The rise and fall of Automata

Note on methodology: Decoherence Media obtained, verified, and analyzed five years of material compiled by independent researchers to tell the story of Andrew Nary, Automata, and the group of neo-Nazi activists he organized with. Open-source methods combined with traditional reporting made it possible to trace Nary's path from a radicalized high school senior to his arrest on firearms trafficking charges nearly six years later. Exports and screenshots of Telegram channels and chats are the most common source used throughout the article, but social media content, public records, legal documents, and third-party archiving platforms were also used.

Andrew Nary and Aiden Cuevas were spooked. They were listening to a podcast about an FBI informant and thought the setup sounded uncomfortably familiar: the day before, in an abandoned parking lot off Highway 72 in northern Alabama, Cuevas allegedly handed $1,000 in cash to a man claiming he could sell them firearms with obliterated serial numbers—a federal felony. The two met with the seller again the next day, asked a lot of questions, and a reassured Cuevas allegedly gave him another $500 for more firearms. Nary and Cuevas, two men in their early 20s with deep ties to the neo-Nazi movement, allegedly intended to use the weapons, in part, to "take out" a former associate of theirs who they suspected of being a government source.

On the morning of January 20, 2026, Cuevas traveled across the state line, with Nary allegedly trailing him in a “shadow car” as a lookout, to a hotel in Tennessee to meet the seller to pick up the weapons. The seller was, in fact, an undercover officer, and Cuevas was immediately arrested. 

Nary was arrested an hour later after surveillance teams observed him returning to the house he shared with Cuevas. After running into the house and leaving again in his car, Nary was stopped by a task force officer. Both were charged with conspiracy to traffic in firearms and are being held, without bond, in separate detention centers. They have both entered pleas of not guilty.

As a teenager, Nary founded Automata, a neo-Nazi organization that promoted paramilitary training and sought to create an ethnostate in North Carolina. At Nary’s detention hearing on January 23, Joint Terrorism Task Force Investigator Chris Hluzek testified that members of Automata had previously been arrested on charges of weapons trafficking and other violent offenses. According to filings, prosecutors have already produced roughly 20,000 pages of paper evidence, with some four terabytes of digital discovery expected.

Automata was the first of many groups that Nary—the son of a revivalist preacher—would start or organize alongside in the Southeast. 

Homegrown

When Andrew Nary was young, his parents divorced and both remarried. The now 24-year-old grew up between two financially well-to-do, prominent religious households. As a young teen, his mother and stepfather brought him to meet Rafael Cruz—the right-wing evangelical pastor and father of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. Dressed in a red polo shirt tucked into khaki pants, Andrew looked attentively at Mr. Cruz as he spoke. 

Andrew attended a private Christian K-12 school whose tuition today is nearly $10,000 per year. He was a senior in high school when the world went on lockdown to prevent the deadly spread of COVID-19 in 2020. 

According to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, Nary registered as a Libertarian in 2024. His father is a revivalist preacher and founder of a religious non-profit whose mission is “to preach and teach the Gospel of Kingdom in such a way that men come alive to God and burn with passion for his Son Jesus Christ.” 

In the summer of 2021, someone posted on the Facebook page of Nary’s father writing that his son was running a neo-Nazi group called Automata. The comment was quickly deleted, but not before a picture was taken of it. Andrew, using the alias “Director,” dropped the picture of it into Automata’s member-only chat. 

Andrew’s mother has long worked as an executive for religious nonprofits, in positions mentoring “women of influence” and “high-potential Christian leaders.” The website of one organization she works with says, "God is calling us to connect women with their unique Kingdom assignment." She also set up a consulting group with Andrew’s stepfather, an engineer in the auto-racing industry. 

When Juneteenth became recognized as a federal holiday five years ago, Andrew shared a quote he attributed to his stepfather in Automata’s members-only chat: “we got another federal holiday- the way I see it, (((do the funny))) to 6 other of those fuckers and we’ll have a whole week off.”

