Amid news of the horrors of Russia’s war on Ukraine, North American white nationalists have been engaged in an online argument over which side is the most nazi. One online space that has branded itself around this ideological tug-o-war is the American Banderite Network (ABN), a pro-Ukraine white nationalist channel on the messaging app Telegram.
ABN bills itself as an “umbrella” group that hopes to “appeal to the far right and national socialist crowd (neo-Nazis) who support Ukraine … not the brainwashed zombie liberals who obey the media.”
Within a few short months of its launch in April 2023, the American Banderite Network had forged a broad swath of alliances with a variety of like-minded white supremacist groups. It boasted celebrity neo-Nazi admins like Christopher Pohlhaus aka Hammer, leader of the militant Blood Tribe, and Kent McLellan aka Boneface, a since-disgraced walking tattoo who told wild tales about his service in Ukraine. The group even partnered-up with a recruitment agency that promised to help North American fascists get to Ukraine on an enlistment pipeline. For a time, ABN was strutting around like a peacock in nazi land.
But ABN wasn’t the product of a seasoned white nationalist organizer. It was created by a 16-year-old from Hillsboro, Oregon with the help of his twin brother.
Using the display name Romanian_guy, ABN’s teenage founder built a chat that has regularly hosted neo-Nazi extremists from “Terrorgram” – a name given to channels and chats on Telegram where racist violence is promoted and organized. This puts the Oregon twins squarely in the milieu of a small youth movement of violent white nationalists that include the 2119 / Blood & Soil group recently unmasked by Jordan Green for Raw Story. Indeed, 2119 members regularly participate in the ABN chat.
Their age also underscores the involvement of older white supremacists who are using the space to groom minors into hate, particularly ABN’s second-in-command Andrew Benson aka Kievan Rus of White Lives Matter Toronto, as well as members of the Northwest Nationalist Network (3N).
Since the twins are minors, we will not be using their full names. Their parents, school, church and friends of the family are being notified and provided with intervention resources. Hopefully the twins will use this as an opportunity to walk away before they cause harm to themselves or anyone else.
We will only be identifying them by their initials – AP and BP. AP is the founder of ABN known as Romanian_guy (@based_romanian1933). BP has posted in the past under the handle @nationalist_legionare777, and although he isn’t foregrounded in the story of ABN, he actively participates in his brother’s promotion of the cause.
For a full accounting of AP and BP’s identification and activities click over to our
companion article here.
Table of Contents
- The Network
- Andrew Benson (Kievan Rus)
- Boneface, Wildman and Hammer
- Boneface Is A Larp, and Wildman Too
- The Northwest Nationalist Network and ABN
- All the Terrorists We Met Along the Way
The Network
There are plenty of white nationalists in the US and Canada who support the Russian invasion, particularly among the intellectual “dissident right” and their signal-following sycophants. There is a maybe smaller (but not insignificant) camp who see white valor in the Ukrainian defense, particularly amongst the white nationalist “3.0” crowd. This cadre of nazis generally follow the lead of their movement’s founder Robert Rundo – himself a staunch defender of the Ukrainian cause.
That said, the invasion of Ukraine is a misinformation minefield, and any discussion of this “brother war” in white nationalist circles can be misconstrued by a variety of agents, for a variety of agendas. So to be clear: there are neo-Nazi troops on both sides of the war, and the scale is up for debate. We won’t be engaging in that debate in this article, but we will point out that there are also many soldiers on both sides who aren’t neo-Nazis. Only one country is raining down horror on the citizens of the other – Russia. And Putin’s government is part of an emboldened international neo-fascist syndicate that is a grave danger to human rights. Notwithstanding, there are neo-Nazis who oppose Russia.
The pro-Ukraine far-right believe they must defend white Europeans against the invasion of a “Eurasian neo-Bolshevik horde”. They emphasize the Asian, or Mongol, characteristics of many Russians, placing the invasion squarely within their antisemitic “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. They believe that Duginism – the fascist doctrine that influences Putin’s geopolitical moves – is a tool of the Jews that is meant to dilute the blood of white people. They may hate the “globohomo” West, but for them defense of a white nation takes precedence.
