lenient punishments — ones that could be expunged as they reached adulthood.
But by 2119’s acknowledgement, these acts are deliberately designed to terrorize Jews and Black people. They offer 2119 members high propaganda value with relatively low risk to themselves.
These attacks also provide 2119 a model for a continuous, insidious feedback loop of documenting crimes, incorporating footage into propaganda videos and recruiting new members. Newly minted 2119 adherents, largely from rural and suburban communities, franchise the brand by committing new crimes in the group’s name. The process repeats and metastasizes.
A post on 2119's Telegram channel in October 2023 documents the network's propaganda efforts in three different states. Source: Telegram
Internal communications reviewed by Raw Story indicate that group members believe their status as children gives them a critical advantage — the impunity to commit acts of targeted terror against innocent people, while laying the groundwork for a future that they hope will allow them to commit murder on a grand scale.
When asked why he wasn’t already killing Black people, one former 2119 member responded, “When the system collapses, that’s the plan.”
Rapid radicalization
The 2119 leaders’ ambitions are chilling and plain in their voluminous online posts.
Their actions preceding prior run-ins with law enforcement speak even more loudly.
Aiden Cuevas, one of 2119’s most enthusiastic promoters, was charged as a juvenile in Alabama with terroristic threatening. He exhorted his peers to assault Black people “to save the white race.”
Aaron Alligood, a longtime member from Georgia, said that he wants “total collapse to happen” and has spoken of this desire to “stick a pistol” in a Black person’s nose, using a racial slur instead of “Black.”
Noah Houran, a 17-year-old from North Carolina described as “a 2119 OG,” distributed the IRA’s guerilla warfare handbook and a sniper training manual on his Telegram channel and expressed approval in response to a news story about a house that was booby-trapped with explosives in anticipation of a police raid.
Mathew David Bair, a 34-year–old Marine Corps veteran who joined 2119 last year, has unapologetically advocated for assassinating judges.
Members of 2119 likewise glorify mass shooters as “saints,” said Emily Kaufman, the associate director for investigative research at the ADL Center on Extremism, an anti-hate organization.
Kaufman noted that 2119 members also display the influences of the most extreme violent faction of the white power movement — what experts call “accelerationism” — “geared towards recruiting youth.”
Accelerationism is a tendency within the white power movement that seeks to hasten the collapse of American society for the purpose of creating conditions favorable to the rise of white ethno-states. Accelerationists reject political methods for achieving the movement’s objectives.
One 2119 member — Alligood — directly endorsed accelerationism on Telegram in December 2022: “I want total collapse to happen.”
Racist and antisemitic intimidation
When the authorities released Fowler on bond around Sept. 1, Georgia-based Aaron Alligood hailed his freedom as a signal that 2119 was on solid ground.
“Good news, Waylon is out on bail,” Alligood wrote in a Telegram chat with an extensive audience of racist skinheads from as far away as Southern California and the Balkans. “And the feds don’t got a case on him.”
Fowler, the reputed 2119 ringleader, awaits trial later this year in Pensacola, having pleaded not guilty to all charges. His freedom appears emboldening.
Since September, 2119 members have allegedly committed at least three additional hate crimes, twicetagging buildings in Laconia, N.H. with antisemitic graffiti and defacing a Martin Luther King Jr. monument in Concord, N.C.
Raw Story has independently confirmed vandalism incidents in at least four different states during the past 12 months that incorporated 2119’s various monikers.
The group makes scant effort to conceal its criminal intent. An “action report” it published online baldly states: “Members/associates of the crew are known to have a militant/violent reputation, and embrace confrontation with political/racial enemies.”
Impatience with standard-issue MAGA activism
When voters elected Donald Trump president in 2016, most of 2119’s members were elementary schoolers.
But they came of age during a time when Trump, as a candidate and president, demonized Muslims, attacked transgender Americans and generally shattered democratic norms.
They watched many Republicans cheer the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and jeer subsequent congressional inquiries and criminal trials. And they have seen multitudes of conservatives, from community agitators to federal lawmakers, fully commit to culture-war attacks on LGBTQ+ people, Black history and even library books.
Raised on internet violence, racism and homophobia, the children who gravitated to 2119 helped build their own, unique communion of hate. They could be as extreme and unmoored as they pleased. They operated free from adult-led, optics-conscious white power groups such as Patriot Front or extreme MAGA movements organized around the cult of Trump.
Patriot Front, for one, “failed to make any change in a matter of 6 years,” Alligood complained on Telegram in December. He dismissed Patriot Front’s activism as indistinguishable from MAGA, adding that he encountered the group’s members at a Trump rally — and he was not impressed.
Now, in 2024, Trump is once again all but guaranteed to become the Republican presidential nominee.
But for 2119 members, it’s not enough to be MAGA. It’s not enough to just support Trump.
The 2119 children aspire to something beyond Trump.
For them, it’s about “activism” that spreads fear, if not outright violence.
National 2119 leadership on FBI's radar
Two 2119 devotees in particular have made direct action their calling card of intimidation.
Eight days before his 16th birthday, in November 2022, the FBI summoned Noah Houran at his high school on the North Carolina coastline.
The agents asked Noah about a video he posted that he claimed showed him burning an LGBTQ+ pride flag. They quizzed him about an online statement he made about plans to attend an unspecified rally.
