In April 2022, we published the first part of “Notes on Martin Kenneth O’Toole and White Supremacy.” Now, four years later, Martin O’Toole unfortunately remains relevant to anti-racists due to his ongoing activism as a white nationalist, as well as his continuing role as the spokesperson for Georgia chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV). Media outlets still quote O’Toole as the voice of this Confederate “heritage” organization without referencing his decades of white nationalist activity.
Our first “Notes” on O’Toole discussed O’Toole’s racist organizing at University of Georgia in the 1970s. We then covered his activities in the 1980s facilitating the production and mass mailing of newsletters for NSDAP/AO, a neo-Nazi group. We also discussed O’Toole’s assistance with Instauration, a racist and antisemitic publication. We concluded with a discussion of O’Toole’s activity in the Holocaust denial scene, which included hosting events for Hitler-sympathizer David Irving in the Atlanta area, as well as operating a related publishing company.
In this second article, we finish our coverage of O’Toole’s racist career by outlining his history with three virulently racist groups: American Renaissance, the Charles Martel Society, and the Foundation for Human Understanding (FHU). During the period when O’Toole led FHU, the Foundation reprinted Siege, a notorious book which has inspired neo-Nazi terrorist attacks. Finally, we discuss O’Toole’s travel to Russia with other white nationalists in 2018 in an apparent networking mission.
Just as with our first “Notes” on O’Toole, this article is not an attempt at a comprehensive biography of O’Toole, or even an exhaustive account of his racist and antisemitic organizing. Our aim is to synthesize existing documentation on O’Toole—scattered around multiple sources—and to add relevant findings from our own research. We hope this provides readers with a clearer picture of O’Toole’s white nationalist campaigning over the decades.
American Renaissance
American Renaissance (AmRen) is a “race-realist” propaganda outfit which aims to make racism respectable by avoiding obvious slurs and adopting a pseudo-intellectual tone. It has also attempted to downplay antisemitic conspiracy theories, instead emphasizing racial pseudoscience in its writings. AmRen began as a newsletter at the start of the 1990s but is currently an online publication. The New Century Foundation, headed by Jared Taylor, is the publisher of American Renaissance. Since 1994, AmRen has held regular conferences which bring together the major players of the US white nationalist movement and some of their international counterparts.
O’Toole’s name does not feature in New Century Foundation official paperwork, but he has been an AmRen participant over the years. In 1996, an advertisement offering video and audio tapes from that year’s American Renaissance conference appeared in Instauration. The contact email for “Renaissance Audio-Visual” is Martin O’Toole’s personal account, and the address in Marietta, Georgia is a former one for O’Toole. Later, “Renaissance Audio-Visual” changed to a PO Box in Marietta rather than a street address, and eventually the business got an email address of its own. “Renaissance Audio-Visual” produced and sold copies of AmRen conference speeches for at least a decade—an article in The Occidental Quarterly references a copy of a 2006 speech released by the company. As Renaissance Audio-Visual was the official source for hard copies of AmRen conference speeches and was advertised by AmRen, it is likely that the business had little independent existence, with funds raised going straight back to AmRen/New Century Foundation.
In 2008, O’Toole assumed a more outward role with AmRen when he was one of the featured speakers at that year’s conference. O’Toole’s speech was on “Race and the Civil War.” In 2012, AmRen published O’Toole’s “Race and the [Civil] War” as an article on its website. While many apologists for the Confederacy claim that the Civil War was not about slavery, O’Toole argued that concern about abolitionism (and its alleged excesses) pushed the Southern states to secede. In other words, O’Toole admits that the Civil War was about slavery and race, although he states this as a double negative: secession was due to Southern opposition to those opposed to slavery! O’Toole also argued that most white people, both in the North and the South, opposed equal rights for Black people. He concluded by arguing that the current “multiracial state is […] a slave state,” where the (alleged) inability of Black and white people to live together as equals must constantly be ignored and lied about, and where the population is bound by “mental fetters.” O’Toole flatters his white supremacist audience when he suggests that they are a brave, clear-headed minority who have freed themselves from popular delusion.
O’Toole is a regular at AmRen conferences. At the 2018 conference, O’Toole briefly spoke to promote The Occidental Quarterly (see discussion of Charles Martel Society, below.) Leaked footage from the 2021 conference shows O’Toole holding the microphone as he assisted Michelle Malkin’s Q&A session.
Following the publication of our first “Notes” on O’Toole, O’Toole gave the keynote speech at the 2022 Georgia Sons of Confederate Veterans “Confederate Memorial Day” event at Stone Mountain Park. In his speech, O’Toole complained that “Modern America has become the land of the Living Dead. […] ‘Diversity’ is the idol before which they prostrate themselves.” In response, O’Toole urged listeners to renounce this society and instead live by the “eternal values” that Confederate ancestors allegedly honored. The American Renaissance website published O’Toole’s speech in full the following week.
