Earlier this week, Decoherence Media released an investigation revealing the contents of the previously unreported neo-Nazi Rope Culture server. Part of the notorious Iron March leak from 2019, the Rope Culture server hosted Iron March’s electronic magazine, “NOOSE.” The Rope Culture server data, however, appears to have been missed by researchers who first analyzed the contents of the Iron March server leak.

The Rope Culture server contains email correspondence, attachments, article comments, profile pictures, image files, and a detailed log of every visit to the website, including visitor IP addresses. This information allowed Decoherence Media to analyze the transnational demographics and scope of those who used the website and unmask several users' identities. Further investigation of emails, messages, and podcasts uploaded onto the server allowed us to identify several far-right figures involved in Rope Culture and Iron March, including a Canadian Nazi podcaster-turned-Orthodox priest, a Danish black metal musician, and a notorious American pedophile.

Podcasts

Alongside “NOOSE”’s articles, Rope Culture promoted four fascist podcasts on its website: “The Hanged Fool,” “Clericus Ex Machina,” “Minor Details,” and “Mysterium Fasces.”

“The Hanged Fool” was described as “NOOSE”’s “flagship show – a fascist banter podcast discussing current events” hosted by four Iron March users: Змајевит, Natt Danelaw, The Yank, and Spöket.

Spöket, under their better-known alias “Greve Hans,” also hosted “Clericus Ex Machina,”  a fascist Protestant-leaning podcast, which only had three episodes posted to the website between late July 2016 and early August 2016. “Minor Details” was hosted by users Agrippa and Dagon Grayjoy, and published only one episode in July 2016. 

“Mysterium Fasces” was much more prolific. It was hosted by Iron March user Florian Geyer, whose output included over 50 episodes of the “Christian Fascist” show. Discussion topics for the podcast included the fascist worldview, orthodoxy, nationalism, Trump, Pizzagate, American Futurism, and spiritual warfare. At least 10 Iron March users mentioned in their “Introduction” posts that “Mysterium Fasces” played a role in their path towards fascism. “I'd like to thank Florian Geyer for his podcast Mysterium Fasces which is the reason why I'm a full-blown fascist,” wrote one user. Wayback Machine snapshots of “Mysterium Fasces” episodes uploaded to Florian Geyer’s SoundCloud page show the podcast had at least 80,000 plays, averaging nearly 5,000 plays per episode.

The podcast’s guests included Mukhitdinov, Chaput, and Daily Stormer creator Andrew Anglin

Decoherence Media reached out to Andrew Anglin and to “The Daily Stormer,” but received no reply before publication.

Alexandre Duiven/Florian Geyer

Decoherence Media has identified Florian Geyer as Alexandre Jacob Duiven, a June 2022 graduate of the Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Seminary in New York. Under his alias, Alexandre Duiven was not shy in expressing his hatred towards Jews, as in episode 12 of his podcast “Mysterium Fasces” when he comfortably exclaims: “Gas the Jews!” and “We have to stop the Jews.” In his posts and direct messages on Iron March, Florian Geyer described himself as a 20-year-old university student in Ottawa, Ontario. In October 2016, he wrote that he planned to enroll in a seminary after finishing college. Decoherence Media used the data breach site leak-lookup.com to connect the email address he used to register his Iron March account ([email protected]) to the username “Ratchet283,” and in turn to the email address “[email protected].” Several pieces of information link the Florian Geyer account to Duiven: a Skype account with the username “alexandre.duiven” and name “Alexandre Duiven” uses the same profile picture as Florian Geyer’s Iron March account, the Skype account lists his location as Ottawa (consistent with an Iron March direct message that mentioned he’s from the “Ottawa area”), and a VK account under Duiven’s name lists his birthday as June 10, 1996, (consistent with him stating on Iron March that he was 20 in September 2016).

The clearest link between Duiven and the Florian Geyer alias is that the same personal nature photo was posted to both a Facebook account using the alias “Florian Geyer” and to Duiven’s VK account, as shown below. Decoherence Media couldn’t find any other instances of the photo being shared online.

Decoherence Media reached out to Alexandre Duiven for comment, but received no reply before publication.

Danilo Totarvaj/Змајевит

User Змајевит (who also went by “The Serb” when co-hosting “The Hanged Fool”) was a member of the Black Corps—Iron March’s moderator team that Slavros, the creator of both Iron March and Rope Culture, called “the most trusted and true who embody both the values that are at the foundation of this community and of the values of our worldview.”

In one of his Iron March messages, Змајевит shared the name of his Facebook account as “Данило Тотарвај,” asking the other user: “don't share personal info pls.” In another message, he said his email address was [email protected], which links to an account on a magic and fantasy forum that lists another email address: [email protected].