At Nary’s detention hearing in January 2026, his mother and stepfather agreed to serve as custodians if he were granted release, and allow him to return to their residence in North Carolina. However, the judge decided against it, citing his participation in a “racially-motivated extremist violence group,” and remanded him to the custody of the U.S. Marshal.

Decoherence Media reached out to Andrew’s mother, father, and stepfather but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Interactive timeline of key events in the history of Andrew Nary and Automata. Created by Decoherence Media using Timeline JS.

Nary’s radicalization

“I created Automata in 2020,” Nary wrote under the alias “john” in the summer of 2023 in a neo-Nazi Telegram chat called Hall of Heroes. Investigator Hluzek confirmed in testimony at the detention hearing that Nary created the group Automata along with another individual using the alias “Roman.” The goal of the group, Hluzek described, was to create a white ethnostate with a smaller government.

Nary organized with the white supremacist group White Lives Matter early on and was even an admin for the North Carolina chapter’s Telegram chat. He left the group by July 2021, writing in the Automata chat: “I’ve left White lives matter. I honestly despise them.”

In Automata’s chat, he mentioned planning to enlist in the U.S. National Guard in August 2021 and two summers later, he wrote in another chat that he was troubled about white people dying in the Ukraine-Russia war, calling it “the tragedy of brother wars.” “Thats why I'm going,” he wrote, “The women and children must be saved.”

Photos he posted online of himself show the influence of neo-Nazi accelerationist aesthetics popularized by the Atomwaffen Division (AWD): camouflage military fatigues paired with a signature skull mask. Automata’s first flag was in the same style as AWD’s, and Nary briefly used the same alias as their founder, Brandon Russell: Ouroboros. 

Jeff Tischauser, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Decoherence Media, “People are radicalized into the movement many ways. A desire for belonging, perceived victimhood, and economic resentment leads to radicalization…how we are socialized at an early age helps to establish our worldview as adults, how we imagine what's right and wrong and how we think about our identity.” Tischauser continued, “I think what's notable here is that we don't have more Nary's running around. Because guys like Nary come to imagine their parent's conservatism as being too soft and too cowardly to do what needs to be done to save the white race and found more extreme alternatives in the white power movement.”

Automata

With inspiration from Jack Donovan’s book “The Way of Men,” Nary founded Automata in 2020 as a Christian-based, white power militia group with accelerationist aesthetics. Nary shared a PDF of the book in the group’s Telegram chat writing: “this is the book that really inspired this groups [sic] creation.” The group started with cells in North Carolina and Florida which met up in person for hikes and campouts, and operated online primarily using Discord and Telegram. Automata’s symbology, Decoherence Media has found, appears to be borrowed from a fictional series published by a niche wiki-based writing collective about a cult that worships the God of mechanization.

Nary began recruiting for his own whites-only micronation on property in North Carolina, which he planned to call Skouria. In a June 2021 Telegram post, Nary described his group as a “potentially large city-state in infancy,” and even considered starting its own church. His plans for Skouria combined real-world organizing with fantasy worldbuilding. On May 17, 2021, an account with username "SkourianPride121" created a page on the Micronations wiki for the Autonomous City-State of Skouria, a Totalitarian Theocracy with a population of 33, led by "The Director" Andrea Narius. In a Civic Sector Decree issued from the Skourian Civic Assembly, Nary required affiliates to donate $10 per month plus 2% of their paycheck as land tax toward Skouria's acquisition. Nary, a self-described monarchist, signed the document "His Lordship."

Automata considered several lots for this project before setting their eyes on a 24-acre plot of undeveloped land just north of the intersection of State Road 1752 and Cedar Farms Road in Tuckasegee, North Carolina. In June 2021 chats, Nary estimated Automata’s goals to take about four or five years to accomplish and during this time, he would coordinate buying land and building infrastructure. 

