Four Alt-Right ‘Fight Club’ Members Arrested for Riots They Incited in Charlottesville
Four men who identified as members of an alt-right “fight club” were arrested on Tuesday for inciting a riot during the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA last year.
The charges were filed on August 27 and released on Tuesday. The Huffington Post reports that the affidavit revealed the fight club members were “among the most violent individuals present in Charlottesville.”
Cole Evan White, Benjamin Drake Daley, Michael Paul Miselis, and Thomas Walter Gillen traveled to Virginia from Southern California to incite riots on the behalf of their alt-right fight club called RAM, or, the “Rise Above Movement.”
ProPublica reports that RAM “claims more than 50 members” and operates with the purpose of “physically attacking its ideological foes,” with skills they develop as a group through in “boxing and other martial arts.”
Images and videos of White, Daley, Miselis and Gillen fighting counter protesters at Unite the Right and other alt-right rallies are featured and shared on social media by ProPublica and other accounts.
JUST IN: Federal authorities announce arrest of four members of white supremacist group "for committing various acts of violence" at Charlottesville rally. https://t.co/1FJvcHGjUZ pic.twitter.com/RUPFm5r3r9
— ABC News (@ABC) October 2, 2018
3/ We identified several RAM members who turned up in Charlottesville and California and attacked counter-protesters—like Ben Daley.
Here he is punching a counter-protester at an alt-right rally in Berkeley in April 2017.https://t.co/6G2BDcTHXl pic.twitter.com/f4j8kNhH26
— ProPublica (@propublica) July 25, 2018
Daley and Gillen previously served time in jail for illegally possessing firearms or handguns. The two were reportedly rioting with torches the night before Unite the Right yelling “Jews will not replace us” and attacking counter protesters coming in for the riot the next day.
Miselis and White were both released from their jobs following the announcement of their participation in the rally last summer.
The four RAM members are not being lined to the death of Heather Heyer who was killed last year when James Alex Fields Jr., drove his car into the rioters and counter protesters in the riots. Fields Jr. was later indicted for first-degree murder and 9 other felony crimes in December 2017 and in June he was indicted on charges for federal hate crimes.