The agents wanted to know if Noah’s online statements were merely his fantasies, or if he really intended to carry out an act of violence.
Anti-LGBTQ+ violence was cresting at the time. Hysterical rhetoric among conservative politicians and right-wing media personalities braided into a mounting harassment campaign aimed at drag shows. The protests drew far-right groups, sometimes armed, ranging from the Proud Boys to avowed neo-Nazis.
The hostile political climate spilled over into fatal violence on Nov. 19, 2022, when a shooter gunned down five people at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colo. As an indicator of the legitimate concern about mass shootings targeting the LGBTQ+ community, the Club Q shooting took place only three days after the date Noah Houran reported to Aaron Alligood that he had been questioned by the FBI.
Noah Houran was a hiking enthusiast whose interest in nature extended to eco-terrorism. A Telegram channel Houran created in October 2023 served as a distribution hub for texts written by Ted Kaczynski, who died in prison last year while serving time for the murders of three people during a 17-year bombing campaign carried out from a cabin in rural Montana.
One of Houran’s posts displayed a photo of a shed built from salvaged materials that was captioned, “Here’s my Ted K cabin, built it about 2 years ago.”
A screengrab from Noah Houran's Telegram channel shows his interest in eco-terrorist Ted Kaczynski. Source: Telegram
Less than two months after Houran was questioned by the FBI, Aiden Cuevas announced on Telegram chat that he was in legal trouble, while reassuring his peers that “just in case they get my phone I took off everything affiliating with 2119.”
“I’m on probation for some bulls— charge of terroristic threat (by the FBI of course),” he said.
Cuevas, who in November said he was 18 years old, told his friends he would be serving a sentence at the Mt. Meig’s campus, an Alabama juvenile correctional facility outside of Montgomery.
Raw Story was unable to find any record of Cuevas’ case. It is likely sealed, as he would have been a juvenile at the time of the offense. But in January 2019, WBRC-TV 6 in Birmingham, Ala., reported that a juvenile in Madison County was charged with making a terrorist threat to Thompson High School in Alabaster, Ala..
Cuevas lived in Madison County, which surrounds Huntsville, more than 100 miles to the north.
An Instagram post, made in November 2023, appears to show Noah Houran dressed in camouflage and aiming a rifle. The firearm, with the exception of the scope, is blurred out. Responding to a commenter who said he was “afraid to show his gun,” Noah wrote that he would “rather not repeat 2022” — an allusion to his run-in with the FBI agents.
Raw Story confirmed Cuevas’ identity as a 2119 member who posted on Telegram under the screen name “Bozak” by matching biographical details such as his mother’s birthplace in the Chuvash Republic in Russia, and his father’s U.S. Army assignment in Japan.
'The fascist pipeline'
Mathew David Bair, a 34-year-old Marine Corps veteran from Pennsylvania, meanwhile, came out of the extreme end of the MAGA movement, having been active with the Proud Boys when they stormed the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. He appears to be one of the few members of 2119 older than 18 years old.
After Jan. 6, 2021, Bair increasingly gravitated to an array of far-right groups that embraced national socialism more explicitly than the Proud Boys.
“The fascist pipeline is very real, as you well know,” Bair said. “I was in a direct pipeline chapter.”
A well-publicized fistfight between Proud Boys and neo-Nazis in June 2023 appeared to hasten his transition. By November, he began heavily promoting 2119 on his Telegram channel.
In a phone call with Raw Story, Bair confirmed he is now a 2119 member.
The difference between the Proud Boys and younger groups such as 2119, Bair said, is that the Proud Boys tend to attract older men who join to fulfill a need for friendship. The younger members of 2119 are more ideologically committed and less concerned about concealing their racist beliefs, he said.
He said he admired the 2119 members for their brashness.
“When these young ones, when they’re talking to their peer groups — to take the step and proclaim your viewpoint, even talking surface level, they might not mention Hitler, but they’ll say, “Have you read Mein Kampf?”
Bair described Trump’s supporters as a natural constituency for Nazism, while condescendingly treating them as if they are clinging to outdated political norms.
“Regardless of your opinion on Trump,” he wrote on Telegram, “his MAGA following incorporates a large number of people who would be our guys if they could break the matrix.”
‘An untapped market full of white children'
In recent months, recruiting children to 2119’s hate-filled cause has become a top group priority.
For example, in August, Cuevas praised a Telegram channel called Robloxwaffen Division — a coupling of “Roblox,” a popular online game geared for youth, and “Waffen,” the combat branch of the Nazi Party’s Schutzstaffel, or SS.
Cuevas hailed the teenagers behind Robloxwaffen as “geniuses.”
“They are reaching an untapped market full of white children that could potentially change their worldview and get them into the movement just from some fun on Roblox,” he said.
In January, the creator of Robloxwaffen — a teenager known only by his Telegram nickname “Patrius” — posted a Roblox-generated scene that simulated the 1999 Columbine massacre with two avatars holding assault rifles while striking a pose between rows of bookshelves. While his age is unknown, “Patrius” has said he isn’t old enough to drive.
That hasn’t stopped the violent ideations of “Patrius” from becoming even more acute. Earlier this month he threatened to “bomb” a gathering at a skating rink to raise awareness for National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day — adding the obligatory disclaimer, “in Roblox.”
