A reporter investigated neo-Nazis. Then they came to his house in masks.

A reporter investigated neo-Nazis. Then they came to his house in masks.

Jordan Green reports on extremists for the news website Raw Story, where his stories have included alleged neo-Nazis joining the U.S. military or protesting at drag shows. For the past few months, he has worked on an investigation into a teenage gang that local police had linked to a spate of racist vandalism, including a brick attack on a Jewish center in Pensacola, Fla.

As Green prepared to publish his story, neo-Nazis came to his house.

Green’s reporting had found that the Pensacola gang was part of a larger online network known as 2119 Blood and Soil Crew, with members operating in several states. On Feb. 10, five people connected to 2119 appeared outside his home in Greensboro, N.C., according to Green, as well as photos the group itself shared on social media.

Some wore skull face masks, a common accessory for violent neo-Nazi groups, according to the photos they posted on Telegram, a social media messaging app popular with far-right extremists. One had a shirt with a skull and a message praising the Einsatzkommando, German death squads in the Holocaust. Another held a sign aimed at Green: “Freedom of press does not equal freedom from consequences.”

Before leaving, the group held up lit flares and made “sieg heil” gestures, the photos showed. Afterward, members of the group posed happily in a picture posted to social media at a marker for the “Greensboro Massacre,” the site where white supremacists fatally shot five labor organizers in 1979.

“Opposition move freely when they feel immune,” a member posted on the group’s Telegram account. “Remove that privilege.”

The intended message was obvious to Green: Stop reporting on 2119. But Green hasn’t been deterred. On Tuesday, Raw Story published Green’s investigation into 2119, as well as Green’s account of the attempted intimidation.

“The amount of harassment and threats kind of validates the importance of the story,” Green told The Washington Post.

The attacks on Green represent an increasingly common tactic by extremist groups against journalists who seek to uncover their activities.

In 2020, federal prosecutors charged five alleged members of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division with intimidating a ProPublica reporter and other journalists covering the group by “swatting” them, or faking emergency calls to police to provoke a violent response against their targets. In 2023, the former head of another neo-Nazi group was charged with making death threats toward a reporter, which included allegedly sending an image of a gun aimed at the reporter’s face.

In an email to The Post, the 2119 group insisted that its actions didn’t constitute harassment and claimed that Green’s reporting “could damage the lives and reputations of many well-respected men within their communities.” Green’s article identifies several alleged members of 2119 by name, and it reports that the FBI is investigating the group.

The brief neo-Nazi rally outside Green’s house wasn’t the first time he believes members of 2119 visited his neighborhood. In January, a pizza Green hadn’t ordered was delivered to his home. As Green was talking to the delivery man, an unknown person snapped a picture of him using a long-distance camera. The surreptitiously taken image was soon posted on a Telegram channel used by the 2119 group, suggesting that a member had ordered the pizza, then waited nearby to take the picture.

Green said he first came across the 2119 group on “Terrorgram,” a terrorism-themed Telegram subculture, in 2022. His investigation accelerated last winter, and months before members showed up at his door, he realized that his address, photo and other personal information were being circulated by 2119 members on Telegram. One Telegram post claimed that Green had been “harassing our boys.”

In late December, Green said, he received a call from a 2119 member warning him that he was being “watched by international ‘brickstas’” — a term that members have claimed for themselves since the 2023 brick attack on the Pensacola Jewish center.

“They want to stop journalists from writing about them, because their secrecy allows them to carry out a campaign of intimidation against vulnerable members of our society,” Green said.

Green declined to comment on whether police are investigating the case. Raw Story editor in chief Dave Levinthal told The Post that “law enforcement is aware of this matter.”

Since last year, Raw Story has focused more on investigative reporting, according to Levinthal. For Green, that has meant an expanded budget for travel and open records requests.

“This has been an incredible ordeal for Jordan, and unfortunately it’s emblematic of what many reporters across the United States have had to deal with in pursuing journalism in the public interest,” Levinthal said.