Burning Hate: Tyler Dykes

Virginia Code. That law passed in two thousand two in response to the legal challenge to Virginia's cross burning statute by Pennsylvania klansman Barry Black.

and rewriting for years. I could fill six months worth of episodes with just the stories of the men who carried those torches. The years I've spent watching the same few minutes of history, frame by frame from different angles, placing individual men within that seething mass of violent intent taught me a lot about the kinds of weird little

guys that make up a crowd like this. There are cops and criminals, soldiers and soldiers of fortune, students and fathers, domestic abusers, realtors and lawyers and small business owners, social media personalities, and wanted fugitives. They're your neighbors, your weird cousin, that guy at work you don't want to talk about politics with. They're all just some guy. There were hundreds of them there that night in August of twenty seventeen, but we'll just start with one today. I'm Molly Conger.

A father of seven with two ex wives and a string of police reports filed by wives, girlfriends, and mistresses. An attorney whose client list includes white supremacist paramilitaries, Nazi street gangs, and anti Semitic trolls. A man who once renounced all of his worldly possessions and wandered off into the desert, proclaiming himself to be a god and a prophet, before quietly returning to Orlando to work at his father's law office. But that day isn't today. His conviction last

week won't be the end of his story. I'm sure of that. So I'll bide my time. Because while Augustus Invictus was the first person ever found guilty by a jury of the crime of burning an object with the intent to intimidate, he wasn't the first to be convicted. Before his trial last week, there had already been five guilty pleas by other members of that march. You see, there is no statute of limitations on a felony in

the Commonwealth of Virginia. Whether or not that's wise or really in the overall best interests of justice more generally is a discussion for another day and maybe for another person. But it is the current state of affairs, and Virginia is a southern state, the one time capital of the Confederacy. Few states without a bloody history of clan violence even have a life on the books that makes it a crime to use a burning object as a tool of intimidation. But we did have such a history, and we do

have the resulting law. So even though that march in twenty seventeen feels like it was almost a lifetime ago, it's not too late under Virginia law to hold those men accountable. To date, twelve men who marched that night have been charged under a Virginia law that makes it a felony to burn an object with the intent to intimidate. Five have pleaded guilty to it, three have entered into plea agreements to the lesser charge of disorderly conduct, one went to trial and got a hung jury, and two

cases remained pending. The first sentence handed down in one of these cases was for Tyler Bradley Dikes. His story touches on quite a few of the recurring themes this show. He was a US Marine who was discharged for his involvement in extremist groups. He attended this Nazi rally where he's on video throwing punches and Hitler salutes, and when he wasn't held accountable for his actions, he went on to engage an even more serious conduct, and now he's

in federal prison. The entire arc of his story can be summed up in a single pair of images, I think like a pair of Nazi bookends. First there's Tyler Diykes on August eleventh, twenty seventeen, standing at the base of the statue of Thomas Jefferson, holding a torch in his left hand, with his right arm extended in a Nazi salute. And then there's Tyler Dikes again on January sixth, twenty twenty one, on the steps of the Capitol Building, turning to face the mob below after fighting his way

up to the doors, giving the same salute. A few months ago, Tyler Dykes was handed a fifty seven month federal sentence for assaulting police officers during the January sixth riot at the Capitol in twenty twenty one. If you're trying to do some math in your head right now, I'll tell you fifty seven months is just shy of

five years. But a federal prison sentence is kind of like a baby in that you always measure it in months, not years, and only the people who have to deal with the time in question feel like that makes any sense at all. In the sentencing memorandum written by his defense attorney, he's described as an impressionable young man. He was just twenty one years old when he traveled to Washington,

d C. With his friends from church. They said he'd been influenced by the NonStop media coverage and President Trump's social media posts into believing that the election had been stolen. He made incredibly poor decisions, his attorney conceded, but he never planned to engage in any violence. He was just young and impetuous, and he got caught up in the crowd. He was a United States Marine. He was a boy