The group released its official guidelines as a 7-page PDF on May 8, 2021 which emphasized following orders and saluting superiors properly. For example, according to “Section Ib” (how a member should speak to a superior): “The lower enlisted should come to a position of attention, heels together at a 45 degree angle, hands directly pointing down at his sides.” It details avoiding the many forms of perceived degeneracy (such as “gay pride,” “use of Jewish owned media,” and "hedonistic indulgence and gluttony”). “Section IIIa” includes a code of conduct for on and offline behavior (for example: “Gay jokes are permitted as long as they remain jokes” and “Casual racism is permitted so long as it remains casual”). All disciplinary actions (pushups, demotion, ban), as described in “Section IVb,” are to be carried out by the Preservation Sector.

Automata’s chain of command was outlined in their official guidelines and discussed in the group chat. It naturally placed Nary on top as the “Director” of the Authoritative Command. His “Vice Director” was a person sometimes referred to as “Erik” and claimed to be a White Lives Matter activist living in Massachusetts who was also active in the National Guard. “Roman,” from Florida and who was also referred to informally as “Greg,” was issued the leadership role of “Oversight.” 

The final “general orders” firmly state the group’s commitment to white supremacy: “I will honor the 14 and holdfast to the sovereignty of my people and homeland,” a reference to the white supremacist slogan Fourteen Words.

Nary previewed several Automata documents—including the group’s official guidelines and propaganda pieces he composed—-in the group chat. One document had a short list of organizations that were “friendly” to Automata, and another list of “hostile” groups had “ANTIFA (Anti-Facist [sic] Movement)” at the top.

The domain “automatausa.org” was registered in April 2021. The website described Automata’s mission as “to bring about a new age of cultural enlightenment; a new classical period, for the sake of good change and preservation of our identity as a people.” None of the site’s content contained overt neo-Nazi imagery or rhetoric, other than a “Hail to Victory” on the “Donate” page.

Automata’s early Telegram vetting chat described the group’s aim as establishing a constitutional militia and ultimately a “society that is self sustaining, that defends it’s [sic] sovereignty and provides for it’s [sic] residents.” Exports that Decoherence Media reviewed show no more than a dozen accounts were ever in the vetting chat at a given time.

One member, using the alias “Tropolski” and claiming to live in Florida wrote: “We could remake the boy scouts/Hitlers youth.” Nary, writing under an alias, responded: “That’s basically what we’re doing, actually. That’s exactly what we’re doing.”

While Nary was already 18 years old when Automata first began organizing, most members were minors. “We need to find more 17 and 18 yr olds,” he wrote in July 2021 to 26 other members. “Still sorta fresh but not too fresh.” The group discussed strategically planning actions that their parents would approve of, with the goal of diverting suspicions about fascist activity.

“Alright ill [sic] have to hold off on donating. I cant get a job without the vaccine my parents said so im limited to lawn mowing.”
— Tropolski (Telegram, June 2021)

“I’m 17 and i can’t go to the training.”
— RapeJetzt (Telegram, June 2021)

“I get like 20 dollars for chore money every other week. I can send you 10 dollars every two weeks...if no one meets my parents I can’t go.”
— General MacArthur (Telegram, July 2021)

“It just occurred to me almost all of us active are underage.”
— I have Grammarly (Telegram, June 2021)

“Hey bros, so basically, my mom is making me install some shit on my phone and it’s gonna monitor everything 24/7 so I gotta uninstall this shit.”
— . (Telegram, July 2021)

Nary discussing homeless outreach

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Nary disussing religion

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Nary speaks about some of Automata’s organizational goals in voice memos uploaded to Telegram during the summer of 2021. He discusses activities such as feeding white homeless people with youth members as a way to create legitimacy in the eyes of the public and the youth members' parents, and his views on religion and “God’s will.” Audio samples combined by Decoherence Media.

Automata disbanded in mid-2021, but its core endured. For the next two years, former members networked and organized with other neo-Nazi groups, including Tennessee Active Club, Blood Tribe, and 2119 Crew.

764 intersection

A close examination of archived Telegram chats reveals a significant early intersection between Automata and 764, a sextortion network that would become notorious in the following years. 764 members prey on each other and their victims, extorting them into self-harm, animal abuse, producing child sexual abuse material, and in several cases, suicide.