Aiden Cuevas posted a photo of himself in a Telegram chat in early 2023. Source: Telegram
Cuevas, for his part, counseled fellow neo-Nazi teenagers to immerse themselves in subcultures, such as skateboarding, where they can easily make friends.
“I myself choose to target younger whites, still in high school that are lonely and all they want is a tight group of friends to have fun with,” Cuevas wrote.
Cuevas reported that he met a girl who was skateboarding alone after his local skate park had closed, and “she thought the swastikas were cool and had never seen ‘Nazis’ before.”
He boasted that in the past three weeks he had met “4 young white men that have seen my flag and hung out with my friends while we [will] be casually racist and throw up Romans,” referring to Nazi salutes.
‘Death squad'
Since its inception in May 2022, under the moniker “American Columbian Movement,” the 2119 group has made propaganda videos a key recruiting tool — one they consider essential to their growth and the advancement of their long-term goals.
One shows 2119 members marching to an anti-abortion rally.
“Nat soc death squad,” the teenagers chant in a robotic drone, a reference to the “national socialism” of the Nazis. The children occasionally giggle during the bizarre video.
As recently as December 2023, Cuevas and two other young men dressed in skull masks and protested outside a drag show in Albertville, Ala. The event organizer reviewed Cuevas’ Telegrams posts boasting of his involvement in the protest, and confirmed that she saw the men there.
Another early outing for the members of what would become 2119 took place in 2022, when they attempted to disrupt a May Day cookout in Pensacola. The event was co-hosted at a local park by two far-left organizations, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Democratic Socialists of America.
“We were cleaning up,” Sarah Brummet, a Party for Socialism and Liberation organizer, recalled in an interview with Raw Story. “Some kids came tearing through the park. They were yelling something. We couldn’t really hear it.”
They only learned later from a video that the boys were yelling, “F— you, you f—ing socialist slimy little s—.” After the socialists left the park, the teenage Nazis left flyers reading, “Commies stay off our street.”
“It was like they were afraid to confront us, and they were making agitation for the Internet,” Brummet told Raw Story.
When the official 2119 Blood and Soil Crew Telegram channel launched in September 2022, the group began churning out content that positioned it as a digital-era Ku Klux Klan teen auxiliary.
An eight-second video clip posted on the channel in November 2022 included the caption: “Pensacola lads out on patrol searching for Antifas! We protect our community!”
In another evocation of the Klan, a 2119-connected X account published a video showing a flier affixed to a front porch support post reading, “Attention! You have been visited by the 2119 Crew. We are pro-white, pro-Christian national socialists; anti-communist, anti-woke, anti-Zionist.”
Aaron Alligood of Georgia has indicated in online chats that he’s been involved with 2119 since at least October 2022. He also immersed himself in the Terrorgram community, as 2119’s on-the-ground activities became more aggressive.
Alligood became close with both co-administrators of the “P.A.W.G. Ops” channel, an acronym for Primal Aryan Warlord Gang.
A cross-country runner whose father was the head football coach at Berrien High School in Georgia until last year, Alligood became particularly close with Skyler Philippi, one of the channel’s co-administrators.
Philippi called Alligood a “little brother.” Raw Story was unable to determine Alligood’s age, but a runner profile indicates that he is currently a sophomore in high school.
“Like I said, keep your spirits high and play s— smart,” Philippi counseled Alligood. “We will prevail. Be the little man to a big man Hitler would be proud of. Go start reading Mein Kampf tonight.”
Like other Terrorgram channels, the Primal Aryan Warlord Gang celebrated racially-motivated mass murder, valorizing the shooters as “saints,” and promoted attacks on the energy grid. When anti-fascist researchers attributed a fatal shooting in Slovakia to a member of the Terrorgram community, participants in the chat congratulated themselves.
An administrator of the Primal Aryan Warlord Gang channel celebrate a mass shooting in Slovakia. Aaron Alligood, a 2119 member, was a frequent contributor to the chat. Source: Telegram
Terrorgram has been publicly credited for spawning one mass shooter, and here was one of the administrators of a channel where Alligood was a frequent commenter claiming victory.
Alligood’s involvement with the channel came to an abrupt end in January 2023, when one of the channel’s co-administrators was arrested at his home in Rustburg, Va. for conspiring with two other white supremacists to commit a bank robbery.
Shortly after the arrest, the FBI seized Aaron Alligood’s cell phone and laptop, he recounted on a Telegram chat with fellow white supremacists several months later. Although there is no public record of the seizure, Alligood confirmed the incident in a recent interview with Raw Story.
Meanwhile, the 2119 members’ online extremism was also manifesting in aggressive behavior on the ground.
In March 2023, a handful of 2119 members showed up to counter-protest a celebration of International Women’s Day hosted by the PSL in Pensacola. There’s no indication that Alligood, who lived in Georgia, was there.
Brummet described the incident as “a marked escalation.”
“They came up and they started standing close over our members and they were yelling racial slurs,” Brummet recalled. “We were speaking to a lot of things we identify as major social problems and the role of the existing capitalist system in that. They were yelling, ‘F the Jews.’”
2119 members disrupt an International Women's Day celebration in Pensacola, Fla. in March 2023.
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‘Sounds like you fear the brick'
Following the arrests of Waylon Fowler and his co-defendants in Pensacola, Fla. for their antisemitic hate spree in late July, a gusher of local news coverage followed.
