Exposed: Jonathan Giusto, Violent Sacramento Proud Boys President

A man with glasses and a scraggly, graying beard holds his middle finger up to the camera.

Jonathan Giusto, circa late 2023

Defashsac would like to thank Jeffrey Perrine for his contributions to this exposé.

Please be aware, Jonathan James Giusto shares a name with his son, who we do not suspect of harboring the same kinds of beliefs as the elder Giusto.

Jonathan James Giusto Sr. is a violent and cowardly Proud Boy, white nationalist, and part-time neo-nazi supporter from Antelope, CA. Within the Proud Boys, Giusto serves as president of the “Cap City” splinter of the Sacramento Proud Boys chapter. He is notorious for his pattern of unprovoked violent attacks before immediately retreating to avoid repercussions.

Place of work

Business filings show Giusto’s repeated efforts to get Solution One (previously One Solution) Insurance Services up off the ground, starting in 2014, and most recently with renewed filings in June of 2022. Giusto’s license with the state insurance board shows that he is currently licensed to deal in casualty and property insurance. Archive links from a webpage showing an insurance license number matching Giusto’s company show that he offered General Liability and Worker’s comp insurance. Records also show that Guisto accepted two PPP loans for his business, one under his own name and one under the One Solution business name. In addition to his personal business, a Linkedin profile for Giusto lists him as a field rep for Smart Choice Agents, an independent insurance agency network.

Violent Attacks

A man walks by the camera, wearing a Sacramento Proud Boys hat, a black and yellow gaiter, a tan ballistic vest, and a gray backpack. He has an orange cast on one hand and a black cast on the other.

Jonathan Giusto on 11/21/20, with casts on both hands. He would later change from black and orange casts to orange and yellow.

Giusto has a long and well-documented history of violent and unprovoked attacks on protesters, streamers, and bystanders. Giusto was apparently radicalized during the Covid-19 pandemic and began to appear in Proud Boy colors in 2020, when he was seen at “Stop the Steal” rallies in Sacramento and Washington DC. His recklessly violent nature was apparent from the get-go, and a comical video from the “Million MAGA March in Washington DC shows him swinging a punch, missing, and falling to the ground in an unprovoked attack on a demonstrator. The next week he would appear in two hand casts. Medical professionals have told us that this specific kind of cast is used to treat a “boxer’s fracture” (warning: mild medical gore), which is typically cased by punching a hard object with poor form.

A group of men in Proud Boys attire have fistss out attacking a single person, whose face is blurred. On hand, which is circled and raised above the others, has an orange cast on it.

Jonathan Giusto, along with Robert Sunday and several other Proud Boys, attack a trans teenager in Cesar Chavez park in Sacramento, 11/21/20

At a rally in Sacramento the following week, Giusto was caught on video committing three more unprovoked attacks: one on a streamer with the media group Black Zebra, a second on someone who seemed to be a fellow MAGA rally-goer, and a third on a trans teenager in Cesar Chavez Park, alongside Proud Boy Robert Sunday Jr. On December 12, he returned to DC, where videos captured him bloodied from his participation in street brawls there. On January 3, 2021, Giusto assaulted several protesters in Vacaville with pepper gel (initially believed by some to be wasp spray).

Jonathan Giusto, wearing a gray T-shirt, backwards SF Giants cap, and a tan tactical backpack, throws a punch at a person wearing black

Giusto attacks a counter-protester at the California capitol, 6/5/21.

On June 5th, 2021, Giusto again committed a series of unprovoked assaults on protesters at a rally put on by white nationalist Chelsea Knight at the CA Capitol. At this event, Giusto was caught on film committing four separate assaults. In at least three, he was in full view of CHP officers (and in one case, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with an officer), but faced no repercussions, yet another stark reminder that police should never be relied on to protect us from fascism.

On February 20, 2022, two streamers with local outlet Black Zebra attempted to film a banner drop held by Proud Boys on a bridge in Rancho Cordova. Giusto attacked both streamers with a pole and chased them from the bridge.

A screenshot of a newscast from KCRA 3. The Chiron reads, "Hate in Yolo County". One man, wearing a black shirt, holds back a man in a gray shirt. The man in the gray shirt is wiping his eyes with a napkin or tissue.

Jonathan Giusto wipes tears and pepper spray from his eyes after being repelled from his attack on Mojos, 6/30/22 in Woodland, CA

Through 2022, attacks and harassment of pride events and other public displays of queerness became a priority for Proud Boys. On June 25th, Giusto, along with a group of Proud Boys including Tyler Greenhalgh and Brandon Revering joined the white nationalist group White Lives Matter CA to harass a children’s pride event in Rancho Cordova. Five days later, Giusto, Greenhalgh, and Revering, along with a group of Proud Boys–including at least one armed with a large knife–tried to force their way into a drag event in Woodland, only to be met with a cloud of pepper spray and repelled. In August, he was documented among a group of Proud Boys who were repelled from the would-be site of the so-called “Straight Pride” white nationalist hate-fest in Modesto.

In October of that year, Giusto and seven other Proud Boys attacked a protest against Stephen Davis, a TPUSA contributer who was scheduled to speak at UC Davis. During a 20-minute battle that saw Giusto and other Proud Boys throwing metal barricades at the crowd, Giusto sucker-punched multiple people, including at least one young woman. Two of the attacks were captured in footage from the event, showing Giusto punching unsuspecting victims in the head. One victim was not visibly associated with the protest. Medics at the event reported one woman who was carried to the medic area after being assaulted by Giusto.

A photo of police leading away Jonathan Giusto, wearing a tan ballistic vest with an assortment of Proud Boys patches on it, and bleeding from above his left eye.

Jonathan Giusto reaches the “finding out” stage at a Drag Queen Story Hour in Sacramento on 4/16/23.

Giusto finally faced consequences for his actions at an April 2023 drag story hour in Sacramento. Shortly after arriving at the event, Giusto charged a line of supporters, throwing a punch at one of them. The strike failed to connect and the single blow that was returned sent Giusto off in an ambulance. According to other Proud Boys, Giusto was drunk at the time of the event, 11:00 am on a Saturday, and photos of Giusto from the hospital showed him bleeding profusely from the head (CW: Blood, facial injury). In November of that year, a group of antifascists reported seeing Giusto among a group of Proud Boys at a gas station in Davis, following a speaking event at UCD by anti-trans bigot Riley Gaines. Giusto was reported to be bleeding from the head and missing a shoe, with one of the window on his truck broken.

Outside of direct violence, Giusto also has a history of harassment and attempted doxxing. Archived deleted tweets (which we are not reproducing here to protect those whom he attempted to dox) show that Giusto has engaged in numerous dox attempts, including at least one failed attempt to dox an author of this write-up. When other groups have also attempted to dox local individuals, Giusto has been enthusiastic about joining the harassment campaigns. When a local schoolteacher was doxxed and subjected to a harassment campaign by the right-wing disinformation outlet Project Veritas, Giusto was caught on video both at the School Board’s next meeting, where the public harassment campaign hit a crescendo, and he also showed up to harass and threaten a press conference put on by the teacher’s legal team alongside fellow proud boy and Neo-Nazi arms dealer Brandon Revering. As Proud Boys continued their harassment campaign, Giusto’s truck was seen alongside Proud Boy Jeffrey Perrine’s van while they bullhorned the teacher’s neighborhood and painted a Proud Boy logo in front of the house.

