Robert Budzyna, who allegedly attempted to commit a pair of arsons in Auburn MA on June 28th of 2019, is formerly “Peter MA” of Patriot Front, and is currently “Red Wood” who is almost certainly a member of the Nationalist Social Club of New England. Normally any good identification bulletin would come with an action item; I feel I have no responsible recommendations on how to approach that, considering Budzyna is currently being tried for his actions in Worcester County Superior Court!

In September 2022, I published a bulletin on Patriot Front members David Spellman-Oldenquist & Tyler Primevara via Twitter, and detailed a fracas between Spellman-Oldenquist and Chris Hood that stemmed from Patriot Front nonsense. If you’ve read it, you may recall me mentioning Robert Budzyna, at whose home the aforementioned fracas occurred. I recommend reviewing said bulletin! We’re gonna build off events described there.

I’ll also be making copious use of various chat leaks, especially Torch Network’s 2019-2020 Patriot Front general channel Rocketchat leaks, and some leaks of the New England Nationalists chat circa early 2022.

There will be a considerable amount of chatter concerning neo-Nazi organizer Christopher Raymond Hood Jr., teenage III%er, former Proud Boy, member then Network Directing Officer within Patriot Front before his expulsion from said organization, member of the New England cell of the Base, and founding member of the Nationalist Social Club of New England, NSC-131 for short.

While I’ll be citing a number of sources running the gamut from courts to journalists to antifascist researchers, I’ll also be speculating thoroughly throughout, particularly when I’ve questioned how responsibly or capably I can pursue a line of inquiry and left it incomplete as a result. I hope that I’ve written well enough to differentiate between reality and my own meanderings.

Finally, be advised: content warnings for antisemitism, racism, misogyny, and other nonsense you’d expect from a bunch of neo-Nazis, as well as at least one mention of self-harm.

Budzyna as “Peter MA” & “Red Wood”

I believe we get our first publicly-available glimpse of Budzyna as Peter MA here, back at the Resist Marxism event meant to be held at Berklee College in December 2018. I think he can be seen twice: first inside the venue before leaving it and looking straight at the camera of our chosen livestream, then later standing next to the rest of the Patriot Front guys.

In the event that’s not a correct assessment, I can say for certain that “Peter MA” first appears in leaked PF internal chats late March 2019 (where the leaks start), and was likely a member well before that.

As Peter MA, Budzyna’s been a mystery for awhile! The guy occupies space in the minds of several local antifascists simply because of how WEIRD he is. He regularly vacillates between being one of the more verbally playful neo-Nazis I’ve ever seen and seeming unpleasantly disturbing. Seriously, read over this stuff, all of which he posted into Patriot Front’s internal Rocketchat.

Here Budzyna is, speculating on his prime suspicions for the true identity and possible haunts of antifascist researcher Antifash Gordon (apophenia is a helluva drug), with Chris Hood doing the only sensible thing I’ve seen him do in the form of getting irritated over it.

Here’s a moment where Budzyna compelled Tommy Rousseau, founder of Patriot Front, to ban taco reacts in Patriot Front chats. I’m not sure of the date on this, but I do think it ended poorly for Petey!

I speculate on that because here’s the only evidence I have of what I believe is Budzyna’s ban from Patriot Front’s internal chats at Rousseau’s hands during the evening of July 21st in 2019.

After this point, Budzyna is to the best of my knowledge never seen in this specific set of leaks again.

We do know that Budzyna was only expelled from the chat, and not the organization as a whole, because he was photographed a handful of times during Boston’s March Against Cages on August 14th in 2019. This includes the iconic photo of looking shook with Chris Hood in a subway car.

The two of them had just gotten chased onto an Orange Line train by demonstrators at the Boston March Against Cages, and probably needed a minute to calm down from their brush with consequences. There are a handful of identifiers you should remember here: the Mjolnir necklace, the “you’re gonna get burned” tattoo on the right forearm, and the vaulted boots. They’ll come up later.

