An ‘Angry Fascist’ Revealed

Nashville police announced in a press release last month they arrested an “alleged member of a white supremacist group” who they believe is responsible for spray painting racist and antisemitic slurs, as well as neo-Nazi symbols, in the early morning hours of March 19, 2023, on five residences in the Sylvan Park neighborhood. The person, who was 17 then, was charged as a juvenile with criminal trespassing, vandalism, theft and criminal conspiracy. The press release did not identify the alleged culprit.

Scoop Nashville first identified the individual in custody, using the name listed in Davidson County jail records, as Aiden Stamper, 19, of Madison, Alabama. However, it appears Nashville police misspelled his name. According to data brokers, a wedding registry website and Facebook posts, an Aidan C. Stamper resides in Madison. Hatewatch located Stamper in the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office active inmate search online, which lists the charges against individuals in custody, to verify his alleged role in the crimes. In a phone call with Hatewatch, a representative of the court clerk confirmed that Stamper’s case is pending, and he remains in custody as of this reporting.

With assistance from the Appalachia Research Club, a group of independent researchers who provided Hatewatch with a trove of documentation, Hatewatch connected Stamper to his online alias, Angry Fascist. Hatewatch first encountered the Angry Fascist account in previous investigations into a particularly aggressive network of white power groups taking root in Tennessee and the surrounding region. The Angry Fascist Telegram account left several clues to their identity including posting unaltered personal photographs revealing the user’s face and tattoos. These photographs seem to match Stamper’s appearance.

“The arrest highlights trends that can help the public understand the current practices of extreme nationalist movements,” Chris Sanders, the executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, said in an email to Hatewatch. “First, I note the efforts to radicalize young men, who have been initiated and trained in hate violence. We should not be tempted to view incidents as random, isolated acts. We should rather look at the networks that make them possible. Second, the diversity of targets is evident, which really puts the general public in danger. There have been increasing threats to Pride festivals around the country the last few years, for example. But significant numbers of non-LGBTQ people also attend these gatherings. These challenges concern all of us and call for community-wide responses.”

The documents Appalachia Research Club shared, including public chats, videos and photographs from Telegram and Gab, also appear to show Stamper’s close ties to Tennessee Active Club (TAC), a white nationalist group led by Sean Kauffmann, as well as to 2119 Blood and Soil Crew, a violent neo-Nazi group whose members reportedly pleaded guilty to acts of racist and antisemitic vandalism committed in Pensacola, Florida, in 2023. Stamper appears to be part of a violent white supremacist underground army of young men being organized by Kauffmann. By examining posts from public and private Telegram chats, as well as propaganda produced by the Tennessee Active Club and 2119 Blood and Soil Crew, Hatewatch has been able to sketch Stamper’s ties to violent white supremacists, as well as reproduce a timeline of Stamper’s activities before and after he allegedly committed racist and antisemitic vandalism in Nashville.

Identifying an ‘Angry Fascist’

Hatewatch connected Stamper to his online alias with materials shared by the Appalachia Research Club, who have been tracking the Angry Fascist Telegram account since December 2022. Angry Fascist, which is the display name for the Telegram account, uses @Praise_Brenton as a username – a reference to the Christchurch, New Zealand, mass shooter who targeted and killed 51 Muslims and injured 40 more at a Mosque and Islamic center in March 2019.

The Angry Fascist account provided hints as to their identity, including using an unblurred image as a profile picture of an individual sitting atop a statue outside a restaurant in Huntsville, Alabama. The booking photograph of Stamper published by Scoop Nashville, the unblurred Telegram profile picture, still images of propaganda videos posted by Tennessee Active Club to Telegram, as well as photographs found on a family member’s Facebook account all appear to be the same person.

The Angry Fascist account also shared a photograph of a tattoo of the Celtic Cross on their right wrist. Sometimes referred to as Odin’s Cross or the Sun Cross in the white power movement, the Celtic Cross is a symbol that fuses Christian and Celtic traditions to signify unity in faith. After World War II, white power groups repurposed the Celtic Cross to subtly signify their white supremacist beliefs in public. According to photographs found on a family member’s Facebook page, Stamper has a tattoo of the Celtic Cross on his right wrist.