When an LGBT-affirming youth pastor was similarly targeted by Project Veritas, Giusto was again active in the harassment campaign. The Sacramento Proud Boys telegram channel continually posted content related to the campaign, including threats to show up at the pastor’s home. Giusto was there on at least one night outside the pastor’s home, when Jeffrey Perrine was cited for disturbing the peace.

Group Fractures in the Proud Boys

One thread that has continued to surface through the history of far right organization in the US is a tension between centralized and decentralized tactics. Early neo-nazis such as William Luther Pierce of National Alliance and George Lincoln Rockwell of the American Nazi Party emphasized a top-down, hierarchical approach to organizing, which materialized in large, national White Supremacist organizations. After long struggles with internal strife and infiltration, KKK Grand Wizard Louis Beam advanced his own approach of “Leaderless Resistance”, in which the movement should be organized through independently operating cells without a hierarchical structure giving orders. This approach has been typified through the popularization of so-called “lone-wolf” attacks by members of the white nationalist movement, starting with the Oklahoma City Bombing only a few years after Beam introduced his concept at a Christian Identity conference in 1992.

This same tension has been running through organizations like the Proud Boys in the wake of the repercussions they have faced for their role in the January 6, 2021 attacks on the US Capitol. These repercussions were also fueled by the revelation that the Proud Boys’ national leader, Enrique Tarrio, was a “prolific” informant prior to joining the Proud Boys, and that several other prominent Proud Boys officers in the group were revealed to be regularly liaising with federal law enforcement. The resulting fallout has caused rifts in the Proud Boys organization as some members and chapters reject the national structure in favor of a more decentralized approach.

In California, a similar drama has played out, seemingly starting when the presidents of several chapters attempted to oust Central Valley (Modesto) chapter leader Sean Kuykendall. This, along with accusations of other chapters cooperating with federal investigations, has resulted in the Sacramento chapter declaring itself “autonomous”. For a while, both the Sacramento and Modesto chapters were de-listed from the Proud Boy’s listing of chapters on telegram. More recently, it appears that a new Sacramento chapter, the “Sactown” Proud Boys, featuring some members of the old Sacramento chapter, as well as some from the Placer County-based “State of Jefferson” chapter, has sprung up to challenge the offending “Cap City” faction. Both chapters consider themselves to be the “legitimate” Sacramento chapter and the other to be “fake”.

Giusto is President of the “Cap City” splinter, and his clique (comprised of members of the Cap City and the Modesto-based Central Valley chapter) aggressively pursued a campaign of violence and harassment against the LGBTQ community in 2022-23. This was a short-lived arrangement, however, and Cap City-Central Valley coalition broke ranks after anti-fascist opposition to their poorly planned attack on an April 2023 drag event saw Giusto carted off in an ambulance while the Central Valley Proud Boys’ vice president was photographed on the ground in the fetal position with his bare buttocks hanging out of his pants.

A photo of Jonathan Giusto, wearing a black SF Giants hat and gray T shirt, standing next to a masked man in a white T-shirt and tactical pants.

Jonathan Giusto (gray shirt) and a member of WLM-California harass a children’s Pride event in Rancho Cordova, 6/25/22

The Sacramento Proud Boys had also previously maintained ties to the closely-related white nationalist groups White Lives Matter California and NorCal Active Club. Sacramento Proud Boys would frequently share these groups’ content on telegram and joined them to harass kids at a children’s pride event in Rancho Cordova in June 2022. This alliance has broken as well, in the wake of in infamous fight between Proud Boys and an Active Club-aligned group in Portland, OR. After Giusto gloated about the Proud Boys’ victory in that skirmish through the Sacramento Proud Boys telegram channel, his posts became bombarded by nazis and he eventually turned off comments for all posts on the channel. From this and other incidents, it is clearly evident that Giusto’s personality makes him a pariah even among his far-right peers.

Ideology:

Giusto’s ideology is incoherent at best. At times, he seems to claim “anarcho-capitalist” politics, a form of right-wing libertarianism. Through the Sacramento Proud Boys telegram channel, however, Giusto has also posted in favor of protectionist policies and restrictions on free speech that fly in the face of an-cap politics. Giusto also describes himself as rejecting white nationalism in favor of “civic nationalism”, an ideology that professes nationalism for one’s current state, rather than ethnic origins. However, his chapter’s culture is overtly white supremacist, and the Sacramento Proud Boys telegram channel is littered with white nationalist content, including posts about the perceived inability of Black Americans to coexist with Whites.

A telegram post by proud boys Sacramento. Features a stylized image of a statue of Perseus holding up the head of medusa, accompanied by the text: "without a deadly hatred of that which threatens what we love, love is an empty catch word for hippies, queers, and cowards" – George Lincoln Rockwell

The Sacramento Proud Boys telegram channel posts a quote by American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell

In the past, the Sacramento Proud Boys telegram channel has also made numerous posts quoting Adolf Hitler, other Nazi Party officials, and Gerorge Lincoln Rockwell–the founder of the American Nazi Party. In addition, the channel has promoted imagery featuring swastikas and sonnenrads (another neo-nazi symbol) and has promoted numerous explicitly neo-nazi groups, such as NSC-131 and Misanthropic Division (a Ukranian neo-nazi paramilitary group). In particular, The Sacramento Proud Boys telegram channel enjoyed a close relationship with White Lives Matter California–an explicitly white nationalist group–and NorCal Active Club, it’s neo-nazi fight club spinoff.  Ties between Sacramento Proud Boys and these two groups are now severed – not because of any ideological conflict, but due to a nationwide split between Proud Boys and Active Club groups stemming from a previously-mentioned brawl that broke out between Proud Boys and Active Club members at an event in Oregon. The OR brawl itself was also less about ideological differences and based largely on existing drama between the leaders of the groups.

Giusto’s record also reflects the deeply conspiratorial mindset that is endemic within the far right. Footage from the 11/14/2020 “Million Maga March” in Washington DC shows Giusto as a prominent member of notorious conspiracy-grifter Alex Jones’ security retinue as he marched through the city, campaigning for the overthrow the 2020 general election in favor of Donald Trump. Posts on Giusto’s twitter account show his belief in “sheriff supremacy”, a pseudolegal concept that is a hallmark of the terminally conspiratorial Sovereign Citizen movement. Through the Sacramento Proud Boys telegram channel, he has also shown wide and deep conspiratorial leanings ranging from flat eartherism to the asinine belief that pyramids are an ancient source of free electical energy or that Stonehenge was built in the 1950s to “great replacement” theory and holocaust denial.

A screenshot from Twitter. @fordfischer posts a video with the caption, "The Proud Boys posed for photos outside Harry's Bar in downtown DC with the #BlackLivesMatter banner they had just swiped from a church.When it was suggested that they burn it, one said "it won't take, it won't take, it won't burn." Stand by for next tweet.". The video shows a group of men in Proud Boys colors. One man is circled. He wears a tan ballistic vest with a Gadsen Flag patch on it, a black mask and helmet, and has a yellow cast on his left hand and an orange one on his right.

