Patriots of Gold Country; Anatomy of a Homegrown Hate Group
“The Ku Klux Klan comes wrapped in the American flag, as it were, advocating the American principles openly, with a Bible in its hand, and the very next day they are passing their neighbors with a mask over their faces.”
- Lannie Jackson, Mayor of Central City, KY, 1923
To my ears there are seldom descriptors to stir more suspicion than when a group or businesses includes “patriot,” “liberty,” “heritage,” “freedom,” or “prayer” in their name. From the faux intellectualism of the conservative thinktank, Heritage Foundation; to the far-right Christian nationalist group, Patriot Prayer; to the ironically named pro-monarchist grifters at Liberty Hangout, numerous American nationalists and far-right organizations have wrapped themselves in American iconography. Hate groups too have adopted these common conservative branding buzzwords, such as the aptly named, Patriot Front, which serves as a front for American nationalist antisemitism.
So when a Tuolumne County resident announced the creation of a new conservative only Facebook group called Patriots of Gold Country my hackles raised. Over the course of 10 months I monitored the posts and members of Patriots of Gold Country, and documented over 400 posts and comment chains and 200 screenshots of a private group chat.
Patriots of Gold Country is best described as an American nationalist hate group, where members can freely share racial slurs, neo-Nazi iconography, antisemitic conspiracies, queerphobic fear-mongering, calls for violence, and targeted harassment towards residents of Tuolumne County. The group is led by a retired Los Gatos officer, Randal Villata, and Melissa Chase, a member of the anti-government organization, Three-Percenters. Group membership has included dozens of local business owners and government employees at the federal, state, and county agencies.
Patriots of Gold Country provides an opportunity to see the infant stages of a hate group forming, not as an abstract concept existing somewhere else, but among our own community by people readers will certainly recognize.
Hate Group Defined
Labeling a group a hate group is a hefty claim, thus before getting to the heart of the matter it is prudent to define what a hate group is and is not.
The Southern Poverty Law Center defines hate group as, “an organization or collection of individuals that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. An organization does not need to have engaged in criminal conduct or have followed their speech with actual unlawful action to be labeled a hate group.”
The Anti-Defamation League has a similar definition but adds the important point, “The mere presence of bigoted members in a group or organization is typically not enough to qualify it as a hate group; the group itself must have some hate-based orientation/purpose.”
In their article, Hate Groups for Dummies: How To Build A Successful Hate Group, Webster University psychology professors, Linda M. Woolf, Ph.D. and Michael R. Hulsizer, Ph.D, defined hate group as “any organized group whose beliefs and actions are rooted in enmity towards an entire class of people based on ethnicity, perceived race, sexual orientation, religion, or other inherent characteristic.” They say there are two major components to their definition: “First, a hate group must be organized,” and “The second major component… is the clear use of enmity towards a specific group as a primary organizational focus.”
Woolf and Hulsizer’s article provides thorough research on factors which contribute to the creation of a hate group such as leadership qualities, recruit traits, and social psychological factors which can trap people in hate groups. The breakdown they provided will be used as the lens through which Patriots of Gold Country is analyzed.
It should be noted that while Woolf and Hulsizer make mention of how the Internet has bolstered hate groups, their focus is primarily on hate groups which initially organized in-person. Their model still provides valuable insight, as will be demonstrated in the succeeding sections, but some factors they touch upon, such as organizational uniforms, don’t necessarily have an online equivalent. To compensate for this other researchers who focus on communities of hate will be referred.
Because hate groups are more than just a group with bigoted members, and the group changed direction after Villata and Chase took control, I will be specifically looking at the members who make up the active membership — those who have posted, commented, or reacted within the group.
All my research material can be accessed here (450 group screenshots + 230 chat log screenshots).
Foundation and Leadership
Between 2019–2020, Andrew Mellott’s Facebook groups, “Tuolumne County Anything Goes Page” and “Tuolumne Incident, Rant, and Local Politics” became the online hotspots for locals to gossip and political discussion. Tuolumne County has a thriving and active online political scene, with over half a dozen Facebook groups dedicated to local and national politics.
While Mellott implied the groups were free-speech absolutist in nature, in practice this allowed for those with hateful intent to co-mingle their bigoted content among those attempting to have serious conversations. While his groups provided a platform for the spreading of toxic propaganda and misinformation, the presence of leftists and liberals willing to critique and fact-check these posts countered much of their rhetoric and kept it in check.
Mellott’s groups became something of online Colosseums where conservatives, liberals, and the occasional leftist squabbled over the politics of the day. More often than not the conversations broke down into mindless trading of insults, ego flexing, or derailing of posts by people who refused to discuss topics in good faith or remain on topic.
Some of these rightists protested the membership of liberals and leftists. One such poster, Kelly Potter, ultimately decided to create her own online conservative safe space.
On 29 June 2020, the Facebook group, Patriots of Gold Country was formed. Kelly Potter wanted “a new private conservative only group” after the other groups were “overrun” by progressives.
The desire for a safe space free from critique, accountability, and fact-checking set the tone for the infant group’s direction. Many of the founding members were those most frustrated with the progressive presence in other shared online political spaces.
The local conservative bloc’s need for a safe space caused a large migration from Mellott’s groups to Potter’s group. Within two weeks the new group had 324 members and has maintained a membership of over 300 since.
Potter didn’t intend to maintain long-term responsibility for the group. After the initial influx of members, Potter appointed others to administrate the group. She initially attempted to recruit Kathy Hardisty, but she turned it down. Her second pick, Randal Albert “Randy” Villata, accepted and would go on to appoint Melissa June Chase and Jeffrey Lawrence “Jeff” Scipio as fellow admins.
The desire for a conservative safe space free from critique, accountability, and fact-checking set the tone for the group’s direction. Many of the founding members were those most frustrated with the liberal and leftist presence in other political spaces. Some of these early members boastfully blocked those who expressed criticism of their views, but still maintained backup profiles to spy on those they were too timid to engage with.
Shortly after appointing Villata as admin Potter deleted her social media presence, allegedly on advisement of her husband. Potter could not be reached for comment.
“The Patriot 9"
While the group maintained over 300 members, nine members had their own private group chat called “The Patriot 9.” The chat was started by Melissa Chase and nine other highly trusted local conservatives; originally it was “The Patriot 10” but one member, Tammy Alexander, was deemed by Chase too impatient and combative thus removed.
Chase desired a private space to discuss the affairs of the group, and to express suspicions and paranoia about group members believed to be moles. I was a specific concern and an initial motivating factor in creation of the group chat.
Though Villata, Chase, and for a time Scipio, were the group’s admins, the Patriot 9 provided advice and guidance for the direction of the group.
Personal conversations among friends slipped effortlessly into monitoring, stalking, and violent ideation about local progressives, before slipping into half-baked political rants and conservative memes.
The members of the Patriot 9 included:
Melissa June Filbeck (née Chase),49, Groveland, CA.
Owner of SpiceStash.Randal Albert “Randy” Villata, 67, Twain Harte, CA.
Retired officer for Los Gatos Police Department.
Dealership driver for Sierra Motors.David William Ernst Jr, 54, Morgan Hill, CA.
Co-owner of EVIL Designs.Richard William “Rich” Stewart, 42, Groveland, CA.
Co-owner of SpiceStash.
Tow-truck driver for Miller Brothers Automotive.Jerrad Allen “JC Cooper” Verplanck, 38, Sonora, CA.
Road worker for Tuolumne County Community Development Department and Department of Public Works.Loree Ann Davis (née Johnson), 57, Sonora, CA.
Owner of Needful Things.
Co-owner of L&L Powdercoating and Kustoms.Andrew William “Andy” Mellott, deceased.
Removed from chat after his passing.Jeff Lawrence Scipio (née Fitzwater), 36, Sonora, CA.
Caretaker for unregistered cannabis farm.
