I have a new deep dive out I did with my comrade Isaac at Unicorn Riot on neo-Nazis who are people of color.
In May 2023, when Mauricio Garcia killed eight people in an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, it seemed like just another senseless mass murder similar to innumerable school shootings. But when it came out that he identified as a neo-nazi, outrage spread: calling a Latino that was just too much for many.
However, a person of color carrying out a mass shooting as a neo-nazi came as less of a surprise to antifascist researchers. Several years ago one of us was introduced to a Black man named Mohammed Abdali. While he was vouched for by an antifascist with impeccable credentials, he didn’t seem right. Soon after it turned out he wasn’t: Gabriel Diaz, his real name, had previously made the papers when he was suspended from his job as a New York City cab driver for wearing a swastika armband at work. And this wasn’t just cosplay: a TV news interview showed he was well-versed in National Socialist ideology. And that too was no quirk, as it came out that he was spying on antifascists for the National Socialist Movement (NSM), at the time the largest U.S. neo-nazi party.
Diaz is just one of many neo-nazis who are also people of color. While Black neo-nazis are rare, in comparison Latino neo-nazis are fairly common. Latin America itself is honeycombed with neo-nazi groups, and is just one of the many places around the world where they can be found.
Spencer Sunshine 