As Texas Anti-Fascist Found ‘Not Guilty,’ Republican Billionaire Mega-Donor Reportedly Funded Trial for Fascist, Anti-Semitic Group

On Thursday, August 8, Chris “Big Tex” was found not guilty by a jury in a criminal trial for “assault on a police officer,” following a spring 2023 mobilization to defend a drag event at a Fort Worth, Texas brewery in response to threats from fascist groups.

In a message to his supporters on the Free text website, Chris wrote:

On April 23, 2023, Fort Worth police attacked and beat me for standing on a street corner and stopping Nazis from filming people entering a drag show. Within hours of my arrest, the police, in partnership with the elected district attorney, developed a false allegation that I had assaulted them, an allegation they failed to mention in 24 additional reports and reports. The county integrity officer took a case that spanned 2.5 seconds of my life, to concoct the biggest conspiracy of all: that I am a terrorist, the leader of a criminal street gang, that I paid people to engage in unlicensed security, that cleaning water off my umbrella was a “secret antifa signal,” etc. She tried to blur 2.5 seconds with two years of lies and the jury saw it from the start.

I don’t want to mince words here. We watched for days as the police lied on the stand, constantly contradicted themselves, and more often than not, twisted and lied about the very things we were all watching together on screen. We watched the accusations that Christian fascists have long leveled against me be methodically dismantled into the lies that they were. Here is an archive of the daily trial updates for all four days. Please read, it is impossible to communicate the absurdity to someone who wasn’t there.

After four days of intense tension, Tarrant County sealed its fate when a wall of police officers entered the courtroom to stare at the jury as they read my indictment. After less than 45 minutes, I heard these beautiful words: Not guilty.

I am forever grateful to my legal team who saw this blatant political persecution for what it was from the beginning and for their fierce commitment to justice while helping me feel like a person who mattered throughout the trial. I will never forget their righteous anger and commitment to the truth. I am so grateful to my wife and family, both blood and choice, whose endless source of hope and strength helped me through the darkest days. I am so grateful to the journalist who spent every moment of those four long days in the courtroom with my family so that my story could be told. And I am so grateful to the Quakers for standing by me from beginning to end and helping me stay calm and centered.

I never wanted this to be about me, I never wanted the attention or the platform, but I am grateful to everyone who listened and did more than I can express to make the next twenty years of my life come back.

The real danger has passed, but the lawsuit filed against me by the New Columbia Movement, funded by its billionaire donor, is still ongoing and I am defending myself in that lawsuit. I will be back in civil court on August 13th to defend myself once again and, as before, the truth will set me free.

I am burdened with a huge amount of expenses to reimburse for two additional days of trial, preparation for the investigation and expenses related to fighting the civil lawsuit. If you can help me, send me some bones.

One of the main fanatics who came to protest the event was KElly Neidert, a self-described “Christian fascist,” has called for Pride attendees to be “rounded up” and is reportedly a member of the fascist group New Columbia Movement. Neidert has organized several anti-LGBTQ+ protests, which have included both Trump supporters and neo-Nazi groups that have waved swastika flags. The Daily Beast, “Kelly also received support from former Proud Boys attorney Jason Lee Van Dyke,” who, as VICE He reportedly tried to join the neo-Nazi paramilitary group The Base, but his attempt was rejected.

Ky testified at the trialthe Randle, a former member of the New Columbia Movement, who participated in the far-right rally outside the Fort Worth, Texas, brewery. According to Alexandra Edwards, who reported on the trial, Kyle is also suing Chris and “His co-plaintiffs are Joshua Finecy and Anthony Long… (also former) members of New Columbia (Movement)…”

Edwards later reported that during the trial, it was revealed that billionaire real estate mogul and Republican mega-donor Monty Bennett, publisher of The Dallas Express, is actually funding the lawsuit filed by the fascist group. Beyond massive donations to Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Bennett is best known for defrauding people out of tens of millions of dollars in PPP loans during the COVID-19 outbreak and for leading various attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and public education.

The New Columbia movement is known for merging European fascism with authoritarian Catholicism and American nationalist symbolism. As Steve Monacelli has written, the group embrace a form of “Carlism, a semi-fascist, pro-monarchist Catholic ideology, emerged in 1800s Spain and played a role in Franco’s brutal regime.”