The brick inscribed with a swastika instantly became the group’s singular totem of power — an implied threat.
It also became a liability.
Alligood turned to a white power activist named David William Fair, who runs a separate white power group that is friendly with 2119, for advice. He confided that his girlfriend was concerned about his involvement in extremist activity.
Fair advised caution.
“I don’t want you in jail just as much as she don’t,” Fair said on Telegram. “Brick through the finance building is fun and all. But not worth your youth.”
Cuevas interrupted the heart-to-heart conversation between Fair and Alligood by posting a cutout of the brick used to vandalize the Chabad Jewish Center from the photo published in the Pensacola News Journal.
“Sounds like you fear the brick,” he quipped.
“I’m angry at the brick bc it got good boys put behind bars,” Fair replied.
“It rooted out the weak,” Cuevas shot back. “The others are out and will get thru it ez.”
Aiden Cuevas, posting under the screen name "Bozak bzk" valorizes an antisemitic attack by fellow 2119 member Waylon Fowler in an October 2023 Telegram message. Source: Telegram
Cuevas was likely referring to the Ferry brothers, Kessler and Nicholas. Kessler Ferry, Fowler’s 18-year-old co-defendant, admitted to a Pensacola police detective that he drove Fowler to Chabad Jewish Center.
Randall Etheridge, who is representing both Ferry brothers, told Raw Story his clients are fully cooperating with law enforcement, and that they were “ordered” to drive the Fowler brothers to the crime scenes.
Fowler and his younger brother have pleaded not guilty to all charges. His grandparents, with whom the boys live, referred Raw Story’s questions to their attorney, who declined to comment.
When another member chat asked about 2119, David Fair felt compelled to vouch for the members while also attempting to shield them from the consequences of the alleged crimes in Pensacola.
In an audio recording obtained by Raw Story, Fair identified “Bozak,” who is Cuevas, and “AllenWrench,” who is Alligood, along with “Constantine,” who remains unidentified, as “guys inside” 2119.
Fair opined that 2119’s critics were “insecure,” adding a homophobic slur. They might be “hooligans” who spray-painted swastikas, he said. But so what?
In the recording, Fair acknowledged the alleged crimes in Pensacola, but attempted to insulate the national 2119 leadership from them.
“You know, that was from a local crew of boys that did something objectively stupid, and it shouldn’t have happened,” Fair said. “But that’s not really something on the crew.”
David Fair, the leader of Southern Sons Active Club, discusses 2119 on a Telegram chat for racist skinheads in late 2023.
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Multiple comments on Telegram show that “Constantine,” Alligood and Noah Houran were involved in assessing prospective members to determine if they were suitable material for 2119.
Chatting online with other extremists in early December, Alligood claimed to be on “house arrest.”
Reached by Raw Story for this story, Alligood initially claimed he quit 2119 after he was partially doxed by anonymous antifascist researchers. The researchers were able to identify Alligood because his mother posted a photo of him on her Facebook page posing with a deer he had killed, and Alligood posted the exact same photo on the official Blood and Soil Crew channel.
A Facbook post by a family member shows Aaron Alligood posing with a buck (left); the same photo, with Alligood's face redacted, identifies him with the "Georgia Chapter" on the Blood and Soil Crew Telegram channel. Sources: Facebook, Telegram
But when Raw Story offered Alligood evidence that he had continued to promote 2119 online and helped members network, he walked back his statement by claiming instead that he never did any “IRL,” or in-real-life, activities after he was doxed.
Alligood admitted to Raw Story that “house arrest” didn’t mean he was legally confined to his house, but rather, it was a way of saying that he had been grounded by his parents.
Commenting on Telegram in early December, Alligood said he was “looking forward to f---ing leaving this house so I can actually meet you n------.
“Oh yeah, it’s gonna be on,” he added. “Thinking about doing a country tour with 2119.”
When contacted by Raw Story in late January for this story, Alligood said he had decided to leave 2119 a couple days earlier.
At one point, Alligood said he would be willing to check in with Raw Story once a month to provide assurances that he continues to avoid any associations with other neo-Nazis.
“I promise you I’ll walk away,” he said. “I’m done with that.”
Antisemitic hate arrives in New Hampshire
The antisemitic vandalism spree in Pensacola had provided 2119 with a degree of notoriety, at least in Florida.
But 2119 members faced a question: How could they extend their brand across the country?
On the weekend of Rosh Hashanah 2023, six weeks after Waylon Fowler and his co-defendants were arrested in Florida, a man ambling down a central New Hampshire walking path discovered antisemitic graffiti on the abandoned Laconia State School building.
The graffiti included the “2-1-1-9” tag, a swastika and a crossed-out Jewish star.
It also said the word “f—,” followed by the name of a specific Jewish person in Laconia whose identity Raw Story has agreed to withhold. Following the person’s name: an antisemitic slur and the words “go to hell.”
Local news reports noted that a year earlier, graffiti depicting Nazi symbols and antisemitic messages had been found at the Laconia Public Library and a local park. A couple months later, police found antisemitic graffiti at the state school property.
The group has had a presence in New England since at least October 2022, when the original 2119 channel displayed a banner described as “a new flag for our folk in New England!”
