DATA RELEASE: White Supremacist Fundraising & Planning for Charlottesville

Charlottesville, VA – As the smoke continues to clear from the violent “Unite The Right” white supremacist rally on August 12, details about those involved continue to emerge. Various neo-nazi, “alt-right”, and other fascist groups prepared for the event and shared their plans using Discord, a voice and text chat service marketed to gamers but now also preferred as an organizing platform by the far-right.

Unicorn Riot has leaked many of the contents of the “Charlottesville 2.0” Discord server, which was used by organizers such as Jason Kessler and Eli Mosley to provide guidance and event infrastructure to white nationalists seeking to attend Unite The Right. Many of those involved in the chats appear to express attitudes similar to, and consistent with, those of James Alex Fields, Jr., a neo-nazi who came to Unite The Right and drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters, killing Heather Heyer and severely injuring many others.

The fourth batch of screenshots from the since-deleted Charlottesville 2.0 server we are releasing today include the channels #sponsors_only, #i_need_a_sponsor, #news, and #safety_planning.

The channel #sponsors_only is introduced by the user ‘Erika’, who appears to play a major coordinating role throughout the Unite The Right planning chats. Erika starts the thread by inviting white supremacists with funds to spare to pledge to financially support others traveling to Unite The Right.

The #sponsors_only and #i_need_a_sponsor channels both mostly consist of various neo-nazi and white supremacist individuals posting their online fundraising pages. All of the fundraiser pages that openly stated funds would be used to attend Unite The Right were hosted on Rootbocks.com, a racist-friendly payment processor that was recently shut down. Many of the fundraising pages on sites like GoFundMe that were shared in the Charlottesville 2.0 Discord server appear to have been set up under less than forthcoming pretenses.

One GoFundMe page was shared by a man who openly stated in Discord that the funds would be used to travel to Unite The Right. However, the GoFundMe campaign page itself, entitled “Get Ignis There”, does not mention Unite The Right; instead, it asks for help for a young man claiming to be separated from his family. The URL for the page is still active, and states the campaign, “Help A Young Man See His Brothers”, has reached its $1,250 fundraising goal.

One of our dear friends has fallen on some hard times financially and lives in a very remote area. He would like to attend a family reunion and see all of his Brothers. – GoFundMe page posted by user ‘Ignis Faatus’ in Unite The Right Discord server

Another group seemed to use a similar strategy, referring to themselves as the “Greater Michigan Reich” on Discord but using the name “Detroit Right Wing” on GoFundMe. Their campaign, which they privately shared as being used to travel to Unite The Right, does not explicitly name the event on the GoFundMe page (which is also still up) but mentions an unspecified “vacation and fellowship event.”

We contacted GoFundMe for comment on these pages and they have not yet responded.

Discord users “I Am Not A Gerbil” and “Erika”, both prolific participants in the Unite The Right chats, also shared their personal Paypal pages.

The #news channel largely consists of commentary about news coverage leading up to Unite The Right. A lot of it contains racist comments, as well as Discord users helping Jason Kessler craft an anti-Semitic statement denouncing the Anti-Defamation League in a media interview.

Also seen in the #news channel are individuals discussing their respective locations, and white supremacist organizations reaching out to recruit people in their area. One man who said he lived in Pittsburgh was told by another Discord user to seek out ‘ICG’ or Iron City Guard, an “alt-right social club” attended by fans of the neo-nazi podcast The Right Stuff.

The channel #safety_planning, while mostly at first was a place where users posted hundreds of Alex Jones memes (not included in this release), eventually became a place for serious discussion of strategic considerations leading up to August 12.

Some of the white nationalist organizers posted about how the police had been working with them to provide security for their event.

The archive: Click here to download the full set of screenshots from the Charlottesville 2.0 Discord chat server (302 .PNG files, “Batch 4” ZIP – 70.5MB)

Here is a slideshow of the 302 images:

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Use left/right arrow keys, swipe or click buttons to change slides.

While Discord made an official statement shortly after Unite The Right in Charlottesville, saying they would not tolerate white supremacists using their platform to organize, several Discord servers are still actively being used to promote neo-nazi ideology as well as conduct harassment campaigns.

We will be working through the coming days to finish our releases of the leaked contents of the Charlottesville 2.0 server, and will publish additional details of white supremacist activity on Discord in the days and weeks following August 12.

Unicorn Riot’s leaks from Charlottesville:

Unicorn Riot reporting in Charlottesville & beyond:

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Categories: Racism & Far-Right

Published August 25, 2017