“The balloon has gone up:” Spotlight on members of IL WTP III% Patriot Militia, IL Sons of Liberty militia & new IL recruits

Panic! in the Discord is teaming up with old friends, John Belushi Antifa and Chicago Anti-Fascist Action plus new comrades Anne Frank Army (their Twitter) and Shield Wall Chicago (their Twitter) for this lightning round of dossier publication. Currently, we’re identifying all the IL militia networks, thanks to a ton of help from a Threeper who “grew a conscious about organizing to murder fellow human beings in the name of Donald Trump.” We salute you tipster! We welcome any new information on the growing armed paramilitary movement. We have dozens of names and will be churning out dossiers in the coming weeks so if you’re on this list or think you’re on this list and would like help leaving the white nationalist/Boog paramilitary/far- or Alt-right/QAnon movement, please don’t hesitate to reach out to panicinthediscord@riseup.net We won’t out you and we won’t charge you any money.

Militia growth has been exponential leading up to and in the aftermath of the US Presidential election. leading to an increase in membership, but the interconnectedness of militia, the military and the far-right cannot be overlooked. As explained in The Nation, “In a country where gun ownership and firearms training are seen by the far right as inalienable, all-American freedoms, the military is a ripe breeding ground for disaffected men looking for individual empowerment, a sense of belonging, and just such training. In fact, a recent New York Times investigation claims that veterans and active-duty military members make up more than a fifth of the membership of America’s 300 anti-government, pro-Trump “militia” groups. According to a 2019 survey by the Military Times, about a quarter of active-duty service members reported witnessing signs of white nationalist ideology among their fellow soldiers, including racist and anti-Semitic slurs and homemade explosives shaped like swastikas…”Let’s remember that this right was grounded in the idea of organizing the revolutionary army against a colonial power that taxed people without representing them and forcibly billeted its military in their homes. The colonists, while rife with their own history of human-rights violations, were not a bunch of disaffected, irrationally angry individual crusaders with an urge to use weapons to threaten civilians.”

It’s also an example of the dangerous feedback loop that occurs when fringe grievances like COVID-19 lockdowns or false stories about voter fraud are amplified by legitimate voices, like elected GOP officials or Fox News, and then fed back into fringe networks like MyMilitia, per Tess Owens in Vice.

The end result of that feedback loop is what we see playing out in The Oath Keepers, (sister militia to the III%ers), “an armed right-wing organisation that boasts tens of thousands of members with law enforcement and military backgrounds, was one of several groups to demonstrate in Washington over the weekend at the “Million MAGA March” in support of Donald Trump, whom news networks project has lost the 2020 election. “I think about half this country won’t recognise Biden as legitimate. They won’t recognise this election,” Stewart Rhodes, who founded the Oath Keepers, told The Independent on Saturday in the nation’s capital,” as reported in The Independent.

‘“What that means is that everything that comes out of his mouth will be considered not of any force or effect, anything he signs into law we won’t recognise as legitimate. We’ll be very much like the founding fathers. We’ll end up nullifying and resisting,” Mr Rhodes said. Thousands of Trump supporters — including members of far-right groups such as the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Boys, and the Oath Keepers, as well as ordinary American citizens — participated in the march, which was pervaded by a sense that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr Trump,’ also from The Independent.

As explored in Vice, ‘“MyMilitia is like Amazon for people on the fringe,” said Brian Levin, who heads the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “The difference is that people here are armed, and they’re reading Canadian manuals about how to blow up tanks.”’ Later in the article, when discussing people who are opposed to fascism (like white nationalism, white supremacy and other incarnations of the authoritarian movement best known for its genocides in Germany and Chile), people known as antifa, short for antifascists, Levin continues:

This article will shine some sunlight on members from three militias, We The People III% Militia, Illinois Sons of Liberty and the entry pool for My Militia, called “Roll Call.” Names, pictures and residential information will be made available on the following people:

Paul Jepsen, George Mendyk, Michele Gropp, Caleb Janssen, David Melvin, Jim Zywick, Richard C Fischer, Charles “Shorty” Thompson, Nick Snyder Sr, Cynthia Maue, Craig Ray Harris Laurant, Michael Pacha, James S Persman, Rebecca Barnes, Tim Glasscock, Terrence Carlino, & Tim Gottmann. 

 

 

There will be more articles forthcoming.

IL We the People (WTP) III% Patriots Militia

 

Per comrades at Anne Frank Army, from their deep dive into the suburban Chicago militias, the III%’s national group name is based on the [wrong] datapoint that only three percent of colonists fought against the British in the American Revolution. The organization is made up of individual chapters, which include the Three Percenter group that recently were busted as domestic terrorists for their exposed plan to kidnap the governor of Michigan and the group who stood protecting Richard Spencer and other neo-nazis at the deadly Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville in 2017, where Heather Heyer was murdered and dozens more injured when a white nationalist drove his car into the crowd, among countless other area groups linked to armed intimidation at protests, leading to concerns about voter repression on Election Day.