City Manager Kirk Beattie told the Laconia Daily Sun that the recent graffiti in September 2023 marked an escalation by “calling out a member of the Laconia Jewish community.”
The official 2119 Telegram channel posted a video two weeks later that interspersed images of the graffiti at the Laconia State School and the earlier incident at the public library with images of members stepping on a Black Lives Matter flag and carrying an ammunition box. The video ended with the URL for the Telegram channel and the invitation to “join today.”
Law enforcement struggles
Laconia police have taken note that the graffiti at the state school included 2119’s Telegram address spray-painted onto a nearby water tower. That Telegram channel then displayed a video publicizing the crime.
Detective Eric Benoit, who was assigned to the case, reported that he could not determine who submitted the footage to 2119’s Telegram channel.
Telegram is designed in a way that makes it difficult for law enforcement to investigate user communications. For that reason, Benoit said, Laconia police aren’t putting legal pressure on Telegram to release the information.
Benoit reported that the investigation had so far uncovered no suspects, and he requested that efforts “be suspended pending new information or suspect leads.”
The following month, in October 2023, vandals spray-painted the “2-1-1-9” tag on a Martin Luther King Jr. monument in Concord, N.C. Two days after the vandalism was discovered, the official 2119 Telegram channel posted a link to a local news story, accompanied by the comment, “Hitting the news once again.”
Sgt. Gary Mearite, supervisor of the Concord Police Department’s criminal investigation division, told Raw Story that investigators have struggled to develop leads.
Currently, Mearite said, the Concord police are reviewing Telegram channels that have reposted images of the vandalism “and see if we can work our way back.”
“We’re still investigating,” he said. “It takes a long time.”
Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC), whose district includes Concord, N.C., expressed fury and frustration at the situation. She condemned the vandalism as an act that “shows an appalling absence of basic decency or empathy.”
“I don’t know if it’s social media raising the mirror closer to our faces, the lingering isolation from the pandemic, or something more sinister, but the rise in hatred in this country is apparent,” the congresswoman told Raw Story. “Hate is contagious. Those who catch the illness can only expel it onto others. They seek nothing more than to divide us and then spread their darkness in the void. They want us to hate each other like they hate us. We cannot give in, no matter how we’re provoked.”
In November, 2119 struck again in New England, spray-painting a swastika and the “2-1-1-9” tag on the Belknap County Democratic Party headquarters in downtown Laconia. The perpetrator glued fliers to the windows. One featured a swastika with the slogan, “Save the planet and your race,” while the other featured a quote by American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell.
On the same day as the attack on the Democratic Party headquarters, someone placed a bogus order to deliver pizzas to the home of the Jewish community member who was named in the earlier graffiti incident at the state school building.
Elected officials in New Hampshire have also condemned 2119’s attacks.
“The people who did this are domestic terrorists,” Mayor Andrew Hosmer toldTheLaconia Daily Sun. “They want to strike fear in you — not just our Jewish brothers and sisters, but anyone that disagrees with them.”
Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) posted on X: “This antisemitic vandalism is part of a surge in hateful attacks on the Jewish community across the country. There is simply no place for bigotry and hate in our society, and we must speak with one voice to condemn it.”
Shortly after the antisemitic harassment in Laconia, 2119 announced that Telegram had deleted its channel.
This hardly deterred them. They simply created a new Telegram channel, and more notably, the 2119 members turned to the broader neo-Nazi community for help promoting the group’s it so they could continue their propaganda push.
“I think the feds ordered our account deleted, with the recent incident in Laconia,” Alligood wrote. “Shout-outs of the channel would be appreciated.”
One member of the chat, unfamiliar with the incident, asked what happened in Laconia.
“Constantine,” the 2119 leader, replied: “2119 Member may or may not allegedly spray-painted the Democrat HQ and left a s— ton of fliers.”
He quickly added: “2119 takes no responsibility for the action taken.”
Feds catching up with 2119?
Tucked into the crevices of their bluster, profanity and grotesque racism, some of the 2119 members have quietly been expressing concern that law enforcement might be catching up to them.
“I’m surprised the feds haven’t been on 2119s ass since the whole Pensacola fiasco,” Alligood remarked to Houran on Telegram in mid-September.
“I’m sure they are,” Houran replied. “We just don’t know it yet.”
Detective Joseph Taschetta told Raw Story that the FBI has assisted the Pensacola Police Department in its investigation of the antisemitic vandalism spree. Likewise, Sgt. Mearite at the Concord Police Department said one of his vice officers contacted an FBI task force officer to obtain information about the 2119 group. And multiple outlets have reported that the FBI is assisting the investigation by the Laconia Police Department.
The FBI declined to confirm or deny that the agency is investigating 2119.
“We would also point out that the FBI investigates individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and other criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security,” a spokesperson for the FBI National Press Office told Raw Story. “Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on criminal activity. We are committed to upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation solely on First Amendment protected activity.”
Bair, for one, is well acquainted with law enforcement.
In 2018, he unsuccessfully sued the city of York, Pa., and its police department for civil rights violations because an officer allegedly assaulted him during an arrest for disorderly conduct.
During his deposition, Bair told the opposing counsel that he had received multiple concussions while playing soccer in high school and while on combat deployment with the Marine Corps in the Middle East — all of which went untreated. He said he was court-martialed out of the Marine Corps for larceny and sale of classified materials during a deployment to Djibouti, and served one year in the Navy brig in Chesapeake, Va.