Video taken from a doorbell camera the night of the March 19, 2023, incident and used in local media reports allegedly shows Stamper defacing a house while wearing a jacket with distinct patches. After the incident, the Angry Fascist Telegram account changed its profile picture to an image of a masked individual wearing what appears to be the same jacket with distinct patches: two identical Knights Templar Crosses on each shoulder, and an Italian fascist eagle above the chest pocket. The Knights Templar Cross refers to a Roman Catholic group that joined wars in the 11^th and 12^th centuries to stop the expansion of Islam.

Attendees of the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, reportedly were seen brandishing flags adorned with the Knights Templar Cross. The Italian fascist eagle is a symbol popularized in the 1920s by the Italian fascist movement. In the first four months of 2023, a masked individual wearing the same jacket with these distinct patches appears in propaganda produced by the Tennessee Active Club and 2119.

Stamper sports another tattoo that wraps around his right arm, according to photographs found on a family member’s Facebook page. Still images of a video shared by Tennessee Active Club on Telegram appear to show Kauffmann, the group’s leader, sparring with an individual with the same tattoo wrapped around their right arm.

‘What you should be doing with Zoomers’

Previous Hatewatch investigations into white power groups in Tennessee reveal that Stamper was associating with dedicated and violent white supremacists. Stamper appears to be one of the teenage associates of the Tennessee Active Club, a group led by Sean Kauffmann, 30, of Linden, Tennessee. A previous Hatewatch investigation dug into Kauffmann’s violent background and examined how he has led Tennessee Active Club members to aggressively target his perceived political enemies on the street outside LGBTQ+ inclusive events, in college libraries and outside their homes. He is unable to possess firearms due to a felony domestic violence conviction. In March, Kauffmann was reportedly arrested and charged with aggravated assault and child abuse.

Hatewatch found the Tennessee Active Club to be composed of several teenagers, including a 17-year-old who lived with Kauffmann, as well as teenagers from North Carolina and Alabama. One of the teens from Alabama was identified as Aiden Cuevas in a Raw Story investigation into the neo-Nazi 2119 Blood and Soil Crew. The number 2119 is an alphanumeric code that represents Blood and Soil – “2” stands for “B,” “1” stands for “A,” and “19” stands for “S.” Cuevas, who used the online alias Bozak, appears to have met Stamper while in high school in Madison, Alabama, according to posts on Telegram. In videos and photographs shared on Telegram, the two appear alongside each other giving Nazi hand gestures, burning symbols of LGBTQ+ pride and posting racist and antisemitic propaganda. The two were also featured together in propaganda shared by Tennessee Active Club and 2119 Blood and Soil Crew on Telegram.

The Raw Story investigation into 2119 Blood and Soil Crew revealed the group’s violent nature, which included members plotting to commit a bank robbery in Virginia and a series of racist and antisemitic attacks in Pensacola, Florida, that included an associate throwing a brick through a window of a synagogue with a swastika and the phrase “no Jews” scribbled on it. Four 2119 associates in Pensacola were eventually charged for this attack, as well as defacing two other synagogues, a mosque and a Masonic lodge with racist and antisemitic messaging. Charged with a combined 18 felonies, three 2119 associates – all teenagers at the time of the incidents – reportedly accepted guilty pleas last month. The case of the other 2119 associate has been moved to juvenile court.

For his part, Kauffmann appears to welcome teenage recruits. In a post from Nov. 6, 2023, to the Tennessee Active Club Telegram channel, which he operates, Kauffmann wrote favorably about Shredder, the villain from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. “Shredder was collecting rebellious teenagers from all over the city,” wrote Kauffmann, “and being a surrogate badass ‘Dad’ by giving them a purpose and place to belong, using martial arts as an initiation into a tribe, building a literal underground army … that’s what you should be doing with zoomers.”

Hatewatch contacted Kauffmann via Telegram direct message to ask about his relationship to Stamper and his recruitment strategy, but he declined to comment. A short while later, Kauffmann sent a note that included a racial epithet.

The Tennessee Active Club is one piece of a loosely affiliated network of white nationalist groups appearing across the U.S. Each active club is autonomous and locally led. While founder Robert Rundo is still an influential figure within the larger Active Club network, he is not directly leading each group. Rundo, who was federally charged with conspiracy to riot, is reportedly in jail awaiting an appeal by prosecutors to the lower court’s decision to dismiss the case. Active clubs operate independently but are united by a desire to create a subculture centered around a warrior’s ethos and a hypermasculine aesthetic. Associates of active clubs get together to train, work out and spar. Many active clubs also post racist and antisemitic propaganda in communities, as well as protest LGBTQ+ inclusive events and reproductive healthcare centers. Taking their cue from European far-right groups who needed to adapt to stricter speech laws, active clubs use subtle racist and antisemitic rhetoric and avoid explicit symbols of hatred in their propaganda.