scout quite literally. The defense sentencing memo cites his accomplishments as an Eagle Scout He was just a nice young man who goes to church every Sunday and runs a small IT services company and takes care of his elderly parents. How could he possibly be the kind of person who deserves to go to federal prison for making a little mistake. But that wasn't quite the whole picture. Not that those things aren't mostly true. They are, but it's a spit

shined image of a much darker situation. Tyler Diykes was indeed a member of the United States Marine Corps. On January sixth, twenty twenty one, he was a US Marine when he wrenched the riot shield from the hands of a US Capitol Police officer and then used that shield to force his way through the police line and into the Capitol building, and he remained a United States Marine until he was given an other than honorable discharge in twenty twenty two. The revelations that unraveled his life came

out of order. He wasn't identified as a Unite the Right attendee until twenty twenty two, after he'd already participated in the January sixth riot. In twenty twenty one, he wasn't identified as the man putting swastika stickers around town in twenty twenty until he was discharged from the Marines for it in twenty twenty two, and he wasn't identified as a participant in the January sixth riot until July of twenty twenty three, after he'd been convicted for his

conduct at Unite the Right. The consequences of his actions always seemed to come a little too late, after he'd already been emboldened by an apparent lack thereof. At his federal sentencing hearing a few months ago, he told the judge that he was high on adrenaline during the Capitol riot and said, I falsely believed that I would be free of consequences, But maybe we should start at the beginning rather than the end. In August of twenty seventeen,

Tyler Dykes was nineteen years old. He'd taken a year off after high school and was living at home with his parents in North Carolina that summer after spending his gap year abroad in Romania. He'd been accepted to Cornell University and would be moving into his dorm at the end of the month. Just a week before new student orientation at Cornell, he took one last trip before starting college,

he to Charlottesville. On the evening of August eleventh, twenty seventeen, Tyler Dyke stood among the hundreds of men who gathered at Nameless Field. It's a confusing name, Nameless Field. It isn't nameless, it has a name. The name is nameless Field. I wonder what kind of who's on first type conversations happened over text message that night as the crowd assembled.

But there he was in the field down by the tennis courts behind the library, and he was handed a torch, and he found a place in line, and he marched. He chanted with the crowd as this river of flames wound its way through the university grounds. Blood and soil, blood and soil. You will not run place us, Jews will not replace us. Fuck off, commis this is our town now, They shouted on the empty streets as they passed empty buildings. Blood and soil, Blood and soil, blood

and soil. They chanted until they could taste the blood in their own mouths from shouting themselves hoarse, blood and soil, until they saw blood red. When the small group of students at the base of the Thomas Jefferson statue came into view. The streets had been empty until the march filled them. The libraries were empty, the dorms were empty,

the academic and administrative buildings were empty. But as the march reached the top of the rotunda step, looking down into the brick plaza below, they knew they weren't alone anymore. They knew what they were doing. As they came down those steps, each man, torch in hand, had a moment.

live here. I've sat in courtrooms and in coffee shops, and on long car rides and on living room couches with people who are hurt that night. But even if I had no connection to these people or to this place, it's no secret that as a researcher of white supremacist violence in America, my starting position is always against fascism, against Nazism, against violence done in the name of white supremacy, and I don't think that's anything to be ashamed of.

As sociologist and expert on political violence, doctor Peter Seemi once said on the stand, no one is ever surprised to find out that a cancer researcher is interested in preventing cancer. So yes, I have a stake in.