IL WTP III% Patriots Militia uses the forum MyMilitia.com, hosted by GoDaddy and Facebook private groups to recruit and organize. Interestingly, another local right wing group, Illinois Gun Owners Together aka IGOT works closely with WTP. Before the US election, IGOT suffered a huge blow to their recruitment strategy when their over 9000 member facebook group was unceremoniously deplatformed from the social media site. For more on racist, xenophobic, homophobic and misogynistic IGOT members, including dossiers on their leadership and dual-carders, see Anne Frank Army’s article.

Previously, the IL WTP III% Patriots Militia used to look like the above roster…until Anne Frank Army outed Richard Dean Poisso, Shawn Canning, Sean James Wadzinski, Josh Ellis, and Jeff Lee Harris as members. Now their ranks are significantly depleted following the doxxing, leaving only Jdog82, SAJohnny1776, and Redfox1. And we’re pleased to introduce everyone to the leader:

 

IL WTP III% Patriot Militia Leader is Jdog82 aka Paul Jepsen

In order to navigate the MyMilitia site, we archived the pages so we have a container in which to look at them. The following links are all archived pages of the MyMilitia forums.

Paul as Jdog82 shares quite a bit on his MyMilitia profile: he is born in 1982, making him 38 years old. He’s former Marine Mortarman, who currently lives in West Chicago, IL and he drives for Uber. May 10 is his bday. Like most militiamen, he begins his journey in the Roll Call page.

We wonder where else jdog82, a 38-year-old former Marine can be found on the internet?

We find his profile, easily, on FanFiction dot net, an online writing community centered on writing fictional narratives of already-created characters.

On there, Paul is known as jdog2012 and is working on fan fics of Rosario + Vampire, Star Wars as well as one seemingly-autobiographical science fiction-slash-anime war story. The worlds in which Paul lives are steeped in fantasy and strife with pervasive misogynistic overtones, making his interest in leading a militia against people he believes are against Donald Trump particularly troubling.

 

From his fanfic profile, we find his Youtube channel (hey Paul, you have a broken link!), where he’s known as the Millennial Sage but profile pics don’t lie, as his matches the one in his MyMilitia profile. On his channel, it looks like he was starting an explanatory series on the Constitutional amendments but lost steam.

 

Paul seems to spend a lot of time curating what he considers to be educational videos on an array of subjects including the Civil War, the Second Civil War (eyes emoji), socialism, guns, race relations, and the Middle East.

We located his Jdog2012 Patreon, which we have archived here. In it, we see the same visual interests: anime, manga, Star Wars, and writing. And on a closer read, we see the details and circumstances are the exact same as his fan fic profile, along with videos that connect to his YouTube channel.

 

Finally, for the final confirmation, on Jdog82’s Patreon, we find Paul’s PayPal (notably using the same jdog82 handle), which we have archived here and here:

 

Jdog82 and Jdog2012 are both Paul Jepsen of West Chicago, IL.

Since we were able to identify Paul’s confirmed last name, we found him on Facebook

where he posts some really cute content of his parents and the family pupper, who is a good, good doggo. And then he posts this picture:

Presumably from when he was a Mortarman in the Marines, where he tormented Iraqi civilians and threatened to murder them.

Paul Jepsen joins the ranks of fellow IL WTP III% Militia members Richard Dean Poisso, Shawn Canning, Sean James Wadzinski, Josh Ellis, and Jeff Lee Harris as members, outed by Anne Frank Army.

Finally, Paul Jepsen lives with his elderly parents in West Chicago, IL. Due to the publishing requirements of this website, we can’t post private information like phone numbers and emails of our research subjects. However, you can find that information plus other ways to contact Paul on this archived, separate website. We’re looking forward to identifying Redfox and SAJohnny776 to complete our set of dossiers for IL WTP III% Patriot Militia. Gotta dox em all!

Moving on from IL WTP III% Patriots Militia to the IL Sons of Liberty Militia, next on our list is the Illinois Sons of Liberty Militia.

 

IL Sons of Liberty Militia (ILSL)

IL Sons of Liberty Militia is one of the most popular militias in the northern Chicago suburbs. There’s even a forum user by the name of ILSL Sheepdog, whose purpose is to shepherd new members to join the militia. Our team is working on identifying leadership and has a chuckle in corporate meetings about the similarity with “incel” and “ILSL.” Beyond the same sounding words, there’s a lot of overlap between old men frustrated at the world they no longer understand, yelling at clouds, and the ignorant misogynists angry that they’re not given access to women’s bodies after buying them a drink.