In July 2021, some participants in Automata chats discussed the emergence of 764. At least three members of Automata, including “Roman,” “MamaGore,” and Kai Nix who used the alias “Italy Redacted” were in a 764-adjacent extortion chat called ellavator chat. 

Notably, the creator of 764, Bradley Cadenhead, was among the members in ellavator chat, and would be arrested the next month, ultimately pleading guilty to nine counts of possessing child pornography and sentenced to 80 years in prison. 

Ellavator chat has been described by the 764 community as being responsible for making 764 “known to natsoc telegram.”

Canada has since designated the 764 network a terrorist entity, and the FBI reportedly considers the network a “tier one” terrorism threat, with more than 500 764-related FBI cases spanning all 50 states.

The soldier

Kai Liam Nix, at the age of 20, was an active-duty U.S. Army soldier when he was indicted on August 14, 2024 for unlawful firearms trafficking and making false statements to the government. Three years earlier, at the age of 17, he was already a member of at least three far-right groups: Automata, White Lives Matter, and Patriot Front.

Using multiple aliases in chats—including “Italy Redacted”—Nix was not shy to disclose his dual membership in Patriot Front, a U.S. based neo-fascist group. He posted photos of his Patriot Front uniform and propaganda in Automata chats and even reported, in real time, his participation in a July 2021 Patriot Front march in Philadelphia and a subsequent assault on a bystander. 

Decoherence Media reached out to Kai Nix but did not receive a reply by the time of publication. Nix pleaded guilty in September 2025 to charges related to unlawful firearms trafficking and making a false statement to the government. On August 18, he was sentenced to five months imprisonment, five months home detention, and three years supervised release.

Just prior to Nix’s march on Philadelphia, Nary issued a statement on behalf of Automata discouraging his members from participating in other groups. 

Auto Corps

Automata reemerged in the summer of 2023. In August, they began recruiting again with a new Telegram channel called Auto Corps where they attempted to present themselves as a "para-environmental preparedness and education group." Automata posted new and recycled propaganda on social media, and planned nature outings and trainings. 

Aiden Cuevas, a former member of 2119 Crew, was an early promoter of Automata’s resurgence. Videos and Reddit comments place his involvement with 2119 Crew as early as December 2022, when he was 17. He had drawn law enforcement attention in July 2021, when sheriff's deputies responding to a domestic dispute noticed Nazi symbols and referred the matter to federal authorities, Joint Terrorism Task Force Investigator Hluzek testified at Nary’s 2026 detention hearing.

Nary met Cuevas in person for the first time on May 29, 2023, for what Investigator Hluzek would describe in testimony as a paramilitary camping event in Pisgah National Forest, North Carolina. According to the court's official transcript, attendees of this event intended to discuss "plans for the potential collapse of society." Under ten people showed up, instead of the twenty-plus to one hundred expected.

"Roman," who Investigator Hluzek identified as a co-founder of Automata, remained in contact with the network years after the group's first collapse. In December 2024, a Telegram channel that published private messages from Tennessee Active Club members shared a voice chat from 2023 between Nary, Cuevas, and Roman. In the audio clip, Roman pressed Cuevas to delete photos of him that could compromise his planned U.S. Army enlistment. Roman has not been named in legal documents, or charged in this federal case, and his real identity remains unconfirmed at the time this article was published.

Another Automata member named Brandon Crews was active in the Telegram chat Hall of Heroes with Nary and Cuevas. When Nary arrived in the chat in July 2023, writing under the alias of "john," he spoke highly of Cuevas and disclosed that he and Crews worked at a residential mold-remediation business together. Nary wrote that he wanted to start a "100% white contract and subcontract business" with Crews. Cuevas chimed in attesting to a pre-existing in-person friendship with Crews.

Decoherence Media reached out to Brandon Crews with a request for comment, but did not receive a reply by the time of publication.

