White supremacists who beat people up at rallies are escaping police custody — so media outlets are unmasking them

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• Members of California’s Rise Above Movement got into violent altercations during the protests in Charlottesville and Berkeley.
• But police aren’t charging them with crimes, an investigation from ProPublica found.
• So the outlet has identified several white nationalists, revealing who they are to the world.

White nationalists descended on Charlottesville, Virginia and Berkeley, California this year, beating up protesters trying to drown out their hateful messages about people of color, Jews, LGBT individuals, and the media.

Videos and photos show who they are, but a ProPublica investigation found that police aren’t prosecuting them for their violence. So the outlet is unmasking these white supremacists, many of whom belong to the small but growing California-based group known as the Rise Above Movement.

The group of about 50 members has “a singular purpose: physically attacking its ideological foes,” according to ProPublica. A YouTube account under the name posted a recruitment video with shots of members working out, training for violent protests, and displaying neo-Nazi symbols and phrases.

Many of the members that the outlet identified have criminal records. One man, Tyler Laube, was on probation the day he allegedly attacked journalist Frank John Tristan at a “Make America Great Again” rally in Huntington Beach on March 25.

ProPublica

Tristan said he and his editor contacted the police, but ProPublica found that law enforcement is not pursuing charges against Laube. The same was true for the other individuals they identified, too. Multiple police departments didn’t comment for the article.

Michael German, a former FBI agent who has infiltrated groups like these, told ProPublica that law enforcement officials are “looking at this whole thing so narrowly, as two groups clashing at a protest,” but “it is organized criminal activity.”

Federal investigators have successfully thwarted “dozens” of racially motivated terror attacks, according to ProPublica, but white nationalists have killed at least 22 people in the past five years.

Read the full ProPublica investigation here »

Watch the video unmasking white nationalists below:

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