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Neo-Nazis Boast About Participation In Capitol Hill Invasion

While Republican lawmakers baselessly blame antifa, right-wing extremists brag about taking part in "the start of White Revolution."
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Rioters clash with police trying to enter Capitol building through the front doors. (Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

While congressmen and conservative media pundits continue to blame the violent storming of Capitol Hill on “antifa,” neo-Nazi accounts online have been busy posting photos documenting their intimate involvement in yesterday’s actions.

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“I was there as it happened,” posted a known American neo-Nazi account with close to 5,000 followers on Telegram, an encrypted chat app popular with organized racists. The account posted a video of the violent infiltration of Congress. 

“I was in D.C and I can tell you this is the beginning of the start of White Revolution in the United States!” read another of its posts. “The System fired upon Whites approaching (Capitol)l Hill and calling out the treason which has been going on too long here in America.” 

One violent white supremacist street gang, which calls itself the “Nationalist Social Club” and is led and was founded by Chris Hood—a former member of neo-Nazi terror group the Base—bragged online that it not only showed up to the protests on Wednesday afternoon, but were there to “ensure white safety.”

Following the riots, one of the group’s Telegram accounts posted photos of a police riot helmet it claimed to have acquired as a trophy from the day’s events. During the summer, the same group violently intimidated Black Lives Matter protesters

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The stolen police riot mask appearing on Telegram.

An online neo-Nazi store, popular among adherents of the violent terroristic accelerationist ideology, posted a photo of a skull-masked follower in front of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History. (Skull masks are worn by adherents of Siege, an insurgency manual penned in the 1980s that became the founding document of terror groups like the Base and Atomwaffen Division.)

“Dear American brothers and sisters, you'll never get a better shot at ending the globalist menace in your country. It's now or never!” said the post accompanying the photo. It shows a masked man wearing a Black Sun patch—an image synonymous with global neo-Nazism and popularized by the Christchurch shooter who wore it as he massacred 50 worshippers in a mosque. 

While there is overwhelming evidence that neo-Nazis, QAnon conspiracists and others on the right-wing fringe were responsible for yesterday’s violence, lawmakers continue to hawk ludicrous narratives of an “antifa” conspiracy. Republican congressmen Matt Gaetz and Mo Brooks, both have baselessly claimed that antifascist activists were really the ones responsible for the violence on Capitol Hill. 

“They were masquerading as Trump supporters and, in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa,” said Rep. Gaetz on the House floor