 

We’re pleased to illuminate the lives of George Mendyk, Michele Gropp, Caleb Janssen, David Melvin, Jim Zywick, and Richard C Fischer, all members of the Illinois Sons of Liberty Militia.  

George Mendyk, of Carol Stream IL

George Mendyk, a 57-year-old is a bondage aficionado and resident of Carol Stream, IL who joined the My Militia forum (which we have archived here) then found and joined this local militia. George was born in April 1963 and lives at 1329 Gloucester Cir, Carol Stream, IL 60188

 

Check out George’s Facebook, from where the above pictures have come, is archived here and here. Plus twitter is here and here is his son’s, who we’re sure would be horrified to learn what his dad has been up to.

 

Michele Gropp, of Normal, IL

Michele Gropp joined ILSL (archived here) seeking a militia for her and her husband to join.

Michele Gropp lives at 1630 Erin Dr. Normal, IL 61761 and posts some dumb ideas about the interconnectedness of funding streams. She probably thinks everything is funded by Soros too lololol

 

And here’s Andy, the Marine husband she mentions:, with his archived beliefs. ->

You can find redacted info about them on this separate website.

 

Toppel Plumbing

Someone forgot to turn out the auto-complete AND was logged into main when joining ILSI, at least from the looks of the Toppel Plumbing MyMilitia profile. Which proud American militia-loving member of Toppel Plumbing would make that mistake?

 

A quick peruse of their website offers a few sorts likely to join but our money is on Mark, what with that American flag tattoo tattooed on his forearm.
You can ask them who’s the chud looking to take up arms against his neighbors during business hours
or just email them: toppelplumbing@yahoo.com

Caleb .janssen of Quincy IL

We found Caleb’s profile and archived it from the ILSI militia group page on the MyMilitia forum.

By Caleb’s admission on his wife’s Facebook page, he doesn’t have one of his own so we were able to pull the image from his wife’s page. And we found him on the facebook page of his employer’s: his father’s construction company

David Melvin, of Du Quion IL

We found David Melvin and archived his ILSI profile here. He is 41 years old, with a May 1979 birthday. Then we were able to connect his militia profile to his Facebook with our eyeballs:

 

David Melvin lives at 8050 Steven Ln. Du Quoin, IL 62832 and here’s a separate website with some private information
Richard Allen Horvath Jr of Cuba IL
We found Richard Allen Horvath Jr on MyMilitia, in the ILSI group, archived here. Richard posted face pics, which we were able to match on Facebook and also his place of employment, as Crete Carrier OTR Trucking Company.
Richard Allen Horvath Jr lives at 16168 E Wee Ma Tuk Rd, Cuba, IL 61427

Jim Zywicki, of Wauconda IL 

We found Jim in the ILSI forum (archived here) and even though he gave his phone number, we were unable to confirm his address. But we found his Facebook and archived the parts that stood out:

Richard C Fischer, of Spring Grove, IL

Richard Fischer, age 54, born in May 1966, was an early member of the ILSI, which we have archived here. On his social media, he has an idea about people who want to stop fascists from organizing and also those who seek to stop others from being killed by police: he wants to hunt us. We’ve archived those pictures below here and here.

He and his wife Peggy live at 217 Coventry Ave, Spring Grove, IL 60081

 

We have identified only a fraction of the ILSI Militia and we have more on the way. We’ll transition to shining some light on the neighbors who are willing to take up arms against their fellow community members with whom they don’t agree. Last up, it’s the militia onboarding before the militia: the Roll Call page. We’ll be exploring a cross section of the Roll Call members with more yet to come!

 

MyMilitia’s Illinois Roll Call and Lounge members

We archived all 16 pages of Roll Call and they can be safely perused here:

And without further adieu, we present the following Roll Call members: Charles “Shorty” Thompson,  Nick Snyder Sr, Cynthia Maue,  Craig Ray Harris Laurant, Michael Pacha, James S Persman, Timothy Edmond Glascock, Terrence Carlino and Tim Gottmann. 

 

 

Shorty Thompson is Charles ” Shorty ” Thompson of Taylorville, IL

On his MyMilitia profile, he posts in Roll Call topic, Shorty lets everyone know that he answers to Shorty and hails from Taylorville, IL. Where exactly in Taylorville? 1708 S Michels St, Taylorville, IL 62568 is where Shorty lives with his wife Debra. Here’s his post in the Roll Call and archived here 

We found him on Facebook and archived his profile picture here.