Playing off of Russia’s use of the symbol “Z”, they call Russian supporters “ziggers” or “ztards”. Russian soldiers they refer to as “orcs”. In general, Russians are sneered at as “mongrels” or “mongoloids”.
Pro-Ukraine far-right spaces have two visions floating around. The first would see the establishment of an “Intermarium Shield” – a band of ethnonationalist alliances stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, which would oppose both the “Eurasian neo-Bolsheviks” to the East and the “multicultural globalists” to the West. The second vision hopes that a victorious Ukraine would be the spark that ignites a final Race War – a “purge” led by battle-hardened ultranationalist elements in Ukraine’s military.
It is in this ideological space that AP and BP began building their brand last spring.
The American Banderite Network is named after the early 20th century followers of Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera. However, the twin’s ABN isn’t really an organization; it’s a loose affiliation network. Looking back at its beginnings, ABN had the feel of a white nationalist hobby project, an avatar space for AP and BP and their online friends to play at being big-talking national socialists, regularly posting content that was along the lines of “no, bro. Ukraine has the REAL nazis, bro”!
But as their channel and chat has grown at pace with their braggadocio, they’ve struggled to clarify its mission beyond being racist cheerleaders for the Ukrainian cause. They have also partnered with projects and people who have turned out to be frauds. The resulting mixed messaging is reflected in their cluttered flag.
AP has at points written broad and sometimes contradictory statements about ABN’s purpose. It is an “umbrella”, he says, a sort of big tent for likeminded mingling. It has a membership, although you might think of it more like a branding certificate, a seal-of-approval that goes both ways. It’s not a larp, he says. But at first it kinda was, he admits. He’s not trying to create an organization, but he wants ABN to be a nationalist gang modeled on racist skinheads.
Lately, he’s been dreaming up ways ABN could be represented at rallies, encouraging the idea of wearing blue armbands like Ukrainian soldiers do to identify each other on the battlefield.
Ultimately, ABN is a kid’s nazi networking brand trying to turn itself into something real. Problem is, the networking space that the twins built is now occupied by adult neo-Nazis who are grooming them and their little teenage nazi buddies. White supremacist leaders and terrorbros are teaching these kids how to get organized and do their hate in real life.
Andrew Benson aka Kievan Rus
39-year-old Andrew Benson aka Kievan Rus of Toronto is well over twice AP’s age, yet he is second-in-command under the teenager. He is often referred to as the Canadian Division leader of ABN. His long career as a white supremacist has been well-documented by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, which you can read here. Suffice to say, he was a member of a couple of very violent skinhead gangs (Aryan Guard and Western European Bloodlines), ducked for cover after his pals did some murders, resurfaced as a Libertarian, then hobnobbed with the alt-right, even had a moonlighting stint as a nazbol (a nazi-bolshevik, a sort of racialist authoritarian communist, commonly called “tankies” – he even used the handle “Dr Tankie”). Now he’s a member of White Lives Matter (WLM) Toronto, and his name was recently found in the customer data leak of Midgard, a Swedish neo-Nazi music and merchandise web store.
It’s that stint as a nazbol that’s had him under perpetual suspicion in the white nationalist community. Also, he was attending rallies in support of Russia a few years back, and despite his claims that his ideology has since evolved, the stink of it all has led to some sneering in fascist circles. He had to do a lot of rolling over and showing his belly for 16-year-old AP to bring him aboard in the early days of ABN, and although he enjoys AP’s loyalty now, every time there’s a scandal involving the network it inevitably leads to questions about his trustworthiness. AP has had to jump in to defend him several times, often by lying that he himself had been a Proud Boy three years ago (he would have been 13) and people are allowed to change.
(There are also antifascists who view Andrew Benson’s pivot to a pro-Ukraine stance with side-eye, believing it to be a dodgy psyop meant to do entryism and disparage supporters of Ukraine in Canada).