Video captured on 12/12/20 shows Giusto was present as Proud Boys presented the “Black Lives Matter” banner that they had torn off the historic AME church in Washington, DC.

Posts from the Sacramento Proud Boys channel are rife with every imaginable kind of bigotry. One post calls Jews “parasites” and “the cancer of the world”. Another proclaims “NEVER FORGET. The Jews did 9/11”. Video from December 12, 2020 also show that Giusto was present at the infamous burning of the Black Lives Matter sign that was torn off a historic Black church in Washington DC.

Giusto’s online interactions paint a picture of a narcissistic, capriciously defensive man who jumps to hostility as the smallest slight. His temperament has earned him few friends within the Proud Boys, as all neighboring chapters have cut ties and his own chapter’s membership is rapidly dwindling. Rival chapters in California have put out hit pieces on Giusto, albeit ones that simply halfheartedly reproduce the work already done by antifascists. Giusto has also become a laughing stock in Proud Boy circles after his embarrassing defeat at the a Drag story Hour in April 2023. Despite his repeated claims that others simply wish they could be him, Giusto remains a sad, garbage excuse of a human being who is deeply disliked even among those who share his repugnant views.

Proof of ID:

a photo collage featuring six images of Jonathan Giusto in a 2x3 grid. In each vertical pairing, he is wearing the same San Francisco Giants hat.

Jonathan Giusto loves his SF Giants hats. So much so that he often appears in the same hat in photos from his appearances with the Proud Boys (Top Row, 11/14/20; DC, 4/7/22; Davis, CA, and 8/27/22; Modesto), as in his relatives’ social media posts.

Giusto’s ID can be confirmed by matching multiple articles of clothing worn in photos sourced from social media to clothing that he’s been seen wearing at Proud Boy rallies. This includes shoes, glasses, and three different baseball caps. In Addition to this, Jon Giusto’s 2019 Ford F150 truck, which has been documented at at least 4 Proud Boy events, was also seen parked outside the Antelope address listed as Giusto’s in the business filings [pdf link] for his insurance agency. Lastly, We note that his name, “Giusto”, is most likely the source for his nickname, Juice.

Two photos of Jonathan Giusto, side-by-side. On the left, he wears a sweater, jeans, and an SF Giants baseball cap. On the right, he wears a black and yellow gaiter-style mask and a ballistic vest. In both, he wears the same shoes.

Jonathan Giusto wearing the same pair of shoes in a photo taken from a relative’s social media (left) and a video taken on 11/21/20 in Sacramento (right)

In conclusion, Jonathan Giusto is violently racist, antisemitic, homophobic, and transphobic. He is actively organizing with hate groups who work to harm marginalized communities and spread bigotry-fueled violence. He has assaulted more than 15 people – in overt hate attacks, unprovoked attacks on protesters, and attacks on random, uninvolved bystanders. He has assaulted LGBTQ people, women, people of color, college students, people less than half his size, and at least one underage minor. Giusto’s continual pattern of organizing and carrying out violence against marginalized people (or whoever else gets in his way, really), his frequent rampages, and his commitment to spreading hate make him a threat to the communities of the greater Sacramento area. This behavior cannot be tolerated. It’s up to us, as a community, to respond. We encourage you to spread the word about Jonathan Giusto, boycott his business, call his workplace, and help build a community that rejects his kind of hate-filled worldview.
A white Ford F150 truck with plate number 25948E3

Jonathan Giusto’s Ford F150 with plate number 25948E3, parked outside a Davis Board of education meeting that Giusto was documented at.

Vital information on Jonathan Giusto can be found here.

Exposed: Ex-Fresno Cop Rick Fitzgerald is still a Proud Boy

Rick Fitzgerald in his Proud Boys uniform in Sacramento. November 21, 2020

Rick Fitzgerald–a former Fresno Police Officer who was fired after we exposed him as having been a member of the Proud Boys–is still active within the far-Right organization, and is now even running his own splinter chapter.

Background

On March 14, 2021, a group of men in Proud Boys clothing showed up to harass a protest against the sale of the historic Tower Theater in Fresno, CA. The theater was in a historically Queer district and its sale to a notably anti-queer church had upset locals who had an attachment to the local landmark. The Proud Boys, seeing an opportunity to publicly demonstrate their Christian bonafides in opposition to the LGBTQ+ community, were there to support the sale of the building and intimidate and clash with demonstrators.
Among the Proud Boys was Eddie Block, a right-wing streamer who had recently been kicked out of the Proud Boys, who stood with a few other men, wearing matching blue work shirts. Block’s house would later be raided by the FBI, over Block’s involvement and participation in the attempted pro-Trump coup on January 6th.
One of the men, Eddie stated on a stream, was his friend Rick, a Fresno Police officer. The problem for Rick (and Eddie) was that we immediately recognized Rick from a violent march he had taken part in in Sacramento, four months earlier. At that event, he had been wearing his Proud Boy uniform, a Fred Perry and a yellow and black kilt–Proud Boys colors.

The November 21, 2020 rally had turned violent quickly, as Proud Boys bypassed police barricades to march to Cesar Chavez Park–a location that they claimed to be an “Antifa stronghold.” Once at the park, a melee erupted, with Proud Boys assaulting a handful of activists who had been in the park. While Several Proud boys beat a teenaged activist, Fitzgerald could be seen grabbing and pulling the activist’s pro-Black Lives Matter flag. A fellow Proud Boy joined in and ended up wresting the flag away from the owner, who was being pummeled by several other Proud Boys. The far-Right group later posed with the flag as a trophy, loudly exclaiming that they would burn it. Rick Fitzgerald went to tend to Eddie Block, who had been knocked out of his wheelchair by a fellow Proud Boy while the two of them were assaulting a black man.

Fitzgerald went on to found a different local group, the Sons of ‘76, featuring several other men who had been Proud Boys members. He claimed to no longer be a member of the Proud Boys, but declined to denounce them (at the time). It was with this second group that Fitzgerald was participating outside the Tower Theater the day he was exposed.

Once Rick Fitzgerald’s identity and Proud Boy affiliation were exposed, word spread quickly. By the next morning, the Mayor and Chief of Police of Fresno had released statements condemning Rick’s association and Fitzgerald was suspended. He would later be fired. At the time, and in a video recorded before his exposure, Fitzgerald claimed that he had left the Proud Boys, due to the violence he had seen on display that day. However, He is currently running a splinter chapter, Proud Boys Clovis, under the pseudonym “Ghost”. In a now-deleted podcast episode, Fitzgerald also claims that he “never really left” the Proud Boys.

“Proud Boys Clovis”

Fitzgerald appears to have ruffled some feathers in the Fresno Proud Boys in the wake of his firing. In order to defend his own reputation, he threw his old group under the bus, calling them “[stuff]”. Perhaps this is what necessitated his creation of a separate Proud Boys chapter. Whatever the case, his splinter group quickly became a home for other cast-offs from his former chapter, including brothers Morris and Moses “Chango” Blanco. Dennis Newman, a man who has formerly been seen wearing the insignia of the Hammerskins splinter-group American Guard, is also a member of PBC, and has their logo tattooed on his hand. At the time of writing, we have received information that Newman appears to have been recently apprehended for violation of a court protective order.