Removed from chat allegedly due to internal fighting and suspicions.Melissa Lynn Parmley, 41, Angels Camp, CA.
Former rural carrier associate for USPS, Ceres Post Office.
Voluntarily removed herself from chat.Tammy Gail Alexander, 63, Sonora, CA.
Former heavy equipment operator for Tuolumne Utilities District.
Removed from chat for being confrontational and impatient.Leslie Carrigan “Lee” Herrick, 50, Sonora, CA.
Mechanic for Rick Bacon’s Customs and Collision.
Added to chat to replace Tammy Alexander, but removed due to inactivity.
The entire chat log is available for perusal.
Patriots of Gold Country Culture
A Community in Crisis
Patriots of Gold Country bills itself as, “a group of like minded patriotic conservatives discussing issues of the day without the interference and antagonism of liberals.”
The desire to distance themselves highlights a social psychological technique found among hate groups as Woolf and Hulsizer note, “totalism which extends beyond an ‘us-them’ dichotomy to an ‘us against them’ philosophy. This belief system, taken to the extreme in hate and other destructive groups, pushes individuals to separate from all others not associated with the group.”
Despite the common talking point that conservatives are the silent majority, Americans who identify as conservative are on the decline, especially as far-right policies alienate women, people of color, Black people, queer people, working-class people, and young people. Even in Tuolumne County, the once historically conservative county is beginning to shift further to the left as an older conservative generation dies off and a younger more progressive generations take their place. In fact, during the 2020 Tuolumne county elections, an incumbent supervisor running for reelection built their platform through fear-mongering a liberal takeover of the county.
This is represented in the group demographic whose memberships is largely made up of Baby Boomers and older Gen Xers.
At its core, Patriots of Gold Country was a reactionary safe space for those experiencing cultural crisis. A broad range of rightist ideologies were present among group members including: social conservatism, fiscal conservatism, American conservatism, paleoconservatism, libertarian capitalism, neoliberalism, traditionalism, Trumpism, American nationalism, Christian nationalism, white nationalism, neo-Nazism, and fascism.
According to Woolf and Hulsizer, “destructive groups are easily organized as they reflect existing cultural frameworks of antagonism, institutional forms of bias, and cultural acceptance of violence,” and “often provide simple answers to complex problems and thus require little cognitive or emotional work on the part of individuals towards an understanding of their life situation.”
In his work on cults, psychologist Michael Langone Ph.D. outlines common factors which make individuals vulnerable to destructive groups,
a high level of stress or dissatisfaction
lack of self-confidence
unassertiveness
gullibility
desire to belong to a group
low tolerance for ambiguity
naïve idealism
cultural disillusionment
frustrated spiritual searching
Those experiencing cultural crises, unable to reconcile entrenched beliefs with a changing world, are primed to find cultural validation and acceptance through group membership. Membership to hate groups, similar to cults and gangs, fulfill a “sense of belonging, identity, self-worth, safety, and direction for those experiencing crisis or vulnerability.”
Emphasizing the view that the group was more than an online hotspot, but an actual community, the late Subaru mechanic, Andrew William Mellott, was set on pushing the group to begin organizing into an actual political bloc to counter liberals and leftists in Tuolumne County.
There is a positive correlation between the rise and decline of hate groups with economic stability and access to resources among the working-class. In times of economic downturn and depressions there is a rise of hate groups and incidents. Using datasets provided by the FBI and Southern Poverty Law Center, Dr. Maia Majumder, a computational epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital’s Computational Health Informatics Program, found “income inequality was the most significant determinant of population-adjusted hate crimes and hate incidents across the United States,” with the percent of the population with a high-school degree being second most significant factor.
Income inequality is a known determinant for neighborhood violence and violence in general, of which hate incidents may be considered a special subset. In an economy that increasingly demands a college degree, high-school-educated individuals aren’t able to earn as much as their college-educated neighbors. This — combined with misplaced blame on targeted minority groups — may provide sufficient motivation for hate incidents against them.
This tracts with previous eras of increased hate group and incident activity. In an article in The Atlantic, historian Dr. Josh Rothman, discussed the rise of the the second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Arriving on the heels of World War I, a global recession sparked widespread fear and anxiety “among native-born white Protestants that the country they had known and been accustomed to dominating was coming undone.” These fears were compounded by cultural and demographic shifts as Blacks migrated north out of the South, a growing number of eastern European immigrants “who adhered to Communism and other supposedly subversive political creeds,” and a growing influence from Catholics and Jews.
As if taken straight from US conservative talking points today, the 1920s Klan viewed, “The intellectual vogue for religious modernism, the expansion of political and sexual freedoms for women, and the perception that immorality, crime, and vice were all on the rise only confirmed the sense that the world was spinning beyond their control.”
Though economic and resource anxiety correlate with rates of hate communities and incidents, it should be acknowledged that it’s typically not lower working-class who are most likely to perceive anxiety, but rather the petite bourgeoise (“middle-class”). Rothman pointed out, “Typical [KKK] members were neither wealthy and powerful nor impoverished and dispossessed. Rather, they were middle-class white American men and their families: small-business owners and salesmen, ministers and professors, clerks and farmers, doctors and lawyers.”
This further overlaps with what is seen from Patriots of Gold Country membership. Perusing through member Facebook profiles and LinkedIn accounts, the majority of members work in blue- and pink-collar industries with auto repair, construction, towing and other commercial driving, teaching, and healthcare strongly represented. While many of the younger members were firmly working-class employees, a number of the older, more prominent and involved members were petite bourgeoise. Members such as Andrew Mellott, Loree Davis, Melissa Chase, Jo Rodefer, Paul Kezis, David Ernst, and others owned businesses and property, which Chase even cites as a reason for struggling to be more involved in community organizing for the group.
The Mother Lode too has experienced patterns of racial tension and violence caused by resource anxiety in our own history. In the early days of the 1848 gold rush, immigrants from Chile and France, along with Mexicans (both native Californians and “immigrants” from the at-the-time newly redefined southern Mexican border) flocked to Gold Country in search of gold like their American counterparts. When the gold was plentiful, group tensions existed stronger between miners and indigenous Miwok, than between miners of different ethnic or national backgrounds.
However, by 1849 the increasing number of American and immigrant miners, the decreasing amount of surface gold, and growing competition for claims sparked inter-racial tensions among those who a year prior had been relatively hospitable.
In November 1849, newspapers across the country were publishing stories out of California, including a letter from Big Bar, Middle Fork, where the author wrote, “There are about two hundred miners here, two-thirds canaling and damming the river, and about 2,000 on the Middle and North Forks [of the Stanislaus River]-none but Americans allowed” (emphasis added). Mexican and French miners were forced off claims, while in December 1849 when “Chileans resisted the actions of the Americans, first by legal appeals and then by force, three of their leaders were shot and the rest were flogged and banished from the mines.”
By the time Chinese immigrants fleeing the aftermath of the Taiping Rebellion started coming to California in large numbers (in 1848 there were already small populations of Chinese immigrants), there were extensive Chinese exclusion laws which limited the roles they could fulfill to labor, domestic service, and other essential work, and prohibited working in the mines.
As was the case 180 years ago, there are those in Tuolumne County who feel the county, country, and citizenship should reflect their needs and expectations first (“America First”). An underlying theme to conservative beliefs is a fear that they are losing their culture. Conservative media and speaking points constantly fear-monger that true American patriots are having their rights, voices, and country taken from them by an assortment of malevolent forces. Looking just at Fox News’ resident white supremacist, Tucker Carlson, the propagandist spread fear of political dissidents being imprisoned, elites are brainwashing children, anarchists are tearing down America, liberals are rewriting history, leftists want to rewrite language, even holidays are at risk; in short, American culture is at risk and only a return to patriotic conservative vales can save America.
