Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: altfurry

Furry Raiders sex crime case: Arrest for felon tied to witness tampering and Milo’s “troll school”

by Patch O'Furr

Here’s a wild story that has all this: Internet harassment, the disgraced alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos, the furry fandom pariah Foxler (known for stories in Rolling Stone and Newsweek about neo-nazi furries and his Furry Raiders group), his right-hand man “Sneps” who has a felony record, and their plan to frame a witness for sex crime that Foxler is charged for doing. There was even a bungled plan to target me for reporting. It blew up in their faces, put “Sneps” behind bars, and leaves the crime witness needing vindication after being framed.

If you were Foxler — AKA Lee Miller of Fort Collins, CO — what would you do if:

If you were Foxler, how would you defend from these charges? Maybe get a good lawyer or well-regarded community member to help clear your name?

A smart person with a good future could do that. That’s not Foxler. He got his close friend and Furry Raiders admin, known as Flare or Sneps, and they cooked up a scheme to get him out of trouble by attacking the sources. I helped uncover it and report it to the police, with this result:.

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Arrest of Lee Miller (Foxler) brings a call for witnesses to come forward.

by Patch O'Furr

Report tips to Detective Steve Bishop, Denver Police Department Sex Crimes Unit, 720-913-6903 

In April 2019, Lee Miller, a Colorado man who goes by “Foxler” in the furry fandom, was arrested for enticement of a child. Sources in the legal proceedings think other potential victims may be out there and want to talk to them. (Sex crime charges have protected info, but this site was asked for help and verified a need to share.) Please help if you can bring them forward.

Miller’s Wikifur profile gives an introduction to his history in fandom. In 2017, Dogpatch Press broke news about activity by his Furry Raiders group that went up to coverage in Rolling Stone and Newsweek. (Deeper details are in these loose notes that are being organized by a publisher’s request.)

Miller’s 2019 arrest was for an offense in 2015, before there was public dispute about him. It took time for police to investigate, but the reason was first reported to them as part of research for Aristide’s 2017 Dogpatch Press article.

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Story of a Former Alt-Furry: Clouded by Clout

by Dogpatch Press Staff

This guest post was submitted for anonymous posting on the guest’s behalf. That’s a community access service offered by this site. The story gives details about hate groups that can help readers with similar experience know it’s true, and can put the poster at risk of backlash. Part of such stories that often goes unspoken is the extreme abuse that such posts attract. That’s why it’s important to offer community access service, even for some stories that may have scary information that may be impossible to tell openly.

Sadly, abuse often comes from people who claim to be allies, as well as from enemies — and in cases targeting this site, they often fall for lying and baiting from bad faith sources. The knee-jerk reactions come from acting tribalist and putting agreement above finding out what’s going on. It may gain clout for the group but make you less informed.

“Perhaps we need to spend slightly less time asking whether we agree with, or approve of, a text, a piece, an experience, and ask what it does; or, better yet, what it might do? There is a power in simply asking “hmm, what’s going on here?” – @L0v3byt3

If you find the post valuable, be aware of abuse that comes with hosting it, not to gain clout that others fight for, but just to offer the service (since 2014). Of course nobody owes debate or an audience for bad faith and it’s fair to simply block it, but the post also describes how hate groups can be reinforced by attacking them – and a different solution.

To learn more about how hate groups seek to get attacked for publicity, check out the Behind The Bastards podcast about George Lincoln Rockwell, the American pioneer of those manipulative tactics. – Patch

Hate groups prey on loneliness.

I want to preface this by saying that I understand if you do not want to listen to the words of someone who used to be part of something horrible. What I have brought on myself and my reputation is nobody’s fault but my own and saying sorry after the fact may seem like an afterthought or a way to staunch the bleeding. What I am offering you is an insight into how these insidious groups like Alt-Furry work from an insider’s perspective, and how to avoid them if you feel unsure of yourself, or help others avoid falling into the same trap.

Since the beginning of human history, when we banded together in tribal groups, feeling like you belonged offered you a sense of safety. If you didn’t have the charisma or the skills to start your own group, you joined one, or tried. A sense of community makes you feel useful. It makes you feel like people need you around. Sometimes, this is so intoxicating, especially to people who have been alone for quite some time, that you overlook things that others in your group do.