On the same day that AmRen published the text of O’Toole’s speech, the site also released an audio interview with O’Toole by Kevin DeAnna under his pseudonym of “Gregory Hood.” DeAnna made pointedly racist assertions during this conversation. O’Toole was cagier, and placed distance between himself as Georgia SCV spokesman and AmRen, for example speaking as a representative of the Georgia SCV without mentioning his longstanding involvement with AmRen. On a strategic level, the interview seemed designed to push AmRen’s racist audience towards greater participation with the pro-Confederate cause. Conversely, the publication of O’Toole’s Stone Mountain speech on AmRen aimed to draw Confederate sympathizers toward AmRen’s more forthright white nationalism.
Charles Martel Society
Since 2011, IRS filings list Martin O’Toole among the leadership of the Charles Martel Society (CMS). Founded in 2001 by William H. Regnery II of the wealthy publishing family, CMS is a secretive, closed group that aims to influence and build the white nationalist movement. In 2005, CMS provided seed money for the National Policy Institute, a white power think tank which in turn played a leading role in developing the “Alt-Right.” Since 2006, Regnery’s name stopped appearing on CMS paperwork for the IRS; he died in 2021.
Sam Dickson, a racist Atlanta attorney and close associate of O’Toole, has been active with CMS from the beginning. Another individual who has a long history with O’Toole, Gregory A. Griffin, also features on CMS paperwork—Griffin was a CMS director between 2005 and 2008. The Griffin Dickson & O’Toole law partnership existed from 1989 when O’Toole joined the Georgia Bar until Dickson’s departure from the partnership in the early 1990s.
O’Toole himself first appeared on CMS paperwork in 2011, when he was listed as a director. He continued as a director until 2015, when he became President and Chairman of CMS. In 2022, O’Toole returned to a director role, with James Edwards taking over as President and Director. (In our first “Notes” article, we referred to O’Toole as President of CMS, as the 2022 filing with his new role was not yet publicly available.) The most recent CMS filing available online is for 2024, where O’Toole remains listed as a director.
Matthew Heimbach, former leader of the racist and antisemitic Traditionalist Worker Party, stated that CMS is “in many ways, the heart” of the US white nationalist movement. As a secretive, closed group, much CMS activity is unknown, except in outline. CMS hosts invite-only events for what it sees as the intellectual elite of the racist movement as well as for influential racist youth who show promise as future leaders. Broadly, CMS concerns itself with growing the white nationalist movement and influencing its direction; securing funds for this movement and determining how to spend money to greatest effect; and developing future leadership within the racist movement. For example, reporter Elle Reeve claims that CMS helped to nurture Nathan Damigo for leadership. Damigo went on to found Identity Evropa, a white nationalist activist group that began in early 2016 and was one of the key players in the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 2017. As CMS President from 2015 until 2021, O’Toole must have been involved in high-level discussions about movement tactics and strategy during the “Alt-Right’s” boom starting 2015 and its subsequent implosion after “Unite the Right.”
The Charles Martel Society is responsible for regularly publishing The Occidental Quarterly, which mimics the outer trappings of an academic journal while promoting racism, antisemitism, and patriarchal supremacy. For example, articles published under O’Toole’s tenure as CMS President include: “The Jewish War on White Australia” (Winter 2018), “The Criminalization of Masculinity” (Spring 2019), and “Surviving the Contemporary Racial Nightmare” (Fall 2020).
The Foundation for Human Understanding, Black Sun Publications, and Siege
Research published in 2024 tied Martin O’Toole to the circulation of a notorious piece of neo-Nazi propaganda. Approximately one decade before O’Toole first appeared on IRS paperwork as a Charles Martel Society participant, O’Toole featured on filings for another nonprofit, the Foundation for Human Understanding (FHU). FHU, founded in 1973, was a tax-exempt organization promoting racist pseudoscience. It disbanded in the mid-2000s. An FHU filing with the Georgia Secretary of State in early 2000 updated the Foundation’s business records to reflect the departure of R. Travis Osborne. The same filing showed Martin O’Toole newly listed as the organization’s CEO, CFO, and agent. According to federal filings with the IRS, O’Toole was FHU’s President in 2002 and 2003, with him dropping down to a director role in 2004 and 2005. (FHU’s 2001 filing failed to name any agents or directors, although that year’s IRS filing does claim that O’Toole was taking care of FHU’s accounts.)
On paper, FHU seemed scarcely active during the time of O’Toole’s involvement. The Foundation claimed to have slightly over $200 in net assets each year during that period, and a 2005 IRS filing even admitted that the “organization [had been] basically inactive” but was planning to reboot. The reboot does not appear to have succeeded, and FHU died.
A 2024 research article by Spencer Sunshine and Hannah Gais, published on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hatewatch” blog, shows that the Foundation for Human Understanding reprinted James Mason’s Siege in 2003. Siege first appeared as a book in 1993. It has subsequently become a key text among neo-Nazis who favor terroristic attacks to achieve their goals. As only one example, a mass shooter who murdered three Black people in Florida in 2023 cited Siege. The book has inspired an “accelerationist” subculture of international neo-Nazis sometimes known as “Siege Culture,” and in the US, groups such as Atomwaffen Division and The Base have cited Siege as a foundational text.