The frequent sharing of conservative folkisms reminiscing of a bygone American era which in reality never existed emphasizes these fears. These posts often expressed frustration that conservatives are the silent majority, ignored victims of a culture war. Posts frequently whined from the perspective of the supposed beaten and downtrodden cishetero white Christian conservative.
This folky whining included, “I never cared if you were ‘gay’ or whatever acronym you chose to call yourself, until you started shoving it down my throat,” “I think the Confederate monuments around our country symbolize history, so I’m labeled as having hate in my heart when some suddenly are offended by their presence,” “I never cared what color you were, if you were a good human, until you started blaming me for your problems,” and “I am a fiscal and moral conservative, which by today’s standards, makes me a fascist because I plan & budget. But I now find out that I am not here because I earned it, but because I was ‘advantaged.’”
Complex cultural shifts can’t be more simplified than condensing them into one sentence zingers that require no further engagement with current events. These each touch on major shifts in our culture from growing acceptance and visibility of queer folks, to the discourse surrounding systemic racism in law enforcement, to a growing number of the working-class drowning beneath the poverty line.
Tandem to conservative folkisms, conspiracy theories spread among Patriots of Gold Country spread like wildfire. Conspiracies touched upon everything from the classics — Soros paying protesters, elites using adrenochrome in pedophile rituals, Jewish globalists are establishing the New World Order — to new conspiracies for a fascist age such as QAnon’s portfolio of irrational fever hallucinations, and the 2020 “Great Reset” conspiracy that stipulates Covid-19 is being used to reorganize global society. While gullibility and naïveté certainly make one vulnerable to embracing reality and fact defying narratives, conspiracies can be attractive to those in crisis because they provide an alternative explanation to societal changes. Though conspiracy theories are ultimately more complicated than reality, they are unambiguous, providing a clearly defined target allegedly causing conflict, and thus who or what to oppose to resolve conflict.
This form of propaganda reassures those experiencing cultural crisis or vulnerability that they are not wrong or out of touch, rather a malicious, intricate web of skullduggery is at play leading normally patriotic Americans tragically astray.
These simplistic propagandized answers to cultural shifts have impacted familial relationships for some members, further increasing the need for surrogate validation and acceptance.
Group member, Kendra Lee Wivell, 60, informed me last year that she was at the time alienated from her daughter who refused to speak with her. She claimed her daughter disagreed with Wivell’s political views, but rather than allocate the required cognitive and emotional work to understand her daughter’s position, it was easier for Wivell to believe her child was brainwashed, a common conspiracy propagated by conservatives to explain the current cultural landscape.
Dale Alan Pope Sr., 62, is another member also estranged from two of his children. Abuse and neglect were strong contributing factors to Pope’s children distancing themselves, but one child also expressed concern with their father’s changing political beliefs. Despite living in Wyoming with no intentions of ever returning to Tuolumne County, Pope deeply valued online friendships with likeminded individuals in the group. In all caps, Pope clearly expressed the importance of the group, “I AM SO FUCKING PROUD TO BE A MEMBER OF THIS GROUP… I LOVE YOU GUYS THROUGH AND THROUGH, I FEEL YOU ALL ARE TRUE BLUE AMERICANS… YOU FOLKS ARE MY NEW FAMILY”
Across American nationalist communities, this group familial bond is emphasized even in the language used as seen by the frequent reference to male members as brothers, especially when expressing support or pride.
Though there is no specific research on the matter, the desire for solidarity might explain why conservative folkism posts so frequently claim the rant is written by or stolen from a friend or family. The posts, much like communities themselves, fulfill a belief that conservatives feeling frustrated and disillusioned with a changing culture, aren’t alone, and in fact, they aren’t wrong, it’s those who lack common sense and a supply of bootstraps.
Often the posts request the reader to copy and share. This requires the reader to not engage or form their own thoughts. The suppression of “realistic appraisals of the situation in order to maintain group harmony” results in groupthink “which groups tend to agree with the leader and ignore possible alternative viewpoints.” Adding to this, Woolf and Hulsizer discussed ingroup bias, which helps reassure “their ingroup is highly valued and distinct from other groups.”
Membership in Patriots of Gold Country
The isolated nature of the group makes it difficult to gain access to. Supposedly. The group was both private and hidden thus membership required invitation by an active member of the group.
Invited members are still required to answer screening questions such as what their connection to Gold Country is or to identify three members already in the group who can vouch for them. Screening questions were added only after multiple leftist activists, including myself, were added to the group in the first two days of existence in an attempt to weed out potential progressives and moles.
Once admitted to the group, new members were still under heavy scrutiny and suspicion, and there were multiple ways to quickly get banned. If a new member was suspected of leaking or discussing the happenings of the group with non-members, or worst leftists, they were immediately banned from the group, and the member who invited them was at risk of being banned also. The inviting members was at all times responsible for the actions of those they invited.
If a group member invited a liberal, even if they are vouched for by the member, that member was at risk of being banned. When Chelsea Colleen Diede’s liberal mother was invited to the group, Villata held an inquisition posting details about the mother. Diede was verbally berated for asking “what is the group trying to hide” and why her mother was singled out.
Villata monitored all members’ friend lists to see if they maintained friendships with liberals or leftists. Members were removed for having too many assumed liberal friends.
Member activity was also monitored. Members who did not have enough public posts on their personal account or activity in the group were at risk of removal. Lurkers — members of a group or forum who does not participate — were removed after a certain amount of time. This forced potential members to participate in the group, similar to Woolf and Hulsizer’s observation, “Hate groups will often have new members engage in relatively innocuous activities.”
The worst sin a member could commit was reporting a post. Besides facing an almost certain ban, those who reported posts would be targeted by the administrators in posts where other members were encouraged to heckle. Reporting a post was a betrayal by putting the group at risk of being deleted by Facebook. According to the administrators the group was constantly at risk of being deleted for abusive content, spreading fake news, and hate content.
Ironically, having a post or meme moderated by Facebook was a triumph and proof that Facebook censored conservatives. Moderations fueled their conservative persecution complex and strengthened the belief they were the purveyor of truth. Similarly, having a post tagged with Facebook’s automated fact-checking was viewed as big tech censoring the truth and became something of an internal joke.
Seemingly contradictory to moderations being worn as a badge of honor, the group was deeply concerned about the content of Patriots of Gold Country being exposed.
Due to constant leaks from within the group, the admins and members were paranoid of anyone they did not recognize, and distrustful of each other.
In an attempt to reassure group members of their privacy and safety, retired Los Gatos Police Officer, Randy Villata, would frequently go on banning sprees of members he arbitrarily suspected of being leakers or fake accounts. Even friends of the Patriot 9 were banned inexplicably, such as Mellott’s close friend, David Badgley.
Despite a background in law enforcement, Villata’s deductive capabilities and reasoning left much to be desired. While attempting to identify a person, he’d often mistake the suspected person with someone of the same name or similar appearance, or make sweeping statements that a person doesn’t exist because Villata couldn’t find them in a public database. One such case had Villata incorrectly identifying a local activist as his own niece who he called a scumbag, all simply because they shared a similar name.
Without any evidence trusted members can become prime suspects of crimes against the group. The aforementioned Dale Pope Sr. lost all trust from The Patriot 9 due the child he maintains contact with being named Alexis. The Patriot 9 were convinced that Alexis Sawyer was me because we share a similar name. Though Pope Sr. remained in the group despite being distrusted, members were warned privately to be weary of him. Pope Sr. became enraged when members started blocking his daughter, which fueled further paranoia.
I was a primary concern of Villata’s paranoia, leading him to make erroneous claims such as me being employed as a computer consultant for Calaveras County, or that I drive a red mini cooper. Though at times he was correct, such as an accurate detailed description of my driveway and property. Other times he’d spread libel, such as the claim I’m a pedophile, even though he admitted, “I am not concerned about spreading fake shit about that freak.”