You should feel something you can't shove down when you see a man who proudly calls himself a Nazi swing a flaming torch at someone who is trapped, someone whose only crime is not wanting hate to go unchallenged in a public square. And that's where Tyler Diykes was that night, right at the center of this melee. As the air filled with screams and the burning scent of pepper spray. Tyler Diykes was fist fighting anyone he could reach. Videos

showed Dikes was the last one still fighting. He threw the last punch of the night, even as everyone else seemed to be coming to their senses. When the counter protesters were finally able to escape from the mob, the torch marchers took the statue. Several of them climbed the plinth and cheered for the victory they'd won. Seeg kile Hail victory they shouted. Video shows Tyler Dikes pacing back and forth in front of the statue, right arm extended

in a Nazi salute. After the deadly rally, the next morning, Tyler Diykes went home. He started at Cornell a few weeks later, but they didn't go well. He dropped out after a few months and enlisted in the Marines instead, and it seems like that may not have gone well either, because after a few months of training he was discharged to the Reserves and returned home, which was now South Carolina.

of Active Clubs. These active clubs are, to put it succinctly, Nazi fight clubs. They were inspired by Robert Rundo's Rise Above Movement, the Southern California based Nazi street fighting outfit that brawled their way across the country at right wing political rallies throughout twenty seventeen. There is no centralized leadership or organizational structure. Active clubs operate regionally and are operationally

independent from one another. They share a love of mixed martial arts, both as a hobby and as training for a coming race war, and engage in the kind of propaganda campaigns common among groups like Patriot so hanging banners with racist slogans from bridges and plastering stickers on street signs in mailboxes around town. There are active clubs all over the United States, Canada and Europe, as well as a faltering effort led by Thomas Seol to get them

going in Australia. Each club operates independently, but they network and meet up even across national borders, and there is quite a bit of cross pollination between the Active Clubs and other violent white supremacist organizations. They tend to be on good terms with groups like Patriot Front, and several notable Active club members have ties to Adam Waffen and Terogram. Andrew Tekstov, the New Jersey teenager and Terogram collective chat member arrested this summer, was a member of an Active

Club cell in New Jersey. Active Clubs in Finland are involved in paramilitary training of Karelians reparatist groups that fight alongside the Russian Volunteer Corps, the same Nazi paramilitary group in Ukraine that Andrew Takestov was on his way to join when he was arrested. All that to say this isn't just guys lifting weights together and talking about their

love of the white race. Active club members on multiple continents have been arrested for acts of violence and for planning acts of terrorism, and the reason I can tell you with an unusually high degree of certainty that Tyler Diykes was a member of the Southern Suns Active Club is because of one particular, no good, very bad day

that he had on March seventeenth, twenty twenty three. You see, Tyler Dykes was indicted by a grand jury in Virginia in February of twenty twenty three, but he didn't know that nobody did. Grand juries are secret things, and his indictment stayed sealed until he was taken into custody. And with an out of state warrant, you don't just send a local cop down to get him. You could, I suppose,

but they didn't. The local prosecutor where the charge is filed can ask cops in the city where they think he lives to go look for him, but they aren't always super interested in doing. Some out of town courts work for them, so oftentimes an out of state warrant just sort of sits open waiting for you to step on it, like a rake on the ground. If you've ever been pulled over, you've seen a cop take your

license and walk back to his car. He's putting your name into a computer, and if you have an open warrant, he's going to find it.

I'm sure there's some particular moment in history where the city had an unusually high concentration of Irishmen, and the only lasting legacy is the nation's second most debaucherous green beer soaked parade. I was in Savannah for Saint Patrick's Day in two thousand and eight, but there was a tornado that weekend and the blackout closed most of the bar,

so I don't think I got the full experience. And in twenty twenty three, the Southern Sun's Active Club had the brilliant idea that Saint Patrick's Day and Savannah would be the perfect time and the perfect place to hang a Nazi banner from a highway overpass, because all the extra traffic in town meant more people would see their message.

Thanks to an Atlanta based anti fascist research collective, we have an inside look at the private conversations Dykes and his friends had that day as they were going about trying to get that banner up. The day didn't start off well. The group had some trouble locating a good spot for their banner. They weren't the only ones who anticipated heavy traffic from tourists heading into town for the holiday. There were cops nearby several of the locations they'd hope

to hit. When they finally found a suitable spot, Tyler Diykes walked back to his car to get the tools they would need to hang the banner, but before he got back to his car, he encountered someone walking their dogs. Diykes claims that he was mauled by three pit bulls, but that seems like a bit of an over statement. In the infiltrated group chat, he posted a photo of a small, but unpleasant looking wound on his left pinky finger.