However, Benson appears to be trusted by his local WLM buddies. WLM Toronto is run by an unidentified – but well-connected – man who goes by “McLeafin” online (and is possibly named Spencer). McLeafin is credited with setting up the infrastructure for WLM throughout Canada in 2021 and has been present at in-person vetting sessions for the local neo-Nazi active club. He apparently trusts Benson, who claims that he was allowed to take over the leadership of WLM Toronto between Nov 2022 – Feb 2023, so that McLeafin could take a break.
WLM Toronto is a tiny crew, but it’s a big part of Benson’s life. He promotes the group heavily on the ABN channel.
Benson also heavily promotes the Canadian Nationalist Party (CNP), which is run by fellow WLM Toronto member Gus Stefanis, who acquired his leadership when the CNP founder went to prison over hate crimes.
Basically Andrew Benson, like all nazis, hangs out with a bunch of unsavory characters. Take fellow WLM Toronto rally goer Bubba Pollock, for instance. Bubba was arrested after sneaking into a hospice care room and taking a selfie of himself at the bedside of the dying father of an LGBTQ+ activist he’d been arguing with online.
Using the handle “Kievan Rus” (a nod to the Medieval state that’s considered the cultural ancestor of both Russia and Ukraine), Andrew Benson tends to post dull and dense theory-dork stuff compared to his peers. His posts don’t generate a great deal of attention, but he makes up for it by generating a great deal of posts. He is by far the most active admin on the channel, in large part sharing links to the historical edits he makes on his Odysee account.
But the worst part isn’t his mind-numbing posts, or his shitty violent friends, or the fact that a lot of people hate him. The worst part is that Andrew Benson is grooming minors into hate. He advises and cheers the youngsters on.
Boneface, Wildman and Hammer
Kent McLellan aka Boneface was made an admin for ABN on May 18th, 2023.
The twins were thrilled. Boneface was a superstar racist skinhead at the time. He claimed to have fought in Ukraine twice and bragged of a long list of neo-Nazi gang affiliations, including American Front (for which he was arrested for planning terror attacks), Combat 18, Unforgiven and the Misanthropic Division – claiming that he had led the North American chapter for a time. He also claimed to be the estranged son of Ken McLellan, the British frontman for the nazi punk band Brutal Attack. In the eyes of some fash, Boneface was nazi royalty.
His scrimshaw mug and terrorism charges made him a propaganda magnet over the war in Ukraine. “Here’s this scary nazi who’s fought for Right Sector and Azov! He even admits to war crimes!” He was featured in Russian reports pushing their “denazification” narrative, and his story was even picked-up by US outlets like Greyzone as an example of racially motivated extremists getting combat experience as foreign mercenaries in Ukraine.
It was all a lie. He’d be called out on it months later. But when he joined ABN he was at the top of a story arc that would see him running the hard-right livestream circuit on a nazi promotional tour. His myth-making was in over-drive.
As a representative of the group, Boneface endorsed AP’s “umbrella” vision of the American Banderite Network. But he took it even further. McLellan brought ABN, and the 16-year-olds who ran it, into a recruitment scheme for getting American nazis enlisted in the defense of Ukraine.
At the heart of the scheme was a man who went by “Wildman Forrest”.
Like Boneface, Wildman also claimed to have fought in Ukraine and Kent McLellan called him a brother (meaning from another mother, maybe, but this confused a lotta people, including AP, who referred to them as the “McClellan bros”). Wildman produced shocking siege-like video edits for ABN that were a combo of war gore and pictures of himself, Boneface and the twins posing with weapons and flags. AP was very excited to see himself cast in terror propaganda.
Wildman Forrest ran a sketchy “free of charge” outfit called Team Ukraine International (TUI), which claimed to be an independent group of “volunteers serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, veterans and experienced professionals who have come together to assist, train and advise potential international volunteer recruits for the army.” It billed itself as a non-profit that ran off of donations. Ominously, its contact email used the same handle that Wildman Forrest used on Telegram – “welcometoukrainesukas”.