Villata’s inability to discern accurate from inaccurate information, perform rudimentary searches, and acknowledge multiple people may have the same name, accompanied by a support and aiding in stalking and violent libel, leads one to question how “Officer” Villata acted while in law enforcement. How many other lives did he try or succeed in ruining, especially when in a place of authority?
A Bigot’s Paradise
Without the social, financial, or legal consequences often attached with being a vocal bigot, the hidden group became an attractive place for Tuolumne County’s worst to spread violent hatred. White nationalist memes featuring neo-Nazi iconography, queerphobic and racist slurs, violent ideation, and harassment of county residents found an accepting home among the members.
In their article, Characterizing network dynamics of online hate communities around the COVID‑19 pandemic, Dr. Kathleen Carley, social scientist with a specialization in network dynamic analysis at Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science and research assistant, Joshua Uyheng, found “hate thrives in smaller, more isolated, and more hierarchical groups. This resonates with concerns regarding interactions within echo chambers and sequestered communities, whereby individuals begin to participate away from the mainstream of public discourse, and potentially engage in more harmful online behaviors.”
Anti-Black racism was the most prevalent form of bigotry within the group, though masked as criticism of Black Lives Matter and social justice. For all the alleged criticism of BLM in the group, there were no critiques of the movement given, rather group members dabbled in blatant racism and conspiracies revealing the true intent behind the jabs.
Members bastardized the meaning of BLM, such as Paul Kezis and Tammy Alexander, who explicitly claimed “Black lives don’t matter” (BLDM), while others claimed BLM stood for “Boomers Lover Murder,” “Burn Loot Murder,” and “Biden Loves Minors.” In other posts there were jokes about running over protesters because “Black Lives Splatter,” which encouraged a response from retired Tuolumne County Assessor-Recorder, David Wallace Wynne, “now now be correct — — ALL lives splatter.”
Anti-Black racism was the most prevalent, but derogatory posts also targeted Asians, undocumented citizens, Arabs, Muslims, and refugees.
Antisemitic bigotry was also a commonality, though was primarily expressed through conspiratorial dog whistles. The most common conspiracies focused on wealthy Jewish families. George Soros, a Jewish-Hungarian American billionaire, has been the target of antisemitic conspiracies for decades, the most common claiming he funds antifa and BLM, among other progressive organization. These conspiracies became prominent during the 2020 US election and Covid-19 pandemic. The Soros boogeyman was even included in local propaganda during the 2020 US elections with propaganda claiming the Tuolumne County Indivisible chapter is also funded by the billionaire.
To a lesser extent the Rothschilds were mentioned, as well as other common antisemitic conspiracies about the New World Order, Illuminati, and a singular globalist government.
Some members, however, were a more direct in their antisemitism, openly embracing neo-Nazi iconography.
After Bob Shatraw Sr., a frequent poster of fascist content as seen some of the preceding and succeeding screenshots, had his primary account deleted for multiple Facebook ToS violations, he created a new account under the name “Earl Turner.” The name is taken directly from the titular main character of The Turner Diaries, a neo-Nazi fictional book which fantasized about a future race war. Shatraw admitted to reading the book, and has recommended others read it also.
Explicit neo-Nazi dogwhistles were made by Paul H. Holzberger Sr. In response to a conspiracy article about Jacob Rothschild, Holzberger responded with “88!!!” which is code for “Heil Hitler” (H is the 8th letter of the alphabet). On at least three occasions Holzberger and David Ernst Jr. shared a meme showing a white hand Sieg Heil (Nazi salute) over a black Raised Fist with the words, “PAPER BEATS ROCK.”
Some of these posts specifically linked Soros, the alleged New World Order, and other Jewish dogwhistles to the Covid-19 pandemic. Uyheng and Carley found that hate communities in the era of Covid-19 maintained forms of bigotry that existed prior to the pandemic, but during Covid-19 that native bigotry shifted to incorporate Covid-19 conspiracies.
Peripheral, and at times overlapping, with the group’s racism, gender based discrimination was also common-place. Members of Patriots of Gold Country disparaged feminist ideologies and movements such as #MeToo and Times Up. The group took after women in politics, suggesting some used sex to reach their positions in government; Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and Ilhan Omar were three of their primary targets.
Accompanying misogyny and sexism, queerphobia was particularly atrocious within the group. Transgender folks were the primary target of their vitriol, reflecting current Republican anti-trans legislation and speaking points across the country. The most common attacks equated trans and queer people with pedophilia. One of the most vocal members in the group, Loree Davis, shared an article from the Southern Poverty Law Center designated hate-group, American Family Association, titled, “It’s not the Equality Act, It’s the Pedophile Protection Act.” Davis added to the fear-mongering of the article with her own thoughts, “The equality act is to make everyone feel their queerness is acceptable in our society. It helps everyone in the group, except the victims of their sick behavior. Years ago this behavior was a mental illness. Now everyone is afraid to say it because these group will harass and become violent. This behavior proves their illness.”
Other members, such as group admin, Melissa Chase, and resident white supremacist, Bob Shatraw, shared anti-queer propaganda about clovergender and agefluid — alleged pedophile identities under the queer umbrella. The two “genders” were created by 4chan and weaponized by rightists to smear and dehumanize queer people as pedophiles. Attempts to cast queer people as pedophiles is a long-standing queerphobic attack and dehumanizing smear from Nazi attitudes and laws about sexual degeneracy, to the backbone of the Republican platform during the 2004 US presidential election, to the current GOP platform of faux concern about women’s sports and changing rooms.
The types of bigotry presented above use many instances of common stereotypes and prejudices, but packaged specifically as political grievances. Anti-Black racism is masked as opposition to Black Lives Matter or outspoken Black politicians; racism towards Latin immigrants is argued from a concern over law, order, and taxes; queerphobia is masked as concern for children and opposition to pedophilia. Packaged this way, they aren’t seen as oppressive or bigoted, but rather preservation of the United States and American culture from those who want to destroy it.
Returning to the rise of the 1920s KKK, the organization saw massive growth by “Packaging its noxious ideology as traditional small-town values and wholesome fun, the Klan of the 1920s encouraged native-born white Americans to believe that bigotry, intimidation, harassment, and extralegal violence were all perfectly compatible with, if not central to, patriotic respectability.”
From Dehumanization to Violence
Dehumanization is at the core of the numerous examples of bigotry, from comparing Black people to monsters and animals, to labelling queer folks as pedophiles, to conspiracies about prominent Jews being conniving manipulators, “these messages lead members down a path towards violence that includes increasing levels of devaluation and dehumanization of the ‘other.’” Dehumanization is instrumental in hate incidents and communities “to facilitate movement along a path of escalating enmity and potential violence.” Woolf and Hulsizer also note that dehumanization allow ingroups to “view the outgroup as excluded from the ingroup’s normal moral boundaries and disengage morally.”
The group’s creation was grounded in separating themselves from others they disagreed with politically. For some members this meant months of pent up embarrassment, annoyance, and disdain boiling over from cruel or bigoted jokes into violent ideation against broad concepts — protesters, antifascists, or liberals — and specific residents of Tuolumne County. In their presumed safe space this violent ideation was supported by the admins and The Patriot 9, reflecting Uyheng and Carley’s surmise that “Communities with more hateful opinion leaders might also feature higher levels of overall hate speech.”
The bulk of the violent ideation came from memes and the responses they garnered. Accompanying an article about a Denver police officer driving through protesters, one of the loudest proponents of violence, Tammy Alexander, concluded, “I totally support the officer,” which was echoed by Kathy Hardisty, “He should have stopped and backed up and did it again.” And elicited further response from Merv Mcnally, “A few more times to make sure he did it right the first time.”
Memes about running over protesters were among the most common. Since a white nationalist murdered Heather Heyer in 2017 by plowing his vehicle into a group of protesters, the number of memes by rightists supporting the violence and the actual incidents of cars striking protesters has increased.
During the protests demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and other victims of police brutality, 43 protesters across the United States were struck with a vehicle, 43 documented as malicious with 39 resulting in convictions.
