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.
In their own words.
Part 1 gives background about how the Altfurry hate group works. Now here’s the screenshots.
The source is “Altfurry Mead Hall,” a Discord server that grew after the neo-nazi march at Charlottesville. It documents months of chat from late 2017, specifically from their private channel for trusted staff. That filters out memes and filler and shows what they’re really about. The server is run by Casey Hoerth/”Len Gilbert”, AKA “The Furred Reich”. These chat logs add to a long mission of hate shown by previous leaks from his Altfurry Discord group.
Screenshots are duplicated in imgur galleries for another reading option. One user named Kilton had their ID blanked when this leaked.
Background of a hate group.
Fandom is about imagination, but it’s made of people with a real community. Having a healthy community means discussing issues in it like grown-ups, from politics to risks. That includes happenings in the wider culture that affect a subculture full of loveable college-aged oddballs. These stories connect to “Altfurry”:
The alt-right is a racist fringe group that defines itself in opposition to others (like the mainstream, minorities, and people who aren’t racist). It can’t exist on its own, so they try to creep in, recruit and manipulate for power. Like two-faced chameleons, they wear an outer face to hide a disturbing inner narrative. They sugarcoat it, but the end goal is hateful bigotry. You can see through it when you know what “cryptofascism” is and how it works.
@AamnaMohdin: Alt-right fascist groups, having "drained the market of libertarians” and outed themselves as racist primitives at Charlottesville, desperately try to rebrand as hip and liberal.
— Tempe O'Kun (@TempoWrites) February 4, 2018
Yeah, that trick didn't go so hot here in the furry fandom.🤔https://t.co/uN1P5fayox
Raiding: A hostile invasion or forcible entry to destroy or steal something; predatory warfare.It’s 2018, and many people have New Years resolutions to accomplish. But a few people are stubbornly against being better. That means the Furry Raiders. This week they gained attention for violent threats meant to silence criticism – (because when they say they want “free speech,” it’s only for them). Their threats followed labeling themselves as “Nazis” – (a look at their member activity in the altfurry chat logs proves it’s really true). Until now their trolling has mostly been inside fandom. But then there was the time when they targeted innocent non-furry outsiders.
We did Nazi that coming!
On Halloween of 2017, a Colorado event space had a “Big Gay Costume Party”. Foxler and Kody, the Furry Raiders founder and partner, went in costume with nazi armbands that replaced swastikas with paws. With nobody else’s help, the staff recognized what the symbolism stood for. The Raiders were kicked out for bringing hate to their space.
Foxler and Kody’s excuses like “it’s just a paw” didn’t work. Anyone can see they’re making a clear reference to nazi iconography. This is good evidence that trolling isn’t just a fandom issue with “both sides” fighting and so-called “SJW’s” inside. Outsiders know these trolls are the source of the problem.
When a business kicks someone out, that’s free market power, freedom of association, and free speech opinion by staff. (A protected social class can claim discrimination, but Nazi isn’t a class.) Reasonable people would move on and drop it. But reasonable people doesn’t include a troll whose name means “Fox Hitler”. Again, when they say they want “free speech,” it’s only for them.
The Furry Raiders retaliated by trolling the business with bad reviews. The review bombing was spread from their Facebook group by trolls who are active in alt-right hate activity (including their member Vetus, who supported trolling FurAffinity with hate images). The story was twisted by people who had never been there; they lied that there was no hate symbolism and pretended a “Big Gay Costume Party” rejected them for being gay.
Update: Here’s an in depth interview discussing Magnus being an FBI crime suspect.
Midwest Furfest 2017 broke the attendance record of all furry cons by the margin of a small con itself. It raised an eye-popping $86,000 for an animal charity that was previously in the red and is now funded for years. Twitter was on fire about the smashing success for the fandom. Among many ecstatic posts by attendees, of course there had to be some kind of drama too. It came with a fursuiter being arrested. Here’s the story pieced together by claims on twitter:
Scene: a hotel lobby. A black, red and white wolf fursuiter with a German WW1 style Pickelhaube helmet is parading around. People taking photos are greeted by offensive behavior like saluting with a “Sieg Heil” and shouting racist things. It causes hotel and/or con security to pursue him, and he flees and gets cornered in some bushes until the police come. They make him take off his suit, and he’s taken away in underwear. He was previously banned from the con and hotel, and the charges involve trespassing and assaulting a staff member before his arrest.
Some of those claims may be disputed (especially the nazi part), so let’s look deeper for the truth. Here’s an arrest record. Associates confirm the fursuiter who matches it is Magnus Diridian, AKA Rob Shokawsky (real name Robert Sojkowski). What is Magnus known for in furry fandom?