On October 3rd in 2019, Chris Hood led the local chapter of Patriot Front to banner-drop in Hartford CT, bringing along several local members of the National Socialist Movement.

Along for the ride, from left to right, is “Peter MA,” Michael Moura, the deceased Cameron Anthony in the squatting position, Anthony Petruccelli, and *checks notes* some neo-Nazi chump. Peter’s twin-tipped polo looks very much like the one Proud Boys wear, I must say? [*]

On November 23rd in 2019, Chris Hood, accompanied by a small posse, entered Robert Budzyna’s Auburn MA home to assault Patriot Front member David Spellman-Oldenquist. I’ll recap briefly what I knew at the time of the last thread: At roughly 10PM, Hood and his posse entered Budzyna’s home. In the living room were Budzyna, Spellman-Oldenquist, and Tyler Primevara, another member of Patriot Front. Hood slapped Spellman-Oldenquist across the face before Hood and most of his posse took turns assaulting the subject of their abuse. Primevara didn’t intercede in the ambush, but he did drive Spellman-Oldenquist to St. Vincent’s Hospital after the assault was over. Spellman-Oldenquist later submitted a police report, and Primevara submitted a witness statement in support. According to the report, Budzyna did not witness the assault. As it happens, there’s still more to this specific story that we’ll get to.

Here’s Budzyna as “Peter X” getting yelled at by Zach Brackett – aka “Harold Waters,” ex-member of Patriot Front, the Base, and NSC – for his endless heartsore bellyaching in Brackett’s private chat.

The “ex” in question is a known figure in Texas white supremacist circles I’ll opt not to identify further.

Here’s Budzyna in March 2020 doing what he was told but NOT taking the advice it implied, creating a dedicated Telegram channel to bloviate about how the aforementioned ex complicated his time in Texas in a way that led to his arrest and imprisonment.

This included a rejection email from the Texas National Guard, the blame of which he more or less rested at the ex’s feet. He also posted some revenge porn in there, a not-classy move that got the channel nuked.

There was a brief, blessed time roughly two years ago when one could monitor a specific Telegram chat, one that was affiliated with both Patriot Front and the Nationalist Social Club, without joining it, before the neo-Nazis pegged they had a security hole and nuked the place. A user going by “Red Wood” and identifying himself as “Texas Pete” made an appearance in November 2021, and almost immediately began yammering away about his relationship woes.

I recall reading these leaks and thinking that it was odd that this guy was so obnoxious, yet so many people seemed… deferential to him? Hood even gave him a pass for getting out of hand, called it “peter posting.” After asking around some, it wasn’t hard to connect that “Red Wood” was just “Peter MA” popping his head back up after an extended absence.

Here Budzyna is attributing his development into a neo-Nazi to his father’s influence, while expressing contempt for an affluent Jewish family in Worcester County whose identities I’ve redacted, later that month.

Remember that bit about “doing activism.” [*]

An aside

After Budzyna’s arrest, various members of the local community gathered in a quiet corner of the Internet and commented on what they thought about Budzyna having attempted such violence. I will not be disclosing where, or sharing screenshots of the conversation; these people largely want nothing to do with Robert Budzyna anymore, and deserve to be left alone.

The community mostly expressed shock at the idea of Budzyna committing arsons. They sympathized with his rough childhood, describing an eccentric and smart kid who was bullied a lot. Some of them attributed his spiral to mental illness & his father’s death. (If you find this assessment lacking, that’s good, I’m right there with you, but again: leave these people alone, and don’t go looking for them.)

Another mentioned being the parent of someone 8 years Budzyna’s junior, that he’d been sending letters during his prison stint trying to convince the parent’s 15-year-old daughter that he loved her.

At some point, Joseph Brackett showed up and decided to tell on himself by being an pointless asshole to that community. He shit-talked, implying that these people who were trying to process their confusion and conflicted feelings were chasing clout by saying they used to know Budzyna. He did this while at no point admitting that his son, known neo-Nazi Zach Brackett, is friends with Robert Budzyna, whom after this piece is done will also be a known neo-Nazi. I’m not redacting his name – Joseph Brackett can go eat shit!