The macabre murder ideation is brought by the same members who find “Black Lives Splatter” funny.
Rambo fantasies of mowing down protesters with guns is another favorite fetish for Patriots of Gold Country group members. In a meme shared by Bob Shatraw a question is posed, “Why does anybody need 30 rounds?” which is answered by a picture of black clad protesters with numbers over their heads.
In another post by Jeff Scipio asking, “Seriously, what do YOU think it will take to ‘deprogram’ these little Socialist Indoctrinated Turd Blossoms from #BLM and #AntiFa?” Responses included, “At least a 357 mag. Maby [sic] a 12 ga,” “12 ga sounds perfect,” “A good dose of Phentenol!”
Admin, Randy Villata, contributed to the gun violence ideation by posting a picture of himself at the gun range he edited to appear as if he were shooting Senator Bernie Sanders.
The violent wet dreams of bigots were not confined to their hate group and some members engaged or bragged about real world violence.
In a meme shared by Tammy Alexander, “WANNA STOP THE RIOTS? Mobilize the septic tank trucks, Put a pressure canon [sic] on em…and hose em down…the end,” members supported the plan, but one member, Charles Wesley Telford Jr., 73, took it to the next level. Telford commented, “I threw a dead skunk in front of BLM protesters in Loyalton ca. I thought it was appropriate it was black and white and stink [sic] like hell.” Telford allegedly also struck a protester with his vehicle and spit in another’s face.
Telford’s claims are corroborated with Loyalton protesters who were present when he assaulted them. The Sierra County Sheriff’s Office police logs show a report taken on 13 June 2020 of, “0919 1703 Vehicle hits protester, driver spits in Loyalton” and in the case, “People v. Charles Wesley Telford, Jr. (20CR0062),” Telford was “convicted of violating Penal Code section 415(3), disturbing the peace. He was placed on two years summary probation, ordered to complete 20 hours of community service, and pay a fine.”
Liberals and leftists living in Tuolumne County have been targeted with harassment by members of the group. The business owner of Benjamin Figs in downtown Sonora, Margery Cavins, has been repeatedly harassed online and in person by members. Cavins developed a reputation for being a cryptic fact-checker, frustrating rightists who did not like having their mythology challenged.
Patriots of Gold Country member, David Ernst Jr., proposed creating a “I hate Margery” Facebook page before escalating his disdain. Though Ernst doesn’t live in the county, he does visit Tuolumne County occasionally to see family, and during one of these trips he planned to “go down to town and visit Benjamin Figs and see if Margery is there. Walk around in there with my mask on. Maybe take a picture or two. Then mention All lives matter on my way out.”
The next day Ernst Jr. posted himself at Cavins’ store, though the shop was closed. Group members were giddy at the action, with Andy Mellott suggesting vandalizing the shop by sticking Trump 2020 stickers to the door, while Merv Mcnally suggested “25–30 of us should show up at one time and pack into her store for a few hours at a time every day for a week.”
Child abuser, Leslie Carrington Herrick, intentionally cyber harassed Cavins with the goal to cause her a mental breakdown.
Cavins was not the only local to be harassed. Patriots of Gold Country ridiculed or harassed at least a dozen local liberals and leftists by name. The local liberal grassroots group, Tuolumne County Indivisible, was a target of libel, slander, and propaganda during the 2020 US elections, and members from Patriots of Gold Country were involved in the spread of Keep Tuolumne County Safe antisemitic and Red Scare propaganda.
I remain a primary target of harassment by Patriots of Gold Country. The group kept tabs on where I lived, my phone number, my vehicle, my friends, my jobs, my family, among other aspects of my life. In the Patriot 9 group chat Andy Mellott admitted to stalking me. His stalking escalated from monitoring my social media to him “sitting in an unknown car with binoculars and following” me from work.
Husband of Melissa Chase, Richard Stewart, claimed to use his position as a tow-truck driver to run my license plates. Mellott also suggested he did the same and derived accurate information about my vehicle.
Though no names were given, Mellott incriminated “several employees of [Columbia Elementary School]”, my former employer, in assisting with the stalking. In the group chat Mellott sent a picture of my vehicle that was taken from the Columbia Elementary School parking lot meaning either Mellott came onto the school campus while school was in session for the sole intent of stalking me, or the staff members aiding him in his stalking efforts did this while they were acting as employees of the Columbia Union School District. Narrowing down the potential stalking conspirators, a former CUSD Board of Trustee, along with three active employees and a former Columbia Elementary School teacher were members of Patriots of Gold Country.
Mellott also revealed that another group member, Justin Conner, was no longer an active member of Facebook groups because “he was being investigated for hate crimes and cyber bullying” by Sonora Police Department and Tuolumne County Sheriff Office after the false belief I called law enforcement on Conner.
Part of a Larger Network
The Internet has become the most important tool for hate groups, “web sites not only facilitate recruitment but also organizing, the spread of propaganda and other hate based materials, community building, and networking between hate organizations,” Woolf and Hulsiver note. The cadre of rightist ideologies and outspoken bigotry naturally brought with it members of far-right paramilitary and terrorist groups.
The Three-Percenters (III%ers)
Admin Melissa Chase is a vetted member of the Three-Percenters (III%ers), and has used the group to attempt recruitment of new members into the organization. The Three-Percenter movement is part of the broader American nationalist militia movement, though contradictorily they are antigovernment. The organization itself claims to denounce racism, yet they maintain alliances with white nationalist organizations. Andy Mellott was also a vetted member of the Three-Percenters and encouraged others to join the California chapter in response to political activism among leftists and liberals in Tuolumne County.
Proud Boys
Another far-right organization with had members in Patriots of Gold Country were the Proud Boys. As previously revealed in my leaks of Pacific Northwest Proud Boy initiation videos from a defunct Proud Boy Facebook group, former admin Jeff Scipio was a first-degree Proud Boy, and another former member, Elijah Perez, was also a member of the Proud Boys with a history of violence.
Recognizable by their black and yellow polo shirts, the Proud Boys describe themselves as “Western chauvinists who won’t apologize for creating the modern world.” The Proud Boys are common spectacles at most conservative and white nationalist demonstrations. They have been linked to dozens of instances of violence. Notoriously, Proud Boys have provided security for GOP events, and have worked with local police forces. Proud Boys were present at the 2020 Stanislaus County Straight Pride Event whose keynote speakers worked with Modesto Police Department; Scipio participated in the preparations for the event. During the event Proud Boys assaulted me and other comrades, including an attempt to push me into traffic. Jason Kessler, a former member of the Proud Boys, while still in the organization helped organize white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 which resulted in the murder of antifascist Heather Heyer by a white nationalist. Currently four state leaders of the Proud Boys are on trial for their involvement in the Capital Riot on 06 January, and the Canadian government has declared them a terrorist organization.
State of Jefferson
The State of Jefferson movement is also represented in Patriots of Gold Country. Supporters of State of Jefferson desire to eke out a 51st state among rural California and Oregon counties in a move they claim would give them better representation in the federal government. State of Jefferson Tuolumne County President, David Titchenal, and State of Jefferson Stanislaus County Representative, Matthew Sexton, are both members of Patriots of Gold Country.
In response to a Sonora Black Lives Matter protest last year, Titchenal organized a community meeting where he encouraged Tuolumne County residents to join militia groups. Sexton incorporated State of Jefferson into his business’ marketing, and is heavily involved in the Recall Newsom campaign. State of Jefferson was represented during the Capital Riot by Sexton and other State of Jefferson supporters, though there is no evidence they entered the Capital Building.