According to Sunshine and Gais’ research, based on Siege author James Mason’s papers housed at the University of Kansas, Greg Johnson and Ryan Schuster arranged the 2003 reprint of Siege. The reprint’s dust jacket featured an image of the World Trade Center’s wreckage after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and the new foreword by Ryan Schuster encouraged readers to take inspiration from Timothy McVeigh, responsible for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. “Black Sun Publications” published the new edition. In correspondence with James Mason to arrange the reprint, both Johnson and Schuster presented Black Sun Publications as an imprint of FHU.
It is extremely unlikely that Johnson and Schuster were misrepresenting themselves when they claimed affiliation with FHU. First, well-networked racists such as Dickson and O’Toole would have heard the lie. Second, in correspondence Ryan Schuster urged Siege author James Mason to consider “solicit[ing] tax-deductible donations through the FHU” for the reprint. Such a suggestion would have been futile without a real connection to FHU. However, if Black Sun Publishing really was an operation of FHU, then the FHU President at the time, O’Toole, must have approved the plan to reprint Siege and kindle new interest in it. While the 2003 Black Sun Publishing edition of Siege was neither the first printing nor the last, it was an important link in the chain. Siege’s legacy is of providing inspiration for neo-Nazi mass shooters.
Russia Networking Trip
In 2018, Sam Dickson traveled with “several other people” to Russia and met with “Russian nationalists” while there. Dickson had previously been to Russia in 2015, where he gave a speech at the “International Russian Conservative Forum” in St. Petersburg (as did Jared Taylor of American Renaissance). We discussed the 2018 Russia trip the following year, when we exposed attorney Michael Dominy as another member of Dickson’s party. We also discussed Dmitry Oveshnikov (Дмитрий Овешников) as the person who showed the group around Moscow. Oveshnikov has Russian state connections: he worked as an analyst for the Federation Council and later became the head of media and public relations for the Moscow City Court. In our 2019 article, we noted that Martin O’Toole’s wife, Carol, seemed to know the group’s itinerary for the Russia trip. We have since discovered that O’Toole was also part of the group on the 2018 Russia trip, alongside Dickson and Dominy.
Our earlier article about Dominy and Dickson in Russia went into detail to establish that both Dominy and Dickson were on the same westbound Trans-Manchurian Express train, which departed Beijing on Saturday, July 7, 2018 and crossed the border into Russia in the early morning of Monday the 9th. While researching O’Toole, we came across his photos on an amateur railroad photography website. One of O’Toole’s images is from “Haerbin [sic] West” in China, dated July 8, 2018. Dominy and Dickson also passed through Harbin on July 8 on their way from Beijing to the border with Russia. Although the train that Dominy and Dickson were on has traditionally passed through the central Harbin station not Harbin West, around that time the train was using Harbin West, as evidenced by online images of the train (Vostok K19) at Harbin West station exactly four weeks later, on August 5, 2018. Because Dickson and Dominy’s train stopped at Harbin West station on July 8, and Martin O’Toole took a picture there on the same day, it is clear that the three far-Right metro Atlanta attorneys were all traveling in the same party.
Because of Dickson and O’Toole’s involvement in the Charles Martel Society, of which O’Toole was President at the time, and Sam Dickson’s admission that the group met with “Russian nationalists,” the trip increasingly looks like a CMS networking mission. Circles around CMS are typically extremely favorable to the Russian state. For example, current CMS President James Edward’s radio show, “The Political Cesspool,” features pro-Kremlin perspectives from guests such as propagandist Charles Bausman as well as from Dickson himself. As we pointed out in our initial article discussing the 2018 trip, the trip occurred at a time when the US white nationalist movement was in shambles in the wake of the previous year’s “Unite the Right” rally. One theory amongst researchers monitoring the far-Right was that US white nationalists had little to offer either the Kremlin or their Russian counterparts at that point, because the US race warriors were so mired in their own problems. Dickson, O’Toole, and friends took a longer-term view that the turmoil in their movement would not last forever. They therefore set off to Russia in 2018 to build and maintain relationships with their international allies.
Conclusion
As spokesperson for the Georgia Sons of Confederate Veterans, Martin O’Toole tries to maintain a respectable image. However, our research on O’Toole shows that he is a lifetime leading figure within the white nationalist movement who has provided support to even its furthest neo-Nazi fringes. Our first article in a two-part series discussed O’Toole’s racist activism while at the University of Georgia in the 1970s; his work assisting the production and distribution of neo-Nazi newsletters in the 1980s; his efforts for the antisemitic, white nationalist journal Instauration; and his involvement in Holocaust-denial circles. In this follow-up article, we covered O’Toole’s involvement with American Renaissance; his participation and leadership in the secretive Charles Martel Society; his control of the Foundation for Human Understanding when it reprinted a tome promoting neo-Nazi terrorism; and finally, his travel to Russia in 2018 with other far-Right figures on an apparent networking trip. Given O’Toole’s white nationalist involvement spanning over fifty years, his involvement with the Georgia SCV is not based on mere historical interest. Rather, it stems from ideological conviction and from O’Toole seeing pro-Confederate circles as useful for his movement. By keeping O’Toole in a prominent role, the Georgia SCV tells on itself.
If you have further information on O’Toole and his white nationalist associates, please get in contact.