Following his military service, Bair said he checked himself into a sober living house in Colorado, and has been in and out of prison for domestic violence and burglary.
Bair, who specialized in demolition in the Marine Corps, told Raw Story that he likes Terrorgram for the “aesthetics.”
“It’s like what the Proud Boys did,” he said. “Nobody promotes the acts themselves, but here’s the information. Read it your goddamn self.”
A still from a video published by 2119 member Mathew Bair shows a flier on a chain-link fence that reads "Shoot your local judge." Source: Telegram
Asked about a video he posted showing a flier with the words “Shoot your local judge” that includes a URL to the 2119 Telegram channel, Bair suggested that the “judge” referenced on the flier was a kind of handgun — a Taurus Judge.
He responded with equanimity when asked whether he thought someone might interpret the sign as an endorsement for shooting a judge in a court of law.
“That’s all right,” Bair said.
Bair then volunteered that he lives close to where an anti-feminist extremist went to a federal judge’s home in New Jersey during 2020 and fatally shot her son.
A future for 2119?
In response to Raw Story’s reporting, some 2119 members have gone dark on Telegram.
Others, such as Bair, remain defiant. The recent exposure, which also includes a new reference page by the Anti-Defamation League, might cause 2119 to rebrand once again, or potentially splinter.
Bair told Raw Story he expects 2119 will be leading large Nazi marches ahead of the 2024 election.
That seems unlikely given the group’s philosophy of spreading hate while avoiding public scrutiny. And if evidence were needed that his words should be treated with skepticism, Bair mentioned his interview with Raw Story on his Telegram channel, writing, “There’s a lesson about misinformation and misdirection here.”
But now that 2119 is a known entity, history suggests the individual members could put on new costumes to evade scrutiny from law enforcement, antifascist researchers, the media and communities at large.
So don’t look for the young white boys and men steeped in terror doctrines to march under a banner reading “2-1-1-9.” Next time 2119 members show up on the streets of American cities and towns, it’s plausible they’ll have migrated to completely new neo-Nazi groups. And regardless of what mantle they claim, they’ll likely downplay their group identity while merging with other fledgling groups in a bid to project maximum force.
The 2119 members, however, appear unyielding as they continue to propagate hate, lionize those who attack the power grid and laud racially-motivated mass shooters.
* * *
About this investigation: This is the first in a two-part series about youth neo-Nazi organization 2119. The second part, published here, examines how parents navigate the challenges posed by online youth radicalization. A first-person account about the threats and harassment reporter Jordan Green has received as a result of his coverage of 2119 may be found here.
This project draws upon numerous interviews, primary sources and accounts of 2119’s members and activities, along with information uncovered by Appalachia Research Club, an anonymous antifascist research collective.
I began reporting on 2119 in an effort to expose its actions. As I investigated the group’s leadership and activities, and publication of a two-part project neared, neo-Nazi threats against me escalated. Online harassment led to phone calls and doxxing, which devolved into death threats and, most recently, visits to my home.
My ordeal began in November, when 2119 called me out by name in profane Telegram posts laden with racism, antisemitism and homophobia.
Soon, I began receiving threatening phone calls and voicemails. Someone took pictures of me with a telephoto lens, private investigator-style, and posted them online. A pizza delivery showed up at my doorstep, unrequested, courtesy of 2119. And earlier this month, matters culminated with six avowed white supremacists standing in front of my house, holding burning traffic flares, their arms up in Nazi salutes. One held a sign warning me of “consequences.”
Harassment and even death threats are, unfortunately, an occupational hazard for journalists on this beat. The leader of the neo-Nazi terror group, Atomwaffen, unhappy about being the subject of a ProPublica story, conspired with others to carry out a swatting attack — a tactic in which the perpetrators place bogus calls for the purpose of eliciting a law enforcement response to the victim’s residence — on journalist A.C. Thompson.
Other examples abound: Journalist James LaPorta, for one, learned his name was on a hit list in the possession of a neo-Nazi accused of plotting race war. In another case, a journalist received a death threat from the leader of a Nazi group called Feuerkrieg Division to try to discourage them from reporting on his group.
I first ran across 2119, also known as Blood and Soil Crew, while combing through Telegram chats in December 2022. They’ve been firmly on my radar since the spring of 2023, when I began to tally up racist and antisemitic incidents and attacks made in 2119’s name. Starting in late October 2023, my editor let me spend significant time investigating what — and who — 2119 truly is.
Almost as soon as they became aware of my reporting, the 2119 members responded with hostility and threats in a naked attempt to stop me from reporting on what had become a multi-state campaign of racist, antisemitic and homophobic violence.
Four days before Thanksgiving, an anonymous Telegram channel published my professional headshot, home address and phone number.
This wasn’t the first time such a thing has happened during my many years covering neo-Nazis, and other extremists. Online posts that include my personal information have been a semi-regular occurrence for the past four years. What was notable this time is that 2119 members immediately amplified this doxxing, highlighting it to like-minded extremists on their Telegram channel.
The accompanying note included a complaint from 2119 that “the bastard above” — me — had “been found out to be harassing our boys.”
Over the next two months, their tactics would become ever more extreme — and strange.