TUI promoted each one of its “travel agents” with goofy baseball card-like graphics for “Bolshevik Safari 2023 – Alternative Recreation Therapy”. The agents were given nicknames like “Sicily aka the Black Hand” and pictured in ways that obscured their faces. Each travel agent card included the logo of orgs that supposedly supported the effort, including Azov Battalion, ABN and the Misanthropic Division (a far-right terror group that partnered with TUI; ABN regularly shares their content).
But ABN really hit the spotlight when they landed Christopher Pohlhaus as an admin on August 9th, 2023. Pohlhaus aka Hammer is the leader of the white nationalist Blood Tribe, a nationwide org that mixes Patriot Front’s flash mob regimental-style with a more overtly neo-Nazi aesthetic. Their whole schtick is to seem scary. But it backfired last September when they became a national laughingstock, because … well, Boneface.
To capitalize on Pohlhaus’ vocal support for Ukraine, Boneface had used his made-up war credentials to join Blood Tribe through the vetting chats they’d set up last summer in preparation for a “March of the Red Shirts” in Florida. Hammer was charmed by this outrageous bonehead who wanted to join his club, and quickly began using the Boneface larp to promote his own crew. They appeared on livestreams together, and Boneface was probably the one who convinced Hammer to sign up as an admin on the American Banderite Network.
In an apparent nod to AP’s young age, Pohlhaus responded to his admin introduction with the meme of an old man hello.
At the time, Pohlhaus was expressing interest in joining up with the defense of Ukraine. His good pal neo-Nazi Denis Kaputin aka Denis Nikitin aka White Rex runs the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), a small force of largely Russian ultranationalists who oppose Putin from Ukrainian territory. Denis is the Moscow-born godfather of the white nationalist MMA scene, and Pohlhaus was talking about pulling together a better pipeline of American extremists for his RVC.
Pohlhaus’ Ukraine ambitions fit right in with ABN’s advocacy and Wildman Forrest’s recruitment effort. RVC is hugely respected by the ABN crowd – Andrew Benson / Kievan Rus is very fond of posing with the RVC flag. Pohlhaus’s proximity to the Corps lent the ABN channel legitimacy.
As anticipation for the March of the Red Shirts built throughout August, ABN seemed to be hitting a stride. At one point, in another attempt to play to the young age of the ABN audience, Pohlhaus posted a merch pitch for a swastika-branded baseball cap by using a dorky video of himself showboating with a gun in the woods. “ALL THIS SLAVIC WAR TRAINING IN THE MAINE WOODS HAS ME EXHAUSTED!”
In an awkward attempt at irony, the video used a Creedence Clearwater Revival tune. We’ve replaced that audio with something a little more apropos.
Everything was going great for AP’s American Banderite Network. Pinocchio was becoming a real nazi. Even Greyzone writer Moss Robeson wrote a breathless (and since deleted) Medium article casting ABN in ominous tones that highlighted the Boneface bullshit. In response AP wrote, “Enemy eyes are watching us” and “Shits [sic] crazy y’all. But no matter what. WE WILL NEVER BACK DOWN! COMMIES GET THE ROPE!”
Boneface Is A Larp, and Wildman Too
The March of the Red Shirts took place on September 2nd outside of Orlando, Florida. Joined by the Goyim Defense League and the Vinland Rebels, this Blood Tribe march made for a larger nazi gathering than most. But still, they were in the middle of nowhere shouting “We. Are. Everywhere!” to no-one except a small gaggle of press.
AP cheered them on from Hillsboro, OR.
Naturally, the guy who looked like an emaciated Popeye with cranial tats, throwing roman salutes while yelling “Slava Ukraini”, stood out. People began talking about Boneface. People began digging into the story of Boneface. People began to poke holes in his fantastical tale.
What followed was an infamous, multi-day nazi trial overseen by Pohlhaus, where Boneface conceded his lies, with excuses, one by one until there was nothing left to concede. The final blow was a challenge to a simple Ukrainian conversation, in which he just made-up Slavic sounding words. The dude was a fraud. Hammer and the Blood Tribe disavowed him.
AP, who had been conspicuously absent during the ordeal, shot out his own disavowal of Boneface.
