June 17, 2022
Spencer Thomas Simpson, aka "David WA"
Spencer Thomas Simpson is a member of the neo-Nazi, neo-fascist, white-supremacist group Patriot Front (PF). He operates under the name "David WA" and lives in Ellensburg, WA.
Simpson is highly active and has attended several Patriot Front banner drops, stencilings, hikes, and more. He helped deface the "Respect and Love Olympia" mural in October 2021, and was also present at the recent December 4th fascist march in Washington, DC. Spencer was arrested on June 11th, 2022, during an attempted Patriot Front flash mob intending to intimidate and disrupt a Pride event in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.1
Patriot Front is known for holding fascist flash mobs in major cities, which are planned in secret so members can march without any real confrontation. The group is an offshoot of Vanguard America, a fascist organization that fell apart after the deadly "Unite the Right" rally on August 12th, 2017. Vanguard America gained significant attention after that event when it was revealed that James Alex Fields had marched with them before driving his car into a crowd and killing Heather Heyer.
While Patriot Front does not yet have a body count themselves, fascism as a philosophy is inherently violent and is characterized by forcible suppression of opposition. Members of PF do discuss committing violence against their political opposition and marginalized groups. Spencer Simpson trained to be a part of a shield team for the December 4th fascist march after his Network Director, Colton Michael Brown, set an expectation those team members might need to commit assault against people of color at PF events.
Background
Spencer Simpson joined Patriot Front in late 2020, after being vetted by Stephen Trimboli and Colton Michael Brown around November.
He is known for his extreme social awkwardness, public and private breakdowns, and incel-like behaviors. Simpson has become an in-joke among his region for being so subservient to his Network Director that he would, and has, peed in a bottle on the highway rather than be a mere few minutes late to a meeting.
His loyalty to Colton Brown defines his relationship to the collective. Simpson follows his leader at cost to himself, driving frequently over the Cascades to attend events. When he's late or commits any minor infraction, he demands Brown punish him. In return, Brown describes Simpson as his most loyal and well-behaved member. Simpson stays attached to Brown at any action they both attend. Brown trusts Simpson to a high degree and even invites Spencer to stay over at his own house prior to actions.
In the following video, he even follows Brown over a barbed-wired pedestrian bridge over a highway to place a banner in Burien, WA. Shortly after placing this banner, the group had to run away after sighting police driving up to the overpass. Simpson is seen wearing a sweatshirt with a black sun, a neo-Nazi symbol.
As described in our previous article, Brown uses his position to pressure aimless young white men (and occasionally minors) into commiting hate crimes for the organization. Brown trains the insecure Simpson by asking him to plan actions on the east side of the mountains. As Spencer is miles and hours of driving away from other members in the network, Brown asks him to scout his area and make local plans for the racist group to drop banners or put up white nationalist posters.
Simpson shows affection to his racist mentor by giving him gifts, including a matching sweatshirt with neo-Nazi symbols and a memoir by a Nazi collaborator and Waffen-SS volunteer.
Simpson gained some notoriety earlier this year after 17 hours of Patriot Front meeting audio was leaked by Unicorn Riot. In one clip featured on Twitter, Spencer Simpson compares Jews to Lucifer.
According to 'David WA', the point of Patriot Front's vandalism is to "show people that you can do something like this, and you can get away with it." He also refers to Jews as "Lucifer."
— Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) June 12, 2022
('David WA' planned and took part in the Oct. 2021 @cityofolympia pride mural vandalism.) pic.twitter.com/PoErsm0BJS
Notable Appearances With Patriot Front
Camp Muir Hike
In late August 2021, Network 8 hosted a camping event in the Mt. Rainier area, including a hike to Camp Muir, which was attended by current and former members from Washington, Oregon, and California. Patriot Front puts on events like these largely for propaganda purposes: they believe that showing their members enduring difficult hikes will demonstrate that Patriot Front is an organization that values brotherhood and has the strength to overcome challenges. These events usually include speeches and casual chats in which members repeat racial slurs, express admiration for fascism and Hitler, and share conspiracy theories about Jews.
Spencer Simpson was present for this hike and these speeches. He was photographed at the event in proximity to many other identified Patriot Front members.
Defacing "Respect & Love" Rainbow Mural in Olympia
Around 3:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 16th, members of Patriot Front vandalized a "Respect & Love Olympia" mural, covering it with white paint before stenciling over it with their nationalist slogan and links to their Nazi website. This effort involved weeks of planning with members from across the entire Pacific Northwest contingent of Patriot Front, as well as with knowledge and assistance from Thomas Rousseau. Spencer Simpson was present and involved in this action.
