Neo-Nazis turn up at doorstep of US journalist who investigated them

Last August, teenage members of 2119 allegedly perpetrated a series of crimes terrorising the Jewish community of Pensacola, Florida. These included bricks with swastikas scrawled on them being thrown through synagogue windows and swastikas spray-painted onto a house. Around the same time, the group vandalised a local mosque, a Masonic meeting house and a socialist community centre.

A journalist for more than 20 years, Green, 49, covers right-wing extremism for Raw Story, a US news site. His three-part investigation into 2119 is one of the longest pieces that he has worked on, and it is his proudest work.

Six neo-Nazis hold burning flares in front of Jordan Green's home 10 February 2024 (Photo: Raw Story)[Missing Credit]

For most of his career, Green was more interested in reporting on policing and housing than on white supremacists.

He started looking into neo-Nazis after an attack on an electrical grid in North Carolina in December 2022. It caused a widespread electric outage for five days, and a woman who was dependent on an oxygen machine died. 

After that, Green gained access to a 2119 Telegram channel. His investigations have since revealed a network of teenage white nationalists across America who have conspired to enact violence, including domestic terror and mass murder

Their social media posts include a photo of a nude, black female body missing her head, and instructions for mass industrial chaos.

Raw Story reported on internal communications that suggest group members believe their status as children gives them the freedom to commit acts of terror, “while laying the groundwork for a future that they hope will allow them to commit murder on a grand scale”.

One former member reportedly said he would start murdering black people: “When the system collapses, that’s the plan.”

Green told the JC there were neo-Nazis with links to 2119 operating in the UK.

“It's transnational,” he said. “There is networking across the Atlantic. Neo-Nazis compare notes on how they get around the technology challenge of being de-platformed or trying to avoid law enforcement.”

A Pensacola community centre defaced with swastikas in August 2023 (Photo: Twitter/X)[Missing Credit]

Soon after Green was identified on Terrorgram for reporting on the group he began receiving threatening phone calls.

On the evening of 28 December, one caller rang Green at home and identified themselves as Bozak, a name the reporter recognised from a 2119 channel.

"They said, ‘We just want to let you know that the Global Bricksters are on standby’,” Green recalled. He took “Bricksters” to be a reference to the brick attacks. The caller said, “Don’t mess with us” and hung up.

Days later, someone took photographs of Green at his home using a telephoto lens.

On 7 January, an unordered pizza delivery showed up at Green’s home and someone else took photographs of the reporter when he opened the door.

Later that month, Green spotted a post on Telegram: “Jordan Green, you have a healthy respect for a Taurus Judge now, yes? Keep phishing for minors and we’ll keep shooting our local Judge."

A Taurus Judge is a gun — but the group have also suggested that they would target real judges.

A 2119 member had previously posted a video that said, “Shoot your local judge.” When asked whether someone might interpret the phrase as an endorsement for shooting a judge in a court, he allegedly said: “That’s all right.”

He also reportedly said he lives close to where an extremist fatally shot the son of a federal judge in New Jersey in 2020.

A still from a video published by 2119 member Mathew Bair shows a flier on a chain-link fence that reads "Shoot your local judge" (Photo: Raw Story)[Missing Credit]

 

It was a few days after the Taurus Judge threat on Telegram that neo-Nazis targeted Green’s house with the lit flares. Afterwards, white supremacists posted photographs of themselves on social media, posing in paramilitarily camouflage and ski masks.

Green reported that one teenager, described as “a 2119 OG” [original], distributed an IRA guerrilla warfare training manual on his Telegram channel.

It is unclear how many members there are in 2119. Green said it could be hundreds. He has identified 24 distinct profiles, most of them very young.

“One member said he has been a committed national socialist since he was 13,” said Green. Some 16-year-olds say they have been on the 2119 Telegram channels for years.

“Initially I was looking for an adult that was behind it, a puppet master of the children who was orchestrating it, but I did not find evidence of that. Even more troublingly, it appears that they are radicalising themselves on the internet,” Green said.

Some of the youths that Green has reported on have been detained and others have been suspended from school. Three were arrested and charged in connection with the Florida brick attack in August.

The ideological inspiration for the teenagers is clear. Green said that one of the teenagers arested in Florida started with a World War Two Discord chat (a social media platform used by gamers) that admired Hitler and the Third Reich.

“Their ideology is consistent with American neo-Nazis going back to the 1980s,” Green said.

Like the Nazis of the 1930s and ‘40s, these young men share a loathing for the press.

Green noted, “Nazis have a clear disdain for the press. They see it as a necessity to dismantle the free press in order to impose the kind of totalitarian social that they wish to create.”

He believes the danger that neo-Nazis pose to democracy is grave: “It [the threats towards the press] erodes the respect for the press and puts journalists at risk. It’s the same for public servants, election workers, elected officials: the temperature is hotter.

“Their main objective is to erode trust and they will play against all sides.”

Green said: “They [2119] seem to take the attitude that their harassment of vulnerable minority groups is a legitimate activity of private citizens, and their privacy is violated by journalists exposing their activity.

“They think that their harassment of journalists is just kind of a tit for tat, showing journalists how it feels to have their privacy violated.”

Green has never shared the address or contact details of the 2119 members he has investigated, but they have repeatedly shared his.

The brick thrown through a synagogue window in Pensacola Florida August 2023 (Photo: Twitter/X)[Missing Credit]

Green warned that neo-Nazi white supremacists will “latch onto any kind of controversy for their own objectives of trying to cause a collapse in democracy”.

The threats, doxing and incitement to violence have clearly taken their toll on Green. He will not divulge any details about any police investigation except to say, “Law enforcement is aware and involved.”

He said: “I’m not a person that is super comfortable with being in the public eye. I don’t want my work to be overshadowed by my own personal experience.”

Despite the stalking, he said, “The harassment has brought attention to the work and seems to have amplified the investigative work rather than overshadowed it.

“I hope that this kind of reporting doesn’t just freak people out. I hope that people will be encouraged and try to engage constructively and push back against antisemitism and other forms of extremism that silence democratic participation.

“I’m committed to reporting. This is my job and the harassment, if anything, validated that this is an important story to tell.

“Wherever the story goes, I’ll go.”