Michael Schmidt and the Fascist Creep

by Alexander Reid Ross

Michael Schmidt’s self-aggrandizing 51-page autobiography, which he has submitted as an attempt at a conclusive response to an exposé co-written by myself and Joshua Stephens on his double life as a white nationalist, is a fascinating exercise in duplicity, misdirection, and irrelevance.

Let’s start with a couple of the most obvious examples…

First there is Schmidt’s coy claim that the pendant he wears is not a Mjolnir (Thor’s Hammer), but an Icelandic Cross with no meaning he knows of — he tells us that he just liked the “gargoyle” on it. He does the same dance when referring to his tattoos. He is obviously hoping that no one remembers the fact that on his Stormfront account he clearly refers to the pendant as a Mjolnir and a symbol of his white pride (along with the Panzer side-cap marked with a small SS symbol, which was confirmed to us by a source close to him). Elsewhere on Stormfront, he gives a lengthy elaboration of the traditionalist meaning of his tattoos — the same meanings fascists ascribe to them, right down to the “life rune” and fetishized Indo-Aryan mythos of the Scythians. Even if Schmidt hadn’t already outed his knowledge on Stormfront, would we really be expected to believe that someone who has “researched” fascism for a decade, as he claims to have done, is clueless to the fact that the Icelandic Cross is the form that the Mjolnir took once Christianity arrived, and that his cute gargoyle is Fenris/Fenrir, beloved mascot of fascists?

Schmidt sounding off about what he calls the 2008 “pogroms” as well as the “Boer genocide” of “farm killings.” At the time, he had a shaved head. He notes in this post—less than a year before leaving the ZACF, engaging increasingly with Black Battlefront, and writing his article on Terre’Blanche—that he is just beginning to openly “express” his racism. He signs off with a reference to neo-Nazi David Lane’s “14 words” and of course “Sig Heil.”

Second, Schmidt goes to great lengths to convince us that his Black Battlefront blog, Facebook page, and the personas he created to people them (Ardent Vinlander & Francois Lesueur), were “intended to provide a portal for me to investigate ‘national-anarchism’ undercover, and not a portal for ‘national-anarchists’ to recruit anyone.” The parts of our article that Schmidt fails to mention are precisely the things that contradict his claims to “research.” To name three off the bat:

1. Ardent Vinlander comments on anarchism-related posts on Schmidt’s personal Facebook page.
2. Ardent Vinlander contacts anarchists in an attempt to interest them in national anarchism.
3. Members of the Black Battlefront Facebook page and friends of Schmidt’s “fake” fascist personas are also his friends on his “real” FB profile.

Vinlander reaching out to Schmidt’s anarchist milieu is clearly not “research.” Neither is reaching out to the Cape Party. The fact that his friends are also online members of Black Battlefront further suggests that he is open about his politics to some people, if not to his Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (ZACF) comrades.

This is in keeping with the fact that his “research” on Stormfront yielded no visible results for his published reports. As far as I am aware, in spite of the myriad articles he pasted on his autobiography, he cannot pull up one article that mentions national-anarchism or pan-secessionism — his alleged field of research — excepting the two that were carved out in original form on Stormfront.

Which brings us to the close relationship between his fascist writings and articles he wrote for both anarchist and mainstream audiences — connections he studiously avoids in his autobiography. To cite just four examples:

1. He used precisely the same critique of the concept of white privilege in his public and internal writings that he did in his Stormfront posts and elsewhere in the white nationalist blogosphere.
2. At the same time that anarchist-Schmidt was circulating his testimonial against what he perceived to be the general intellectual inadequacies of black folks within ZACF, he was also on Stormfront restating precisely the same opinions, calling black people “subhumans,” among other slurs that he was seen and heard making in public by an eye witness.
3. He posted a rabidly racist reaction to the killing of white supremacist Terre’Blanche on Stormfront immediately before he published an article on Anarkismo sympathizing with the dead fascist and all he represents.
4. He posted an extensive construction of pan-secessionist ideas toward Boer separatism on Stormfront shortly before he published an article in the mainstream South African press setting white-supremacist Boer secessionism alongside other nonracist separatist movements using precisely the same rubric.