After the foundation of the new chapter, Fitzgerald started a podcast, “Proud of Your Podcast” to share his thoughts, along with the gospel of the Proud Boys. Using the pseudonym “Ghost”, the four episodes he recorded followed a familiar pattern: He would spend much of his time reassuring the listener that aside from a very small minority, Proud Boys were a harmless drinking club, and the racism and bigotry they were accused of was the furthest thing from the truth. He would then spend the rest of his time espousing profoundly racist positions.

In a fifteen minute inaugural episode, posted in January 2023, Fitzgerald began by introducing himself (through his pseudonym). He went on to say that he “didn’t really leave the [Proud Boys]” but had instead been on hiatus. He also contradicted several of his earlier statements about the Proud Boys by calling them “a really outstanding organization, at its core” and “a worthy cause, a worthy organization”

In the show’s second episode, Fitzgerald lead off with his standard disclaimer that he wasn’t a racist. He then broke into several minutes of tirade about how there are too many multi-racial couples on TV. This is a position popular with racists, and something that non-racists usually just don’t think about at all. “Now all of a sudden, all these companies–and a lot of them, not just a few, but a lot of them–are like ‘now we can finally feel free to represent’. But back in the 70s, not so much. Thant’s a problem. And I do believe there’s a certain amount of indoctrination that goes on.” Fitzgerald is quick to point out that he has no problem with inter-racial couples, he just believes there is a vast conspiracy involving every major media agency to replace white couples with interracial couples. Such racist talking points are emblematic of the “white genocide” conspiracy theory, that a cabal of often Jews, are orchestrating the racial displacement of white people.

In a clip from his third episode, Fitzgerald returns to his favorite formula. “This is probably going to come off as a little racist,” he prefaces, before beginning another tirade: if whites are so oppressive, “Then why does Africa still suck today?” he asks. “Black people are like, ‘well we did this’ well then why didn’t you do it in your own country? Are you telling me you sent all your best slaves to America but you kept the shitty ones in Africa? We can’t build bridges here, we can only build huts. All the bridge-builders went to America. All the people who knew about cotton and agriculture, they all went to America?,” Fitzgerald laughed, before finishing with a dip into the pool of white genocide conspiracies: “We’re all going to go down to South Africa and kill all the white farmers and be like, ‘Oh shit, does anyone have Farming for Dummies? Because we don’t know what we’re doing now.’”

At some point following the release of his fourth episode–on March 2, 2023, Fitzgerald deleted his podcast’s page on the platform Spreaker. Around the same time, he also removed much of the information from his Telegram profile, which had previously identified him as the President of the Clovis Proud Boys chapter. Fortunately, we were able to archive all four episodes of his show prior to their deletion.

Rick Fitzgerald is currently suing the city of Fresno for libel and wrongful termination regarding his firing. The lawsuit is currently in discovery.

Complete podcast audio recordings:

Episode 1:

Episode 2:

Episode 3:

Episode 4:

 

 

Exposed: Jeffrey Perrine’s Neo-Nazi Merch Shop

A photo of a bearded man wearing a black hoodie with a scrunched up school mask around his neck. From behind him a hand holds a paper with the text literal Nazi and an arrow pointing to the man.

A helpful community member holds up a sign accurately labeling Jeffrey Perrine as a neo-Nazi

Sacramento-area Proud Boy and perennial failed political candidate Jeffrey Perrine is running an overtly neo-Nazi apparel shop, which also appears to be connected to a local Sacramento screen-printing and embroidery shop. Through this shop, he sells merchandise with swastikas, images of Adolph Hitler and other prominent Nazi Party Officials, and other bigoted slogans and symbols. This represents the culmination of Perrine’s decline into more overt neo-Nazi positions over the past year, despite his public persona as a victimized conservative. Perrine is also a vetted member of the White nationalist group White Lives Matter California, and has been active with them in multiple racist and antisemitic propaganda campaigns over recent months.

For a more complete Background on Perrine, please read Sacramento Antifa’s write-up on him here.

Overview

Jeffrey Erik Perrine, who posts on telegram as “Unapologeticallywhite”, has a long history of far-right street action. As a Proud Boy, his activity goes back at least as far as 2018. In June of that year, Perrine was part of the Proud Boys’ contingent at the “Battle of Portland”, where he was caught on camera participating in a group assault against an unarmed person who lay on the ground as Proud Boys, including Perrine, kicked them. As an observer tried to intervene, he was attacked as well. Perrine was also recorded that day yelling that immigrants ought to have their heads slammed into concrete, and their children separated from the parents. Although Perrine was detained by police that day, it does not seem like any charges were filed.

At some point after this, Perrine was kicked out of the Sacramento Proud Boys. According to his own telling, he was not disavowed by the organization as a whole though, and was instead taken in by the neighboring Placer County-based “State of Jefferson” chapter. Over the next few years, Perrine bounced around, at one point trying to start his own chapter. It appears that he now identifies with one of the splinters of the former Sacramento chapter. This chapter, “Capital City” is declared a “rogue” by neighboring chapters in part of a rift among Proud Boy chapters that stretches nation-wide.

Taming his appearance

Since his earlier run-ins with notoriety and law enforcement, Perrine has attempted to publicly tame his image. He presents himself as a conservative and “citizen journalist” and often goes to events under the guise of “documenting” for his Youtube channel. He has frequently been interviewed on Conservative channels, where he describes how he has been smeared as a “Nazi” by the left. During this time, Perrine has left indications of his antisemitic beliefs but has generally tried to play them down to give the impression of respectability.

A street corner with a large campaign sign for Jeffrey Perine. The sign features a photo of Perrine in a suit with his name in large letters. Beneath, it reads, "Constitutional Representative! State Assembly District 7and his campaign website. below that is a list of checked boxes: constitutionalist, antiestablishment, against political correctness, fiscally responsible, business oriented.

One of Perrine’s campaign signs during his State Assembly primary race in June 2022.

In 2020, Perrine also began a foray into Electoral politics, starting with his placement into the Sacramento GOP Central Committee, a position to which he ran unopposed. After he began to grab attention for this position, the Sacramento GOP expelled Perrine. This did not stop his electoral hopes, though, and in March 2022, he began his primary campaign for California State Assembly in district 7. After accruing less than 6% of the votes for that position, Perrine pivoted to a local election for San Juan School District Board of trustees. While he saw more success in the local domain, Perrine still came in a distant third in that race.

“The Day of the Rope”

In March 2023, right-wing disinformation outlet Project Veritas released surreptitiously-recorded videos attempting to paint a local Placer County pro-LGBT pastor as a child predator. Although the videos showed no actual wrongdoing on the Pastor’s part and subsequent investigations by the local school district confirmed this, local right-wingers pursued a harassment campaign against him, lead by Perrine. Most notably, Perrine twice visited the pastor’s home with a megaphone, yelling about biblical executions as punishment. Off the megaphone, during a conversation with a police officer, Perrine took an aside to the camera to say “The Day of the Rope couldn’t come soon enough, folks”. This marked a turn in some of Perrine’s public dialog, pivoting harder toward overtly neo-Nazi and White Supremacist references and rhetoric.

