These Are The Three Richard Spencer Fans Arrested For Attempted Homicide In Gainesville
They are all active white supremacists; two of them are violent felons.
GAINESVILLE,
Fla. ― About five hours before his companion allegedly fired a bullet
toward several protesters, and a day before police charged him with
attempted homicide, Colton Fears, in an interview with HuffPost, laid
out the grievances that had brought him to town. “Basically, I’m just
fed up with the fact that I’m cis-gendered, I’m a white male, and I lean
right, towards the Republican side,” said Fears, 28, wearing a pin of
the 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf of the Waffen-SS. “And I get
demonized if I don’t accept certain things.”
According
to the Anti-Defamation League, Colton Fears is the “least active” of
the three Texas men charged in Thursday’s shooting, which happened after
Richard Spencer’s speech at the University of Florida. Fears’ brother,
William, 30, and Tyler Tenbrink, 28, were also charged. It was Tenbrink
who allegedly jumped out of a silver Jeep after an argument with
protesters and produced a handgun. “I’m going to fucking kill you,”
Tenbrink reportedly yelled at the protesters, while the Fears brothers
encouraged him to shoot.
Tenbrink
popped off a single round that missed his targets and hit a building
behind them, then got back in the Jeep and fled. One of the victims
reported the Jeep’s vehicle tag number to police. Officers from three
different law enforcement units caught up with the trio later that
evening on Interstate 75 and took them into custody.
Even
before their arrest, the trio were known quantities ― Tenbrink and
William Fears in particular. They are fairly representative specimens of
the sort of flotsam that drifts through the the so-called “alt-right”
and, increasingly, trails in the wake of any white nationalist
chieftain, even one as snooty as Spencer. They are, in short, surly
groupies for whiteness. Here’s what we know about them.
Tyler Tenbrink
Tenbrink, the man who fired the gun, is a white supremacist from Richmond, Texas. He told
the Washington Post that he came to Spencer’s Gainesville speech
because he received threats from the “radical left” after he was spotted
at the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. But Tenbrink
had been active in the white nationalist scene long before the August
gathering.
In June, Tenbrink participated in a white supremacist rally at the Texas State Capitol building in Austin, according to the ADL.
The ADL also identified Tenbrink at another Richard Spencer speech at
Texas A&M University last December, a white supremacist protest in
front of the Houston ADL offices last October, a private event organized
by the neo-Nazi Aryan Renaissance Society last September, and a white
supremacist protest in front of the Houston NAACP office last August.
Tenbrink
told the Post that all he cares about are the “14 words,” a reference
to the popular white supremacist slogan: “We must secure the existence
of our people and a future for white children.”
Tenbrink
pled guilty to a felony assault charge in Texas in 2014. That means he
now faces additional charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted
felon, the Gainesville Police Department wrote in a statement.
William Fears
William
Fears, from Pasadena, Texas, claims he didn’t even know about the
alt-right until Hillary Clinton condemned the movement in a campaign
speech last August, at which point his radicalization journey began. By
December, he was turning up at Spencer’s speaking events, including one
at Texas A&M where Fears described himself as ”mainly an Internet troll.”
But
Fears was more than a troll. In 2009, he pleaded guilty to aggravated
kidnapping after he abducted an 18-year-old female University of Texas
at Tyler student at knifepoint and “wounded her several times.”
He has also been convicted of criminal trespassing and possession of a
controlled substance. It was while he was incarcerated, he told the
Post, that he had become racially aware.
“I
don’t think any race experiences racism in the modern world the way
that white people do in a jail,” he said. “In jail, whites come last.”
In
May, Fears, who now works in construction, crashed a May Day rally with
other neo-Nazis and reportedly assaulted a man. In June, he antagonized
members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia movement, at a rally
in Houston until one of them put him in a chokehold.
In August, he showed up in Charlottesville to brawl in a helmet, gas
mask and goggles, waving a white nationalist flag and shouting, “Shoot! Fire the first shot of the race war!” In September, he and other neo-Nazis tried to provoke anarchists at a Houston book fair to violence.
“Nazi is like the N-word for white people,” says Fears. “And I just embrace it.”
Colton Fears
Before
coming to Spencer’s Gainesville speech, Colton Fears participated in
the Charlottesville rally and an April counter-protest of a Houston
Socialist Movement event as part of a group of white supremacists, which
included neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right, the ADL said.
After
the Charlottesville rally, Fears posted a 13-minute-long statement on
YouTube. He congratulated himself for attending the event, lamented the
mainstream media’s attack on Southern heritage, and complained bitterly
about being doxxed. He made no mention of Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old
protester who was killed at the rally.
In
his interview with HuffPost, Fears tried to distance himself a little
from the scene around him. He said of Richard Spencer, “I agree with
like 75 percent of his ― he’s not ― he’s kind of a scam artist, in my
opinion.” Asked if he identified as alt-right, he said: “I try and deny
identity politics. That’s why I’m not wearing a white polo and all that
stuff.” But he also served up a word salad of white grievance: “Like,
OK, for one thing, say, you know, gay marriage, that’s cool, whatever,
you know, except — that’s fine, I’m cool with it — well, then, what’s
after that? The next step? This whole transgender movement, right? Well,
if you don’t accept that, you’re a bigot, this and that. Well, that all
goes hand in hand with being a white person.”
Asked
about the pin he was wearing during the interview, Fears said “it’s
basically just like an SS thing.” Explaining the significance of the pin
would require an extensive conversation about World War II, he said.
“And it’s my heritage, I’m German.”
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