This behavior extends, of course, beyond his writing. On Stormfront, he posted a story of purchasing fascist merchandise from the War Store, which was confirmed by a fact-checked eye witness. In his fascist posts, he insists that he voted for the far right populist party, the Freedom Front Plus (FF+), because it supports “white rights,” and again, eye-witnesses say that he boasted the same thing in “real” life.

In which Schmidt boasts of voting for the FF+, a boast that was confirmed to us by two different anonymous sources in “real” life.

With regards to Schmidt’s excuse that he set up the Stormfront account with the permission of Brendan Seery, I contacted Seery again, and this is what he said:

“There is absolutely no way I would have forgotten something like that. I repeat: this was never discussed with me. It is not something I would have forgotten. I would like to think I am known for my ethical behaviour as a journalist and I take ethics very seriously, as anyone who has worked under me will testify. I would never forget someone asking to put aside ethics in favour of a story.

Schmidt lives in a fantasy world. I am irritated, rather than angry because, as someone who has more than 30 years of real experience in some of the most interesting places and times in recent history, I know Schmidt for what he is: a wannabe…

To illustrate Schmidt’s mendacious character: He never once declared to me, as his editor, that he was not only an anarchist but that he was an active office holder in an organisation… If he didn’t want to reveal the anarchist issue to me… then it is obvious he adopted a similar position when it came to Stormfront.”

The claim that Schmidt is a “wannabe” is backed up by an anonymous witness who has spent the better part of a decade in South Africa’s anarchist movement. According to this source, Schmidt’s autobiographical claim to have been active in the “anti-xenophobia movement” is by all accounts false. “Schmidt is lying about being so actively involved in the anti-xenophobia ‘movement’ and ABC South Africa,” the anarchist source said. “That’s bullshit. The ABC never did anything.”

This record of falsity and “mendacious” fantasy lies at the foundation of the autobiography Schmidt presents in the form of mind-numbing lists of articles, many of which seem completely irrelevant. The excuse he tries to pass off — “But I’ve done a lot of anarchist writing” — does nothing to contend with the point that his own work also creeps into white nationalist and pan-secessionist ideology. The real point is that no one ever claimed that Schmidt hasn’t written anarchist texts: he has also tried to meld anarchism and white supremacism in his own politics.

Schmidt’s admission that “the demographic demon of black genetic propagation is our acknowledged primary threat” precedes his insistence that multiracialism is necessary for swaying the court of international opinion.

Schmidt attempts to dodge the white nationalism expressed by his alter-ego in his blog Black Battlefront by claiming that he “deliberately brought some elements into the Creed that no white right-winger in South Africa would easily accept: a multiracial separatist Cape[.]”

1. The white nationalist FF+ declares that they would create an Afrikaner Volkstaat that is not strictly Boer, but inhabited by the cultural-linguistic “nation” of Afrikaners (the exact same principle expressed by Schmidt).
2. Schmidt admitted openly to me in our interview that he personally supports such a “multiracial” separatist “Boerestaat.”
3. Schmidt simply passes over the fact that a Boerestaat would be a majority-white, Afrikaner separatist state in the middle of Africa, making it a de facto white nationalist and colonialist project not unlike the kind of gerrymandering that has always marked the “new Jim Crow” in the US. Even if the minority of “coloureds, indigenous, and Asians” (note, he does not mention black people) are included under “democratic” auspices, an Afrikaner Volkstaat would be a site of inequality in Africa.
4. He also fails to mention that in the Black Battlefront site, he states that multiracialism must be grudgingly accepted “in order to adequately argue in the court of international opinion our right to self-determination[.]”

Hence, Schmidt’s feelings on the Boerestaat, far from veering from the white right wing, fall in line with the program of the FF+; the principle difference is that, as he told me in our interview, he would support an “approximation of national syndicalism.”