Meanwhile, despite his proximity to the controversy, Wildman Forrest managed to salvage his own reputation. During the Boneface trial a Medium article on Team Ukraine International was published by someone named Jason Bridges, a no-name who doesn’t seem to have any other bylines. We suspect it was written by Wildman himself. The article is a glowing endorsement of the TUI, a “you guys, this is totally real” fluff piece that was conveniently published during the nazi trial of one of its own “travel agents”. Wildman shared it around to reassure people.
The “Boneface is a LARP” Telegram channel was taken in by Wildman’s story.
AP defended him by shouting in all-caps.
Alas, only a few weeks later …
Inevitably, the truth had come out. Wildman Forrest was a larp, just like Boneface. His real name is Mike Reed Beam and he’s never fought in Ukraine. All his tough battle field pics in his super clean Azov gear were taken around Florissant, Colorado, where he’d been arrested on Sept 29th for breaking probation on a DUI and weapons violation conviction. In reality, he was a failed DJ with a history of ripping people off. A TUI travel agent confessed in DMs that they were worried he might have also ripped off their recruits for Ukraine, guys who’d been so all-in for the defence of the white race that they went and hit that “welcometoukrainesukas” button on the website.
Pretty embarrassing outcome for AP’s growing network. After the Boneface trial, Pohlhaus appears to have ignored ABN and pulled back from his ambitions in Ukraine after a falling out with Denis Kaputin. These controversies would have been a really bad blow to ABN’s teenage nazi branding effort, had not almost all the other pro-Ukraine white nationalist channels fallen for the fraud as well. Instead, it’s been a bonding experience. “I was there when we exposed the Larper of Donbas” n shit.
The Northwest Nationalist Network and ABN
One of the cornerstones of ABN is its close alliance with the Northwest Nationalist Network (3N). Just like Andrew Benson heavily promotes white nationalist activity in his area of Canada, AP heavily promotes the activity of Pacific Northwest white supremacists. 3N members were hanging out in the chat almost from the get go, and several of their crews claim outright membership in ABN.
When the Rose City Nationalists (RCN) went viral for getting their asses handed to them by a bunch of PDX Proud Boys last June, ABN joined the chorus of white nationalist channels that taunted and threatened Proud Boys everywhere. At one point AP even told a HIGHLY unlikely story about how he and his twin brother BP had threatened to jump a Proud Boy at church.
As part of the post-brawl pile-on, a Terrorgram channel called Appalachian Archives posted doxxes of several of the PDX Proud Boys, and AP crossposted those doxxes on his channel, talking tough in his chat about how he was “considering taking action”.
And when the MAGA-sphere claimed that RCN were feds (like they always do), and a faildox of one of the unmasked members of RCN was boosted by Elon Musk, the twins decided to push back by making a little terror-style video where they threatened MAGA grifter Benny Johnson, who was pushing the story.
In a direct act of enabling, Andrew Benson shared this teenage terror tot video on twitter.
Just prior to RCN’s beatdown they’d left the 3N roster due to nazi ego stuff. A small crew repping 3N promptly popped up in its place – Active Club Portland (ACP). Shortly after it was launched, ACP was welcomed into the ABN fold and the Hillsboro twins have become members.
ACP is not a super active crew online, nor on the ground. But in one of its few promotional posts, AP can be seen in his favorite “Jesus’ hand is busting out of my chest like an alien” t-shirt. (The twins are christofascists, but they’re just fine working with pagans).
Let’s be very clear about this: Active Club Portland is a militant neo-Nazi cell that is training 16-year-olds.
Another 3N crew that boasts an ABN membership is Rainforest Active Club (RAC), an ecofash-themed group in the coastal areas of Washington state that has overlapping membership with WLM Washington and the defunct Puget Sound Active Club. They have a strong terror spook aesthetic and put out edits of themselves doing things like firing rifles at LGBTQ+ flags, burning Qurans and soaking Israeli flags in pig fat before setting them on fire.
Of most concern, we know that AP is chatting with Daniel Rowe, the leader of Evergreen Active Club (EAC), in private chats. Danny is a violent racist skinhead who did time for a knife attack on an interracial couple who were kissing. He has ties to the international criminal gang Hammerskins and is in an unstable spiral right now. He should be nowhere near kids.