The second email address contains the English transliteration of the name Данило Тотарвај, Danilo Totarvaj. Among the Google search results for the transliterated name is a LinkedIn page for Danilo Totarvaj, who lists an undergraduate degree in Geology/Earth Science from the University of Belgrade as his education. Coincidentally, Змајевит wrote in a March 2015 post on Iron March that he was studying geology at the University of Belgrade. The LinkedIn account says he currently works at a small video game development company.

A Scribd account with the name Данило Тотарвај uploaded a calendar to the account called “NS Calendar,” with the birthdays of prominent Nazi officials and pictures of Nazi propaganda, with a dating convention that has the birth year of Adolf Hitler as year 1. A Facebook account with the same name and profile picture as the Scribd account is tagged in a photo of a man resembling the LinkedIn account’s profile picture. The Scribd account has since removed its profile picture.

Decoherence Media reached out to Danilo Totarva by email and through his LinkedIn account, but received no reply before publication.

Mikkel Hangaard/Natt Danelaw

In addition to hosting “The Hanged Fool,” user Natt Danelaw (other aliases: The Dane and Natteulven) authored the “NOOSE” article “WHY THE ‘ALT-RIGHT’ IS GAY.” Natt was involved in several podcasts, including “Radio Free Skyrim,” “Electric Jewgaloo,” and “Danelaw Radio.” In his Iron March direct messages, he mentions his alias, Natteulven (Danish for “The Night Wolf”), writes he is in a band called Æresblod, and states he is “a proud member of Danskernes Parti,” a Danish anti-immigrant political party. 

He originally registered his Iron March account using the email address “[email protected],” which Decoherence Media connected to the name “Mikkel Hangaard” via leak-lookup.com, using data from a breach of patreon.com. This corroborates previous reporting by the Danish research collective Redox, which identified Natteulven as Mikkel Hangaard and a member of Danskernes Parti. 

A November 27, 2015 Iron March message from Slavros to Natt shows Slavros telling Natt that “there is a fucking black friday sale by our host” and to “buy the NOOSE domain/host.” The domain was registered 3 days later on November 30, 2015 according to WHOIS History API. Natt was the Iron March user mentioned in the first article who messaged Zeiger on Skype after Iron March was taken down, saying, regarding Iron March “Keep this between us. But we have all the the [sic] material. It is not all deleted. We will rebuild everything. But, without slavros.” Decoherence Media was unable to determine how the Iron March and Rope Culture web servers and admin databases ended up in the publicly available torrent archive.

Another December 2015 message from Zeiger suggests Hangaard submitted a tax form to the company that Iron March used to publish their books.

To our knowledge, Hangaard’s involvement in Rope Culture and Iron March has not previously been reported.

Decoherence Media reached out to Hangaard by email, but received no reply by publication.

Decoherence Media reached out to Gabriel Chaput by email for comment on his Skype messages, but he did not reply by publication.

Megan Squire, the former Deputy Director for Data Analytics and OSINT for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Decoherence Media that shows like “Mysterium Fasces” and “The Hanged Fool” are vestiges of an earlier era of far-right podcasts. "The big shift was the addition of video and in-the-moment donations. That really changed the relationship between host and guest…it’s like tipping, think about an exotic dancer where based on the moves you make you get paid in real-time," she said.

Emails 

Among the most intriguing sources of new information from the Rope Culture web server is the collection of hundreds of private emails sent to the admin email address, which include the sender's email address, associated name, IP address, subject line, attachments, attachment metadata, and content. Neo-fascist fans wanting to contribute pieces to the website, exclamations of support for the project, curious readers with questions, an occasional media request, and a good amount of spam comprise the bulk of the emails.

Decoherence Media identified several individuals associated with the Rope Culture data based on these emails and corresponding attachment files.

Lukas Baltrušis Baltrušaitis/Teliavelis

Members of Skydas, a Lithuanian National Socialist group affiliated with Iron March, appeared to interact frequently with head editor Slavros. Group members were interviewed on episode #10 of “Mysterium Fasces,” and the group submitted a written “exclusive expose” on itself as an article. On May 10, 2016, a person using the email address [email protected] sent a Word document containing a draft of the article whose metadata attributed authorship to a “Baltrušis Baltrušaitis Lukas.” 

The Iron March user Teliavelis, who discussed the Skydas story with Slavros in private messages, registered for the forum with the email address “[email protected].” EPIEOS, a search engine that allows users to look up information associated with an email, returned the name Lukas Baltrušis Baltrušaitis for the address. This user also described themselves as a “self-educated video creator” and used an IP address that could be traced to the Lithuanian city of Kaunas.

