Today in Chutzpah

It appears that members of the racist white supremacist Patriot Front are suing an activist for joining the group and revealing its secrets.

If the actions of your organization are so immoral and disgusting that being exposed as a member something worth suing over, perhaps you should examine your life:

To hear Patriot Front members tell it, David Alan Capito II is basically an antifa superspy — a man who is known by myriad aliases, including “Vyacheslav Arkangelskiy,” “Nick Vasiliy,” and “Vincent Washington.” This last name was the one Capito used to infiltrate Patriot Front and doxx members of the white nationalist group, according to a federal lawsuit brought in late July by five members whose identities were revealed.

What emerges from the 20-page court document is a cinematic tale of an epic doublecross. The suit decries how the left-wing activist conned Patriot Front into thinking he was a fellow traveler, “lying about his background and values,” only to expose its members through photography, secret recordings, and a massive computer hack. The suit pulls back the curtain, for the first time, on how 400 gigabytes of Patriot Front data came to be exposed by the whistleblower group Denial of Distributed Secrets, in conjunction with the media collective Unicorn Riot in early 2022.

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With this alleged hack, “Capito was able to download private chats and intercept video links” later posted in a data dump by DDoSecrets, the suit contends, and publicized by Unicorn Riot. The massive dump included more than 55,000 internal RocketChat messages and numerous behind-the-scenes videos. This leaked material showcased — among other rancid behavior — videos of Patriot Front members defacing murals that celebrate racial justice, burning LGBTQ pride flags in the woods, and thowing up Roman salutes and shouting “Sieg fucking Heil” when they thought they were off-camera.

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Five members of the group now are suing in federal court. Not because they allege Capito spread misinformation about them — they fully admit to being affiliates of the group. Rather, because they insist they had a reasonable “expectation of privacy with respect to their Patriot Front membership.” In other words, they assert they had a right to keep their extremist views hidden from those around them. These plaintiffs are seeking damages for what they deem “severe harms” — including job loss and ruptured family relations — that resulted from being identified as supporters of the group.

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The lawsuit hinges on unwelcome public identification. Ironically, the parties here sue in their own names, filing in federal district court in Washington state and creating a public record of what the suit terms their “unpopular opinions.” By their own identification, they are:

• Paul Gancarz of Virginia
• Daniel Turetchi of Pennsylvania
• Colton Brown of Utah
• James Johnson of Washington state
• Amelia Johnson of Washington state

The nature of Patriot Front’s “unpopular opinions” is critical to understand in this context. The Anti-Defamation League calls Patriot Front a “white supremacist group” that has promoted “American Fascism.” The group’s logo literally features a fasces — a Roman symbol of sticks bound along with an ax, from which the word fascism is derived — surrounded by 13 stars. The secretive group wraps itself in red-white-and-blue patriotism, but its racist ideology insists that “membership within the American nation is inherited through blood” and reserved only for those of “pan-European identity.”

Patriot Front darkly advocates a “hard reset” for America. And the group is infamous for menacing flash-mob tactics, in which shouting members march in a uniform of khakis and blue polo shirts — obscuring their identities with white face gaiters, baseball caps and sunglasses. Five members of the group, including James Johnson, were recently convicted of “conspiracy to riot” at the 2022 Pride festival Coeur d’Alene, Idaho — where they were intercepted by FBI agents before they could descend on the celebrants.

The classic definition of chutzpah is, "That quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan."

Terrorists suing for being revealed as terrorists is a pretty good definition as well.