The “Day of the Rope” is a reference to an event in the notorious fictional book The Turner Diaries. This book was written under pseudonym by William Luther Pierce, leader of the National Alliance, one of the most prominent neo-Nazi groups in US history. The Turner Diaries describes a violent white nationalist uprising in the future United States, and is most notable for inspiring Timothy McVeigh to carry out the Oklahoma City Bombing. Within the book, The Day of the Rope is when the fictional neo-Nazi organization The Order would conduct mass executions of “race traitors” by hanging them from the city lampposts.

This was far from Perrine’s only time dipping his toes into overtly neo-Nazi rhetoric during this period. The following night, Perrine returned to the pastor’s house, where he was arrested for Disturbing the Peace after an incident where he accused a man of brandishing a knife (no knife was found in the area), resulting in the man being pepper sprayed and assaulted by Perrine’s associates. During his arrest, and then again during a live-stream afterward, Perrine referred to the police officers as “ZOGbots”. This is a term that comes out of older White Power movements, and refers to the ZOG, or “Zionist Occupational Government” conspiracy theory, which holds that the US Government is currently under military occupation by foreign Jews. Shortly afterward, at a rally in support of the pastor at a local high school, Perrine yelled at a crowd of mostly teenage students, “Chant more, queers, chant more. It’s all good, the Day of the Rope’s coming one day.

Overview of the shop

Origins and POYApparel

Antifascists first became aware of Jeffrey Perrine’s merchandising activity through his merch store on POYApparel, a now-defunct Proud Boy-centric marketplace set up by fellow Sacramento Proud Boy Brandon Revering.  One of the shops there, Unapologetic Apparel, was immediately recognizable as Perrine’s, due to the use of his screen name in its title. The vendor’s listed phone number also matched the one that Perrine was using on election materials for his doomed State Assembly primary campaign. This store featured mostly merchandise emblazoned with an anti-communist logo that Perrine favors in his designs. One other note-worthy vendor on Revering’s marketplace was a merch vendor named “Cap City”, which sold many designs with the Sacramento Proud Boys logo, alongside several shirt designs featuring homophobic slurs, such as “Don’t be a faggot”

The POYApparel website shuttered after Revering was exposed and antifascists targeted the site with a deplatforming campaign. Perrine continued to sell his merchandise, though primarily through telegram. On January 10, 2023, Perrine created a new merch group, titled “Unapologetic Merch Public Page,” posting, “Made a new page for all my friends and non PBs to join.” Many of the designs from this period consisted of baseball caps embroidered with general right-wing and anti-vax memes. His first hats had a design with the dog-whistly “Pureblood” anti-vax slogan. Others from the early period featured Pepe the Frog, the “angry NPC” meme, or his anti-communist logo. He processes payments through Cashapp using the handle JeffreyErikPerrine.

A flat-brimmed balck hat featuirng embroidered memes: one the "angry NPC" face, the other the "yes chad" face

Many of Perrine’s merch designs feature memes, like a right-wing Hot Topic

In February, Perrine began posting designs that had previously been listed by the “Cap City” vendor in the POYApparel marketplace. These included two designs with the text “Fuck Antifa” and the Proud Boy laurels, and one “Kill Your Local Pedophile” design, the same worn by Ian Kearns when Proud Boys stormed a drag story hour in the Bay Area in May of 2022. All three designs were in black and yellow, Proud Boys colors. On March 11, Perrine’s wife Kimmy, also an admin of the page, posted a link to an Instagram profile for the page.

The page continued along these lines, with Perrine pumping out right-wing meme apparel and his page being a place of general right-wing talk. On April 8, however, Perrine began to push harder into hate-merch territory with several overtly homophobic designs, including one reading “Satan Loves Fags” and a pair in Proud Boys colors with the text “Don’t Be A Faggot”. All of these designs had previously been offered by the Cap City vendor on POYApparel.

The purging of the normies

Perrine broke completely with his optics-priority style on May 4, the day four high-ranking Proud Boys were convicted of Seditious Conspiracy for their roles in the January 6, 2021 attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. Perrine posted several photos of himself with the four, and a video message accusing the US of weaponizing its courts for partisan ends. Group members began responding with anti-semitic messages blaming the verdict on Jews and calling the US a “2 party joo party” system. One called for “a third reich, I mean party in US politics”, and posting a picture of a man with a swastika on his forehead, raising his arm in a nazi salute. Perrine posted a video message agreeing with the “critique” of the two party system and at one point raising his hand and calling Donald Trump “Zionist of the Year”

Jeff began recording a stream of video messages. In one he claims that he soured on Trump after realizing “who his children are married to and who his daughter is married to”. The group member with the Nazi flag in his avatar stated that he liked the chat and that it felt “comphy[sic]” in there. Perrine then uploaded a response video explaining “I have purged almost everyone that doesn’t think like [them]” and that it was a “closed private group” which was “invite-only”. He then said “I’m never going to be overtly out there speaking in a way that can destroy my name […] but I have no qualms talking in person certain ways”

 

In another video message, Perrine Explains that he had purged several additional members, and that they “should get more guys in here who think like [them]”, as long as they are vetted. “Make sure you do a skin check,” he cautioned, referring to a common practice in many neo-Nazi chatrooms of requiring participants to post a photo of their skin, so that their whiteness can be verified. He then complained that due to a restraining order he “lost all [his] legal weapons” and then, using emojis, wrote that the order was “Total ✡️ bullshit” and the judge “was a gay ✡️”.

Explicit neo-nazi materials

A screenshot from Telegram. Unapologeticallywhite shares a post from "Gypsycrusader omegle livestreams/clips". The post reads: swastika hat hammer shades my 1488 Joker shirt. if you are interested in the hat I am wearing please message @unapologeticallywhite he is making the shirt and hat I am wearing. I'll be taking orders for the shirt soon. The attatched Photo shows a man standing indoors. He is wearing a skull mass, a yellow hat with a black swastika, and a T-shirt featuring a man and a joker outfit holding a gun with a flag coming out of the end. The flag has the number 1488 on it. The man holds his hand in an OK gesture.

Jeffrey Perrine shares a post from Paul Miller advertising a swastika hat and a shirt featuring Paul Miller on in, which he says Perrine is producing.

At this point, with the flood gates open and his chat (apparently) secured from watchful eyes, Perrine began posting some of his more explicit merch designs. The first was a computer-generated image of Adolph Hitler and several other prominent Nazi officials riding in a swastika-emblazoned car, with the text “White Boy Summer”. He later added a sonnenrad (Or “sunwheel,” an ancient European symbol frequently appropriated by neo-Nazis) to the background of the design. He also shared a post from infamous neo-Nazi troll Paul Miller, (who was briefly out of prison at the time after pleading guilty to three felony weapon charges) wearing a flat-brimmed cap with a swastika embroidered on it and a drawing of Miller in Joker makeup on the shirt. The post tagged Perrine’s telegram account, saying he was making the shirt and hat Miller was wearing.

A Black flat brim hat with a red brim and trim. It also features the text RWDS on it, embroidered in red.

