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November 15, 2018
In a chilling postscript to Robert Bowers’ murderous October shooting spree at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, authorities in Washington, D.C., arrested Jeffrey Raphiel Clark, Jr., 30, an on-line associate of Bowers. The November 9 arrest came after family members contacted law enforcement out of concern that Clark might become violent.
Clark was charged with illegal transportation of a firearm across state lines, possession of an illegal high-capacity magazine, and unlawful use of a controlled substance (methamphetamine).
According to the FBI and Clark’s relatives, Jeffrey and his younger brother, Edward William Clark, were active white supremacists who advocated for a race war between whites and non-whites. The brothers allegedly openly fantasized about killing Jews and blacks.
The brothers were active in white supremacist social media circles, particularly on the controversial network Gab, a haven for white supremacists, where Jeffrey Clark made upwards of 4,000 posts and associated with Robert Bowers. According to the FBI, Clark’s Gab user name was “@PureWhiteEvil” and his screen name, “DC Bowl Gang,” was an admiring reference to the bowl-style haircut of white supremacist mass shooter Dylann Roof. Clark’s profile photo showed him and his brother, carrying guns while posing in front of a flag emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, topped with a Roof-like bowl cut.
Jeffrey and Edward Clark also participated in real-world white supremacist activism. In the past two years, one or both of the brothers, typically wearing plain white polo-style shirts, took part in a number of white supremacist and extreme right-wing events in the D.C., including:
- April 2017, Washington, D.C.: The Clark brothers attended an event outside the White House, organized by white supremacist Richard Spencer to protest military strikes by the U.S. against Syria. Jeffrey Clark brought a sign that read, “America first, Israel first, pick one,” while Edward’s sign included the anti-Semitic slogan, “Da Goyim Know.”
- April 2017, Washington, D.C.: Jeffrey Clark attended a flash demonstration outside the White House organized by Richard Spencer and extreme right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec to support Steve Bannon.
- May 2017, Washington, D.C.: The brothers helped Jack Posobiec shoot footage for a conspiracy video about murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.
- June 2017, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Jeffrey Clark and other white supremacists attended an Islamophobic “March Against Sharia” rally organized by the anti-Muslim group ACT for America.
- June 2017, Washington, D.C.: Jeffrey Clark attended a “Freedom of Speech” rally that attracted a number of white supremacists, and other far right figures including Jason Kessler.
Jeffrey Clark (left) alongside Jason Kessler at a June 2017 "Freedom of Speech" rally in Washington, D.C.
- August 2017, Charlottesville, Virginia. Jeffrey and Edward Clark were among the hundreds of white supremacists who showed up for the violent Unite the Right rally.
Edward Clark’s white supremacist activism ended abruptly on October 27, 2018, when he shot himself just hours after Robert Bowers’ synagogue shooting. Family members subsequently told the FBI they feared he might have been planning to commit some violent act that day but killed himself instead. The unlikely coincidence of timing leaves open the possibility of some sort of coordination between Edward Clark and Bowers.
After Bowers’ shooting spree and his brother’s suicide, Jeffrey Clark celebrated the Pittsburgh murders, calling Bowers a hero and posting to Gab that the “fucking kikes that got shot…deserved exactly what happened to them and so much worse.”
The ADL’s Center on Extremism examined the “DC Bowl Gang” Gab posts which the FBI attributes to Jeffrey Clark. That investigation revealed someone obsessed with “saving” the white race by any means necessary. In 2018 alone, Clark posted thousands of violent, hate-filled comments directed at Jews, Muslims, African Americans, the government and anyone else who disagreed with or challenged his white supremacist views. He justified his rants by claiming that the survival of the white race is “the absolute highest moral imperative” and “hatred is just your natural instincts towards the things or beings that threaten what you love.”
Clark made his hatred of Jews explicitly clear; his GAB profile contains hundreds of anti-Semitic posts. In February 2018 he wrote, “I don't know how they do it but every day the fucking kikes make my hatred for them rise at least a little more. Sometimes just when I don't think it could get any worse it rises by leaps and bounds. How can one group of people be so despicable?”
Other posts underscored Clark’s belief that Jews are “the singular most destructive force to western civilization” and that Jews influence and control Hollywood, the government and the media. He also called the Holocaust a “Jewish myth” and “holohoax propaganda.” His Holocaust denials were often followed by threats of an “actual holocaust as payback” for the alleged lies. In October he wrote, “Here's my dissertation; kikes are deliberately destroying White nations and unless it stops like yesterday, we're gonna holocaust you ‘again.’” In an April 2018 call for violence against Jews he wrote, “If everyone who considered themselves pro-White murdered a single jew [sic], they'd never win again.” And: “I'm trapping myself inside an echo chamber of those who are ready to stand up and do WHATEVER IT TAKES to take back our nation and I don't intend to emerge until after we've accomplished that goal or I die in the process.” Clark also called for violence against everyone who disagreed with his racist ideology. In September 2018, he wrote, “I support killing every single person not committed to the survival of the White race. May God have mercy on your souls.” A month later, he commented, “You're not fucking pro-White if you give a single fuck about the opinions of non-Whites & anti-White Whites who think the survival of our race hinges on our choice of words. It's not fucking negotiable & there's nothing more to discuss. Anyone who disagrees goes in a woodchipper.”
According to Clark, “an American citizen should literally be able to gun down a whole family of illegals, on camera, then call the proper authorities, confess to what he did so they can come clean it up & w/o him even getting arrested.”
These calls for violence were buttressed by his obvious reverence for notorious killers. He explained there are only two kinds of people “those who know Saint Dylann Roof did nothing wrong, and those who hang.” Saying Roof did the world a favor, he wrote, “Obviously no one else was willing to do anything about all the niggers on the loose and we're gonna punish the one guy who showed a little initiative? That's certainly not the America my ancestors fought and died for nor the America I want to live in.” In a later post he wrote, “#BowlCutNationalism is the only way forward I mean someone's gotta do something about all these feral beasts roaming around freely.”
He also lauded James Fields, who has been charged in the crash that killed Heather Heyer and injured 19 others following the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally. “The only thing James Alex Fields did wrong was not fucking plowing through that crowd fast enough to kill more of those fucking pieces of commie shit. We need legislation at the national level making it not only legal, but obligatory to run over these fuckers, as in if you don't run them over, you go to jail for endangering your fellow White man.”
Clark appeared to be frustrated by what he considered a lack of action by some white supremacists. In June 2018 he highlighted an ongoing rift within the white supremacist movement when he wrote, “For the record, the hardcore racists aren't responsible for the need for acceleration. It's the complacent "optics savy" [sic] racists who've been insisting for the past half-decade that if we just ask the jews [sic] nicely to stop doing what they're doing then we can save our race. Their complacency created an environment where only suffering awakens people.” And in October he warned, “Race war's already on, we're just not fighting back. demographic [sic] trends are against us so the sooner, the better & the only thing stopping us is hope that we can petition the govt to do it. It's not looking good on that front.”