Thread by @UR_Ninja

NEW: “Task Force Butler” Veterans Share Skills to Track Far-Right Groups unicornriot.ninja/2023/task-forc…

Unicorn Riot chatted with Kristofer Goldsmith, the founder of a nonprofit called the “Task Force Butler Institute” which is recruiting U.S. military veterans to monitor fascists and far-right hardliner movements around the country.

.@KrisGoldsmith85 & the group worked on tracking #PatriotFront neo-nazis on the ground at the January 21, 2022 March for Life in DC; by coincidence, Unicorn Riot released more than 400 gigabytes of leaked Patriot Front material during the same march. unicornriot.ninja/2022/patriot-f…

@KrisGoldsmith85 Task Force Butler released a short guide to share tips and techniques monitoring far-right public events. It’s tailored specifically to tracking Patriot Front, but also helpful for watching other violent far-right street crews like the Proud Boys. ( taskforcebutler.org/streetteams )

@KrisGoldsmith85 The guide stresses taking photos of shoes, belts, patches, hats, and similar details to help ID anonymized far-right members; this could assist in documenting far-right harassers at recent LGBT events, @KrisGoldsmith85 smith notes.

@KrisGoldsmith85 We shared the guide with a few sources who have long tracked Patriot Front to get their take. One of our sources pointed out a big catch: Patriot Front usually operates “flash mob” style. They don’t announce events ahead of time so it’s hard to catch them out in the open.

@KrisGoldsmith85 Lauren Pespisa, (@SplendidSpoon) an antifascist knowledgeable about Patriot Front, weighed in:

@KrisGoldsmith85 @SplendidSpoon We also heard from Eugene Antifascists, who have monitored Patriot Front since 2017, and were one of several sources for our original 2018 expose on Patriot Front‘s leaked Discord chats. (original here: unicornriot.ninja/2018/americans… )

Another one of Goldsmith’s investigations in Texas directed at the Aryan Freedom Network was covered by an NBC crew; that report was released on January 6, 2023. It includes footage released by Unicorn Riot:

The NBC report highlights footage first obtained by Unicorn Riot which helped us identify Nathaniel Noyce (aka ‘Roger VA’) and Thomas Dale (aka ‘Kenneth VA’) as they filmed themselves destroying a mural of Arthur Ashe in Richmond, Virginia in October 2021
unicornriot.ninja/2022/patriot-f…

he said he decided to form a company to perform research and monitoring projects directed at far-right and fascist groups in the field, for nonprofit nonprofit that keep tabs in the public interest; this year he's transitioning that work to the Task Force Butler nonprofit.

Goldsmith also said that law enforcement and attorneys had shown an interest in ‘Project Blacklisted.’ He provided us a copy of the large report about Patriot Front that was released for limited distribution to government, researchers and journalists last year.

He provided us a large report about Patriot Front that was released to government, researchers and journalists last year. He said that the Massachusetts AG, an FBI agent detailed to the Civil Rights Division @ DOJ, Philadelphia & Idaho prosecutors requested copies.

Regarding how the investigation last year at "March for Life" turned up another obscure far-right group called the “New Columbia Movement,” Goldsmith added:

One section in the new guide calls for giving local police and similar authorities detailed dossiers on far-right groups — partly to deter law enforcement from falling for their commonly used disinformation tactics.

Goldsmith acknowledged a lot of people looking at his group’s new guide tend to avoid interacting w law enforcement — many antifascists are guided by the “three-way fight” perspective informed by a long, painful experience of law enforcement bias in favor of far-right groups.

Task Force Butler seeks to reach as broad an audience as possible and bring a new #veterans’ organization into antifascism. This includes trying to leverage #veteran status to reach audiences that have been fed lies about “Antifa” & falsely believe “#Antifa” burned down cities.

Goldsmith feels that antifascist research has given him a sense of purpose after becoming disillusioned with other forms of political activity like antiwar-style street protest marches. He believes the efforts are effective against Patriot Front.

Task Force Butler is named after Marine Major General Smedley Butler, who became entangled in a conspiracy known as the “Business Plot” to topple President Franklin D. Roosevelt around 1933.

Butler said to Congress he'd told them: “My interest, my one hobby, is maintaining a democracy. If you get these 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home.”

Interestingly this passage comes amid a discussion where the conspirators proposed placing Smedley Butler as a ‘secretary general’ after a right-wing coup against Franklin Roosevelt that would render the presidency a figurehead position.

Conspirator Gerald MacGuire:"We need a fascist government in this country to save the Nation from the Communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America.The only men who have patriotism to do it are the soldiers & Smedley Butler is the ideal leader."

Butler instead blew the whistle on the plot and Goldsmith’s organization says this is “the closest historical parallel to what occurred on Jan. 6, 2021.”
In 2022 a film "Amsterdam" and a book by @KatzOnEarth Katz with Butler's famous phrase "Gangsters of Capitalism" released

@KatzOnEarth The group is also named after a “Task Force Butler” in the phase of World War II immediately after the D-Day Normandy landings -in the "Operation Dragoon" campaign an unusual combined-arms task force led a successful push against German military.

“I’m having a blast,” @KrisGoldsmith85 told Unicorn Riot. “It’s OK to think antifascism is fun.” Now that he is trying to establish a nonprofit, with a team of around two dozen volunteers, he is “swinging for the fences” and trying to build a viable donor base.

@KrisGoldsmith85 Goldsmith has stressed the international connection between Thomas Rousseau’s Patriot Front and Robert Rundo, the leader of the violent Rise Above Movement, who is currently suspected to reside in Serbia as a fugitive.

https://twitter.com/KrisGoldsmith85/status/1535766308247191554

Goldsmith’s group has argued that the Rundo-Rousseau operational relationship could open legal vulnerabilities that the Department of Justice could leverage to roll up Patriot Front.

LeftCoastRightWatch @LCRWnews explored the links between Rundo, the Rise Above Movement, and its media spinoff called Media2Rise which has assisted Patriot Front.
leftcoastrightwatch.org/articles/insid…

.@BellingCat has used open-source investigative methods to trace Rundo’s Serbia activities. bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
Rundo was prosecuted in California for Rise Above Movement activity. A district court initially found prosecutors overstepped First Amendment protections

@bellingcat The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found in March 2021 that the Anti-Riot Act may have been overbroad in restricting First Amendment content, but the law was “severable” and therefore Rundo and three other defendants were still liable. He continues to work with Patriot Front.

For more about these far right investigations see our new story: unicornriot.ninja/2023/task-forc…
... and check out our Far-Right Investigations Desk for earlier stories:
unicornriot.ninja/far-right-inve…

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