I’m afraid that Robert Budzyna’s acts aren’t as simple as mental illness. Look, mental illness is almost certainly part of Robert Budzyna’s descent into neo-Nazihood. It isn’t the root of his white nationalism though, the beating, bleeding heart of who he’s chosen to be: antisemitism is!

The man himself admits that his father indoctrinated him into antisemitic ideas at a young age. It’s not just the mental illness or the “friends” steering him wrong; his father poisoned him with hate as a child. The friends that his hometown community talk about are probably people Budzyna intentionally sought out for their common hatreds.

In “Skin in the Game,” Eric Ward states that “antisemitism is the theoretical core of white nationalism.” In our context here, it’s such a killer envelopment of what should be a widely-accepted argument and not a point of contention: people don’t become neo-Nazis solely because they’re mentally ill! They become neo-Nazis largely because they become inculcated into hating Jewish people, and that hatred opens doors to thinking that maybe Nazi Germany was onto something when they opened the concentration camps! If I could force an essay directly into the brains of people who pass off neo-Nazi ideology as mental illness it’d be this one.

Moving on

Here’s Budzyna posting about getting up to Patriot-Front-esque bullshit on January 10th of 2022, slapping neo-Nazi propaganda and invest-in-silver bullshit on the back of a sign somewhere between Atlanta GA & Boston MA.

Here are whom I believe to be NSC members Austin Conti, Liam MacNeil, and Tyler Moody – aka “Pete SS,” “Amerikan Werewolf,” and “Eternal Tyrone” respectively – sympathizing with Budzyna over his endless heartsore bellyaching in that same chat the next day.

Then here he is saying he’s back in Boston very shortly after the above exchange.

With Budzyna back in Massachusetts, members of NSC visibly inviting him to events, and the small amount of NSC events between January 2022 and his arrest on April 22nd, you’d think he’d be easy to spot in NSC propaganda. The biggest issue is that Budzyna, by build, is VERY similar to NSC member Stephen Farrea. Their individual 2022 arrest reports both place them at 6’2” and 200lbs. Mercifully, there’s a saving grace of an identifier: Farrea favors tan work boots, and Budzyna favors vaulted leather boots.

I believe the above is Budzyna at NSC’s standout at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in January 2021. The Fred-Perry-looking polo is consistent with the one he wore for Patriot Front’s 2019 Hartford CT event, and we’ve seen him wear those boots before. The Mjolnir necklace is an upgrade from the one he wore last. The shocker hand gesture, while not tying him back to previous appearances, is also a handy identifier.

I also believe the above is Budzyna, at NSC’s standout at the Storrow footbridges in Boston MA during February 2021. Note the boots again, the reappearance of the shocker, and that other thing.

Finally, I think the tall drink of tapwater on the left, in this photo of various NSC members somewhere in New Hampshire sometime in early April 2021, is him.

While there were other NSC events in March and April before the 22nd, there’s some trouble in narrowing Budzyna down to one specific figure in any of them.

Budzyna as himself, evidence

It was sometime between the appearance of Red Wood on Telegram and linking him to his appearances at NSC events that I felt an itch. The guy had a long history, and he got on my nerves! I thought to myself that there had to be something that spilled out of this man’s mouth in the last three years that pointed to who he actually was. I was combing through old material on him when I saw this photo.

That was the point where I realized I’d seen Peter MA’s face before. That clueless, vacant stare, albeit in a sorrier and more hunted state.

Now, verification! From the Hartford photo, it went to comparing Peter’s narratives of his activities and info on Budzyna via social media and data brokers. Articles on Budzyna’s arrest mention that he served time in Texas, and his Facebook profile has him down as living in Dallas.

He also has a number of stalking charges filed against him in Texas according to BeenVerified as well as members of his community, which would be pretty consistent with the circumstances of Peter’s imprisonment and relationship woes!