That same month, Cuevas spun up Fascher Magazine, an Alabama-based Telegram channel whose profile description read ”Sk88ters get together for activism and propaganda distribution”—the “88” being a reference to a white supremacist code for “Heil Hitler.” One message Cuevas posted in the attached chat told a newcomer: "Need to get you hooked up with the automata boys."

Two men who would later appear in court documents from Nary and Cuevas's 2026 firearms trafficking case were also in the Fascher Magazine chat. Ryan Patrick—a former Proud Boy and affiliate of the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe who, according to court documents, used the alias "Finnegus"—was a chat co-administrator. Logan Gulbranson, then a teenager with a swastika tattoo on his chest, was a chat participant.

In January 2025, Gulbranson—along with Cuevas and Crews—were arrested on suspicion of trespass and burglary after the group allegedly entered a secure Mississippi industrial site that includes nuclear power plant infrastructure. No indictments have been entered in the case at the time of publication.

Attempts to reach Logan Gulbranson with a request for comment were unsuccessful.

The proliferation of chats and organizations is common in these neo-Nazi communities, Jared Holt, a senior researcher at Open Measures, an open-source threat intelligence and social media analysis platform, told Decoherence Media. "If tracking extremist movements for the last decade has taught me anything, it's that the figures, organizations, and stylings of these spaces are highly disposable," Holt said, "the branding and strategies extremist movements adopt are fluid, but the driver of that activity is constant."

Automata’s revival was short-lived, and by late 2023 its organizers shifted focus to newer projects.

Active Club organizing

The new version of Automata that reemerged in 2023 shared considerable organizational overlap with the rapidly growing Active Club network, a decentralized cadre of neo-Nazi physical fitness enthusiasts and entrepreneurs of a fascist lifestyle brand who engage in combat sports. Automata organized events with several Active Club chapters, including the Tennessee and Southern Sons chapters.

Holt told Decoherence Media, “The concept of 'active clubs' spread through harder-edged pockets of the online white supremacist movement at a time when its future felt uncertain. The movement and its supporters feared increased attention from law enforcement, and many prominent groups effectively imploded amid disputes between their leaders. Active clubs were conceptualized as an answer to these problems, and were initially presented as a 'model' that the movement could adopt when forming localized groups.” 

In the summer of 2023, Automata started its own Active Club chapter in North Carolina—Old North Active Club (ONAC). Cuevas wrote under the alias "Bozak" in Hall of Heroes that "The automata guys are starting an AC in north [sic] Carolina." They launched the channel on July 10, 2023 by reposting a Tennessee Active Club group photo tagging Old North and captioned: "Trained with members of the TN AC last Sunday."

“Finnegus” was an administrator of the Old North Active Club Telegram channel, and Nary administered the channel's attached chat under the pseudonyms “John” and "Lord of the West." ONAC garnered the support of regional active clubs both on and offline. South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee chapters boosted ONAC on Telegram. In December 2024, photos of ONAC members practicing Muay Thai and sparring outdoors in Hendersonville, North Carolina were posted to Telegram by the South Carolina-based Palmetto Active Club, which would absorb ONAC by the end of that year.

In October 2023, both Hall of Heroes and Tennessee Active Club reposted a message that recommended keeping Cuevas out of chats because he "talks so much about internal irl info that he's basically a snitch.”

North ‘Bama Brigade

On May 30, 2024, Nary-affiliated Telegram channels boosted a recruitment message for the North ‘Bama Brigade—described as looking "for young white men to train” and to “start a community on a property here in North Alabama and North East [sic] Mississippi."

According to the official transcript from the detention hearing, before Nary’s January arrest, Nary was an online participant in the North ‘Bama Brigade (NBB) Telegram chat—a group created in May 2024 by the then-teenaged Cuevas. Investigator Hluzek described NBB as "a Telegram group that originally stemmed from a group called the 2119 Crew, which was aligned with the Tennessee Active Club." The active club, he testified, was an organizational anchor from which the North ‘Bama Brigade emerged. 

