By now, you may know Patriot Front as the group of anonymous neo-Nazis who pour out of the backs of moving trucks dressed as Blockbuster Video employees. Well, it turns out that pulling a turtleneck up over your face is not a guarantee of total anonymity, as several members of the Seattle chapter were exposed earlier this year by a helpful citizen who pretended to be one of them in order to get the dirt.
In January of 2022, anti-fascist site Unicorn Riot published a massive leak of Patriot Front’s private online chats, detailing the group’s members, recruitment strategy, operations, along with a few crimes here and there. That is all thanks to one David Capito, who pretended to be a white supremacist named “Vincent Washington,” infiltrated the group, and even became their videographer.
Now, outed members Paul Gancarz, Daniel Turetchi, Colton Brown, James Johnson, and Amelia Johnson are suing Capito on the grounds that his actions ruined their lives, got them fired from their jobs and hated by everyone they know.
In the case of Colton Brown, Patriot Front’s Network Director for Pacific Northwest, it also led directly to him and another member being arrested for vandalizing a gay pride mural, but for some reason, the lawsuit fails to mention that.
It does, however, note that Brown was fired from his electrician’s assistant job where he was making $50,000 a year, and became estranged from his father, who kicked him the hell out of his house, where he was living, leaving Brown with no job and no place to live.
We’d feel super badly for him were this not the direct result of him being a Nazi.
The lawsuit also details the other ways the fascists say they were hurt by being outed as fascists:
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“Plaintiff Paul Gancarz is a resident of Virginia. Before Defendant Capito’s unlawful and tortious actions as described in this complaint, Mr. Gancarz was a civil engineer, earning approximately $107,000 a year. He lost that job as result of Capito’s actions.”
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“Plaintiff Daniel Turetchi at this time is a resident of Pennsylvania. Before Defendant Capito’s unlawful and tortious actions, he was working as a real estate agent in Maryland earning in excess of $10,000 a year. As a result of Capito’s unlawful actions, Turetchi was discharged from the real estate brokerage where he was employed as a real estate agent and was unable to associate with any other brokerage, thus preventing him from continuing to pursue his real estate career.”
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“Plaintiff James Johnson at this time and at the time of Defendant Capito’s unlawful and tortious actions is and was a resident of Washington state. Before Capito’s unlawful and tortious actions, he was a union HVAC technician in Washington state earning approximately $80,000 a year. He lost approximately one-third of that income, and also benefits, as a result of Capito’s actions.”
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“Plaintiff Amelia Johnson, the wife of James Johnson, at this time and at the time of Defendant Capito’s unlawful and tortious actions is and was a resident of Washington state. Before Capito’s unlawful and tortious actions, she had a job earning about $60,000 a year. She lost that job as a result of Capito’s actions.”
The Johnsons were also forced to move out of their neighborhood because their neighbors didn’t want to live near white supremacists, and Amelia Johnson has had a real hard time finding a job anywhere, on the grounds that no one wants to hire a white supremacist.
A good way to fix this would be to not be a white supremacist in the first place.
The lawsuit seeks damages from Capito, claiming that his outing of them as members of Patriot Front deprived them of income they were able to earn while pretending to not be Nazis. It also attempts to make the case that Capito infringed upon their constitutional rights under the First Amendment and that they need to have the right to express their views anonymously.
“At a deeper level,” the lawsuit states, “this complaint seeks to vindicate the rule of law and basic principles of free expression for persons who espouse unpopular opinions.”
Patriot Front’s mission and activism have aroused the antagonism of many persons and organizations, who have inflicted on Patriot Front members the harsh aspects of doxxing: physical violence, threats, harassment, losses of vocation, and defamation, to name a few. Patriot Front, accordingly, seeks to protect the confidentiality and privacy of its members’ identities, as is their First Amendment right.
You will note that nowhere in the First Amendment does it promise anyone that they have the right to hide their identity in order to protect themselves from the consequences of their speech. Also, a fellow citizen cannot deprive someone of their First Amendment rights, only the government can do that.
It also does not promise that other citizens will respect your privacy.
Capito’s violation of Plaintiffs’ privacy as described above would be highly offensive to any reasonable person who held unusual or unpopular opinions that were often misinterpreted or distorted by the general public and mainstream media and subjected the person to potential threats, harassment, and loss of vocation.
The claim that their opinions are “often misinterpreted or distorted by the general public and mainstream media.” is also entirely incorrect. Moreover, Patriot Front’s activities are not limited to having bad opinions — the group also engages in vandalism, intimidation by way of their “flash” demonstrations and papering neighborhoods with racist and anti-immigrant fliers.
They put those posters up because they want people to be hostile to immigrants. They exist in the first place because they want straight white people to join them in being hostile to everyone else. Their whole M.O. is hostility. Indeed, their mission statement, included in the lawsuit, is explicitly about seeking separation from others.
Our people, born to this nation of our European race, must reforge themselves as a new collective capable of asserting our right to cultural independence. The LIFE of this nation, unique among all others, will be defended.
They got exactly what they wished for. Now they have all the “cultural independence” they want! They just didn’t get cultural dominance to go along with it.
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