Curious Case Of The Man Facing Federal Charges For Threatening The Alt-Right
By Allegra Kirkland | June 15, 2018 6:00 am
On August 12 of last year, white nationalists, skinheads and Ku Klux Klan members in full regalia marched through Charlottesville, Virginia in the blazing summer heat, chanting racist slogans and clashing with the hundreds of anti-racist activists who showed up. Dozens were injured and a young paralegal, Heather Heyer, was killed when a car driven by a far-right activist plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters. Afterward, with tensions running high, concerns percolated that a “Free Speech Rally” scheduled to take place in Boston the following weekend could devolve into similar violence.
The day after Charlottesville, Eric Radulovic, a 32-year-old Indiana man, visited 4chan’s “Politically Incorrect” discussion board, popular among the white nationalists, anti-Semites, and trolls who compose the “alt-right.” Dozens of messages proliferated about the Boston rally and how it would go. “Be prepared everyone. this can get bad,” one warned.
Posing as a member of the alt-right, Radulovic wrote an anonymous post warning that he planned to shoot other alt-right activists at the rally, in order to generate public sympathy for the movement, which was now associated with Heyer’s death.
“I’m going to bring a Remington 700 and start shooting Alt-right guys,” Radulovic allegedly posted. “We need sympathy after that landwhale got all the liberals teary eyed, so someone is going to have to make it look like the left is becoming more violent and radicalized. It’s a false flag for sure, but I’ll be aiming for the more tanned/dark haired muddied jeans in the crowd so real whites won’t have to worry.”
The Boston event was ultimately peaceful. But last Friday, some 10 months after Radulovic wrote the anonymous post, he was arrested and charged by federal prosecutors with the felony of “transmitting in interstate and foreign commerce a threat to injure the person of another.” Radulovic now faces up to five years in prison.
Speaking to TPM, some experts on far-right extremism questioned the federal government’s decision to pursue the case. They noted that no federal indictments have been brought against the white nationalists who openly promoted, and in some cases carried out, violence in Charlottesville.
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