Budzyna’s Facebook banner image has an image of specific tatts he has on his forearms. We can’t get a good look on account of the blurriness and glare, but there’s a certain resemblance to the right forearm tatt we saw during the March Against Cages.

As Peter, Budzyna has posted his tatts copiously over the years. A lot of them were inked during his stint in Texas prison. Not a fan of the sonnenrad. REALLY not a fan of the helter skelter.

Of course, why rely on chatlogs, paperwork, and old photos when we have the word of involved parties themselves?

See, one of the tips I received after releasing the identities of Spellman-Oldenquist and Primevara was a transcript! It was of a secret conversation between Hood and Brackett as they discussed a certain night in November 2019. In this transcript, which I will not be providing for confidentiality reasons, Brackett repeatedly stated that the assault of Spellman-Oldenquist occurred at “Peter’s house.” The police report lists the attack happening at Budzyna’s home in Auburn MA. It’s all incredibly straightforward, almost anticlimactic.

The conversation also adds a bunch of details to the narrative of what happened that night that make it clear that Spellman-Oldenquist and Primevara weren’t being very forthcoming with police when they made their statements on the night’s events! Notably:

• Brackett claimed he contacted Budzyna to arrange the ambush, which Budzyna agreed to on the terms that his home be spared from damage. (yeah I called that shit)
• Spellman-Oldenquist and Primevara were present at Budzyna’s home alongside other members of Patriot Front, who were preparing for a wreath-laying promat event at some historical site the next day. Leaked chatlogs from PF internal comms indicate that Rousseau was in fact planning such an event for Thanksgiving ‘19 by November 17th. 
• Budzyna was present in his home for the assault, and fled to an upper floor once Hood started swinging at Spellman-Oldenquist.
• While Hood & Brackett never mentioned the presence of Hood’s girlfriend and documentarian, they made it clear that Petruccelli was so violent during the fracas that Brackett, described in antifascist circles as “knife-happy,” felt the need to de-escalate him. Budzyna made Brackett promise not to do any damage to the home, but apparently Brackett forgot to pass on word to Petruccelli! No good deed, right? You let three guys ambush one guy in your home and suddenly you’re down some furniture.

Let’s summarize: Budzyna, a genuinely strange person even for a neo-Nazi, attempted and failed to burn down two homes in Auburn MA, got booted from Patriot Front internal comms, helped stage a fight between various white nationalists in his own home that he fled when it got out of hand, left Massachusetts to try and fail to join the National Guard down in Texas, did time for stalking an ex, returned to Massachusetts, and got pinched for the arsons after cops in TX forwarded his DNA to cops in Auburn MA.

There is, of course, more.

New context

To begin, we’re gonna go over some 101-level local fash history. There’s a frame that needs to be set, and that includes Chris Hood being involved in several different strains of fascist organizing.

You may remember Patriot Front as the male-only group of neo-fascists, founded as Tommy Rousseau’s spin-off from Vanguard American in the aftermath of Unite the Right, who marched through Boston in 2022. Several local members were subsequently identified for their trouble.

When enough members join in a given area, they can form a “network.” For example, Network VII is New England minus Fairfield County CT.

Chris Hood was the first member of Patriot Front to have signed up from Massachusetts, and he got real busy recruiting for PF right afterward. Sometime between February ‘18 and March ‘19, Hood gathered enough chuds together to form NW7. Here’s PF founder Thomas Rousseau saying as much!

It’s widely believed that Hood was booted from Patriot Front for lifting print money for weed; internal chatlogs imply a more complicated story. As of July 2019, Hood was handling printing for PF out of his home.

By August, after a long absence, Hood was no longer marked as “network director.”

By September, other members from Texas were taking care of printing tasks.

So, safe to assume that Hood was busted for lifting print money between mid-July and mid-August. But, see, he was still doing events and posting in the chat after that! So if he didn’t get booted for theft, then what did he get booted for?