Boots on the Ground Cali
Boots on the Ground Cali is an another “American Patriots” group founded by Three-Percenter, Aaron Bates, and having its origins on Facebook, though the group organizes in-person. The group describes itself as “We are Pro America! We are Pro Constitution! We are American Patriots!!! If you want to sit back in front of your Computer, please don’t ask to join.” Bates puts his money where his mouth is and hosts rallies, such as the 2018 “Turn California Red” rally in Sacramento which was co-organized with Jarod Flores, a member of the neo-Nazi American Guard. There is overlap between Boots on the Ground Cali and Patriots of Gold Country membership, though Boots on the Ground Cali was never explicitly mentioned.
Freedom Angels
Even the young Freedom Angels Foundation (also known as Freedom Angels 2.0) had support in the group. Freedom Angels is an anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist group founded in 2019 which found a captive audience during the Covid-19 global pandemic. Through 2020 members hosted anti-lockdown protests around the state. Former Patriots of Gold Country member, Suzanne Cvetkoski, posted links to the Freedom Angels website in the group and on her personal page.
Members in Government Employment
Over the past few years a number of similar Facebook groups have been exposed, multiple having government employees as members. In 2019, A.C. Thompson of ProPublica broke a story about a secret US Border Patrol Facebook group where racist and sexist memes were posted. It was revealed 62 active Customs and Border Patrol agents, including former Chief Karla Provost, and eight former employees were members of the group, opening up an investigation.
Last year, the “partner of an active law enforcement officer in a San Francisco Bay Area police department” leaked the contents of a San Jose police Facebook group where members were plotting the assassination of controversial personality, Shaun King. And in March another police Facebook group, this time in Pittsburgh, where former and active officers shared transphobic and racist content was exposed. The issue is so prevalent that Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting “identified hundreds of police officers across the country who were members of closed racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic or anti-government militia groups on Facebook.”
One of the reasons hate groups have been able to exist across the United States with relative impunity, Woolf and Hulsizer acknowledge, “some government officials have turned a blind eye to hate groups. Local elected officials and law enforcement officials are not exempt from holding belief systems grounded in hate.”
Patriots of Gold Country is not an exception, in fact, Alex MacLean of Union Democrat, wrote an article about the group after my initial leaks which mentioned two politicians being members of the group.
During Patriots of Gold Country’s infancy, newly elected Sonora mayor, Matthew Hawkins, and at-the-time Tuolumne County District 5 Board of Supervisor, Karl Rodefer were two early members, but took different attitudes towards the group.
In a sit down discussion with Mayor Hawkins last year, when asked about his short membership in the group, he said he joined the group after receiving an invitation and had minimal interaction during his short time in it; the posts in the group reflect this.
Once my leaks began circulating, Hawkins told MacLean, “When Alex put those things up, I never saw those but I pulled myself out of the group. If I had known sooner, I would have done that sooner. I condemn all that. I condemn violence, I condemn discrimination and I condemn bigotry.”
During our discussion Hawkins informed that one of the reasons he initially accepted the invitation was to expose himself to county voices, a similar reason he maintained communication with members of the left-leaning Tuolumne County Indivisible.
Initial support of Hawkins by Patriots of Gold Country members quickly dissipated when he didn’t bend to demands of some local conservatives to condemn Tuolumne County Indivisible or spread propaganda during the 2020 US elections. At the time Tuolumne County Indivisible was at the center of propagandist attacks from local political leaders and business owners.
Mayor Hawkins has since been a vocal proponent for the creation of the Sonora Social Equity Committee whose mission is, “To strengthen the city’s understanding and capacity to recognize biases and eliminate racial disparities, heal racial divisions, and build a more equitable town.” The efficacy of the young committee is to be seen.
Taking a different approach from Mayor Hawkins, former supervisor Karl Douglas Rodefer, embraced the local online hate group outright posting, “Love this site.” Karl Rodefer wasn’t a voracious poster, but when he did post it was largely to stroke his own ego and fuel his conservative persecution complex.
After Karl Rodefer’s membership with Patriots of Gold Country was revealed he double-downed on his support for the group. In a post by admin Melissa Chase informing the group she’d been contacted by Alex MacLean for his article, Karl Rodefer responded, “I’m not going anywhere. This is a legitimate conservative forum and I’m an unabashed conservative.” In a jab at Mayor Hawkins, who Karl Rodefer has held longtime animosity towards, he concluded, “But I don’t run and hide when someone throws mud;” Hawkins had already removed himself from the group.
In a fear-mongering post claiming “ WE ARE WITNESSING THE MOST CORRUPT, ANTI-AMERICAN, GODLESS AND CRIMINAL DEMOCRAT PARTY IN AMERICAN HISTORY,” Karl Rodefer suggested there was an insidious reason, “Not JUST to win an election.” The fear-mongering of Democrats and liberals taking over Tuolumne County to enact a radical communist agenda was the cornerstone of Rodefer’s failed campaign.
Since MacLean’s article last year, Sierra Foothills Stump has identified 40 members of Patriots of Gold Country who were past or current government employees. Members were employed at the federal, state, and county levels of government in a variety of positions from law enforcement, to road crews, to court clerks, and even teachers.
Mark Vaughn Ding, 50, is the postmaster for the United States Postal Service, Murphy’s Post Office.
LurkerMelissa Lynn Parmley, 41, is a former rural carrier associate for United States Postal Service, Ceres Post Office.
Patriot 9Caroline Barbette Cruz, 53, is a social insurance administrator for the US Social Security Administration.
LurkerJames Michael Shevlin, 68, is a retired forestry technician for the U.S. Forest Service.
Tammy Gail Alexander, 63, is a former employee for the U.S. Forest Service.
Patriot 10Randal Albert Villata, 67, is a retired motorcycle officer for the Los Gatos Police Department.
Admin, Patriot 9Harold Lee Prock II, 55, is a retired investigator for the Sonora Police Department.
Mark Emichelle Huddleston, 68, is a retired officer for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Police.
Bradford Dewayne Tweedy, 51, is a retired correctional sergeant for Sierra Conservation Center.
Dustin Scott Niday, 48, is a retired correctional officer for Sierra Conservation Center.
LurkerDennis Lee Marquardt, 69, is a retired correctional officer for Sierra Conservation Center.
LurkerTari Anne Brink, 55, is a pharmacy technician for Sierra Conservation Center.
LurkerJennifer Cheney, 33, is an executive assistant at Mule Creek State Prison.
Lurker
Charles Gentor Fuchsel III, 76, is a retired fire apparatus engineer for California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Charles Wesley Telford Jr., 73, is a retired maintenance supervisor for CalTrans, District 10.
Michael Adelbert Shaughnessy, 64, is an equipment operator for CalTrans, District 10.
Robert Foster Gansel, 46, is an equipment operator for CalTrans, District 10.
LurkerTravis Michael Faught, 32, is a highway maintenance worker for CalTrans, District 10.
Matthew Johnson Hawkins, 41, is the mayor for Sonora.
Removed self from group and has spoken out against it.Karl Douglas Rodefer, 70, former supervisor for Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors, District 5.
Removed by Villata during paranoid purge.Jerrad Allen Verplanck, 38, is employed as a road worker for Tuolumne County Community Development Department and Department of Public Works.
Patriot 9David Wallace Wynne, 75, is the retired Assessor-Recorder for Tuolumne County.
Sharon Kay Buettler, 74, is a former community health worker (relief) for Tuolumne County Health and Human Services.
LurkerShelia Jeanette Wagnor, 63, is a behavioral health worker for Tuolumne County Health and Human Services.
Shauna Shari Armbright, 33, is an eligibility specialist supervisor for Tuolumne County Health and Human Services.
LurkerSusete Paula Sorritelli, 43, is an eligibility specialist (relief) for Tuolumne County Health and Human Services.
LurkerCrystal Anne Ruiz, 75, is a former in-home supportive services coordinator (relief) for Tuolumne County Health and Human Services.
LurkerTeddie Helen Archuleta Kleier, 51, is the UDW union representative for Tuolumne County IHSS; not a government position, but benefits from government work.
