Hunting hate: Veterans group warns of neo-Nazi group's activities in NH
May 6—Decades after their service and sacrifice on the battlefield, a coalition of American veterans is embracing a new mission on the home front.
"We are American veterans who hunt neo-Nazis."
That's how Kristofer Goldsmith describes Task Force Butler, the nonprofit organization he founded to investigate and expose hate groups and their activities.
Its latest target: The National Social Club (NSC-131), the organization whose members hung a banner over a Portsmouth highway overpass last summer that read, "Keep New England White." The state Department of Justice has filed a civil complaint against NSC-131 and two of its members for violating the Civil Rights Act.
Task Force Butler — named and modeled after a World War II group that targeted Nazi defenses — recently released a 308-page report that details NSC-131 activities in New England states, including New Hampshire.
The report describes NSC-131 as a "violent terrorist gang that primarily functions to plan, train, and obtain weapons for the explicit purpose of engaging in acts of violence and harassment against religious, racial, and ethnic minorities, the LGBTQIA+ community, and others deemed 'enemies'..."
It also warns that NSC-131 "functions as part of a broader, global white supremacist terror network."
The report offers a bleak and frightening assessment of the threat posed by such groups.
"Our adversaries are deliberate and persistent in their imitation and modernization of propaganda efforts used by history's most notorious ethno-nationalist and fascist movements, harnessing the power of the internet and social media to create dangerous networks of radicalized individuals," it states.
But Task Force Butler's website also has a message for those adversaries:
"America is watching you."
Thanks to popular books and movies, the phrase "Nazi hunters" conjures images of operatives tracking down elderly men hiding in South America, their sins unpunished.
The veterans of Task Force Butler rely on internet-based research and social media to find and expose members of new-Nazi groups that they say pose the greatest modern threat to American democracy.
Founder Goldsmith said joining the military "was the only plan that I ever had growing up."
The 9/11 attacks happened when he was a junior in high school. "Then I also wanted vengeance," he said.
Goldsmith served in the U.S. Army from 2003 to 2007 and was deployed to Iraq. "My job ended up being photo-documenting mass graves," he said. "It messed me up in ways I didn't have the words to explain."
He struggled with PTSD when he got home, but eventually went to work as a researcher for Vietnam Veterans of America. "I was focused on external actors that were taking advantage of troops, veterans and their families online."
He found plenty: lookalike "charities" raising money and selling merchandise; criminals targeting veterans for identity theft; and Russian trolls on social media working to interfere in the 2020 presidential campaign.
Goldsmith's work led to publication in 2019 of what became known as the Troll Report (vva.org/trollreport).
Goldsmith graduated from Columbia University the spring the pandemic hit. He was laid off from his job as the country shut down, with a sudden abundance of free time, he kept looking into those online groups.
"I no longer believed by that point that the biggest threat to democracy came from outside the United States," he said. "Instead, I thought it came from internal actors."
Goldsmith started infiltrating extremist groups online — "first as a hobby" and later as a contractor for a threat-assessment company. He sent his reports to the FBI, warning them of this threat from within.
Then came the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Vets' new mission
Goldsmith watched the insurrection unfold on multiple computer screens in his home office, the livestreams from insurrectionists "who were doing exactly what they openly planned to," he said. "It was the folks that I had been watching at that point for years, capitalizing off the division and disinformation that Russia and other foreign actors were helping to spread in the United States."
The next day, Jan. 7, Goldsmith took a sick day for the first time in his adult life.
"I was just so defeated," he said. "All of the work I had done for months just failed to make a difference. The assault on the Capitol had happened, and it wasn't clear to me that anyone was going to be brought to justice."
A month later, he started his own company, Sparvarius, the Latin name for the American kestrel — "a little rat-hunting predator," he explained.
Goldsmith has since put together a tight community of veterans with a shared mission. "It has given us a sense of purpose and camaraderie," he said. "We're fighting for justice using our brains and our computers."
Last September, Task Force Butler released its first intelligence report, focusing on the Patriot Front. Goldsmith sent it to law enforcement agencies in several states where that group is active.
That's when the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office asked him whether he had done any research on NSC-131, he said.
It made sense, Goldsmith said. Since its founding in 2019, NSC-131 has focused its activities in New England.
The Project Husky report is his response.
It compiles evidence of NSC's activities in New England states, mostly from the group's own statements and videos posted on social media sites. And it names names, including 35-year-old Leo Anthony Cullinan of Manchester, identified as NSC's New Hampshire regional leader.
Cullinan is one of the NSC-131 members charged in the Civil Rights Act complaint by the Attorney General's Office.