Between these events and Hood’s expulsion was October 3rd, 2019: the Hartford CT rally. Patriot Front, lots of self-identified neo-Nazis, big banner, handheld flares, all that!

On October 14th, Hood made his last appearance in the logs, hassling a member in Texas.

Then, October 25th: Hood used the PF-centric “Massachussetts Front” Twitter account to post a diatribe on getting outed from NW7 and Patriot Front as a whole.

In retrospect, knowing what we know now about the relationship between Hood and Budzyna, the very overt denial that Patriot Front isn’t “focused on illegal activity” seems kinda suspect? It feels like a hint, a sideways admission even.

Here’s what we didn’t have then: Torch Network’s internal PF chat leaks, featuring Rousseau responding internally to Hood’s claims. The very day Hood spoke out about his booting, Rousseau laid out what Hood did to warrant expulsion: joining the Base, inviting and including overt neo-Nazis in local Patriot Front actions, and forming a splinter group within NW7!

This is the context in which Budzyna (allegedly) tried to burn people alive. He was part of a social circle within a neo-fascist organization who were getting impatient with a lack of militancy against their perceived enemies, and were making inroads with an accelerationist organization that they hoped would satisfy that desire for militancy, the desire for violence.

Apropos of what I assure you is nothing

It seems that 2019 was actually a pretty bad year for various Jewish communities?

In March, unknown persons vandalized a Hebrew cemetery in Fall River MA. Largely bigotry-centric vandalism at Fall River cemeteries almost became a yearly event since, occurring in 2020 and 2021. It mercifully doesn’t seem to have happened in 2022, and hopefully won’t happen this year either. In the past couple of months, Fall River has also been the site of two specific Drag Queen Story Hours, one the subject of an NSC standout in December 2020 and another that NSC pointedly avoided the following month due to copious community support. Finally, Fall River is the home of two (possibly three) neo-Nazis with varying degrees of proximity to Chris Hood. [*]

In July, the Middlesex County Chabad arsons were committed by, to my estimation, a very dead Quincy MA neo-Nazi. Like Budzyna’s attempts, Iakovos “Ramy” Giannakakis’s spree of four arsons incurred no casualties, and resulted in superficial property damage. In what is almost certainly grim coincidence, Giannakakis attempted to end his life on November 23rd of 2019, a date mentioned copiously elsewhere in this missive. He passed on September 25th of 2020, after lying in a coma for almost a year. [*]

In September, Richard Tobin of Brooklawn NJ directed members of the Base in a vandalism campaign against Jewish-owned properties, among others. Two synagogues in Racine WI and Hancock MI were defaced as a result. Yousef Barasneh of Oak Creek WI was arrested for the former in January 2020 (as were three members in Maryland and three members in Georgia for a variety of violent schemes unrelated to Tobin’s vandalism plot). The latter’s perpetrator is still publicly unidentified. [*]

Of course, I’m being facetious about the last one being apropos of nothing. We don’t know whether or not Budzyna was a member of the Base. Still, even if he wasn’t, we do know that Hood and Brackett were members. It’s a relevant data point, even if it’s an arm’s length from Budzyna himself.

Anyway

On or before November 7th of 2019, Hood and several members of the New England cell of the Base flyered the Boston University campus, in advance of the Boston Anarchist Bookfair. This resulted in Boston University making demands of the event’s organizers which led to the relocation the Bookfair into the Democracy Center in Cambridge. (The Bookfair has lived at Democracy Center since, and Hood frequently makes a point of targeting it for NSC standouts.) Two days later, the Base posted several propaganda photos and a 46-second video of the flyering to their Telegram channel.

To my understanding, this social media blast included this photo.

From left to right: Chris Hood, an unidentified member, Zach Brackett, and another unidentified member who stands roughly at Brackett’s height if not taller. Brackett is 6’1″. Remember, Budzyna is 6’2″, and moreso in the boots. The jacket, pants, and boots look pretty familiar, and it seems important to point out that, whoever this is, they look to be seig-heiling in part to cover up whatever patch is on their baseball cap.