Interestingly, an individual named Lukas Baltrušis Baltrušaitis appeared in a 2015 video posted by the YouTube account Lietuvių tautinio jaunimo sąjunga (Lithuanian National Youth Union or LTJS). LTJS is a far-right nationalist organization whose members are reported to have founded Skydas. In the video, Baltrušaitis is referred to as the “Kaunas branch chairman” (“Kauno skyriaus pirmininkas”) of LTJS. 

Decoherence Media also found Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn accounts with the name Lukas Baltrušis Baltrušaitis. The Facebook page lists his employer as “Voxchaos” and the YouTube and Instagram accounts list “Voxchaos” in their description.

In addition, Decoherence Media identified a VKontakte account under the name Lukas Baltrušis Baltrušaitis. The account followed a page for the Lithuanian branch of neo-Nazi organization Misanthropic Division, and its friends list includes Benjamin Raymond, the founder of the banned UK neo-Nazi terrorist organization National Action. According to vk.watch (a website that archives historical snapshots of VKontakte accounts), an earlier profile picture for this VK account shows a man who looks similar to Baltrušaitis holding an LTJS flag.

Baltrušaitis told Decoherence Media, in a message through his LinkedIn account, that “Rope Culture stuff is old news,” and that claims about him are “inaccurate and based on misinterpretations of old online material.”

Travis Frey/In Hoc Signo Vinces

Email attachment metadata corroborates VICE’s identification of Iron March user In Hoc Signo Vinces as Travis Frey, the former captain of a privately run US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Nevada. On June 2, 2017, [email protected] (which In Hoc Signo Vinces used to register their Iron March account) sent an article submission to the Rope Culture admin email address via an attached Word document titled “The Greater Holy War,” listing the “In Hoc Signo Vinces” username in both the email body and the document. The document’s metadata named the author as “FreyH ome,” which matches Frey’s last name. The article submission calls upon fascists to “wage the inner Jihad” through prayer, weightlifting, and abstaining from pornography. The article was never published and the email never replied to. 

Decoherence Media reached out to Travis Frey for comment but received no reply before publication.

Nathan Larson

Another email from the Rope Culture server, sent on August 5, 2017 from the address [email protected], sought support and signatures for a petition to allow white nationalist mass shooter Dylann Roof to run for a seat in the United States House of Representatives. This email address appeared in a Virginia Libertarian Party newsletter as a contact for Nathaniel Daniel Larson, a failed politician and pedophilia advocate. The email address was also used to create a Medium account. The only account it followed was far-right neo-reactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin. 

Larson wrote that Roof liked the March 2017 NOOSE article “VIOLENCE” by Maxwell Macro, which praised him and other white nationalist mass shooters like Anders Brevik. Larson claims Roof said in a letter to him: "I enjoyed that article. Whoever wrote it must be a very enlightened individual." Larson had earlier praised Roof in his blog, calling his attack “a simple and elegant solution.” Larson died on September 18, 2022 while being held in federal custody in California on charges including sexual exploitation of a minor and distribution of child pornography. Decoherence Media could not confirm Larson’s correspondence with Roof.

Decoherence Media reached out to Dylann Roof, at the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute and through his lawyer's office, but received no reply by publication.

Decoherence Media reached out to the Virginia Libertarian Party—which expelled Larson in 2017—by email, but received no reply from their spokesperson before publication.

Maxwell Macro

Maxwell Macro is the former treasurer of the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP), a now-inactive American neo-Nazi political party. Messages he wrote on the TWP Discord server are archived by the nonprofit media organization Unicorn Riot. Macro sent an email on January 24, 2016 from the address [email protected] pitching two articles that “NOOSE” published as “CONTRA ALTRIGHT” and “TRUMPCUCKS.” Macro said he was referred to Rope Culture by Iron March user Growth of the Soil. Macro pitched another article, later published as “THERE ARE NO ‘GOOD JEWS‘," on May 1, 2016. Rope Culture subsequently added Macro to its staff page as its first “Contributor” between June and July 2016. 

Decoherence Media reached out to Maxwell Macro for comment, but received no reply before publication.

Matthew Heimbach

Traditionalist Worker Party founder Matthew Warren Heimbach sent an email to Rope Culture on February 18, 2017 pitching a 5,600-word article called “My Journey from Conservatism to National Socialism,” which begins with a quote by Chinese philosopher Laozi and ends with the phrase “Hail Victory.” The article was never published and the email never replied to.

The email was sent from the address [email protected], matching the email address for the Iron March user MatthewHeimbach. This email address also appeared in 2017 court documents where Heimbach was charged with harassing a Black protester at a rally for US President Donald Trump.

Decoherence Media reached out to Matthew Heimbach for comment, but our email went unanswered.

Decoherence Media has created a tool that organizes and simplifies searching both the Rope Culture and Iron March datasets. Anyone interested in exploring this database can access the information at the FashyLeaks website.