Schmidt writing under an alias Feyd Saif’ulisaan

Schmidt also employs the top three positions of any white supremacist dodging accusations of racism:

1. I have black friends
2. I have had serious intimate relations with a person or persons of a different race
3. I have a remote, but traceable, non-white relative.

Apparently, serious relationships with several Indian women (who, by the way, fascists consider Aryan) and knowing some black people did not stop him from creating an intensely racist “internal discussion document” in 2008 for ZACF. When we first made that document public, Schmidt responded mockingly in an October 13th Facebook post that it wasn’t a racist screed, but rather one that asks “difficult — no doubt politically incorrect — questions.” This followed his September 27th claim that he had never written anything with even a “whiff” of racism. In his autobiography, however, he seems to have decided it would be more strategic to admit that his ZACF document might have been a bit more than politically incorrect.

In fact, that document gives a five year history of incredibly racist ideology, beginning in 2003 with Schmidt’s proposition that the ZACF be split into a white rear-guard that provides the ideology and policy for the black front guard to execute. (In his autobiography, Schmidt fails to address the claim that the year prior to his attempt to forge an apartheid split in the anarchist movement in 2003, he was connected to an attempt to set up a white supremacist website.)

Schmidt then gazes back through the scope of a DNA test through the centuries to identify Mongolian and Central American genes in his make-up. And he doesn’t stop there. In his new book, he insists that he is, in fact, an indigenous African: “My personal roots as an indigenised white-classified African of Bengali[?]-Huguenot-Afrikaner descent are entangled in the bowels of South Africa’s often contradictory race relations — and probably tainted with genocide.” Although the Bengali claim comes out of left field, it matches the Indo-Aryan fetishism of his tattoos, as well as some other important aspects of his biography. Schmidt’s declaration that he is “indigenised” matches up with the only other white people in South Africa who identify as “indigenous”—the white far right in the tradition of the Afrikaner Volksfront and FF+ who claim that the “stolen dream” of the Boerestaat, as Schmidt put it, is a right bestowed by heredity.

This logic reaches new heights, or depths, in the fact that so much of what Schmidt cites as evidence of his research into the far right, genocide, and xenophobia are in fact attacks upon “reverse racist” black politicians and “genocidaires.” He makes much, for instance, of the fact that the 2008 “pogroms” in South Africa affected him deeply and led him to undertake work against “xenophobia.” He thus marshals an instance of what one might call “black-on-black violence” as proof of his anti-racism (although, as previously mentioned, his anti-xenophobic work with ABC was scant). The same holds true for his comparison of Robert Mugabe to Pol Pot, or his claim that Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales are fascists.

The point is not whether or not these events and individuals should be politically opposed, but rather that the same man who downplays the genocidal dreams of the Boer and portrays national anarchists as merely an anti-authoritarian cultural-ethnic movement (that isn’t fascist) also builds his alleged antifascism and opposition to the far right almost entirely upon critiques of black folk. Even when trying to defend himself, he works, consciously or not, to redefine left and anarchist politics within a white supremacist framework.

Schmidt’s most desperate form of argument is attacking us as journalists, particularly our methods, rather than actually refuting the facts in an honest way. He claims we “harassed” someone who we contacted once in an upfront and polite Facebook message. He also falsely states that we made light of his meningitis.

In fact, we only stated the truth: that he used anterograde amnesia as part of an elaborate ruse to trick people into believing that his profile(s) were, in fact, hacked by a National Intelligence Agency (NIA) spy among his friends whose identity he was protecting. If this story is true, nobody should trust Schmidt for keeping the spy’s identity a secret from the radical community. If it is false, nobody should trust Schmidt for lying to everyone in the first place. However, the second position is true either way, since part of the initial ruse was that “Ardent Vinlander” was likely working in tandem with the NIA agent — hence, the clear lie in the midst of the amnesia excuse.