‘You're being watched'
Just before New Year’s Eve, I received a phone call from a restricted number at dinner time. Someone identifying himself as “Bozak” warned me that I was “being watched by international bricksters.”
I already knew by that time that “Bozak” was 2119 member Aiden Cuevas, but the caller hung up before I had an opportunity to confront him.
I understood this “bricksters” term as a reference to an antisemitic attack last summer in Pensacola, Fla., where another 2119 member, Waylon Fowler, threw a brick through the window of a Jewish center while two rabbis sat inside having dinner.
Written on the brick: a swastika and the words “No Jews.”
A couple minutes after the “Bozak” phone call, the same person made a transparent attempt at misdirection by calling back and leaving a voicemail. He claimed to be Thomas Rousseau, leader of the white power group Patriot Front, and again warned: “I’m letting you know that we have people on standby. You’re being watched. Quit messing with us.”
In early January, early on a Sunday afternoon, an unidentified 2119 member placed an order for a pizza delivery at my house. It’s clear a 2119 associate was parked down the street with a camera and a telephoto lens because, the following day, a 2119 member posted a photo on Telegram that shows me standing in my doorway.
The experience was unsettling, but their efforts at intimidation only confirmed in my mind that we had a story that was worth telling. Just as any investigative journalist would do in the course of reporting a story, I called the subjects to offer them an opportunity to be interviewed and to ask them questions.
I began calling 2119 members — and their parents. The response was an odd mixture of silence, defiance, confessions and pleas for understanding.
'We'll keep shooting'
But one particular interview — with Mathew Bair, a Marine Corps veteran who, at 34, is roughly twice the age of most of his fellow 2119 members — stood apart.
Bair readily confirmed much of my reporting about 2119’s activities and goals. And unlike some of his younger cohorts, he was unapologetic, even appearing to take pleasure in confirming some of the most unsavory aspects of 2119’s racist and antisemitic intentions.
As we came to the end of the interview, I dropped what I expected to be one of the most difficult questions.
I asked Bair about a video he had posted showing a flier with the words “Shoot your local judge” that includes a URL to the 2119 Telegram channel.
Bair danced around the question. He initially attempted to deflect by suggesting that the reference was to a specific firearm model — a Taurus Judge.
Regardless, he told me he wasn’t concerned about how a potential victim might interpret the message.
He might have left it at that — an ambiguous, vaguely worded threat shrouded in plausible deniability.
But instead he veered back to the more direct interpretation, mentioning that he is “close” to where an anti-feminist extremist went to a federal judge’s home New Jersey, in 2020, and fatally shot her son.
Then, he casually tossed out the phrase “just like you live in the Raleigh/Durham area, right?”
As it so happens, I don’t live in that area. But the implication was clear: I could be a target, too.
A couple of days later, on Jan. 21, Bair forwarded a message from a private Telegram channel complaining about my reporting.
“Jordan Green, you have a healthy respect for a Taurus Judge now, yes?” the message concluded. “Keep phishing for minors and we’ll keep shooting our local Judge.”
A Telegram post forwarded by Mathew Bair on Jan. 21, 2024 contains an implied threat.
One might be tempted to chalk this up as nothing more than online bluster. But gun violence directed at journalists is very real. This became apparent when shots were fired into the home of an online news publisher in Tennessee last April.
Concurrent with Bair’s warning, an anonymous Telegram account patronized by avowed extremists doxxed me again — this time with the photo of me standing in my doorway when 2119 sent a pizza to my home.
A couple weeks later, the account posted more personal information about me, accompanied by a note: “It’s not over, yet. More to come soon.”
They weren’t lying.
Around 5 p.m. on Feb. 10, six Nazis approached my house on a quiet, residential street in Greensboro, N.C. They held burning traffic flares as they raised their arms in Nazi salutes.
Photos show that at least three of the men are subjects of my reporting on extremism.
Among them: Sean Kauffmann, leader of the Tennessee Active Club, stood in the middle holding a sign warning about a “consequence” for exercising freedom of the press. Flanking Kauffmann were David William Fair, leader of the Southern Sons Active Club, and Jarrett William Smith.
The three men have a history of glorifying and pursuing violence.
Kauffmann and Smith met through Terrorgram, a loose collective of Telegram channels that extol mass shooters, while promoting graphic violence and wildly flagrant racism, in 2019.
Smith, then a soldier in the Army, advised Kauffmann on how to hide firearms from law enforcement when Kauffmann was worried that the police would take them due to a custody dispute with an ex-partner.
According to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, sheriff’s deputies responding to a domestic violence incident in 2021 encountered Kauffmann waving around an assault rifle and later “received information that Kauffmann stated he was going to get into a shootout with police.”
Smith was arrested and charged with distributing information related to explosives and weapons of mass destruction in 2019, a couple months after his exchange with Kauffmann on Telegram. The government alleged that Smith shared information with others on Facebook about how to make improvised explosive devices and suggested to an FBI informant that then-Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) would make a suitable assassination target.
During his prosecution — for which he ultimately pleaded guilty and served 14 months in prison — federal prosecutors presented evidence that Smith stated in a text message that it was on “my bucket list to KO an antifa member” and advised other Telegram users on how to get away with committing arson against a Michigan podcaster.