Shorty is 62 years old, and was born October 1958. You can find his phone number at this separate website.
217) 827-7043

 

Nick “Nikko” Snyder Sr, Clinton City IL

We found Nick in the early posts of the IL Roll Call topic (and archived here). Then we found his Facebook, which didn’t have much on it, other than a connection to his partner Nikki.

Nick and Nikki Snyder live at 283 N 3rd St # 1, Breese, IL 62230 with their two adult sons. Nikki works in health care. For redacted information, see this separate website.

Cynthia S Maue of Belleville, IL

Cynthia S Maue, 63 years old born in November 1956 is all over the boards, trying to join a militia in the St Louis Metro area, IL side. She’s shared wanting to join a local militia in Roll Call and archived here. Cynthia’s full MyMilitia profile is here and archived here. Cynthia lives at 7500 Melba Ln, Belleville, IL 62223 and some private information can be found on this other website.

 

Craig Ray Harris Laurent, of Belleview IL

Craig helpfully explains his life and associations in the Roll Call page, which we’ve archived here and goes into more details on his MyMilitia profile, which we’ve archived here. From there, we found him on Facebook and archived, where his username (xangman) is the same as his MyMilitia moniker.

 

Then, searching for the same username, we find Craig’s twitter, archived here. It’s great that he works with stray cats, maybe he should try extending some kindness and compassion to his fellow humans. Anyways, Craig Ray Harris Laurent and his cats live at 507 Calgary Way, Belvidere, IL 61008. More sensitive information about Craig can be found here on this separate website.

Michael Pacha, Algonquin IL

 

We find Michael Pacha on the Roll Call forum then his MyMilitia profile and from there it’s easy to connect him to his Facebook profile.We saved his profile pics, for posterity.

 

James S Persman, aka Sergeant Hunter, of McHenry, IL

In the MyMilitia IL Roll Call, archived here, one Sergeant Hunter, offers his location in Northeast suburbs of Chicago and his email address in order to organize take up arms against neighbors with whom he doesn’t agree. That email is bornagain2803@gmail.com  and it directly connects back to James S Persman, age 48 years old and born August 1972.

We found Sergeant Hunter aka Jim Persman on Facebook and he lives at 2803 Myang Ave in McHenry, IL 60050

 

Rebecca Barnes, Jacksonville IL

We find Rebecca on the Roll Call post, and you guessed it, we archived it here. We were able to pinpoint the post to the person Rebecca Barnes I, 42 years old, born August 1978, married to Brian Barnes. Rebecca is last known to be living at 3218 N Missouri Ave, Peoria, IL 61603. We then find her Facebook:

And then we scrape some more personal information, which can be found here.

Tim Glascock, of Carmi IL

Timothy Edmond Glascock, 61 years old, born December 1958, posted in the MyMilitia Roll Call forum and archived here. Turns out he lives not just in Southern Illinois, he lives in Carmi. Tim lives at 303 12th St, Carmi, IL 62821, to be exact. And here’s some sensitive information about Tim that we’re not allowed to post on this site. We’re seeking pictures of his face, so if you have some, send em!

Terrence Carlino, of Bartlett IL

Polygraph was feeling some kind of way about 9/11 this year so he went and joined MyMilitia, then began the process of seeking out a militia to join in his northwest suburban area of Chicago (archive). Turns out he’s not really good at it, offering his real name: Terrence Carlino and he lives in the Bartlett area, Northwest Suburbs of Chicago. Specifically 527 W North Ave, Bartlett, IL 60103. Terrance is 49 years old and born October 1971. He’s not on the Facebook so any identifying social medias would be helpful!

Tim Gottmann, of Grayslake IL

Tim Gottmann not only joined the ILSL militia, he also joined his local area code militia (which we’ll get to soon!) after an invitation from ILSL Sheepdog, which we’ve archived here. Per his Facebook, Tim is married to Colleen and is 30 years old, born in September 1990. Tim works at HT Strenger as a plumber.  His last known address is 1904 Country Dr Apt 102 Grayslake, IL 60030 and more sensitive information can be found here.
Tim wraps up our first foray into shining some sunlight into the creepy cobwebs and seedy underbellies of the boomers and gun nuts who want to run down, lock up or otherwise harm people who don’t agree with them politically. We will continue to research and write, next time looking to dig into the area code militias in IL. We share this information on militia members and encourage others to do so as well to keep our communities vigilant and safe. We stand up for one another against homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism, and white nationalist organizing. All we have is each other. <3
And if anyone out there has any information on their local militias, white nationalists, Proud Boys, or any other fash, don’t hesitate to reach out! We’re panicinthediscord@riseup.net and on Twitter at @Discord__Panic
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