As Political Research Associates reported:

In a manifesto posted on its website, the group… calls the notion of equality—or at least what it considers “unnatural equality”—“wrong,” describes democracy as a “failed experiment,” and advocates a “Roman” model as a solution to “America’s cultural diversity,” in which “subject peoples” would be allowed to “retain their own cultures,” but only within the framework of a “high American culture” based on “Christian morality, the rule of law, and the common good.”

In YouTube videos, New Columbia Movement leaders have referred to Elliot Rodger, the incel mass murderer who killed six people in Santa Barbara in 2014, as a “supreme gentleman” — a self-aggrandizing term Rodger used in his final pre-massacre video that has since become a common term of endearment on far-right forums like 4chan. Leaders have also engaged in anti-Semitism, as when one leader claimed during a 2021 livestream titled “The Sexual Revolution and Its Aftermath” that Jews “actually have a very strong hold on the porn industry” as well as “a huge hold on Hollywood.” Another leader then added, “This could turn into a ‘JQ’ podcast real quick!” — a reference to the alt-right and neo-Nazi abbreviation for “the Jewish question.” The movement’s social media posts also regularly denigrate Jewish religious texts such as the Talmud, and one Instagram post captioned an image of ancient Israelite Jews as “the world’s most dangerous enemy.”

During the group’s first livestream in July 2020, its co-founders, SK Nicholas Chimera Jr. and Nicholas Haas—both of whom claim to be fourth-degree members of the Catholic fraternal organization Knights of Columbus—detailed their ideological journey to the far right. When the two met in college, Haas explained, SK “was borderline National Socialist wignat”—a reference to an online neo-Nazi subculture—and frequented neo-fascist forums online, while Haas described himself as “basically the definition of a Three Percenter.” SK, who has professed admiration for the former fascist regimes of Italy and Spain, added that “both of our positions lacked God. That’s the problem. Once we introduced God into all of this, everything was fine.”

Members of the New Columbia Movement regularly rally alongside neo-Nazi groups that openly display Nazi imagery. The New Columbia Movement’s social media posts promote anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and directly attack Jews. In January 2024, members of the New Columbia Movement were filmed shaking hands and rallying alongside members of the neo-Nazi group Patriot Front at an anti-abortion march in Washington, D.C. Patriot Front is a new version of Vanguard America, a group that marched in Charlottesville in 2017, where a member of the group murdered anti-fascist protester Heather Heyer after driving a car into a crowd of protesters. Patriot Front members have called for the creation of “ethno-state rape gangs” and have filmed themselves giving the Nazi salute.

The fact that a billionaire capitalist and a GOP megadonor is supporting a self-proclaimed fascist group that promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and holds rallies alongside neo-Nazi groups shows how desperate elites are to crush popular opposition to their anti-working class, white supremacist policies.

Bennett’s funding of the New Columbia Movement’s lawsuit is just the latest example of the Texas Republican Party’s direct ties to neo-Nazis and white supremacists. In the fall of 2023, the Texas Tribune reported that “Jonathan Stickland, the ultraconservative leader of a group that has donated millions of dollars to prominent Texas leaders, hosted prominent white supremacist Nick Fuentes and other far-right activists (such as Kyle Rittenhouse) for several hours…” In May of this year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott also pardoned Daniel Perry, a far-right Trump supporter convicted of murdering “Garret Foster…in Austin, Texas, during a Black Lives Matter protest following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.”

The entire ordeal also reveals how various forces, from street fascists to the Texas governor who tweeted praise for the police for Chris’ arrest, to billionaires like Bennett who are funding a trial for a literal fascist group and employing journalists at the Dallas Express Those who write articles attacking antifascists – all work towards the same goal: to crush communities that stick together. It is up to us to fight back, by showing that our solidarity is indeed a weapon.

For more information on how to support Chris in his ongoing fight in court, click here. Another comrade, Aeshna, is also raising money for another case stemming from the same protest. For more information on how to support, click here. For more information on the upcoming lawsuit filed by the fascist group New Columbia Movement, click here.