Cullinan, who has a criminal record including drug convictions, could not be reached for comment. In court documents, he used the address and phone number for the Valley Street jail in Manchester as his own, but a booking officer on Thursday said Cullinan is no longer being held there.
Among the NSC-131 activities documented in the report:
—Following someone who participated in a 2022 May Day celebration at Veterans Memorial Park in Manchester and smashing the window of their car.
—Vandalizing a Nashua mural by spray-painting white supremacist slogans, and later threatening a state representative who criticized that act.
—Conducting firearms training in the woods of Bristol.
New England targeted
NSC-131 recently stepped up its presence in New Hampshire. The group on April 20 announced a new effort, the People's Initiative of New England, calling for New England to become "a White Homeland and a sovereign state."
"Over the past few years we have built a tremendous network of Nationalists in New England. We have taken to the streets, and have shown our people that we are fighting for them," the group wrote on social media. "We must also provide an alternate path, a better way, to the system that now subjugates us."
Group members recently distributed flyers outside a rally held by former President Donald Trump in Manchester. "Our message was well-received and volunteers engaged in many fruitful conversations about the Initiative and New England Nationalism," the group posted on social media.
Goldsmith said he has shared his Project Husky report with the FBI and law enforcement agencies around New England. He's still waiting to see criminal charges brought against those his research has identified.
He has three target audiences for his investigative reports: law enforcement and government officials; journalists; and other researchers and nonprofit organizations studying extremism in the United States.
"We hope that they will listen to us when we say that we are very concerned about the state of our democracy, and we collectively as a society need to start imposing costs on those who seek to destroy our democracy," Goldsmith said.
Hate incidents on rise
Sean Locke, director of the Attorney General's Civil Rights Unit, said his office has been getting more complaints and referrals from law enforcement about hate incidents. Not all are attributable to organized groups, he said.
"But those who commit hate-motivated acts, whether it's an organized group, or an individual actor, they do it to send a message to the community that they're targeting," Locke said. "That message is that those communities should feel unsafe, should feel unwelcome here in New Hampshire."
That's why it's important for people to report any such incidents, Locke said. "There's nothing too minor to report in these circumstances," he said. "These should always be cause for concern."
Locke said the Task Force Butler report on NSC-131 is valuable in "shining a light" on hate-based activities.
But he said there's a line between violations of the Civil Rights Act, which his unit targets, and politically driven acts. "I'm here looking through the lens of hate-motivated conduct," Locke said, adding, "That doesn't mean there might not be criminal acts, politically motivated, that need to be addressed."
Task Force Butler's Goldsmith called New Hampshire's civil action against NSC-131 and two of its members "a good start."
But he pointed out that the group has raised nearly enough online to pay the maximum fine that could be levied by the court.
Goldsmith said he would like to see the attorneys general of all the New England states get together with law enforcement agencies and share intelligence about the activities of hate groups here. "Let's take down this neo-Nazi organization using our states' laws as best they can," he said.
The next step is to bring in the FBI and other federal agencies, Goldsmith said. In the Project Husky report, Task Force Butler lays out the legal case for charges of racketeering, domestic terrorism, riot and other federal crimes.
"Federalism is great," he said. "Everyone having their own laws is great. But we don't have to work separately. These states and the feds can all work together, and they can take down this organization, literally, like overnight."
That's why the report is written like a legal document, citing federal and state laws that could be brought to bear. Even if law enforcement agencies don't use it to file criminal charges, Goldsmith said, perhaps individuals could bring civil litigation using the report's evidence.
A personal fight
In the court case filed by the Civil Rights Unit, the NSC-131 defendants are representing themselves, after failing to find a New Hampshire lawyer to take their case. They argue this is about their First Amendment right to free speech.
"An outcome which serves to stifle pro-White activism in the Free State must be recognized as a dire omen and a turning point towards truly dark days for those who would hang their political hopes on the principles enshrined in the Constitution," the defendants wrote in court documents.
For Goldsmith, the fight against such groups is not only patriotic; it's also personal.
"My wife is a Jewish journalist who works at the New York Times," he said. They have friends who work at other media organizations. And family members have been threatened because of his work.
"I can either sit back and let this get worse and wait until my wife or our friends are getting killed, or I can fight back," he said. "I'm not going to dress in camouflage and wear armor and pick up weapons like these idiots. I'm going to fight for justice in a way that is effective and, relatively speaking, is low risk."
Why are veterans taking up this cause?
Those who signed up to serve did so for one purpose, Goldsmith said: "To protect Americans and protect the American way of life."
That mission continues, he said. "What we are doing today with Task Force Butler is in every way protecting democracy and Americans from oppression, from violence," he said.
"From all of the ills that Nazis in Germany were bringing to the world back in World War II."