Ellen Demaris Miller, 53, is a clerk with the Tuolumne County Superior Court, and a former employee for the Modesto Police Department.
LurkerMersedeh Shams Sullivan, 60, is employed as a clerk with the Tuolumne County Superior Court.
Gloria A. Doehring, 48, is employed as a clerk with the Tuolumne County Superior Court.
LurkerSusan Rae Vassey, 74, is a retired court clerk for the Calaveras County Superior Court.
LurkerJo Dee Rodefer, 70, is a former board clerk for Columbia Union School District Board of Trustees.
Removed by Villata during paranoid purge.Amber Renee Pullen, 46, is a front office assistant for Columbia Elementary School.
Removed self from group during investigation at Columbia Elementary School.Rebecca Elaine Cox, 58, is a 7th grade teacher for Columbia Elementary School.
Removed self from group during investigation at Columbia Elementary School.Amy Elizabeth Olenchalk, 59, is a 5th grade teacher for Columbia Elementary School.
Removed self from group during investigation at Columbia Elementary School.Trinka Renee Martin, 43, is a former teacher for Columbia Elementary School.
Removed self from group during investigation at Columbia Elementary School.Donna Jean Mittry, 50, is the lead of transportation for Soulsbyville Elementary School.
Glynda Gay Miller, 61, is a bus driver and cafeteria assistant for Soulsbyville Elementary School.
Removed by Villata during paranoid purge.Natalie Marie Munsel, 36, is the cafeteria manager for Summerville Elementary School.
Destanie Danielle Smith, 31, is a teacher for Mark Twain Elementary School.
Not all of these civil servants participated in the group, some remained in the group as lurkers — those who join groups but don’t post, comment , or react — as was the case with Murphy’s postmaster, Mark Ding. When Ding was asked about his membership in the group, he was not a member, claiming, “he wouldn’t be in a hate group. After being informed that a screenshot of his membership existed, he pivoted to “not being on social media in a while” and that he couldn’t remember being in the group. There is no evidence Ding interacted with the group, but he, like most members, chose to become a member by answering the membership questions.
While lurkers may be able to claim ignorance due to their lack of interactions with the group, other civil servants spewed violence and hatred and signed their participation in reactions.
No further comment will be provided on retired Los Gatos Police officer, Randy Villata; former U.S. Forest Service employee, Tammy Alexander; Jerrad Allen Verplanck, road worker for Tuolumne County Community Development Department and Department of Public Works; and Charles Telford, retired CalTrans maintenance operator, as their deeply violent and bigoted attitudes have already been explored above.
Former Columbia Union School District Board of Trustees clerk, Jo Rodefer joined during the 2020 US elections while her and her husband, Karl Rodefer, were up for reelection for their positions of CUSD board clerk and Tuolumne County District 5 Board of Supervisor respectively. Though Jo Rodefer was not very active, her membership was prelude to an explosion of antisemitic and Red Scare propaganda from an anonymous conspiracist site called Keep Tuolumne County Safe which had multiple links to the Rodefers. Patriots of Gold Country members Loree Davis, Jeff Scipio, Leslie Herrick, Tammy and Jeff Alexander, Ian Nandhra, and Jo Rodefer herself were instrumental in spreading the far-right propaganda around Tuolumne County social media.
The Rodefers, and a fake account invited by them, Ed Gavin, were casualties during one of Villata’s paranoid banning sprees.
Jo Rodefer was not the only Columbia Union School District employee while in the local hate group.
Former Columbia Elementary School teacher Trinka Martin was an early member of the group. Like many rightists who can’t reconcile the reality that younger generations are steering US culture away from American nationalism and capitalism, Martin’s found the simple answer of indoctrination by public schools and colleges to reconcile her cultural crisis. This is a concerning conspiracy for a public school teacher to believe. Martin also made reference to the South African white genocide conspiracy common among white nationalists.
Local leftists and activists were frequent targets of Martin, myself being the subject of multiple longwinded rants by her where she used transphobia as a cudgel.
Trinka Martin roped her former Columbia Elementary School colleagues into joining the group with her, where they all contributed to anti-Black racism.
Employees of Columbia Elementary School, front office assistant, Amber Renee Pullen, 46; fifth-grade teacher, Amy Elizabeth Olenchalk, 59; and seventh-grade teacher, Rebecca Elaine Cox, 58, were all members of Patriots of Gold Country in the fall of 2020. Pullen joined the Facebook group 03 October 2020, four days later on 07 Oct. Olenchalk joined.
Olenchalk and Pullen both “liked” an image shared by Shatraw stating, “Fuck Black Lives Matters.” Shatraw added the comment, “fuck those chimps..” In two more posts, Pullen interacted with Shatraw stating she loved his image of a Black raised fist crossed out. Returning to the meme featuring the Sieg Heil over the same Black raised fist claiming, “PAPER BEATS ROCK,” Pullen “laugh” reacted the meme.
Cox made posts and comments critical of Black Lives Matter, and when the question if “BLM helped one black person” came up, Cox stated, “Nope… just funds Democrat political races.”
Superintendent Joseph Aldridge of Columbia Union School District, along with Principle Suzanne Mohr and the Board of Trustees have been aware of the situation since October 2020, and there is currently an investigation into the trio’s online activity only after official complaints were filed in March.
Staff at Columbia Elementary School were instrumental in aiding Patriots of Gold Country in targeted harassment against me. On more than one occasion internal emails I’d sent to school officials were leaked to Loree Davis who shared the emails within Patriots of Gold Country. The earliest known instance of this occurred in August 2020 after I sent an email expressing concerns about Jo Rodefer’s Covid-19 views and the board’s Covid-19 response. Despite being a violation of board policy, Columbia Elementary School administration did not investigate the matter. Since the administration turned a blind eye to employees leaking to a hate group, I attempted to investigate on my own, using my position as Columbia Elementary’s computer administrator to run email log searches; the results were inconclusive due to detailed logs being only accessible for seven days.
As was previously mentioned, Mellott had incriminated, but did not name, multiple staff members at Columbia Elementary School as co-conspirators in stalking me. Another of the Patriot 9, Jerrad Verplanck (Jerrad used the alias JC Cooper, Cooper being his mother’s maiden name), attempted to use his wife’s — Rochelle Montgomery — connections with the Columbia Union School District Board of Trustees to get information on what I was up to to aid Mellott.
Columbia Union School District was but one of four school districts with staff in the group.
Two Soulsbyville Elementary School transportation department employees, Donna Mittry and Glynda Miller further demonstrated concerning views among Tuolumne County’s school employees. In a meme comparing California Congresswoman, Maxine Waters, to an alien, Miller exclaimed, “Look just alike! And The same stupid look on their face.” As an aside, Mersedeh Sullivan, courtroom clerk for Tuolumne County Superior Court, says the two are “Twins.” Comparing Black people to animals, monsters, and aliens is common racist rhetoric used to dehumanize and alienate, implying Black people aren’t human.
A teacher with Mark Twain Elementary School, Destanie Danielle Smith, 31, is best known as the person who organized three pro-cop “Back the Blue” rallies in response to Black Lives Matter protests held in Sonora. These events were heavily circulated on Patriots of Gold Country by Tammy Alexander and Kerry Hardisty who promoted the events. Members of Patriots of Gold Country showed up to the events including eligibility specialist supervisor for Tuolumne County Health and Human Services, Shauna Armbright, and the previously discussed, Amber Pullen.
Smith was also a gleeful harasser of Margery Cavins. Another racist meme shared by Bob Shatraw stating, “How to break up a blacklivesmatter rally!” featuring a group of Black men running from a Black boy asking, “Are you my Dad?” was “liked” or “laugh-reacted” by Smith. Tuolumne County Superintendent of Schools fired a former employee, Natasha Eaves, for sharing the same meme on her personal Facebook.
