As protests ignited across the country, an armed Neo-Nazi’s goal of crashing a Dallas protest against racism and police brutality was thwarted after he was spotted and identified by local anti-fascists. The man, who goes by the pseudonym “WarHippie” and operates a white supremacist Telegram channel, was identified as Dalton Dixon of McKinney, Texas.

On May 29, the account for the California-based website Left Coast Right Watch flagged a video filmed from the driver’s seat of WarHippie’s vehicle. The video depicted him driving to Dallas to embed himself in the protests taking place against racism and police brutality following the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by Derek Chauvin, a white officer.

As Megan Squire, an Elon University professor who tracks online extremists, told Left Coast Right Watch (LCRW), based on the Telegram channels that re-post WarHippie’s content, he is aligned most closely with Bowl Patrol, Paul Nehlen, and There Is No Political Solution. These channels traffic in content advocating white supremacy and terrorism.

WarHippie’s Telegram profile stated his channel was “/k/ approved” — /k/ is a 4chan board devoted to discussing weapons “from military tanks to guns and knives.” Some people on /k/, Squire said, “act like ‘only guns, no politics,'” which made it “interesting that [WarHippie] seemed to float between both worlds.”

WarHippie’s Telegram channel is dedicated to his twin interests of gunsmithing and white supremacy. In between posts about acquiring, cleaning, and modifying guns, are memes advocating violence and Nazi ideology.

On December 8, 2019, he shared the following message: “What are your thoughts on the Holocaust?” Accompanying it was a video montage of Jonathan Frakes from Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction saying “It never happened.” In a post from December 10, 2019, he celebrated the antisemitic attack on a kosher deli in Jersey City that left six dead, including the two perpetrators.

And on March 17, 2020, he shared an image from another Telegram channel depicting a totenkopf — the SS-Totenkopfverbände’s logo — and a swastika superimposed over an atomic bomb explosion. It was captioned with “EMBRACE COLLAPSE.”

When WarHippie announced on Telegram that he would be traveling to Dallas, there was no question as to whether he was expecting violence. In fact, he was hoping for it. In a now deleted post, WarHippie wrote the following message on his Telegram channel: “ITS NOT JUST IN MINNEAPOLIS! SOCIETY IS FALLING! THIS IS IT BOYS! RACE WAR NOW!”

WarHippie, like other white supremacist accelerationists, long for the violent collapse of society in order to create a nation for non-Jewish whites.

And in another post he boasted that, “People are already anticipating a riot tomorrow around me. I t s. F I n a l l y. H a p p e n I n g.” WarHippie was presumably referring to what he and other far-right extremists call the “boogaloo” — slang for a coming civil war.

In March, gun-toting extremists calling themselves the “Boogaloo Bois” attended anti-lockdown protests. In April a “Boogaloo” movement member named Aaron Swenson was arrested after he live-streamed an attempt to murder police officers. And another three “Boogaloo Bois” were just arrested in Las Vegas for trying to incite violence at an anti-police brutality protest.

Armed to the teeth and wearing a skull mask, WarHippie arrived at his destination — but not without attracting the attention of local anti-fascists. Utilizing the information gathered by LCRW, anonymous South Dallas Anti-Fascist Action activists — including one using the handle @PegasusAFA, whom I’ll refer to as “SDAFA” — located and confronted him.

According to SDAFA, someone in their group saw the video clip WarHippie posted after it was tweeted by LCRW. That person then tipped SDAFA off, and they set off to track him down. “[WarHippie] was streaming his vantage point on Telegram according to the tweet,” SDAFA explained in an interview with LCRW, “and we knew exactly where that place was. I walked right up to him.”

SDAFA told LCRW that on the evening of the protest he was “walking in the door from work” when he looked at the posts WarHippie made on Telegram. He “determined that all of the information amounted to more than shitposting” — that is, saying purposefully offensive and outrageous things — and decided to confront what he believed to be a genuine threat.

He said that their group is used to keeping tabs on white supremacists, compiling information on them and passing it on, or waiting until they make actionable threats. But this appeared to be an exigent circumstance. “He had a ton of gear, he had a powerful weapon, he made a race war threat, he made a threat to shoot looters, [and] he had a picture saluting Hitler,” SDAFA said.

“It was clearly a threat and all I saw in my head was the possibility of news coming across later that evening of a mass casualty event downtown.”

Such fears are not unfounded. White supremacists have launched multiple deadly terrorist attacks in the past few years, including at protests. This includes mass shootings in Oslo and Utøya in 2011, Oak Creek, WI in 2012, Charleston, SC in 2015, Pittsburgh, PA in 2018, Christchurch in 2019, Poway, CA in 2019, and El Paso, TX in 2019.

In 2015 white supremacists traveled to a Black Lives Matter protest in Minneapolis to harass “dindus” — a racial slur coined by the alt-right — and shot five Black protesters. During the white power “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, a Neo-Nazi plowed his car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and wounding scores of others.

SDAFA said he “walked right up to the group” WarHippie embedded himself in. “I walked by and got a short clip of the boogaloo people and then confronted him immediately,” he added.

Video clips posted to SDAFA’s Twitter account corroborate this confrontation between the two. “I know who you are, man,” SDAFA told WarHippie in one video clip. “You know who I am?” WarHippie asked incredulously. “Yeah, it’s nice to meet ya,” SDAFA replied. “Say hello to America. You’re WarHippie.”

SDAFA stayed with WarHippie until the other armed “boogaloo people” left the protest, although roughly 20 protesters remained and several cops were watching from across the street. SDAFA said that WarHippie “wasn’t saying much” at that point, and that he told WarHippie he was going to stay until he left and walk him back to his car.

“We stood there about half an hour and then he asked me if I was ready and we started walking southbound away from the protest,” SDAFA said, adding that there were “three men with me at that point.”

As they walked to the parking lot WarHippie stopped to rest against a brick ledge, and took a swig of bottled water. His skull mask slipped, momentarily revealing his face. By SDAFA’s estimate, they talked for about ten minutes there. “[R]ight now, I should be home havin’ a beer, but I’m up here watchin’ your dumb ass,” he told WarHippie.

The group then moved to the parking lot where WarHippie initially attempted to get in the driver’s seat with his weapon. SDAFA told him to disable it and stow it in his trunk. WarHippie obliged, clumsily tossing the loaded weapon into the trunk, and SDAFA told him to “take the clip out of his weapon and get the fuck out of there.”

As WarHippie drove away, one of the men in SDAFA’s group looked up his license plate, revealing his identity as Dalton Dixon. A Facebook page belonging to Dixon reveals a similar love of weapons, and on WarHippie’s Telegram channel he admitted he had been “doxxed.” In a post addressing the matter, he wrote that “the fed posting will be toned down a shit ton.”

“Fed posting” refers to the practice of saying deliberately provocative things — usually advocating violence and lawlessness — which sound as if they’re being said by a federal agent attempting to entrap people.

In spite of writing what Megan Squire termed a “goodbye, sorta post,” there is no reason to believe WarHippie has abandoned his violent, fascist ways. He will likely continue working and communicating with like-minded white supremacists on Telegram, including in his group chat.

But he no longer has the option of doing so anonymously. His neighbors will know that among them dwells an armed Neo-Nazi who celebrates terrorism and mass murder. And that is the first step toward keeping themselves safe.

“If I could say anything it would be to please stop calling the police,” SDAFA told LCRW. “They are not your friends and they are not going to help you. Nobody is going to protect us, but us. Get involved in your community. There are few things more satisfying than feeling solidarity with your community.”

[Left Coast Right Watch provided critical research and reporting for this article.]