After all, they are your friends, right? It’s okay for people to be imperfect. If you point out that what they are doing is wrong, they won’t want to be your friends anymore. You will have to be alone and afraid again. Unfortunately, this feeling of fear is sometimes what drives us to turn a blind eye to things that hurt the people around us. It just gives you company when the ship begins to sink. Anything is better than dying alone, even dying together.

Taking advantage of this feeling is the core of how many hateful groups operate, and Alt-Furry is no exception. By convincing you that others hate you, and are always out to get you, they separate you from the world and trap you into a bubble. This is not to say that they are master hypnotists or that they force people to act the way they do. Instead, they are master manipulators, and nudge people who are vulnerable emotionally into doing the wrong thing. They convince you that they are your friends not because they like you specifically, but because everyone else -hates you-, and so they are the only friends you will ever make.

You have every chance in the world to walk away, but they convince you that doing so will only make you alone again. This is how they got me.

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Altfurries caught buying fake accounts and doing organized harassment.

by Patch O'Furr

Content warning: hate speech

Meet Sam, a racist troll.

In early 2018, Atlantic City Fur Con, a party and proposed con, had a harassment problem in their chat group. (The organizer has made effort to fix it since then.)

A black member of the group respectfully asked for better behavior.  The quality had fallen from edgy jokes to an all-time low of lazy racism. In retaliation, a cluster of harassers (altfurries and neo-nazis) ganged up to escalate the hate. Apparently one simple request to act grown-up was an “SJW” menace that needed to be aggressively crushed. Some drizzled their profiles with swastikas to compensate for failing so hard at kindergarten-level getting along with others.

One of the worst offenders was Sam/@slizzzler/”Fang” (@jasonafexFa, a fake Telegram account with Jason’s name that Sam uses.)

They did it with confidence that everyone would be their doormats, and didn’t expect to get caught acting like pigs with a news article about it. When it began to come out, Sam threatened me to try stopping publication (as if that wouldn’t get published, or screenshots of someone’s own misbehavior is “slander” somehow.) Then they retaliated used a doxing blog and a fake Telegram account for @midwestfurfest. Sam later claimed responsibility in the altfurry chat, using the “Fang”/@jasonafexFA fake Telegram account. It was part of a pattern of harassment with fake accounts you’ll see below. Here’s Sam/Fang:

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ArtworkTee issues and the heart of the furry economy

by Patch O'Furr

There was a lot of recent drama about Artworktee, an indie operation catering to furries. This video covers how it started, but there’s a lot more to say.

I had mixed feelings on watching it unfold on social media. “But Patch, isn’t reporting not supposed to have feelings?” I’m a fan like any other, and “objective fan” is an oxymoron.  I couldn’t pretend not to be one, or miss the point of having an independent subculture by fans, for fans that’s best written about from inside. For this story, I dug deeper into some of the issues involved:

  • Complaints about underpaid artists.
  • Questionable practices for the business of art.
  • The mission and allegiance involved in profiting from fandom.
  • The stakes of overlooking problems and calling it “just business”, vs. how formal business can solve problems too.

Let me try to bring understanding from several perspectives, including the travails of small-business, and the devotion of grassroots fans. This is a great case for that stuff, because it’s not every day that a business comes from this niche fandom that kind of resembles mainstream startup companies. Until now, the most successful commercial enterprise like that is probably Bad Dragon.

Pro-fans and profiteering

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FurAffinity updates Code of Conduct, backlash by hate groups promoted by 2 Gryphon

by Patch O'Furr

IN THIS ARTICLE: FurAffinity bans hate groups – click through the Twitter threads to see many screenshots of what they were promoting. 

The true story of FurAffinity account bans

Furry art is full of cute, cuddly cartoons. Many FurAffinity users wanted to know – why was the site being used for hate imagery? If the art has to be edgy, couldn’t they just stick to good old-fashioned Hyper Diaper Pokemon Porn or whatever? At least sex is positive and life-affirming.