Based on Telegram chat exports, the NBB chat never had more than 40 participants. Of these, Decoherence Media was able to identify two with ties to the transnational neo-Nazi network The Base, which is considered a terrorist entity by Canada and the European Union. A Bulgarian member of The Base using the alias “Buron” was regularly active in the chat. Another account going by “Skin,” from England, posted self-identifying photos in the chat and was active in other neo-Nazi chats composed of members from the Dutch cell of The Base.

Members of NBB were active together offline as well, including traveling to Georgia for “Aryan Fest” in October 2024, hosted by the neo-Nazi Aryan Freedom Network. 

North ‘Bama Brigade became the mature form of what Automata had first sketched in 2020. Where Nary's teenage group had drawn maps of a micronation, NBB recruited young white men to build a physical pro-white community in northern Alabama—"operating as one machine.” The group kept a private channel, NBB DEFFINED, described in Investigator Hluzek's testimony as "a private channel for the goal of discreetly preparing organizational insurgency." 

Race City Nationalists

By January 2025, Nary had launched a new Telegram channel called Race City Nationalists. In the channel’s description, Nary wrote that it was a “New Community group” based in Mooresville, North Carolina—a town nicknamed Race City for its long association with NASCAR and the auto-racing industry. The channel's inaugural image, posted January 1, 2025, features a stylized black and white photograph of Nary wearing a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses, a fasces symbol in the background, and captioned: "Victory of the People." An altered version of the same photograph was posted that day on Nary's public Facebook page, with the caption and fasces cropped out.

In March 2025, Nary was advertising a “Faith & Fitness” meet up on Facebook under his real name. This time organizing as “Lake Norman Yovng Mens Gvild” and targeting young men aged 18 to 30 in Mooresville. The event was described in Nary’s post as a meet and greet with refreshments, physical exercises, scripture study, and prayer.

Checkmate

Cuevas had come to believe that Ryan Patrick, the former Proud Boy, was a snitch. By November 2024, Cuevas was meeting regularly with the undercover officer he would later try to purchase illegal firearms from. In a meeting with the undercover officer that month, Investigator Hluzek testified that Cuevas described Patrick as one of the “pawns that needed to be taken off the board."

In June 2025, Cuevas claimed in a large Telegram chat that Kai Nix had been "stealing guns with a federal informant" and had "ratted for reduced sentence too," referencing Nix’s indictment, as well as "PY"—Patriot Youth, a Patriot Front youth recruitment project he claimed Nix had helped run. That evening Cuevas went further writing: "The federal informant that snitched on him in the first place is a bloodtribe guy," tagging Patrick’s Telegram account “@Finnegus” and adding that Kai told him that.

At a January 12, 2026 meeting to exchange money for the illegal weapons, Nary—referring to Patrick by his alias—told the undercover officer that “Finnegus” was someone "who has to be handled or dealt with," Investigator Hluzek testified. Just over a week later, Nary and Cuevas were arrested.

Ryan Patrick told Decoherence Media, “I have no current involvement, affiliation, communication, or participation with Andrew Nary or any extremist groups associated with him. That part of my life is behind me, and I intend to keep it there. I have no interest in returning to those circles or maintaining ties with the individuals involved. I have no further comment on my past associations or interactions with those connected to this matter.”

During a search warrant execution of Nary’s room at the Alabama residence he lived at with Cuevas and Cuevas’ girlfriend, law enforcement found Nazi flags hanging on a wall in a closet and a black backpack which contained large rocks and bottles of urine, Investigator Hluzek testified.

Decoherence Media reached out to Aiden Cuevas but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Logan Gulbranson and a fourth unidentified person mentioned in the criminal complaint, the two other alleged intended recipients of the trafficked firearms, have not been charged.

Andrew Nary was remanded to Cullman County Detention Center and Aiden Cuevas to Morgan County Jail. Both are awaiting a status conference scheduled for September 2nd. 

Decoherence Media reached out to Andrew Nary but did not receive a response by time of publication. 

Appalachia Research Club contributed research to this article.