Federal authorities arrested a 20-year-old neo-Nazi on a gun charge after investigating a white nationalist group called Iron Youth that brought together extremists on Instagram.
Christian Michael Mackey was charged with unlawful sale of a firearm. Federal authorities said he was “apparently intent on killing members of the Jewish faith.” A criminal complaint by an FBI special agent said the bureau began investigating the group Iron Youth, and issued search warrants for members of the organization in April 2020. The FBI called Iron Youth a “White Racially Motivated Violent Extremist (WRMVE) group.”
Mackey, who the feds said ran the defunct Instagram account @oberthesober, discussed “the need and desire for killing others” and described himself as a “radical jew slayer” in August 2019, authorities alleged.
An undercover agent was introduced to the group and began communicating with Mackey both online and in person. At a meeting on Dec. 9, 2020, the feds said, Mackey said he was “willing to do whatever it takes … if you drop me off back at my house and the feds are there waiting … I’m ready to do whatever I need to do … either to aide or defend whatever is in this movement or myself.” The remarks, the affidavit noted, were captured on an FBI recording device.
Mackey talked with the undercover agent about selling his rifle and buying a “ghost gun.” The undercover agent then arranged for Mackey to sell his rifle to a paid FBI source with multiple felony convictions, giving the feds what they needed to make an arrest.
“During the exchange,” the FBI special agent wrote in a complaint, “Mackey asked the FBI Source if she was ‘based,’ a term widely used in white-supremacist circles to mean having white-supremacist ideology. Mackey went on to tell the FBI Source that he heard she was a felon, and that he didn’t care if ‘Santa Claus or the Devil comes.’”
Read the criminal complaint below.
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