On the site and on Twitter, protest rose against activity that seemed to violate the Code of Conduct, while complaints were being dismissed by site staff. The CoC looked toothless because promotion of hate groups was excused with an exception for “fictional” activity.

What furry stuff ISN’T fictional? And depicting hate imagery in a positive light IS promotion. That’s part of the history of propaganda. And making excuses that it’s just historical interest reminds me of when I used to sell rare books at an antique mall; let’s be honest here, that chicken-necked skinhead with a swastika on his elbow wasn’t visiting that creepy dealer down the lane just for memorabilia. (His money was no good to me.)

During the protesting, FurAffinity users openly claiming to be alt-right trolls were gloating about driving traffic from the site and taunting those who left. That’s like getting acquitted for a hate crime and then mooning the judge. Sometimes nazis dress to impress, but nobody ever accuses them of being smart.

The dumpster fire kept burning until the complaints started tagging FurAffinity’s corporate owner IMVU. Perhaps they got worried about their anime-eyed avatars being the lesser evil on the site.

Soon the Code of Conduct was updated, and dozens of accounts went dark. It seemed to follow a precedent set a few months earlier when Discord Inc. flushed many of the same assholes and their alt-right servers down the drain.

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Furry is Punk | Culturally F’d

by Arrkay

Guest post by Arrkay from Culturally F’d, the furry youtube channel. See their tag on Dogpatch Press for more.

Furry and Punk have a lot in common, way more than you think! Arrkay discusses the parallels of the two movements, their philosophies, their work ethic and more! We’re really excited for this episode as it’s been on the list of suggestions for over a year!

This episode came together with the help of a lot of different furs! This article is going to look at some of the research we used, and a shoutout for everyone who helped.

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Discord bans Altfurry hate speech – see what they’re hiding with a leaked organizer phone call.

by Patch O'Furr

(Content warning: antisemitic hate)

Altfurry and the Furry Raiders are toxic trolls on the fringes of fandom. These tiny groups claim to be furries, but they align with alt-right hate groups in the larger culture. Their harassment of a subculture comes disguised with bad-faith claims to support “freedom” and oppose “SJW’s.” Here’s a look behind the false front and a reminder that their hate is like oil and water to this community.

Racist hostility can’t coexist with a group full of queer nerds that’s based on tolerance and creativity. This makes altfurries uncomfortable about their alt-right associations, especially when they try to recruit – making them do two-faced, propagandistic denials that they’re “diverse” and not actually hateful. The denials are contradicted by how they look, talk, and act.

The denials are also contradicted by ban after ban for abuse on the platforms that they use for organizing. From early 2017 to February 2018, altfurries relied on Discord servers that hid behind layers of secrecy. Then on February 28, Discord kicked them out along with numerous other alt-right servers. I’ve been in contact with company reps about their investigation. What they found was as extreme as groups being responsible for murders – but Altfurry and the Furry Raiders weren’t let off the hook for the coordinated bans. They were all violating terms of service against hate.

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Ever hear that Altfurries are just trolls? A real Nazi leader is taking them seriously.

by Summercat

Founder of Neo-nazi website The Daily Stormer praises Nazifurs and Altfurs as good examples for his wider movement.

One defense of Nazifurs I’ve heard over the years is that they’re just adopting fascist fashion to get a rise out of you, or even that they’re mocking real Nazis. This doesn’t hold up well to me, as ones I knew in 2005 who said they were joking are mostly taking their act seriously now.

Something about staring into the void, I guess. Or maybe I was a shitty judge of character when I spent time with them as a naive 20 year old? It could be a bit of both. Friends of mine have looked on former mutuals with horror when I’ve pointed out how far some have gone.

But people still claim that we’re being ridiculous if we take this seriously. They say that real Nazis could never be – or accept – Furries.

That denialism gets weaker and weaker when real Nazis look at nazifurs and love what they see.

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Article archived

by Patch O'Furr

9/26/19: In 2018 an article was published because of a request for help by tippers. A year and a half later, the issue is in the past and no further requests about it have been received, except patient requests for removal to leave negativity behind. Parts (1) (2) (3) are now archived with a note that it isn’t current info and should only be judged by current responses, for progress and goodwill.