The channel that helped organize the flash rally in front of my home followed with an eerie sequel. The subsequent post showed some of the protesters posing with a historical marker commemorating the Greensboro Massacre. The sign marks the site where a coalition of neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members fatally shot five civil rights and labor activists near a public housing community in 1979.
The caption in the Telegram post emphasizes the point that the shooters were acquitted during state and federal criminal trials by arguing that they acted in self-defense.
The message to me isn’t subtle.
Jordan Green is a Raw Story investigative reporter who covers domestic extremism.
U.S Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) is being criticized for wrongly identifying the suspect in last week's Super Bowl Parade shooting in Kansas City, Missouri, and also claiming he is an "illegal Alien." That mass shooting left one person dead and 22 others, including 11 children, injured.
Congressman Burchett made national headlines last year after the Covenant Elementary School mass shooting in Nashville, when he told reporters while standing in front of Congress, "we're not going to fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals." Three nine-year old students and three staff members were killed by a shooter with two AR-15 style assault rifles and a handgun. He instead called for a Christian "revival."
On Thursday, Rep. Burchett posted to X the photo of a man, seated, with his arms behind his back and flanked by law enforcement officers.
"One of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade shooters has been identified as an illegal Alien," Burchett falsely claimed on his social media post (screenshot below). The post has received 1.4 million views.
That man is not the shooter, not a suspect, nor an undocumented immigrant, according to reports.
On Thursday CNN reported three people, including two juveniles, had been taken into custody. The adult was not arrested and was released.
"Two juveniles were charged with crimes connected to the mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl rally, authorities said Friday, as the city tries to recover in the aftermath of the violence," the Associated Press later reported. "A mother and popular disc jockey died in the burst of gunfire Wednesday as the parade and rally were concluding."
The man Rep. Burchett, and others, falsely claimed on social media was one of the shooters has been identified.
"The man in the photos is Denton Loudermill. He's an Olathe native, a father of three daughters, and a proud Chiefs fan. He's not a mass shooter," ABC affiliate KMBC reports, noting the man wants to clear his name. "Attorney and justice advocate LaRonna Lassiter Saunders is working on his behalf."
“Mr. Denton has received death threats over a lie, over misinformation,” Saunders said. "He didn't do anything wrong. He did not commit a crime. So please, run, tell that. Get the truth out there. Help us clear his name. Help us save his life."
As of the time of publication Rep. Burchett's post has not been taken down, nor has he made an apology.
Former federal and state prosecutor Ron Filipkowski, the editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch, wrote on social media: "I urge this man, who is an American who had nothing to do with the shooting, to sue the hell out of Rep. Tim Burchett."
Someone who says they ran away from the mass shooting at the Chiefs parade on Wednesday says they saw someone else running: a GOP governor who frequently touts his support for firearms.
Earlier on Wednesday, between eight and 10 people were shot near the Chiefs Super Bowl parade, and two armed suspects were then placed under arrest, according to Kansas City police, the New York Post and the Associated Press. Chaos erupted.
In that chaos, one man reported seeing Missouri governor Mike Parson running scared.
Patrick Quaife, identified on his social media as a University of Kansas alum, posted his observations after escaping the gunfire.
"I just ran away from a mass shooting at the Chiefs parade where I saw the Missouri governor (the gun lover below) running scared for his life next to me with an army of officers protecting him," Quaife wrote, including a photo of the governor supporting "responsible, law-abiding gun owners."
"I am so sick of these NRA funded politicians," Quaife added along with a support for gun control.
"Governor & First Lady Parson were in attendance when shots were fired near Union Station in KC. They are safe and secure. State law enforcement personnel are assisting local authorities in response efforts. As we wait to learn more, our hearts go out to the victims... Governor & First Lady Parson want to thank the Missouri Highway Patrol, KCPD, and their security officers for their quick and professional actions."
An Instagram post by Noah Houran from November 2023 likely alludes to his interview with the FBI a year earlier. Instagram
A friend posted a photo on Telegram that shows Aiden Cuevas riding in the back of a pickup truck. Telegram
A Telegram post by Mathew Bair shows his 4-year-old son posing next to graffiti swastika. Telegram
A still from an October 2023 propaganda 
A post on 2119's Telegram channel in October 2023 documents the network's propaganda efforts in three different states. Source: Telegram
A screengrab from Noah Houran's Telegram channel shows his interest in eco-terrorist Ted Kaczynski. Source: Telegram
Aiden Cuevas posted a photo of himself in a Telegram chat in early 2023. Source: Telegram
An administrator of the Primal Aryan Warlord Gang channel celebrate a mass shooting in Slovakia. Aaron Alligood, a 2119 member, was a frequent contributor to the chat. Source: Telegram
Aiden Cuevas, posting under the screen name "Bozak bzk" valorizes an antisemitic attack by fellow 2119 member Waylon Fowler in an October 2023 Telegram message. Source: Telegram
A Facbook post by a family member shows Aaron Alligood posing with a buck (left); the same photo, with Alligood's face redacted, identifies him with the "Georgia Chapter" on the Blood and Soil Crew Telegram channel. Sources: Facebook, Telegram
A still from a video published by 2119 member Mathew Bair shows a flier on a chain-link fence that reads "Shoot your local judge." Source: Telegram
A Telegram post forwarded by Mathew Bair on Jan. 21, 2024 contains an implied threat.