On Tuesday, Project Veritas released the third of its antifa video exposes. This undercover video exposes the armed branch of antifa who want to abolish the police and identify as the leftist movement’s “militia.”
“Redneck Revolt,” also known as the “John Brown Gun Club,” identifies itself as the “militia wing of antifa.” A Project Veritas journalist infiltrated the North Carolina chapter in 2018.
While Redneck Revolt supports gun ownership, local leaders condemned the National Rifle Association.
In the video, a Redneck Revolt leader insists, “I hate the NRA. The NRA is a white supremacist terrorist organization.”
“This particular group sees themselves as armed revolutionaries. They’re all about the working class,” the Project Veritas journalist explains. “So they share these communist, anarchist ideals that the working class should run the country with no government and they believe in total abolition of everything, including the police.”
She reported that Redneck Revolt was also part of the riots in Charlottesville, Va. in 2017. “Charlottesville was comprised of your typical Antifa black bloc measures. There were also Black Lives Matter. There were multiple chapters of Redneck Revolt that went to Charlottesville and acted as the militia wing of the anti-fascist movement,” she said.
Following the example of John Brown, the abolitionist who led the raid on Harper’s Ferry in order to arm the slaves for an uprising, Redneck Revolt aims to arm black Americans.
“One of their missions is to arm minorities. They feel that black Americans and minorities are disenfranchised by gun laws and permit fees,” the Project Veritas journalist reported.
The journalist recalled going to the gun range with Redneck Revolt, calling the experience “especially stressful and scary” because “they had guns” and because “I was wired with a camera, so the entire time that I was there at the gun range, especially while we were shooting guns, I was constantly worried that something would come unattached or a wire would show.”
Ultimately, the undercover journalist found herself booted from the group because she posted on Facebook her support for a candidate for sheriff. “That’s where they said to me, that’s where we fundamentally disagree. We don’t believe in reform of any kind. We believe in complete abolition of the system itself, including police.”
While most antifa instigators seem more interested in carrying batons and throwing bricks or Molotov cocktails, Project Veritas has revealed that armed instigators do play a role in the radical leftist terrorist movement.
Project Veritas’s previous antifa videos exposed various tactics, including “fight club” training sessions.
The videos come after protests over the police killing of George Floyd devolved into looting, vandalism, and arson across America, destroying black lives, black livelihoods, and black monuments. Antifa instigators are likely behind such violence — antifa black bloc tactics make an appearance in footage of the riots.
Antifa instigators have a long track record of violence, particularly in Portland, Ore. Journalist Andy Ngo has been hospitalized after receiving a beating. Local conservative Adam Kelly had his head busted open with a baton. He suffered a concussion and needed 25 stables to close the wounds. Gage Halupowski, an antifa agitator, pled guilty to second-degree assault and was sentenced to 70 months in prison for the violence.
Last July, 69-year-old Willem Van Spronsen threw “incendiary devices” at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Tacoma, Wash. Police killed him, but not before he ignited a car and tried to get a propane tank to explode, ironically endangering the lives of the very immigrants he intended to help. “I am antifa,” Van Spronson said in his manifesto. The group Seattle Antifascist Action hailed this terrorist as a “martyr.”
“When our good friend and comrade Willem Van Spronsen took a stand against the fascist detention center in Tacoma, he became a martyr who gave his life to the struggle against fascism,” the antifa group posted on Facebook.
While some have defended antifa by comparing them to the soldiers who stormed the beaches on Normandy to fight the Nazis on D-Day in 1944, the London antifa branch vandalized a statue of Winston Churchill — on D-Day, no less!
The revelation of antifa’s armed “militia” should terrify Americans — but it also reaffirms conservative opposition to gun control. The Redneck Revolt is correct in its suspicions that restrictions on gun ownership trace back to a desire to prevent black Americans from being able to defend themselves. It seems ironic that so many leftists who insist police are racist seem opposed to the idea of black people arming themselves for defense against them. Redneck Revolt is at least ideologically consistent in supporting black gunowners even as it is utterly inconsistent in demonizing the NRA.
In advocating the abolition of police and presenting itself as a militia, Redneck Revolt seems to be making a play to replace the police and become a form of private security force. I’d take the police — with all their faults — over antifa militants any day of the week.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member