All that said, I’m not willing to say for certain that any specific member of the Base’s New England cell is Robert Budzyna. In this context, it’s simply a reasonable suspicion to harbor, a decent “maybe.” One could suppose that, were Budzyna a member of the Base at the time of his alleged arsons, it’s possible that the delay in his getting caught for them served as a bellwether for whether or not Tobin should proceed with the plotting of his vandalism campaign.

On November 12th, Richard Tobin was arrested in NJ in his capacity as a member of the Base. News stories on the topic were circulating by the 15th, and the Daily Beast article on the topic was out by the 18th.

Then, November 23rd happens. Ambush! Fist fights! Police reports! It seems like there was a lot of pressure on that social circle in November 2019. It would make anyone want to run and hide, gnaw a leg off, do anything to get away from it all.

Given Budzyna’s National Guard rejection letter, I believe that means sometime after the events of the 23rd and before March 2020, Budzyna moved down to Texas. It had to have been before February 7th, which seems to have been the incident date of the first of the stalking charges against him filed in Texas. Then, by December, Hood and Brackett signaled a clean break from the Base by publicly acting as the New England Nationalist Club, which would eventually become the Nationalist Social Club of New England.

So, let me see if I have this right: sometime after trying to set some fires, suffering the death of his father, being pals with members of the Base as other members elsewhere were terribly rude to a pair of synagogues, being conscious while the arrest of Base member Richard Tobin made headlines, helping to arrange the assault of Patriot Front member David Spellman-Oldenquist by Chris Hood in his own home, then possibly being one of the many many neo-Nazi buddies Chris Hood hoped to doxx to antifascists, Patriot Front member and failed arsonist Robert Budzyna packed up and hauled off to Texas? Do I have all that lined up correctly?

It sure seems like there were a lot of factors in him making that sudden life change, doesn’t it? That maybe his father’s death wasn’t the only motivating factor here? That the potential for scrutiny may have been a little much? It’s not like he didn’t try escaping from his problems again. It’s pretty clear that Budzyna violated his parole in Texas by returning to Massachusetts. Dude prefers fleeing.

Questions I’m eager to ask, conclusions

In December 2021, Matt Smaller of Maynard MA flyered the Framingham State University campus as part of a Patriot Front propaganda materials dissemination. He was charged with defacing property and conspiracy in June 2022. Brian Harwood and Alex Beilman, operating in administrative capacities for Patriot Front NW7 at the time, were also charged with conspiracy in Smaller’s flyering.

In light of this, and given that Budzyna was an associate of Chris Hood’s and a member of Patriot Front when he allegedly committed the arsons in Auburn MA, I get to ask a number of questions:

1. Was Budzyna attempting to commit a hate crime when he set his fires?
2. Was Budzyna one of the people Chris Hood recruited for the Base?
3. How long was NSC germinating within Patriot Front NW7 before Hood was expelled?
4. Was Budzyna one of the people within this social circle of Hood’s that would become the Nationalist Social Club? (I actually feel pretty good about this one being a solid “yes.”)
5. Was Budzyna operating as a member of Patriot Front, the Base, or the splinter group within Patriot Front that would eventually become NSC when he committed his arsons?
6. If yes to the above, does this mean Chris Hood – whom at various points was Network Directing Officer for Patriot Front Network 7, an enterprising newbie to the Base who made sounds about recruiting locals, and a founding member of the Nationalist Social Club of New England – is responsible for conspiracy in those arsons? [*]

After all, Hood admitted during his interviews with Base founder Rinaldo Nazzaro that he and many others were getting increasingly impatient with Patriot Front’s lack of militancy. Budzyna may have been one of them. What are the ramifications of more militancy in a neo-fascist network? Streetfights? Burning buildings? Kill lists?

Where were you going to go with the Base, Hoodsie? Surely getting the BABF to move locations wasn’t the end-all-be-all of your tenure.