A “Right Wing Death Squad” hat, posted by Perrine on June 24, 2023

On June 24, Perrine posted a photo of a new product in his merch chat: a black and red hat with the acronym “RWDS” on it. This is an abbreviation for “Right Wing Death Squad”. Though some Proud Boys had previously been documented with patches and other clothing bearing the acronym, this usage is notable for coming after the phrase received widespread mainstream attention when it was worn by a mass shooter in Allen, Texas. That shooter had murdered 8 people at a shopping center on May 6, 2023. In addition to the patch, the shooter was found to have tattoos of a swastika and the insignia of the Schutzstaffel, the Nazi division most responsible for carrying out the holocaust .

“The Jews are now in Control of the Proud Boy Organization”

On Saturday, June 24, Members of the neo-Nazi Active Club, Rose City Nationalists got involved with a physical altercation with members of the Portland Proud Boys outside of Oregon City Pride. RCN is run by a former member of the Portland Proud Boys, so this altercation was more likely the result of interpersonal dysfunction than true ideological disagreement. Regardless, Proud Boys and Active Club neo-Nazis staked out battle-lines and grudges quickly formed where tolerance had existed before. By and large, a rift had formed between the two factions.

Screenshot from a telegram chat: 🩸 Jöᚢ ᛗäᚱᛋᛏöᚻ 🩸, [Jun 25, 2023 at 6:26:47 PM]: You cool with RR? Unapologeticallywhite, [Jun 25, 2023 at 6:33:08 PM]: I kicked him due to not knowing if he's one of us or not He's a PB President. Couldn't trust it. He's in a chat that is anti white I had to make the call quickly so he didn't blow my cover Scottie BigBalls, [Jun 25, 2023 at 6:35:51 PM]: Smart move Unapologeticallywhite, [Jun 25, 2023 at 6:35:52 PM]: I use PB as a tool for networking

Perrine explains that he “couldn’t trust” the President of a different Proud Boy chapter, and that he simply uses Proud Boys for networking.

Against this backdrop, a President of a Florida-based Proud Boy chapter joined the chat, and was promptly removed. Perrine gave the reasoning that he didn’t know if the chapter president was “one of us” and that he didn’t want to “blow [his] cover”. “I use [Proud Boys] as a tool for networking”, Perrine explained. After one member lamented the fight in Oregon City, Perrine followed up with a voice message claiming that Proud Boys were “set[ting] themselves up to get  their asses beat” by other groups and that they “want to cuck to the n*gs and the Jews”. Perrine also accused Proud Boys of “only recruiting fat, disgusting alcoholics”.

In another video, Perrine remarks, “The Jews are now in control of the Proud Boy Organization, the three percent organization. They’ve infiltrated like they do everything.” Later in the video, he claims, “[Jews] have convinced the world that Nazis are evil people. And who are Nazis? Nazis are people who believe in family, traditional values, apparently.”  This represents a significant break with Perrine’s (soon to be?) former organization. He admits that the Proud Boys are only useful to him as networking to sell merch.

UPDATE FROM CAP CITY TEES:

We have been informed that Cap City Tees and Embroidery have cut all ties with Jeffrey Perrine and Unapologetic Apparel, and will not be taking further business from them. The following section has been retained for posterity. Please read on below for more info on Perrine’s connections to white nationalist groups.

Connections to Cap City Tees and Embroidery

A comparison of the Cap City Tees (left) and Unapologetic Apparel (right) Shopify stores.

In addition to Perrine’s Telegram and Instagram pages, he also has a web storefront through Shopify–Unapologeticapparel.shop–which has been in a partially-completed state for over a month as of this writing. This partial completeness reveals some interesting things about the page, however. The Privacy Policy , Shipping Policy, and Terms of Service all make reference not to “Unapologetic Apparel” as the name of the business, but rather “Cap City Tees and Embroidery”. The Privacy Policy additionally lists an address for Cap City Tees and Embroidery, which matches that listed in filings with the California Secratary of State’s “Bizfile” system. The Privacy policy also lists a shopify URL, which is currently inactive. A Google cache of that URL, however, shows an about page with identical verbiage to that used by Unapologeticapparel.shop. The Unapologeticapparel.shop website appears to be a direct copy of the Cap City Tees Shopify store, with updated branding.

Three photos side-by-side. The first shows a screen printing machine against the background of a gray curtain and pink brick wall with gray mortar. The center photo shows a T-shirt with a clown world logo featuring the meme Honkler. The background features a gray curtain on the left-hand side pink bricks with gray mortar, and an embroidery machine. The right hand photo shows a stack of boxes and behind them an embroidery machine matching the one in the center photo.

Left and right: Photos from Cap City Tees’ Instagram page, posted 7/25/20. Center: Posted to Perrine’s merch chat, 4/29/23, showing matching gray curtains, brickwork, and embroidery machine.

Furthermore, the background from one of Perrine’s merch images matches the interior shown on Cap City Tees’ Instagram page. This includes a brick wall and gray curtain, as well as an embroidery machine which appears to be the same model shown in both images. Additionally, one photo that Perrine posted of his “White Boy Summer” merch design shows the shirt draped over a pile of boxes. One box has the words “Cap City” written in sharpie on it. Another box features the logo of Empire Safety and Supply. The labelled cabinets match those seen in other photos inside Cap City Tees and Embroidery. Unapologeticapparel.shop seems not only to have directly copied the website of Cap City Tees and Embroidery, but also have their designs produced at the shop.

Photo shows a white boy summer shirt. It is sitting on a stack of boxes. One box features a label with the writing cap city on it. Another features a black and red label of Empire Safety and Supply

One of Perrine’s White Boy Summer shirt designs sitting on a stack of boxes with labels for Cap City Tees and Empire Safety and Supply.

Cap City Tees business relationships

Cap City Tees and Embroidery, the company linked to production of the Swastika hats, pro-Hitler shirts, and other neo-Nazi merch that Perrine sells through his online channels, appears to be run out of a residential address in Sacramento. On their website, Cap City Tees boasts several large industrial and corporate customers, including Sacramento Regional Transit, SFMTA, and the California Conservation Corps. This is likely due to a business relationship with Empire Safety and Supply, a safety supply company out of Roseville. Multiple photos showing the inside of Cap City Tees show boxes bearing the markings of Empire Safety and Supply. Rob Crawford, Chief Operations Officer and Production Manager for Cap City Tees, also works for Empire in Inside Sales. Crawford, whose position implies oversight over all merchandise produced through Cap City Tees, has several right-wing interests on his Facebook profile, including far-right propaganda outlet Breitbart and the Daily Wire, the Ben Shapiro-founded outlet responsible for pushing much of the current anti-trans moral panic.

This relationship gives the small Print shop access to much larger customers in need of bulk branded Hi-Viz vests and other work-wear. Other clients that Cap City Tees has worked for, again likely through Empire Safety and Supply, include Schimmick, Performance Contracting, Inc., F. D. Thomas Inc., Bogle Family Vinyards, Long Beach Energy Resources, Concrete Value Corp, Placer County Water Agency, Turner Construction, and Sunworks Solar Power, and the Don Pedro Power Tunnel Project. This also means that Empire Safety and Supply is also (likely unwittingly) a major enabler of neo-nazi fundraising efforts in the Sacramento region, by propping up the print shop that is linked to the production of this nazi merchandise.