Using an illness as the cite of a fabrication involving phantom infiltrators is deplorable, because it jeopardizes the position of real people struggling with illness and being forthright and honest about the effects of their condition. Claiming that others are diminishing or making light of an illness when they point out such a lie only further exposes an irresponsible tendency to misrepresent, mislead, and provoke. He also falsely claims that we rejected or diminished his diagnosed PTSD.

As to his claim that we did not go through “peer-reviewed journals or professional periodicals,” our article was actually in the acceptance process of a radical, peer-reviewed publication with a prestigious editorial board. However, due to the time constraints and pressures of putting the piece out early, we found it prudent to publish immediately, even if in piecemeal form, using whatever materials available to us.

Given the pressures my co-author and I faced, Schmidt’s pinpointing of a particular error of dates that we made to suggest that it presents some kind of lynchpin of generalized inaccuracy seems particularly rash. Our entire five-part series is extremely detailed, and includes a rigorous exposition of a tangled web of at least five different profiles, which we made sure to identify by their different names, as well as three sites, several books, and a smattering of articles.

Our series also involved the use of several core eye witnesses who have been close to Schmidt for years, and who he callously refers to as “faceless informants.” The witnesses were cross-checked by an independent journalist with an impeccable reputation. We interviewed other anonymous witnesses as well, whose information was generally not quoted, but played a formative role in our series. The reason they choose to remain confidential is personal security — a smart plan, since Schmidt is apparently threatening everyone involved in the series with some kind of a defamation or “slander” law suit. Either way, as fact-checked witnesses, their use is as valuable as any other witness. Is it really necessary to note that confidential sources are intrinsic to reporting (eg, “a diplomat speaking under condition of anonymity told us X”)?

Regarding his claim that I interviewed him under false pretexts, the first thing I told him was that I was working on book called Against the Fascist Creep, and am researching national anarchism. I was by no means certain that his Black Battlefront and Stormfront profiles actually belonged to him; he admitted the latter to me, and told me to keep quiet about it. I never published personal info that he provided in the interview—he exposed everything all by himself right after the first AK Press announcement. Displacing the discussion to our “methods” of investigation, rather than Schmidt’s obvious white supremacist activities, is simply a tactical attempt to turn the tables.

Why does Schmidt resort to attacking and intimidating journalists, talking about irrelevant details of his personal memoire, and even plainly lying? Why can Schmidt not face up to any of these glaring problems in his 51-page autobiography? Because he is simply relying on seniority and his 20-odd years in anarchist clothes to usher him through this controversy. He hopes to trade in his radical resume in exchange for being bailed out of accountability for a pattern of deceit and disgusting racism established as early as 2002.

Schmidt’s anarchism has become as dubious as his identities. He was even quoted by pan-secessionist icon Keith Preston critiquing antifascist analysis. Schmidt agrees with the FF+ in terms of a “proper” Afrikaner/Boer Volkstaat; he agrees with them that he is an “indigenised” Afrikaner; he even voted for them at around the same time that he began channeling a national-anarchist cell toward the propagation of “entryism” into the Cape Party and turning them toward Afrikaner claims that might synch up with the FF+. To this effect, Schmidt attempted to recruit from anarchists, but failed miserably.

Schmidt’s rejection of nation-states is dubious, given his support for a “proper ‘Boerestaat,’” and his blood and soil identification with Afrikaners goes beyond mere nationalism. He is not “coloured.” He is not “indigenised.” He is not our comrade. Anarchists reject ultranationalism, and Schmidt’s syncretic right-to-left views are anathema to the broad anarchist tradition.

Alexander Reid Ross is a featured journalist in Project Censored’s Consored2016 in the Media Democracy in Action section. He is a co-founding moderator of the Earth First! Newswire, which has been listed as a top-ten Forestry Resource for the last five years. His books include Grabbing Back: Essays Against the Global Land Grab (AK Press 2014) and the forthcoming Against the Fascist Creep (AK Press 2016). His articles have been published in a variety of periodicals, including the Dissent Newswire, Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, Third World Resurgence, Truthout, and Upping the Anti.