With the previous overwhelming screed as background, I feel I have good ground to suggest that Budzyna moved to Texas in part because the numerous events of November 2019 could have exposed his attempts to burn down two Auburn MA homes in June of that year, when in actuality his continued engagement in the white supremacist movement and abusive misogyny made exposure of his violence inevitable!

Hood and NSC’s NH regional lead Leo Cullinan have recently been charged by Portsmouth NH City Hall for dropping their usual brand of racist banners. It makes for the second contemporaneous legal challenge Hood himself is facing this year, given the ongoing affray case against him in Jamaica Plain MA. This also isn’t the first time members of NSC have caught charges while acting as part of one group or another.

Hood, Matthew M. Wolf, and Tylar Larson were arrested in East Boston in 2019 while flyering for Patriot Front, after Wolf struck a cop. Hood was carrying a 5″ knife, and Larson brass knuckles. Those charges were dismissed for, if I recall correctly, a lack of probable cause.

Hood and Petruccelli were arrested and charged for the assault of David Spellman-Oldenquist, which I’ve discussed at length. Those charges were dismissed by the plaintiff.

Justin Milaszewski was one of three members of Patriot Front who flyering Haverhill MA during the local Black & Brown Outdoor Market in 2021. One of the other members brandished a firearm at passers-by during their pro-mat activity. Milaszewski was the one arrested for it, after his own father gave him up to Haverhill PD. Those charges were also dismissed at the recommendation of the local probation department.

NSC and Patriot Front have both released video of their members assaulting people. Members of Patriot Front shoved a protester with shields, in the face of verbal instructions from other members to go around the guy (as revealed by a video they released that they thought would exonerate them in the eys of the public), during their July 2022 march through Boston. Meantime NSC members have assaulted people in Nashua NH, Boston MA, Providence RI, Manchester NH, and Fall River MA, video of which they have posted to social media as recruitment propaganda.

Budzyna’s arsons are one of a gaggle of violent crimes local neo-Nazis with varying relationships to NSC have committed in the past several years. They aspire to be dangerous people, and some of them are actually dangerous!  Petruccelli and Cullinan are repeat felons with a history of violence. NSC member Andrew Hazelton went to J6 with MacNeil and another member who was probably Hood, then got pinched for possession of child pornography after people he worked with worried he was gonna shoot up their office. NSC member Michael Moura violates restraining orders against previous romantic partners like it earns him money, and most recently has caught federal charges for trying to buy an assault weapon when he was legally barred from doing so. NSC’s connections to the Church of Aryanity, a group that has claimed to had a hand in motivating the doers of various mass casualty events, through Nicholas Large aka “Sigma Phoenicis” of Walnut Creek CA should worry anyone. Even decedent members Cameron Anthony and Jeremiah Shivers were known to be violent before their passings.

With all this history in context, I believe that the knowledge of Budzyna’s failures to burn down homes while their occupants slept within is an open secret among neo-Nazi circles in New England. I believe that he is tolerated and/or celebrated for his acts of violence no matter how ineffective they were. We already know that the Nationalist Social Club actively recruits violent neo-Nazis, but maybe their dumb standouts and marches are not the point of their organizing? Maybe building capacity for acts of terror is the point! They’re morons whose ideas shouldn’t be taken seriously, but that doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous and that the danger they present to our communities shouldn’t be taken seriously.

The obvious statements to make here are the ones that have been made repeatedly by better antifascists than me, which I am too happy to echo. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists seek to violently oppress their perceived enemies. Our local ones have largely escaped accountability, and it really looks like most city-level authorities aren’t going to do anything about them until it’s too late. Thus, it is VITAL to undermine their organizing as much as possible in our own communities. Find your local anarchists or socialists! Join a mutual aid collective! Make friends! Get organized!

Okay? That was a lot. I hope you’re okay out there. Thank you for holding on!

Acknowledgements

Much thanks to Green Monster Antifa, Garfield But Antifascist, Antifash Gordon, Unicorn Riot, Torch Network, and the countless other antifascists and journalists on whose backs I’ve built this piece.

