PHOENIX, AZ — A Phoenix journalist targeted in what the FBI called anti-Semitic hate and threats of violence says she was terrified and afraid to leave her home alone after finding a poster tacked to her window that included Nazi symbols and masked figures with guns and Molotov cocktails.
Mala Blomquist, the editor in chief of Arizona Jewish Life magazine, was among journalists targeted by members of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen, which the Justice Department said Wednesday delivered the threatening and intimidating posters to journalists and activists “to further their ideology.
Johnny Roman Garza, 20, of Queen Creek, Arizona, is among four people facing charges of conspiracy to mail threatening communications and commit cyberstalking.
According to court documents filed in Washington State district court, the four men associated with Atomwaffen targeted journalists and activists in Florida, Texas and Washington state. In the Seattle area, the posters were mailed to a TV journalist who reported on Atomwaffen and to two people associated with the Anti-Defamation League, and in Tampa, the group targeted a journalist but delivered the poster to the wrong address, authorities said.
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The four men facing charges “crossed the line” of speech and ideas protected by the First Amendment “in order to intimidate and coerce individuals who they perceived as a threat to their ideology of hate,” Raymond Duda, an FBI special agent in Seattle, said in Wednesday’s news release announcing the charges.
The Atomwaffen group mainly targeted journalists of color and Jewish descent, authorities said.
“It is terrifying when you’re targeted like that,” Mala, who found one of the racist flyers glued to her window in early February told news station KNXV.
“I didn’t leave the house for a week after that, alone, because I was afraid,” she told KNXV.
The poster she found had death images and, written in small print, “You’ve been visited by your local Nazis,” Mala told news station KPNX. It also said “Your actions have consequences … our patience has its limits.”
Blomquist, who is not Jewish, said “it doesn’t matter who you are.”
“They’re just hating to hate,” she told KPNX.
A journalist with the Arizona Association of Black Journalists was also targeted, the KPNX report said, but a spokesperson with the group told the news station the group doesn’t know the identity of that person.
Also facing charges are Cameron Brandon Shea, 24, of Redmond, Washington; Kaleb Cole, 24, of Montgomery, Texas; and Taylor Ashley Parker-Dipeppe, 20, of Spring Hill, Florida.
Authorities said they used an encrypted online chat group to identify the journalists and others they wanted to intimidate.
“These defendants from across the country allegedly conspired on the internet to intimidate journalists and activists with whom they disagreed,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said in the news release. “This is not how America works. The Department of Justice will not tolerate this type of behavior.”
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