From the Journal of Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater (JOLT):
The Rainbow mural was created in 2014 as a community statement against hate crimes happening in Olympia, including several violent attacks outside Jake's, then Olympia's sole gay bar, according to Schlecht. (archive)
In calls leading up to the event, Colton Brown described the planned mural cover-up as the "biggest org-wide" for Patriot Front to date. Network 8 members, plus members of local non-network clusters, rehearsed the vandalism late on October 15th, 2021, at an abandoned brewery in Tumwater, WA.
Simpson can be seen holding the URL stencils upon walking into the brewery in the following video. He is wearing his typical neo-Nazi black sun sweatshirt.
The plan was to cover one side of the Olympia mural with one of their slogans, with the other side showing their website URL. Spaces in between were to be filled with various smaller stencils. At the Tumwater rehearsal, Brown had the membership split into groups, and Simpson's group would be responsible for spraying the URL stencil. In the video below, Spencer is heard at the rehearsal instructing Justin Michael O'Leary, along with Idaho member "Johnny ID," on how to quickly spray with the stencil. While Justin laments the challenge of trying to spray a legible design in a hurry, Simpson advises him to value speed over quality as "no one's going to notice driving by."2
Simpson's participation in the Olympia mural cover-up is documented at every step thanks to Patriot Front's insistence that all of their hate crimes be heavily photographed. After the Tumwater rehearsal Simpson changed his outfit, but can still be seen carrying the same Patriot Front web address stencil down the alley leading to the mural.
In the following video O'Leary is spraying blue paint while Simpson and "Johnny ID" hold the URL stencil, exactly as planned in the rehearsal.
National Event Preparation: Drilling and Sparring
Each regional PF network was expected to hold three drilling sessions between October and December 2021 in preparation for their December 4th fascist march. Network 8 members were only able to muster mandatory minimum attendance for two sessions in that time. Members practiced marching cadences and ran shield drills, essentially trying out for spots on the shield teams present at Patriot Front marches.
Thomas wants the public to view Patriot Front's shield teams as a purely defensive formation. However, in our previous article on Justin Michael O'Leary, we described how Network Director Colton Brown set the expectation that shield team members may end up proactively assaulting their opposition. In one audio clip, Brown recalled an encounter in Philadelphia between Patriot Front shield team members and people of color. He said that shield teams will not allow such encounters going forward, blames one particular crowd member for emboldening others, and states that any similar Black man at future events will get "dispatched, quickly."
At some point after hearing these expectations of violence from his Network Director, Spencer Simpson accepted a role on a shield team.
Targets of shield team engagement aren't just limited to private individuals. Brown makes it clear that both shield team members and flag bearers at the march should be prepared for the possibility of resisting arrest and forming their lines in ways that would ensure that they outnumber and exhaust any police that would attempt to approach targeted members.
Those holding flagpoles are expected to drop their flags and link arms, making it difficult for police or "antifa" to break their lines. A document obtained by Unicorn Riot (PDF) shows how the drills teach members to protect themselves from getting isolated from their group. Other members will act as aggressors, to "emulate the practice seen by some of snatching a supposed agitator away from his surroundings to deal with him individually."
During the first Network 8 drilling meetup, members interpret those "snatchers" to be police or antifascists. It is made clear that one purpose of the technique is to resist arrest. Members ask if the drill was only an "anti-cop" maneuver, which Brown says it isn't. Rank-and-file PNW members are shocked and upset to hear that flagbearers are expected to be passive, unlike shield teams.
In the following audio taken before a drill, Spencer Simpson is playing the role of a Patriot Front member being targeted by either antifascists or police, and the rest of the present group are tasked with protecting him.
While Brown is prone to misunderstanding or disobeying commands from Thomas Rousseau, leaked videos show that he is faithfully interpreting his leader's intentions. In the video below, Thomas himself instructs a line of pretend flagbearers, telling them to "link up." When Kieran "Patrick TX" Morris asks how they would do this while carrying flags, Thomas says their choice is "between getting arrested and dropping a flag." He agrees with another member's notion to just drop the flag in order to have arms free to enter a linked, braced position. Rousseau imagines how a "pig" trying to capture a Patriot Front member would quickly get outnumbered.
Later drilling sessions in November would see Network 8 repeating these drills, with more emphasis on sparring. Sparring, and exercise in general, are commonly exploited and documented as "activism" moments and used as propaganda to aim at the disaffected white boy neo-Nazi demographic. Patriot Front members capture these sessions through photos and videos, but most are left on the cutting room floor in efforts to find the rare nuggets that their untrained followers might misinterpret as any semblance of fighting skill.
Simpson took part in these sparring drills, which were expected to be useful for assessing those looking to become shield team members. Being able to defend themselves, given the possibility of confrontation, was deemed a must. In the following video, Spencer Simpson is seen sparring with Casey "Leo OR" Knuteson, both displaying terrible footwork and form. Colton Brown regardless would later advertise Spencer's sparring skills to Thomas and others to get him onto a shield team.