I feel like you'd come away with more than a two inch cut on your little finger if you were truly attacked by even one dog, let alone three pit bulls. But we only have Tyler's word on this one. A little before six pm, he texted the Southern Son's Group Chat that he was headed to the hospital to have

his hand looked at. While he was waiting to be seen at the hospital, he texted the group chat again to let them know that the plan had gone awry and unfortunately they hadn't been able to hang any of the banners that day, writing quite literally, everything that could possibly have gone wrong all happened at exactly the same time. Half an hour later, though, nothing else went very wrong for Tyler Dikes, and he texted the group again, I'm

being arrested by Virginia nuke my account. Dog bites, like gunshot wounds are something that hospital staff are required to report to the authorities. While Tyler Diykes was waiting for a doctor to look at his hand, an officer arrived to take a police report. And when you talk to a cop in some official capacity, he's going to run your name. I can't even imagine his surprise when the officer informed him that he was a wanted fugitive in

a state he hadn't visited in years. His hand was fine, it seems, and he was taken directly into custody from the emergency room that night. It took nearly a month to arrange for his extradition back to Virginia, during which time he remained in custody. When Tyler Diykes was finally transported up to Virginia, his attorney asked for a bond hearing. Makes sense he'd been in custody for a month, and it was at that April twenty twenty three bond hearing

that I first saw Tyler Dikes. At that hearing, Tyler Diykes's father, Scott, took the stand to tell the judge that if his son was allowed to return home with him, he would ensure that his son stayed out of trouble and would return for all of his court hearings. And then the prosecutor handed Scott Diykes a few pieces of paper. Is that your son? He asked. Scott Dykes was still staring down at the paper in his hands when he said, softly, reluctantly,

it looks like it could be. The pages in his hands were printed out stills from security camera footage showing a tall, dark haired young man putting up flyers with swastikas on them in Sumter, South Carolina. In November of twenty twenty, the prosecutor asked Scott Dikes if he knew why his son had been discharged from the Marines. He didn't know. Tyler had apparently not even told his parents

that he'd been given an other than honorable discharge. He didn't tell his parents that he'd been interviewed by an FBI agent from the Joint Terrorism Task Force in twenty nineteen, or that he was a suspect in the case of the Sumter County swastika stickers in twenty twenty. The prosecutor didn't ask Scott Dikes where his son was on January sixth, twenty twenty one. Maybe he didn't know he should have.

We know now that the FBI had been investigating Dyke's involvement in the insurrection since December of twenty twenty one, but they may not have shared that information with a county prosecutor. It was Diykes's own messages in the chat on the day of his arrest that left him in jail without bond after that hearing. Mere hours before his arrest on Saint Patrick's Day, he was demonstrating what they call consciousness of guilt. That is, behavior that shows you

knew what you were doing was wrong. His messages show that he had attempted to evade police in order to find an overpass, which he planned to use tools to damage for the purpose of unfurling a racist banner. Then, upon learning of his arrest, he demonstrated a willingness to destroy evidence, asking other members of the white supremacist group to erase his participation, to nuke his account and delete the chat so police couldn't read it on his phone

once it was checked into evidence. In his ruling denying bond, the judge told Dikes that day, this court can't believe you'll be on good behavior if released from custody. It was barely a month later that Tyler Dykes decided to plead guilty to the charge of burning an object with the intent to intimidate. The judge handed down a sentence of five years, the maximum under the statute, but suspended

all but six months of it. I don't know if this is a common practice everywhere, but I see it almost all the time here in Virginia, the judge gives you a much longer sentence than he actually expects you to serve, and you just serve that little bit of your sentence, but that suspended portion hangs over you like a sort of damocles that will fall if you get into any trouble during some set period of good behavior.

With the time he'd already served before his extradition and credit for good behavior, he was scheduled to be released in July of twenty twenty three, just four months after that terrible day in March. And here's where I wasted a whole day of my life. I was curious to see Tyler Dikes walk out of the album roll Charlettsville Regional Jail. I can't explain now why I felt like that might be an interesting or important thing to see,

and in retrospect, it really wouldn't have been. But I knew his scheduled release date, and I lived nearby, and I wasn't busy that day, so I thought i'd try. I got up early and drove to the jail. I packed snacks and drinks, and I was prepared to wait around for a couple of hours. I talked to a few people who'd been booked into ACRJ, and typically you get released sometime before lunch. But the hours passed and they kept passing. I finished all the snacks I brought,

got bored. It was hot as hell, and I didn't want to run my car all day just for the AC so I just sat there, sweating, waiting. I watched that damn door like a hawk as the hours passed, and then I got an email. I have all sorts of automated email alerts set up related to court cases and custody status of weird little guys all over the country, guys I just like to keep track of, or might write about one day, or I don't know, just nosy.

So not a day goes by that I don't get some notification that somebody's filed emotion, or they're appealing something, or they've been transferred to another facility. It's always something, and there it was a custody status changed notification.

he wasn't released at all. That means some kind of cop from somewhere else picked him up. He never walked out the front door because he'd been driven out the side entrance in a non script looking SUV with a U. S. Marshal at the wheel. I had to wait until the following morning for the federal charging documents to show up in the system, So it wasn't until July of twenty twenty three that I finally knew what the FBI had

known for a year and a half. Tyler Dikes fought his way into the Capitol on January sixth, twenty twenty one.

He was charged in a ten count indictment with robbery, civil disorder, two counts of assaulting, resisting or impeding an officer with a dangerous weapon, entering or remaining in a restricted building, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building, disorderly conduct and a capitol building, engaging in physical violence in a

capitol building, and picketing in a capitol building. He was released on bond shortly after being transferred into federal custody, and in addition to the standard rules of pre trial release, the judge specifically mandated that he have no contact with members of the Southern Sun's Active Club or any related group while out on bond, and he was ordered to live at his parents' home and keep to a strict curfew.

In April of twenty twenty four, he accepted a plea agreement that dropped eight of the ten charges of the indictment, pleading guilty only to the two counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers, and with the dangerous weapon element dropped with no trial, Some questions about this case will probably never get answered. In December of twenty twenty one, the FBI received an anonymous tip from someone who said Dikes told them he had entered the Capitol on January sixth.

The full text of the tip is printed in a filing by the government. The suspect is Tyler Dikes lives in Bluffton, South Carolina. I was with Dikes and we started talking about the January sixth attack. We had differing opinions about it, but was respectful. He then told me about how he went into the capitol with a mask on with the other rioters and started beating up police officers. He states he was still in the military at the time.

He said he has video evidence of him being there, but he did not show me since we were in a public setting. He was there for fund and wanting to make a statement. He was there with other group of people, but would not state who. I believe he was telling the truth about it, and I believe he

needs to be investigated. The Asian assigned to investigate the tip confirmed the sources identification of Dikes through typical investigative means things like issuing a subpoena to his cell phone provider, comparing footage from the capital to the suspects, DMV photo, and so on. But he had an extra source this time, something an FBI agent doesn't usually have at his disposal when he investigates an anonymous tip like this. He already

knew what Tyler Diykes looked like. He had met Tyler Dikes before The agent assigned to follow up on this tip was the one who had interviewed Dikes in January of twenty nineteen regarding his potential ties to domestic extremist groups.

No additional information was offered in this affidavit about the circumstances that prompted their first meeting, whether any follow up investigation was done, or if that investigation was at the request of or reported to the Marine Corps, or even which extremist group the FBI believed he was involved in in twenty nineteen, because it couldn't have been the Southern Sun's Active Club. The active club network didn't really exist that early on, back in January of twenty nineteen, and

the Southern Suns chapter certainly didn't. The agent doesn't give me even a crumb to work with here, so I don't know. And whatever it was about, that wasn't what

led to Dikes's discharge from the Marines. The military records filed in this case are sealed, but references made to them specifically cite those November twenty twenties swastika flyers in Sumter County, South Carolina as the reason for his discharge, and that's as much concrete information as we're likely ever going to get about the reason for his removal from the military. In a text found on his phone after his arrest, Dikes had sent a photo of his discharged

letter to someone. He claimed he was being discharged quote for being incredibly political with my fellow Beaux Marines after the twenty twenty election, incredibly political. When he was interviewed by the probation office for the pre sentenced investigation report in his federal criminal case, he lied. He told the probation office that he was asked to leave the military after not reporting for drill, and that wasn't the only

time he lied. The government sentencing memorandum also indicates that despite his willingness to plead guilty to the charges to be honest about his conduct on that day, he was not truthful in his final interview with federal agents. The terms of his plea agreement required his cooperation with the ongoing investigation into the events of January sixth. Part of that agreement was a final debrief interview with federal agents, which was conducted on June twenty eighth, twenty twenty four.

In that interview, Bigs again told agents that he left his home in South Carolina mid morning on January fifth, and arrived in DC that evening, sometime after dark, but early enough to have dinner with his friends before checking into his hotel for the night. And that's not true because his cell phone tells a very different story. Records obtained from Verizon show that his phone was in Marathon, Florida,

at three twenty pm on January fifth. A little before eight pm, he took a photo with his cell phone of a slip printed by an American Airlines kiosk at the Miami Airport, indicating that he would need to see a ticket agent for assistance. His phone pinged again an hour outside his home in South Carolina at twelve thirty a m. On January six. No clear conclusion is drawn

in the memo. The prosecutor doesn't write out exactly what he thinks this means, but it appears that Dikes drove thirteen hundred miles from the Florida Keys to Washington, d C. Overnight after unsuccessfully trying to board a flight in Miami. It would be very hard to forget driving for twenty hours and then immediately fighting your way inside the United States Capitol. Even three years after the fact. That's not

something you'd forget, is it. It seems far more likely that he chose to conceal his activities in the lead up to January sixth, But why it seems unlikely now that the DOJ would choose to pursue additional charges, although remember, it is a federal crime to lie to an FBI agent, and it obviously wasn't something they cared enough about to ask the judge to reject the plea agreement, which they could have Whenever he was hiding about his trip to

Florida the day before the insurrection, he must have felt like it was worth the possibility of a lot of extra prison time to keep it to himself. The government sentencing memo also details some of what was found on Dike's phone. In the Southern Suns group chat, he used the name Nocturnal Wolf. The prosecutor who prepared the memo included several examples of materials found on the phone related

to the pseudonym things about Wolves. One of those little odds and ends about wolves was the front cover of a Terogram collective publication called do It for the Gram, which bears the phrase faceless Lone Wolf. The prosecutor makes no mention of the contents of the document or the fact that it is a three hundred page manual on how to commit varying acts of terrorism. It seems he was perhaps unaware that he'd stumbled across a piece of

neo Nazi terrorist propaganda. There's no transcript of his sentencing filed in the case, but NBC's Ryan J. Riley reported that quote Dikes did not distance himself from extremist ideologies, nor did he say he no longer believes the former president's lies about the election. His biggest expression of regret seemed to be for his elderly parents, who adopted him as a child and who are still providing him with

a monthly allowance. Diykes was given a few months to get his affairs in order after being sentenced to fifty seven months back in July. The day before he was scheduled to turn himself in to begin serving his sentence, he filed a last minute motion asking for.

just in time for the next presidential election. Weird Little Guys the production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.