WLM California

In addition to running his neo-Nazi merch shop, Perrine is a vetted member of California chapter of overtly white nationalist group “White Lives Matter”. WLM advocates for the removal of People of color in the US to convert the countries of Europe, North America, and Australia into exclusively-white ethnostates, with no more than 1% made up of people of color “for purposes that serve the interests of White People – this includes tourism and trade.” The California chapter of White Lives Matter also made a practice of requiring new additions to the chat to recite the “fourteen words”–a white power slogan coined by white supremacist David Lane while serving a prison sentence in connection with the murder of a Jewish radio host.

five men sit in a row of seats in a city council chamber. On the right side is Jeffrey Perrine, with a short bear and mullet. he is wearing a hat with the meme Honkler on it and a shirt reading "Pureblood"

Perine (right), along with Ryan Messano and three white nationalists associated with WLM and Norcal Active Club at a Sacramento City Counil meeting on May 25.

Jeffrey Perrine has joined in WLM-CA’s activities on multiple occasions. On May 23, 2023, Perrine joined a group of three other members of WLM-CA and local antisemitic loser Ryan Messano at the Sacramento City Council meeting–a city he does not live in. While he was not able to speak in person after the council closed the chamber due to disruptions associated with the presence of the white nationalists, Perrine did call in later that night to support his antisemitic compatriots. Perrine has consistently called in to address the Sacramento, Walnut Creek, and Sonoma city councils, mostly to deliver inane comments for clout from online neo-nazis like Jon Minadeo of the troll outfit Goyim Defense League.

On Shortly after midnight on the morning of June 19, 2023, there was a coordinated flyering campaign in several locations in Sacramento to promote a neo-nazi propaganda film, antisemitic literature from the Goyim defense league, and WLM promotional materials. A few days prior, on June 16, 2023, Perrine left a voice message in his telegram merch chat saying, “I’m going to be doing a fuckin’ flyer drop for Defiant and GDL on Sunday. So I’m getting excited, Brother”. Perrine later replied to twitter posts regarding the flyers by challenging the poster to refute the antisemitic claims made.

Jeff Perine, wearing sunglasses and a hat with the letters FAFO on it stands in front of a group of masked men wearing signs.

Jeffrey Perrine with members of white nationalist groups Patriot Front, WLM California, and Norcal Active Club, harrassing a children’s pride event in Rancho Cordova.

On June 24, 2023, Perrine joined a group of approximately 14 members of White Lives Matter, Norcal Active Club, and Patriot Front to harass a children’s pride event in Rancho Cordova. Members yelled at children at the event to kill themselves. This was the second year in a row that WLM California had attempted to disrupt the event, after they had been joined by members of the Sacramento Proud Boys the previous year. After the event, Antifascists were able to follow the white nationalist group to their cars. The white nationalists then retreated down a side-road until police arrived, despite an overwhelming numerical advantage.

Conclusion

Jeffrey Perrine has long been a source of bigotry and violence in the Sacramento area. But his ability to curate his public image in the face of more moderate right-wing media has won him attention, presenting him as the public face of the Proud Boys, and “proof” that they aren’t the evil nazis that the left makes them out to be. He has run for office multiple times, winning mainstream attention if not electoral victories. But this image that Perrine cultivated was a lie. Jeffrey Perrine is an overt neo-nazi, as antifascists have long warned that he was. He is also a two-faced liar, presenting himself in different circles exactly as he needs to to get what he wants out of those circles. Pathetic and vacant as the man may be, though, his efforts harm our communities and for that reason we deem it necessary to expose him.

Action Items:

You can help keep our community safe from neo-nazi bigots by helping out with the following actions:

  • UPDATE: Cap City Tees has stated that they have cut all business ties with Jeffrey Perrine and will not be accepting any future business from him. Contact Cap City Tees by email or phone (916-476-3841) and demand they cease all business relations with neo-Nazi Jeffrey Perrine and Unapologetic Apparel immediately. We recommend that you take precautions with your identity because we cannot be sure of Cap City Tee’s motivations.
  • Contact Shopify and ask them to terminate any business relationship with neo-nazi Jeffrey Perrine and his shopify site, unapologeticapparel.shop.
  • Contact cashapp and ask them to terminate any business relationship with neo-nazi Jeffrey Perrine, who is using their service to process payments for merchandise explicitly promoting nazi ideology and right-wing violence. Perrine’s cashapp account is $JeffreyErikPerrine. He has also previously used the account $ThePrudentPatriot
  • Jeffrey’s wife Kimmy Perrine, who is an admin of Perrine’s neo-nazi telegram channel and intimately involved in the merch sales, is an esthetician at Beauty Exhange Inc.  Please Contact Beauty Exchange at their email, Facebook, or Instagram to inform them of Kimmy’s neo-nazi affiliations and kindly request that they terminate any business relationships with her. You can also leave reviews directly on Kimmy’s Facebook Page to warn any potential customers about her associations.

 

 

 

Joshua Isgrigg: Neo-nazi bomb-maker and elder abuser from Porterville CA

A mugshot of a man, he has long hair with a receding hairline and a scraggly, wispy beard with a mustache that doesn't connect

Joshua Isgrigg

Joshua Isgrigg is a neo-nazi and convicted elder abuser and bomb-maker living in Porterville, CA. He is connected to the White Lives Matter and Active Club neo-nazi networks, which have promoted his banner drops and activities. In 2020, he was caught with over 100lbs of bomb-making materials but is currently back on the streets. Due to his pattern of violent abuse, exterminationist ideology, and history of bomb-making, he should be considered a danger to any in his community.

Arrests

On April 5 2020, a neighbor called police after hearing Joshua Isgrigg’s elderly relative calling for aid. Isgrigg, who lived in the home and was the primary caretaker for this relative, had spit in their face and taken their vehicle without permission. The relative reported that Isgrigg had a history of violent and financial abuse. In June of 2020, Isgrigg was stopped by police and found to be in possession of 56 lbs of Ammonium Nitrate and hexamine–chemicals that could be used to manufacture an explosve device similar to the one used in the Oklahoma City bombing. Subsequent searches found that he had additional explosive precursors and bomb-making supplies in his home. Isgrigg also made statements that he had been testing mixtures of the precursor as explosives. In January 2021, Isgrigg pled guilty to felony charges of physical and financial elder abuse, as well as possession of bomb-making materials. He was apparently released sometime in 2022, after serving only two years for the felony charges of physical elder abuse, financial elder abuse, and possession of over 100 lbs of explosive precursor.

Subsequent activity

A man wearing a black had with a white Odal Rune, a black and white shirt featuing the Nazi War Eagle clutching a Swastika, military-style pants and a skull mask holds his right hand up in a Nazi Salute. There are three red arrows pointing down and to the left superimposed over the image.

Joshua Isgrigg performs a nazi salute at a children’s drag story hour in Sacramento, 4/16/23

Since being released from prison, Isgrigg has quickly jumped into public neo-Nazi activity. By July 1, 2022, Isgrigg had created a telegram account and uploaded photos with neo-Nazi imagery, and sometime between then and April 2023, Isgrigg’s telegram account had joined the White Lives Matter California chat. On April 16, Isgrigg made the four-hour trip to Sacramento, to harass a drag story hour that had been targeted by the WLM group. Isgrigg threw Nazi salutes while standing along three members of the Proud Boys. After it ended, several community members confronted Isgrigg, and he retreated into a Chinese restaurant where he hid for 20 minutes while Sacramento Police blockaded the door to prevent anyone else from entering. After activists warned off his Uber driver, Sacramento PD eventually ferried him into their own car and drove him away.

a man in a black shirt and black had with an Odal rune on it gives a nazi salute out the window of a car.

Isgrigg gives a nazi salute out the window of a car after a banner drop in Templeton, CA.

Isgrigg continued to join in public displays of his Naziism. On April 21 2023, Isgrigg and another neo-Nazi were photographed hanging a banner reading “Embrace White Pride” from an overpass in Porterville, CA. On April 29, Isgrigg appeared with another neo-Nazi holding a banner on an overpass over highway 101 in Templeton, CA. After the community responded with an anti-hate rally at the location, Isgrigg returned with three other nazis on May 13–WLM’s announced day of action. This time, the neo-Nazis were confronted and chased off, but not before community members were able to get pictures of their faces and vehicle. Isgrigg again used a photo from this event as his profile picture on Telegram.

Joshua Isgrigg’s activity over this span shows several ties to the White Lives Matter (WLM) and Active Club movements. These movements are two closely connected neo-Nazi campaigns that have come to prominence over the last two years. The WLM movement was launched in April 2021 as a way for neo-Nazis to engage in public displays of white nationalism through a loosely-organized and decentralized network. This mostly took the shape of banner drops, stickering, and occasional small rallies. The active clubs rose out of this, creating a network of neo-Nazi fight clubs designed in the image of the defunct “Rise Above Movement”, which had similar goals. In practice, the Active Club movement is closely tied to WLM, with significant overlap in membership.

A screenshot from telegram. Account “NACVet” responds to a post by Project Mayhem showing Joshua Isgrigg outside a drag story hour and calling him a “Masculine Chad”. NACVet writes: “Sent him this for an ego boost”

A post by the Norcal Active Club adminitrator on telegram, saying that they would relay praise of Isgrigg to him directly

The initial call to action for neo-Nazis to harass the Drag Queen Story Hour in Sacramento was made by NorCal Active Club, and promoted by WLM California. Screenshots from the WLM telegram chat also show Isgrigg’s “Maelstrom” account responding to those calls by contacting another account in response to an apparently deleted message. After the event, Norcal Active Club responded to praise of Isgrigg in a different chat with a statement that they would relay that praise to Isgrigg himself. Additionally, WLM California’s twitter account claimed responsibility for the April 29th “Embrace White Pride” banner drop, which was put on by Isgrigg and one other neo-Nazi. Both WLM California and Norcal Active Club promoted images of that and the May 13th banner drop.

Ideology

Joshua Isgrigg is overt and open neo-Nazi. On his youtube account, he states that he is a “literal Nazi” . He also does not shy away from openly displaying Nazi imagery, and at the April 16 story hour event, Isgrigg wore a shirt bearing the Nazi war Eagle and swastika, and repeatedly performed Nazi salutes. In video captured at the 5/13 banner drop in Templeton, CA, Isgrig said it was “good” that a woman’s Jewish ancestors were killed by Nazis during world war II. He also called Black Lives Matter protesters “monkeys destroying their cities” and that he would “see [them] in the Boog”, referencing the an online meme name for a second civil war.

Aside from his overt Naziism, another concerning element of Isgrigg’s worldview is demonstrated by a post under his name on a California-based webpage devoted to gang-stalking. Gang-stalking is a phenomenon wherein people experience delusions that much of the outside world are engaged in a conspiracy targeting them in particular. This presents a concerning level of paranoia and separation from reality, particularly for someone with a history of violent behavior and hateful ideology. Isgrigg had also reportedly made apocalyptic references during his investigation.

Confirming identity

Two photos side by side. The first is a screenshot from facbook, showing a profile picture with a shirtless man whose face is covered in a skull mask. Behind him is a nazi flag. The second features the identical photo, though the background has been replaced with a sonnenrad. It is also framed by an ouroboros.

Left: Isgrigg’s Facebook photo, as reported by the ADL. Right: A photo which was at one point used as Isgrigg’s profile picture on Telegram.

Shortly after his appearance at the drag story hour at Poppy + Pot, Joshua Isgrigg uploaded photos of himself at the rally, including first-person video, to his telegram account, under the username @guttedman1488 (since changed to @maelstrom1488). He also claimed responsibility in at least one telegram chatroom. This account also featured photos of him wearing matching clothing, uploaded weeks prior to the event.

Two photos side-by-side. Both show a man flexing in a typical bodybuilders pose, with one wrist holding the other while his arms flex. On the left hand photo the face is covered with a Nazi totenkopf. This photo is shot in a gym locker room. In the right hand photo the background is that of a bodybuilding contest. In both photos just below the man's left nipple there are two moles in an identical pattern.

Left: a photo posted from Isgrigg’s “Maelstrom” telegram account. Right: a photo for a profile of Joshua Isgrigg from a body-building competition in 2016. Identical moles are visible in each.

One of the photos Isgrigg had uploaded to his telegram account is a modified version of a photo he had previously used as a profile picture on Facebook, which had been included in reports by the ADL. Another photo shows a shirtless man posing in a gym mirror with his face covered by a totenkopf. This photo shows two distinctive moles that match moles shown in photos of Isgrigg on a competitive body-building website. Additinal circumstantial evidence abounds, such as his presence at a banner drop in his small hometown of Porterville, and comments under his name on an Etsy listing of a hat identical to the one he wore in both Sacramento and SLO. Isgrigg was also found to have made mention of a “Maelstrom Division” during investigations after his arrest. He would later use Maelstrom as his telegram display name.

Conclusions

Finally, I want to draw up some threads that have shown throughout Isgrigg’s story. In 2021, Isgrigg took a plea deal, pleading no contest to three felony charges: physical elder abuse, financial elder abuse, and possession of explosive materials, charges which would normally carry a 6-12 year sentence. Less than two years later, Isgrigg is back out on the streets and immediately threw in his lot with the WLM movement, going so far as to travel four hours to Sacramento, apparently alone, for an event. In Sacramento, he got suspiciously friendly treatment from police, including valet service away from protesters at the end of the event. In SLO, he was also seen liaising with officers, and in one clip could be overheard offering up his ID. I will leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions about what might tie all these threads together, but I’ll note that the neo-nazi movement is notorious for harboring informants.

A m a man wearing a gray hoodie, a skull mask, sunglasses, and a white shirt with the German war eagle visible on it holds his phone up to his ear. He's surrounded by bicycle cops from Sacramento Police Department.

Joshua Isgrigg in Sacramento, under police protection shortly before being escorted into a police car and driven away

Regardless of the circumstances surrounding Joshua Isgrigg’s release from incaceration and subsequent re-entry to the neo-nazi movement, he is a danger to any who are around him. He has a clear and deeply concerning history of violence, coupled with a hateful and paranoid worldview. If he is collaborating with law enforcement, it is shameful that they would enable such an individual to be active in our communities. For all of the above reasons, it is imperative that Joshua Isgrigg be exposed.

Welcome

This page represents efforts to expose and disrupt fascist organizing in Northern California and beyond.

At present, this page is under construction. Both archived and new information will be available here shortly.