I’d also like to cynically offer thanks to Chris Hood, Zach Brackett, and Anthony Petruccelli, the loud mouths of whom informed certain lines of inquiry and pointed toward key documents. Petruccelli in particular called Budzyna a “good dude” and a “brother” in the replies to the post where I mentioned Budzyna was under investigation for arson. It reminded me of Petruccelli calling failed hospital bomber Tim Wilson a “solid brother.” This was a catastrophic lapse of judgement on his part that convinced me that there was more to know about Robert Budzyna, and helped compel me to keep picking at this story like the scab it is.

Revisions & corrections

October 22nd, 2024: I got answers to some of my questions about Budzyna’s relationship between his activism and his crimes! I was wrong about them potentially being hate crimes; the truth appears stranger than that. I also managed a voice print on him, and ruled him out as the identity of “Speaker 40” and “Descendant” of the Proud Boys.

July 24th, 2023: I corrected the date for the screenshot containing the first time Hood was seen not marked as ND in Torch’s Patriot Front general channel chat leaks. I originally had it down as July 8th, 2019.

July 2nd, 2023: I added a note about the identification of the Base’s Hancock MI vandal!

April 24th, 2023: I corrected a bit about Justin Milaszewski, a member of Patriot Front. News reports indicated that Milaszewski was the one brandishing the weapon; a reasonable conclusion to make based on the charges levied against him, but contradicted by the police incident reports and an eyewitness account on the subject.

February 1st, 2023: I added Torch Network as a source for the previously-uncited Rocketchat leaks, and added a blurb to the end of the “New context” section that I had left within my mental drafts.

January 24th, 2023: I noticed that Budzyna’s stalking charges happened before the photo of the flight from his Facebook profile, and have noted as such in the paragraph speculating when he moved down to Texas post-11/23/19.

Notes

01) One of the Boston-local interviewees of the Base, alternatively identified as “Speaker 40” and “Descendant” by Jamila Paksima and Geraldine Moriba in season two, episode V of the SPLC’s “Sounds Like Hate” podcast, was a Proud Boy. During his interview, he said the following:

“What really needs to happen right now is about 200,000 true patriots need to march up into fucking, into the Capitol building and just kill everybody fucking in it and then turn around and say, ‘Look, we’re done. This is what’s going to happen from this point on because our, our forefathers gave us the keys to the kingdom and told us what we needed to do.'”

The episode can be listened to here, marked as “Baseless: Part V.” Timestamp 27:07. Whoever this is doesn’t seem to be a vocal match with Budzyna, though. ∴ [back]

02) This includes former Proud Boy and Identity Evropa member Michael Barbosa, and NSC member Cody Baker. The third will take some time. ∴ [back]

03) I know this because I went looking for, and found, Giannakakis’s death certificate. I’ve buried this lede intentionally. ∴ [back]

04) The company Budzyna said he had targeted for “activism,” which again I will not identify, has not responded to a request for comment as of the time of this missive being published here, or revised in 2024. The buildings he attempted to burn down, meantime, were not owned by said company. I didn’t know what to make of it at the time, initially thinking he had made an error in targeting unrelated properties. It just turns out that his claimed “activism” and his arsons were completely unrelated, and the connection I perceived between the two was just a ghost. The motivations for his arsons ended up being more personal (see note 06). [back]

05) This is no longer accurate! The vandal who targeted Temple Jacob Synagogue in Hancock MI has been identified as Nathan Weeden of Houghton MI, and has been arrested as of July 2023. [1] [back]

06) I have answers on these! It turns out one of the homeowners he targeted is a local contractor of likely Anglo-Saxon descent, and the other was named as his half-sister in his father’s will. It’s looking like he tried to kill, among other people in his community, members of his own family. This means that Budzyna’s arsons were not hate crimes, and highly unlikely to be connected to his memberships in Patriot Front or the Nationalist Social Club, as well as to any hypothetical membership in the Base. Budzyna has since pled guilty to his arsons. [back]

∴ There is still much work that needs to be done.

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