Category: League of the South

On Saturday, August 17, 2024, three white nationalists held a demonstration in Dawsonville, Georgia. The trio displayed signs promoting racial “loyalty” and alleging that white people are being “replaced.” The theme of their demonstration—“the great replacement”—is a racist conspiracy theory which has inspired mass shootings. An onlooker photographed the three demonstrators, and the images were posted to Reddit later that day.

August 17, 2024 demonstration in Dawsonville. Photos from Reddit.
A Reddit commenter correctly identified one of the racist demonstrators as Stuart Nicholas DiNenno (born 1959) of Chamblee, Georgia. Through his posts on Reddit and elsewhere, DiNenno confirmed that he was involved in the demonstration. He was clearly the public face of this event. The signs displayed by the white nationalists featured a URL for DiNenno’s website, which advocates for a racist version of Christianity known as “Kinism.”

Kinism, the racist form of Christianity advocated by DiNenno, emerged from neo-Confederate circles—in particular, members of the League of the South—during the early- to mid-2000s. (Work formulating Kinist principles began some years earlier.) Kinists believe that God divided humanity into different racial groups; that these groups should be preserved separately; and that Christians have moral duties to their racial “kin.” Kinists therefore advocate for segregation and prohibit racial intermarriage. They are deeply opposed to egalitarianism and favor replacing democracy with theocracy. While Kinism as a term has been around for just a quarter century, adherents portray their beliefs as a return to traditional Christianity.

It is important to differentiate Kinism from another racist form of Christianity: Christian Identity. Christian Identity claims that whites are God’s true chosen people, and that Jewish people are evil imposters. In the case of “dual seedline” Christian Identity, adherents believe that Jewish people are literally descended from the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Such Christian Identity adherents also believe that people of color are subhuman. Kinists, on the other hand, claim that Christian salvation is available to those of any race. However, Kinists promote segregation and characterize white people as superior.

Both Kinists and Christian Identity adherents are extremely antisemitic, but there is a difference between how these two express and justify this antisemitism. Christian Identity proclaims that white people are descendants of the Biblical Israelites, and thus God’s true chosen people. Christian Identity offers theories about Jewish people and their bloodlines to portray this group as imposters or even Satanic in origin. DiNenno on his Kinist website argues that present-day Jewish people are not descended from the Israelites of the Bible. However, he does not speculate about the supposed actual lineage of Jewish people. Rather, DiNenno draws on much longer legacies of antisemitism within Christianity, asserting that “Being a Christ hater […] is the principal component of Jewish identity.”

DiNenno takes a positive view of Hitler and Nazi Germany. On his website, DiNenno reprinted an interview with Mildred Gillars, better known as “Axis Sally,” an American who made pro-Nazi broadcasts from Germany during World War II, and who was convicted of treason after the war. Another section on DiNenno’s site provides a lengthy quote from a 1934 speech by Hitler, reprinted under the heading “Hitler’s Surprisingly Biblical View of the Role of Women.” In a rant by DiNenno on the site, he claims that someone is a “victim of Jewish indoctrination” if the person “believe[s] the Jewish ‘Holocaust’ stories” or “the mainstream narrative of World War II.” DiNenno reprinted a lengthy article by Mark Weber, a major figure in Holocaust-denial circles, to his website.

2018 news story from 11Alive

Calling DiNenno homophobic would be an understatement. On his website, DiNenno portrays “sodomite relationships” as an “evil that is deserving of the death penalty,” and suggests that even approving of such relationships is worthy of punishment. In 2018, DiNenno made headlines after the landscaping company he operates, Botanica Atlanta Landscape and Design, refused to work for a gay couple. DiNenno claimed on Facebook: “I average about one or two calls per year [with my business] from sodomites or lesbians. I always turn them down.”

DiNenno (on left) protests the Pride Walk in Burlington, North Carolina, June 29, 2024 

DiNenno was part of a group that harassed the “Pride Walk” in Burlington, North Carolina, in June of 2023 and 2024. The anti-LGBTQ+ protests were partially organized by Michael Spangler of North Carolina, who this year published a lengthy series endorsing “Christian Race Realism” and who broadly considers himself a Kinist. Earlier in the year (before the start of the “Race Realism” series) the Orthodox Presbyterian Church divested Spangler from its ministry.

Those targeting the Pride Walks aimed to make the gatherings as unpleasant as possible for participants, with Stuart DiNenno gloating this year:
We dogged them everywhere they went and they seemed to be disturbed by our presence. I won’t be surprised if next year’s event is canceled. Please pray for that to happen.
DiNenno also appears to have shown up against Alamance Pride in October 2023, also held in Burlington.

While DiNenno was only able to get two others to join him for his August white nationalist demonstration in Georgia, he is well-networked in Kinist circles and could potentially draw others to engage in public racist agitation. DiNenno’s intense antisemitism and the pleasure he takes from homophobic harassment are both concerning. For these reasons, we believe it is necessary to warn the public about DiNenno.

What you can do:

1)        Warn others about DiNenno’s landscaping business, Botanica Atlanta Landscape and Design. Many potential customers would not wish to financially support a white nationalist who takes a fond view of Hitler and engages in homophobic harassment. Bringing DiNenno into contact with people of color, Jewish people, or LGBTQ+ individuals risks creating an unpleasant situation or worse.

2)        Please get in contact if you can identify DiNenno’s two associates from the Dawsonville demonstration or have potentially relevant information. We would also like to hear from anyone who has further info about DiNenno.

3)        Finally, share this article with friends in north Metro Atlanta who may encounter DiNenno. Please also share this article to contacts near Dawsonville in north Georgia, in case DiNenno and his associates attempt further agitation there.