Part of AP’s brand building is creating comic-style nationalist gang images. He’s been working on a scene that began by showing a crew that had “East Side White Pride” – an old Portland racist skinhead gang – written on a baseball bat. The idea has evolved into a scene that shows white nationalists in a street fight with leftists. On the back of the comic book nazi’s hoodies are the emblems of the different crews that make up the 3N roster, and looming over the scene is the 3N symbol. AP gifted the image to Daniel Rowe, who is now using it as the pfp of 3N’s channel.
All the Terrorists We Met Along the Way
AP claims that he used to be in the American Nationalist Initiative (ANI), a small group of mostly young fascists that generally looked down on national socialists. Several young individuals from ANI split-off from the group to become hardcore nazis. AP claims to be one of them. ABN participated in a series of threats on ANI in October that caused the entire group to disband. Chief among the other crews attacking ANI was 2119 / Blood & Soil, a violent pack of mostly teenage neo-Nazis. 2119 members participate in the ABN chat.
There is a generation of kids being radicalized online, not only in chatrooms and on social media, but in online video games like Runescape and Roblox, where they are specifically targeted by neo-Nazi recruiters looking to redpill kids. The founder of Robloxwaffen has spent time in the ABN chat.
It’s not clear to us exactly how AP and BP were radicalized, but they’ve found their way into the small terror tot community. The twins have slapped up Patriot Youth stickers, a group that has made threats against journalists and leftists. Patriot Youth is closely tied to Robloxwaffen, 2119, Appalachian Archives and the Tennessee Active Club. (The twins have also put up Patriot Front stickers and have posed with Patriot Front flags; they seem pretty young for Tommy Rousseau to be selling them schwag). So however it all shakes out, they’ve clearly ended up in a network of gen-z nazi youth that’s gotta lotta overlapping connections and has direct access to very violent adults, some of whom advocate acts of terror.
Not only has the ABN chat been visited by dangerous individuals like Oregon white supremacist leader Tony Allen, who did time for the murder of a black man; or Jarrett Wilson Smith of North Carolina, an accelerationist neo-Nazi who did time for helping plan a bomb attack. But ABN regularly promotes content from the likes of Kristoffer Nippak, who writes the terror blog “James A Rants”. Nippak was a leader in Canada’s offshoot of the terror group Atomwaffen Division, helped set up Active Club Canada, and was recently arrested on a series of terrorism charges.
The kids are eating it up.
Casey Knuteson, the leader of RCN, recently joined the ABN chat. And although RCN had a rough falling out with the 3N crews early last summer, AP gushed over his presence.
RCN and ABN are now crossposting content. Casey is a convicted child abuser who walked his crew into a brutal assault at the hands of another nationalist gang. Now he’s participating in the grooming of minors into hate.
Conclusion
We don’t want to overstate the influence of groups like ABN. In the end this is a little network run by 16-year-olds and a lonely Canadian adult. Multiple articles have been written about the group that have mischaracterized them, include Russian outlet scare stories. Discussing ABN requires context and nuance.
Last weekend Andrew Benson / Keivan Rus attended a Ukraine solidarity rally in Toronto. He was just one little weird man creeping around on the edge of a huge crowd of everyday people who are genuinely concerned for the safety of the Ukrainian people. A vanishingly small number of Ukraine supporters in the US and Canada share ABN’s twisted vision of a race war. Benson’s promo pics of himself holding up his absurd ABN banner that warns about Bolshevism on the outskirts of the Toronto rally is just that, absurd.
So far, despite their big talk, all AP and BP have managed to do in real life is sticker the fuck out of their neighborhood and hold up a banner at a nearby park with a couple friends. Maybe they’ve been too embarrassed to have their mom drive them to a better spot for nazi rallies.
Thing is, eventually some adult nazi will start giving them rides. If things keep going down this road, the only place it will lead them is somewhere lonely and violent.
If you have any tips you’d like share concerning the American Banderite Network, please reach out to us at stumptownresearchcollective@riseup.net