A previous Hatewatch investigation uncovered a private gym above Lewis Country Store in Nashville as a primary meeting place for active clubs in the region. Owner Brad Lewis, 52, of Nashville, hosted events at the private gym above his store, as well as invited local white nationalists and neo-Nazi to train and network, including associates of the Tennessee Active Club, Alabama Active Club, Ohio Active Club, Vinland Rebels – which Lewis claimed to be part of – and the now defunct National Justice Party. Stamper, Cuevas and at least two other teenagers can be identified in videos and photographs appearing at training and fight club events at the private gym. Lewis sold the store in December 2023.

‘Me and the Alabama boys’

A few months before independent researchers began monitoring the Angry Fascist Telegram account in December 2022, Stamper became a father of a baby boy, according to photographs found on a family member’s Facebook page. On Jan. 20, 2023, Stamper – wearing his distinct jacket adorned with patches, appears alongside Cuevas in a photograph posted on Gab, a social media platform that white supremacists use for its low moderation policies. The photograph shows Stamper and Cuevas standing in front of racist graffiti while giving a Nazi hand gesture. The caption refers to Stamper and Cuevas as “Blood and Soil crew activists … in Alabama”

Stamper appears in a photograph shared Feb. 24, 2023, on the 2119 Blood and Soil Crew Telegram channel. In the photo, Stamper is wearing his distinctive coat with patches, holding a burning torch next to a fire. The post includes another photograph of a different individual holding a burning torch, as well as a short clip of two individuals sparring. The caption reads, “If you’re youth and you wanna crew up then just know our arms are wide open!”

A few days later that month, Stamper used the Angry Fascist account to post a first-person video to a public chat that shows an individual recording themselves using spray paint to cross out the word “Israel” and replace it with the word “Jews” on a sign outside an unidentified Baptist church.

Two days before Stamper allegedly defaced five homes with racist and antisemitic messaging, he appeared alongside Kauffmann and other Tennessee Active Club associates March 17 for a rally in Lexington, Kentucky. At the rally, billed to support a white college student who reportedly faced charges related to a racially charged verbal assault of a fellow student, Stamper appears in his distinct jacket with patches and holds a sign that says “Saying n----r is not a crime” according to photographs posted to Tennessee Active Club’s Telegram channel.

On March 19, 2023, the day of the Sylvan Park incident, Stamper, using the Angry Fascist account, posted a photograph of his Celtic Cross tattoo to a public Telegram chat. The same day, Tennessee Active Club posted a video of Kauffmann sparring with Stamper, who can be identified by his tattoos.

A few weeks later, on April 2, 2023, Stamper appeared at the private gym above Lewis Country Store, according to a propaganda video shared April 29, 2023, on the Tennessee Active Club channel. April 2 is the first known use of the private gym by white power groups and included associates from several active clubs as well as Vinland Rebels and the National Justice Party.

Stamper is then featured in a propaganda video shared April 9 on a Telegram channel popular with active clubs. The video starts with a close-up of a burning Pride flag, then pans out to feature Cuevas and Stamper standing by a fire. Stamper gives a hand gesture used by Nazis next to the fire. The video then jumps to a still photograph of Stamper, who can be identified by his tattoos clutching a rifle in his left hand with a shotgun strapped to his back.

On April 26, 2023, Stamper married the mother of his child, according to a family member’s Facebook page. On May 17, 2023, a family member posted photographs to Facebook from Stamper’s high school graduation.

In the second half of 2023, Stamper appeared to take a break from racist activism. He was not seen in propaganda videos from Tennessee Active Club or 2119 Blood and Soil Crew the rest of the year.

Stamper reappeared in May in propaganda produced by a new group in Northern Alabama that features two young associates of the Tennessee Active Club. Stamper, identified by his distinctive jacket with patches, can be seen in a photograph shared May 29, three days after his arrest on May 26. The photograph was quickly deleted. The caption read: “Me and the alabama [sic] boys being goons exactly one year ago. Keepin [sic] up the good work I hope everyone does their part.”

Photo illustration by SPLC