Yard Sign Theft and the Network 8 Thanksgiving Party
On November 20, 2021, Network 8 hosted a Thanksgiving party at an AirBnB near Darrington, WA. James Julius Johnson planned the event and rented the space, and Network Director Colton Brown wrote the invitation that was sent over chats to members from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.
Brown asked members to bring small 3D-printed stencils and yard signs. Acting Network Scribe Jacob Sundt came up with an idea: he spent weeks stealing yard signs from private property with the intent to paint over the signs with PF's white nationalist slogans, before placing them on city streets as cheap advertisements. He was killing two birds with one stone: by stealing signs, Patriot Front members wouldn't have to spend as much money on materials, and by targeting yard signs with pro-LGBTQ or pro-diversity slogans they were removing "oppositional messaging" from the community. Other stolen materials, such as flags, would go towards a yearly bonfire.
Network 8 was expecting a large turnout to their Thanksgiving event, so it was the perfect moment for members to collect all of their stolen materials in one place.
They used that weekend to paint over the yard signs, replacing messages of diversity with ethnonationalism. Like their other hate crimes, members made sure to document the results and shared a group picture with others.
Fascist March on Washington, DC
On December 4th, 2021, Patriot Front held a march in Washington, DC.
According to an image posted in the private "Shield Section Team Planning" chat in the Patriot Front server, Spencer was expected to be on a "screen" team responsible for protecting column flanks and camera operators, using small plastic shields. He would be overseen by his Network Director Colton Brown, himself taking orders from Kieran "Patrick TX" Morris, who lives with leader Thomas Rousseau in Haslet, TX.
Spencer Simpson was spotted at the event in his shield team role. When Patriot Front ran into logistical difficulties due to antifascist action during their march, members had to wait outside in the cold afterward for longer than they actually marched and chanted. Shield team members were some of the last to leave, as the group had been surrounded by scores of local police at Potomac Park. Patriot Front shield teams were prepared to stand off against police. Leaked photos from the event show Colton Brown's team with shields facing the police in Washington DC:
Attempted Disruption of a Pride Event in Coeur d'Alene
On June 11th, 2022, Patriot Front attempted to hold a confrontational flash mob at a pride event in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Their plans were interrupted after their box truck was pulled over and members were detained, unmasked, and arrested. Spencer Simpson attended the event wearing gear consistent with Patriot Front shield teams, including a "bump cap" attached to his hat via chinstrap in anticipation of confrontation.
Due to the arrest, Spencer Simpson's name and address were publicly posted, and his booking photo is readily available.
In addition, a vehicle matching Simpson's was taken by the police:
As part of their investigation, police seized two vehicles in addition to the U-Haul: a white Ford Ranger and a red Toyota Camry, both with Washington plates.
Police observed multiple homemade shields left behind in the bed of the white Ford, as well as a blue jacket bearing the Patriot Front logo. A similar jacket could be seen inside the Toyota, police said.
Spencer Simpson's white 2001 Ford Ranger with matching plates was found with Patriot Front shields in the back at a hotel. The red Toyota Camry, also spotted with Patriot Front gear, belongs to fellow Network 8 member Justin Michael O'Leary.
Identifying Information
Full name: Spencer Thomas Simpson
Birthdate: 9/20/2001
Address: 6051 Manastash Road, Ellensburg, WA 98926
Education
There have been online reports that Spencer Simpson is attending Central Washington University in Ellensburg, for history.
He is the son of two staff members of the university. Spencer's father is Bruce Simpson, an Employer Outreach Liaison at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, WA. Spencer gave his dad's number as his emergency contact to his Network Director. His mother, Gretchen Taussig-Simpson, is a lecturer.
You can reach CWU's Office of Student Rights & Responsibilities (OSRR) at (509) 963-1817 or Student.Conduct@cwu.edu.
Vehicles
2001 White Ford Ranger
Spencer Simpson parks his vehicle behind his parent's house, where it is not visible from the road:3
License plate: C85408X, Washington state. 4
Notes
1 This article was already in progress and wasn't the first in our queue, but, as it turns out, Thomas Rousseau is getting his members exposed faster than we can write!
2 Spencer apparently forgot that the reason Jacob Sundt chose the Olympia mural location was that there was construction keeping drivers off the road, which makes his advice worthless.
3 "Antifa isn't going to drive all the way out to where you live and harass your mom dude"
4 Patriot Front guidelines for information and operational security advise members to get new license plates if they get doxxed. After finding out that his network was infiltrated, Colton Brown recommended members falsely report their plates as stolen in order to get new license plate numbers to better hide their vehicles from the public. Antifascist activists are on alert to monitor and report back if any NW8 Patriot Front member changes his license plates. His previous plate is shown below:
