People ask this a lot!
Short answer is, nazis had a rally in Philly, I got mad and outed some of them, and @AntiFashGordon tempted me into this Twitter life of glamour and intrigue you see before you.
While I was studying I just fell in love with ethnography (observing culture, basically) and wrote my thesis on white pagan appropriation of Afro-atlantic religion.
Black colleagues from central PA would talk about being stalked by white supremacists, getting tailed by the Klan.
Like Charlottesville, it was a wakeup call.
I had experience from Occupy, so I helped out on #occupyice encampment stuff in Philly.
First, in nonprofit organizing I'd seen a lot of supposedly anti-racist spaces where white people take up all the room and leadership positions.
I was fucking furious realizing nazis were succeeding at making my friends feel unsafe in their own city.
When the Proud Boys started their parade through center city, we were right there, so I started taking pictures of them.
It really gave me the willies knowing that there were Proud Boys *in* local politics, so I started trolling the local GOP about it.
That's when someone suggested I get in touch with @AntiFashGordon, who helped poke around for some clues as to who the guy was.
The dude killed all his internet accounts instantly, which was honestly extremely satisfying.
I posted them here, IDing first Billy and Matthias, then Young Republicans treasurer Brian Lieb.
I started poking around 8chan to see what this world was the shooters had come out of.
So I started writing about that, too.
I'm so boring that people listen.
Hopefully it's useful to people who are interested in doing more and trying to figure out where to start!