from It’s Going Down
[This post only contains information relevant to Philadelphia and the surrounding area, to read the entire articles follow the above links.]
Fred Arena, a member of Vanguard America and a co-planner of Unite the Right 2, was sentenced to six months for lying to the FBI about his membership in the group in order to obtain a security clearance.
In January 2019, Arena applied for a security clearance as part of his job as a security contractor at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. According to a Department of Justice press release, Arena was “required to disclose whether he had ever been a member of an organization that used (or advocated the use of) force or violence to prevent others from exercising their constitutional rights. He falsely answered that he had not.”
In June 2018, Arena was doxxed as a member of the neo-Nazi organization when antifascist infiltrators leaked the event’s planning chats to Unicorn Riot. In the chats, Arena repeatedly discussed his capacity for violence, his links to and in a public Facebook post, endorsed a statement from Andrew Anglin associate “Ludovici Alibi,” saying that “The only answer to Antifa is Atomwaffen,” (a neo-Nazi group linked to five murders in the US) adding “Absolutely agreed! And a few other crazy fucks like myself!! HAIL VICTORY!”
In private chats with an antifascist infiltrator posing as a neo-Nazi, Arena claimed that he and other Vanguard America members were planning on hiding weapons in the Charlottesville park, should the permits be granted, and said he was organizing a group of Vanguard American, Hammerskins, and Atomwaffen members to attend.
“At a minimum I would have a shield, a really good stun gun. A medium-sized padlock tight on the end of a handkerchief makes it a very good weapon,” Arena told an antifascist infiltrator whom he believed to be a fellow member of the Unite the Right 2 security team via Facebook, where he used the pseudonym “McCormick Foley.” After Arena’s bail hearing in October 2019, journalist Nick Martin posted prosecution exhibits to Twitter.
A motion for pretrial detention notes that Arena had a history of threatening witnesses, including one Charlottesville resident whom he believed to be a federal informant. “During their investigation, agents also learned that Arena made online and verbal threats against two women with whom he had failed relationships…. In both cases he threatened to sever intimate parts of the women’s bodies and store the parts in a jar,” prosecutors argued in a motion for pretrial detention.
Though Arena faced up to 20 years in prison, he was sentenced to only six months, with two years supervised release.
Though This Week in Fascism does not endorse imprisonment (or the criminal justice system as a whole), as a collaborator of this author noted, this is disappointing because the length of prison sentences is often a shorthand for the importance with which society views a given issue.
Though some will celebrate Arena’s sentence as a victory of the state, it is anything but. It was antifascists, not federal investigators, who exposed Arena’s affiliations.
Even though Arena was interviewed by the FBI in August 2018 after he was doxxed by antifascist activists as a member of Vanguard America, he was allowed to keep his job at the Philadelphia Naval Yard for fourteen more months, and for 10 months after applying for a security clearance.
This is the failure of the State, and the degree to which it does not treat seriously the threat of fascism and white nationalism. The need for antifascists is greater than ever. We keep us safe!