Last week was a very bad week to be a nazi furry. (Every week is bad for that, but this one was exceptional). Call them the Incel ISIS, or just a bunch of trolls, but the week kept bringing reminders that the furry fandom is past the limit of tolerance for their hate. There was a wave of critical attention:
Life is short. @AltFurryBlocker is your ticket out of #altfurry bullshit. pic.twitter.com/6I2w1tvmcv
— Tempe O'Kun (@TempoWrites) November 14, 2017
Update: Foxler, founder of the Furry Raiders, was arrested for sex offenses in April 2019.
What I learned from lurking the Furry Raiders chat
Hi, I’m Aristide, and I’m a narc. For the past several months, I’ve had a sockpuppet account in the Furry Raiders Telegram, Skype, and Discord groups and periodically leaked screenshots of them to @edgedestroys. I chose Edge in order to protect the credibility of my sockpuppet account, and because I work in a sensitive workplace and worry about being doxxed. Most speculation about the Raiders – that they’re Nazis, they’re Alt-Right, they’re losers – is generally correct. I want to provide a better picture of what we, as a community, are dealing with.
Same Losers, New Politics
The general population of the Raiders community is a combination of old-school 4Chan racists, conspiracy theorists, new wave white supremacists, and impressionable but misled minors. Racist memes from a long-forgotten era of /b/ populate the chat in equal measure to WorldNetDaily or YourNewsWire links. Several dozen in the chat subscribe to the Daily Stormer and similar neo-Nazi websites, while a refrain against “fake news” rings against any news source that is not part of the alt-right media ecosystem. Lost in this mix are impressionable minors, 13 to 17 year old kids that found their way to the Raiders one way or another. Some of them joined because they hated SJWs – (the GamerGate to Alt-Right pipeline is well documented) – others were actively recruited by Foxler, Kody, and other de-facto leaders in the Raiders.
The first commenter left the group with a statement at bottom of article.
Tempo (Tempe O’Kun) is a furry author in North Dakota.
Art: Rattusdingus
~ ~ ~
If you support white supremacy…
If you play dress-up in the uniforms of genocide…
If you mock people who just want the same rights you enjoy…
…you don’t belong here. Not in my fandom. Not in my country. Not in my world. You cannot possibly play the victim enough for me to consider your murderous opinions valid. So cry all you want, but we’ll be here in the furry fandom having fun without you.
To the rest of you, to actual furries: this is our fandom, a place on the Internet that’s nobody’s but ours. We decide who gets to play here, and what the rules are. The offline world’s pretty messed up right now, but kicking the Nazis out of furry is a concrete, realistic, and powerful move toward justice.
I’M JUST HERE FOR THE TALKING ANIMALS
Let me tell you why to care.
Part of furry is "If you got to choose your own body, gender, beauty standards, etc. this is exactly what the world would be like."
— Liam Anne of Oz (@Anxiousounce) October 5, 2017
Politic.
“We Want Politics Out” is politics.
It’s a popular complaint. This fan group is supposed to be for interest in anthropomorphic animal media and nothing more. That boils down to lowest-common-denominator consumerism. It’s like everyone is a bottom-feeding plecostamus in their own fish tank, and what they consume is just random scum growing on the bottom. Who cares where it comes from? Just be a dumb fish.
An unpopular fursona.
The problem is, reductionism doesn’t tell the whole story. There’s a community attached to the way members consume things. And the complaint often comes with attacking care about how things work there. (Stop asking questions about the delicious scum!)
Everyone who’s here in good faith has some kind of care beyond themselves. It can range from management of websites or cons, to health and safety, or being a loose support network. You see it whenever a member gets help with money or a place to live, or even with complaints about FA’s management. When it’s time to talk about bigger stuff, complaining against politics is half-baked activism for the status quo. Here’s why.
(Comment from blog linked below.)
Sugar-coating helps fascism worm its way inside a community. Even with cartoon animals when Altfurry brings Trojan-horse hate to furry fandom. See tagged stories here.
A regional furry organizer shared this story. ID is withheld so their job can be discussed. They’re an airport terminal worker.
“Just encountered something that I never expected to see.
A line of badged, patched, and uniformed fascists just came through my airport. Like any other passenger group, I was assisting them. Noticing their crossed hammer imagery in red and white, I thought… maybe I was mistaken.
I asked them if they were Pink Floyd fans (imagery from The Wall). I got blank stares, followed by laughter.
“No” one of them said, “We’re humanitarians, on our way to go clean up Puerto Rico!”
Laughter from the others.
“We’re plumbers too, and carpenters, gonna rebuild this place!”
More chuckles.
Noticing the very particular tattoos a few of them bore, I knew. Still, I asked. “Oh cool, glad you’re reaching out, what organization are you with?”
One of them winked at me. Pointed at his patch. “How about you look this up. We’re doing great work”.
Fair enough. Finished helping him and the five others. And then researched the image they bore.
Hammerskins. A white supremacist group that’s been planning a rally in the area.
I just came face to face with hate. And. I still feel uneasy inside. Especially as they found it amusing that I politely pretended not to recognize what they represented.