Sonora Police Department detective retiree, Harold Lee Prock II, contributed to the spread of anti-Brandon propaganda in Patriots of Gold Country, smears that would ultimately make it to the Keep Tuolumne County Safe website. While a detective, Prock was sued in 2008 on the claims of “false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress (“IIED”) under state law, and unlawful seizure and excessive force under 42 U.S.C. § 1983" against an 11-year old child with mental disorders experiencing a breakdown including suicidal ideation; qualified immunity protected Prock.
Prock and Villata bonded over their shared experiences in law enforcement, where Villata admitted he was “sort of a dick” while an officer.
When discourse around social equity touches upon concepts such as systemic oppressions and systems of power, government employees, such as those discussed above, are instrumental in the preservation inequity. While law enforcement training, procedures, and officers themselves have become the most clear examples of systemic racism and the state’s monopoly on both illegal and legal violence, bigots employed in other positions of government can manifest their prejudices in many forms. A notable example is Kim Davis, former county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky, who refused to sign marriage licenses for gay couples.
While former and retired government employees can’t face disciplinary actions for their involvement with the local hate group, they still provide a glimpse into how prejudice perpetuates itself in systems. Employees in supervisor positions have the power dictate who is hired or what disciplinary repercussions befall a subordinate. As seen with CalTrans, District 10, Charles Telford managed to reach supervisor and retirement without his prejudices impeding him, and now three other operators involved with the group are in positions where, if they stick with the agency, have possibilities to move into positions with power. Travis Faught, one of these operators, shared a hyperbolic rant, “Can we still order Black Coffee??? Are Brownies being taken off the shelf? Is White Castle changing it’s name?…I’m sure Cracker Barrel is screwed…Can we play Chinese Checkers? …is it still called an Indian burn? No more Italian sausages? how far do ya want to go with this foolishness?” Despite the absurdity of the question, and the ironic ignorance that “Indian burn” is insensitive at best, received positive responses from one of his coworkers, Mike Shaughnessy, and Mersedeh Sullivan. Supervisors with biases are more likely to overlook or undervalue complaints of a subordinate’s own bigoted behavior.
How can a community trust government services if they are at risk of inadequate or abusive attention? When the beliefs of the individual conflict with their duties or demonstrate unprofessionalism, that person is not fit for the role. An example of this in action is Shelia Wagnor, a behavioral health worker for Tuolumne County Health and Human Services. In various group posts, Wagnor expressed agreement with concerning views, such as the belief “Liberalism is a mental disorder,” or that antifascists are no different than daesh and should “be treated accordingly.”
One with dehumanizing beliefs towards large swaths of the community is unable to provide a safe space for people such as undocumented citizens (whom she derogatorily refers to as illegals), those with mental disorders, or political activists. How Wagnor interacts with clients and her medical beliefs will be shaded by her extreme rightist views.
To date, Mayor Hawkins is the only government employee to have spoken out against the group, and that’s important to note. While the lurkers may have never engaged with discriminatory content, they did not confront their colleagues who did participate. At no point did anyone speak out against the use of racial slurs, violent rhetoric against county residents, neo-Nazi iconography, or queerphobic fear-mongering. Instead members either remained quiet about discriminatory content, or gleefully participated.
Woolf and Hulsizer suggested that “communities can put political pressure on these individuals to hold them to broader community values of tolerance and acceptance of diversity.” Active participants in the Patriots of Gold Country hate group who are employed by Tuolumne County may be in violation of the code of ethics and code of conducts. Tuolumne County Personnel Rules and Regulation, Rule 9, Section 9 outlines causes of disciplinary actions including, “Discourteous treatment of the public or other employees,” and “Other failure of good behavior either during or outside of duty hours which is of such a nature that it causes discredit to the County.”
Many government agencies have implemented similar codes of conduct, and there are state and federal anti-discrimination laws intended to protect certain marginalized groups, but it’s not enough simply having values and laws in the books, they need to be applied to those who engage in bigoted vitriol. Anti-discrimination laws are ineffective if those in power remain silent or ignore their subordinates’ actions and rhetoric.
Prevention and Solutions
As Patriots of Gold Country nears its one year anniversary in July, we as a community need to have a serious conversation about social inequity within our county as both a local illness and a symptom of larger societal problems.
Patriots of Gold Country has demonstrated that, despite its branding, they are less a group of “patriotic conservatives discussing issues of the day” and more of an anxious community in crisis lashing out at a culture they feel is leaving them behind.
Their political discourse is sparse, but their reactionary hate is plentiful. Whatever the direction Kelly Potter intended for Patriots of Gold Country, Randal Villata, Melissa Chase, and the rest of the Patriot 9 led the group to become a wretched hive of scum and villainy. The isolated group provided acceptance and validation, giving refuge to those with views they acknowledge are controversial. Under the presumption of secrecy members freely posted neo-Nazi iconography, recruited for extremist organizations, used racial and queerphobic slurs, spread antisemitic conspiracies, laughed at violent ideation, harassed Tuolumne County residents, and engaged or bragged about criminal violence. These actions weren’t only allowed, but encouraged and egged on by group leadership and its most active members to escalate. The group has established itself as a shameful blight on Tuolumne County.
If the benefits hate groups provide to members — solidarity, belonging, validation — are stripped away, if, as Woolf and Holzer concluded, “hate groups become identified as a source of shame as opposed to power and prestige, they fade from the community landscape.”
The rabid paranoia of group posts being exposed to general society proves members acknowledge content in the group is repulsive and could lead to repercussions. Already, three former members are currently being investigated by their employer for their involvement, while another was allegedly contacted by the police over hate crimes and cyber bullying.
While much of the group’s vitriol and actions are legal and protected under the First Amendment, this does not mean they cannot still face repercussions. As mentioned above, those in government positions who participated could be in violation of codes of conduct and ethics, or state and federal law. The same private businesses conservatives love have the right to fire an employee for participating in a hate community if it negatively reflects on the company. Patrons can choose to shop at other businesses than those owned by bigots. While there are communal benefits to shopping locally, one must also shop ethically (as ethical as one can under capitalism) and consider what it means to financially empower someone with one’s patronage.
Looking at the social in social justice, there’s a plethora of social consequences which can befall hate group members, from losing friends and family, to being confronted about dehumanizing views while in public, to deplatforming from social media, to ostracization by the community until habits change.
While repercussions have their place — for example, the far-right extremist, Milo Yiannopoulos, is financially struggling and his influence slashed after being deplatformed — they are not a long-term solution. Preventing the formation of hate groups in the first place is the most full proof method to combating them.
Hate groups and incidents need to be viewed as a community health problem which can spread if not treated. Addressing the societal problems which often make hate groups desirable in the first place is a lofty but imperative goal. According to Woolf and Hulsizer, “Issues such as poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, housing, etc. may all seem tangential to the issue of hate,” but I also add access to universal healthcare, higher education (trade schools and colleges), and access to knowledge (libraries, research databases, et cetera).
Finally, communities require infrastructure to address local hate groups and incidents. This might look like community and school education programs, development of a community response plan for when hate incident occur, holding rallies and protests, hosting speakers, providing counseling services to victims and offenders, support groups, and creating spaces marginalized groups can advocate for what needs to be changed. Tuolumne County has some infrastructure, Center for a Non-Violent Community is a wonderful resource for supporting victims of violence, and the Sonora Equity Committee has potential to be an important tool.
Resources should also be available for former and current members of hate groups who want to leave. Life After Hate, an organization created by former hate group members, is doing important work by providing a support network for those wanting to leave white nationalism. Former extremists such as former white nationalist, Christian Picciolini, can provide valuable insight into the workings hate groups and motivating factors.
Combatting hate groups and hate incidents requires long-term and short-term actions, and necessitates community participation. Hate groups don’t form in a vacuum, they’re a symptom of deeply rooted social problems, and participated in by community members. As such it’s integral for people to engage, speak out, and stand against these groups and their members because the only way for a hate group to survive is for people to ignore it or downplay its severity.
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