Exposed: White nationalist group responsible for hate spree across Chicagoland

Content warning/editorial note: Hate speech, racist and antisemitic imagery. Hate symbols have been censored and the group’s logo has been published for recognition purposes.

Three members of a local white nationalist group have been identified thanks to the work of anonymous antifascist infiltrators.

Using license plates from their vehicles and personal details shared in a private vetting chat, an activist who gained access to their inner circle identified the men behind the group as James Hammans (37), Džiugas Dirzys (22), and Arkadiusz Kowalczyk (38). Unraveled has verified the information collected and confirmed the identities of the three men.

The Windy City Active Club (WCAC) is responsible for numerous white supremacist propaganda incidents across Chicago and the west suburbs, some of which caught the attention of local media and police departments. This includes a vast amount of stickering, leaving flyers on vehicles, displaying banners over highways, and demonstrations at holiday events.

The group’s tagline on social media “Chicago’s resident dissidents fighting for the 14 in 312” references “the 14 words,” a catchphrase used by white nationalists to identify each other.

Since 2023, the group has been organizing and promoting themselves on Telegram, a low moderation social media platform and chat app popular with white supremacists. Much of their activity has been recorded in videos, with faces blurred. With a heavy focus on branding and brotherhood intended to obscure racist, anti-immigrant, and antisemitic messaging, the videos are set to music and often forwarded to other hate groups.

The club is part of a dispersed nationwide network founded by aesthetics-obsessed white nationalist Robert Rundo. They operate autonomously, with no formal leadership structure, and researchers have linked some chapters to acts of violence and harassment. 

According to public databases, none of the men identified have current Chicago addresses. Hammans resides in Somonauk, IL, and Dirzys and Kowalczyk in Naperville and West Dundee, respectively. Kowalczyk only recently moved out of Chicago. He previously lived on the northwest side in the city’s Dunning neighborhood.

The three men are identified by anonymous handles on Telegram. James Hammans writes under the name “Wolfman88” (the number 88 is neo-Nazi shorthand for “Heil Hitler”). Arkadiusz Kowalczyk goes by “Džekson,” a Polish spelling of the name Jackson, and Džiugas Dirzys authors his messages as “Baconator 5000.”

Unraveled attempted to contact Hammans, Dirzys, and Kowalczyk via phone and email. Hammans and Kowalczyk did not respond. 

We spoke briefly with Dirzys, who denied any knowledge of Windy City Active Club. Shortly after our call with him, both Telegram channels belonging to the group tightened their privacy settings and are no longer accessible to the public. Social media profiles belonging to Dirzys and Kowalczyk were also immediately deactivated or deleted.

Campaign of hate

In leaked phone call audio obtained from an antifascist activist who was vetted into the group’s inner circle, Hammans described the group’s “activism” as essentially stickering, leaving flyers on cars, and parading around banners with messages of bigotry at holiday events and over expressways.

Videos posted by the group show them putting up stickers with branded hate messages on light poles and other fixtures downtown, in city neighborhoods, and across the suburbs over the span of at least 18 months. Antifascist researchers believe they are responsible for many (though likely not all) incidents in DuPage County specifically over the last two years. 

In chat messages, the group discusses how Dirzys is able to sticker downtown Chicago because he works part time in the city. A LinkedIn profile belonging to Dirzys identifies him as a financial analyst at Walsh Trading. Unraveled confirmed his employment. He graduated as an Illinois State Scholar from Naperville North High School. 

According to a database of state employees, Hammans work for the United States Postal Service at their Ottawa facility. A USPS spokesperson did not respond to our request confirming Hammans’ employment status.

On November 4, 2023, Elmhurst police shared they had received “several calls” about antisemitic flyers that had been distributed overnight. Similar flyers had also been found in LaGrange Park. The following day, U.S. Congressman Chuy Garcia posted a statement denouncing the antisemitic propaganda distributed in his district.

The day the flyers were found, the group posted a photo of the Elmhurst PD statement along with photos of their flyers, which were branded with the group’s logo and URL.

More antisemitic signs written on cardboard were found in Jefferson Park just eleven days later.  While the group has not taken credit for these signs, both sets of hate literature included a URL linking to the Goyim Defense League, another antisemitic hate group.

Similar messages written on cardboard were distributed in the first half of 2024 in Bucktown, Lincoln Park, and West Ridge.

On July 9, 2023, the group displayed a “White nations are being invaded” banner over the Edens Expressway from the entrance to LaBagh Woods. In August they put up a “Dieversity [sic] is white genocide” banner over I-90 from the Des Plaines River Trail bridge, and in November 2023, the group flew a drone over I-355 to record an antisemitic banner displayed on the Great Western Trail bridge.

Some videos show the men performing Nazi salutes.

On Columbus Day, 2023, three WCAC members recorded a video in Chicago’s Arrigo Park, carrying a branded banner reading “White History Matters.” A man wearing the same face mask that Hammans has been seen wearing, whose voice also matches his in audio messages, gives a nearly three-minute speech complaining about the removal of the Christopher Columbus statue, shouting “They tore down the statue because they hate white people!”

On St. Patrick’s Day weekend, in 2024, the three men traveled around areas of the city, hiding their identities behind masks, with a banner reading, “Keep Ireland Irish.” They left flyers with the same message and the group’s URL on nearby vehicles. One of their stops included the Irish American Heritage Center on the Northwest Side.

“It gives the appearance to our enemies that there’s more of us than there actually are”

In recorded audio, James Hammans asserts himself as the ringleader of the small crew—and also appears hungry for new members. 

In between his casual use of racist and homophobic slurs and disparaging remarks about Jewish people, Hammans explains his interest in potentially keeping some of his activism under the White Lives Matter Illinois banner. He and Dirzys are both members of the group, yet another assortment of loosely associated neo-Nazis who spread propaganda and have harassed LGBTQ+ Pride and drag events. 

“Also it gives the appearance to our enemies that there’s more of us than there actually are,” he says. “You know, it’s like oh shit, there’s guys over here and there’s guys over here? But they don’t know that it’s necessarily the same guys.”

This tactic is also evident in the maintenance of two Telegram channels—one for the current active club configuration, and another chat for “Windy City Nationalists.” The WCN channel was started first. After the channel was app banned (meaning the chat can’t be accessed through the Telegram app, only web browsers) the Windy City Active Club chat sprung up, but both continued to cross-post the same content.

In additional voice messages between Hammans and Kowalczyk, Hammans describes the experience his “lady friend” had demonstrating for White Lives Matter at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. She and another purple-haired agitator, identified then as Rachel Siegel, were photographed displaying a white supremacist banner at a protest outside Ogilvie Transportation Center on August 20. 

Hammans calls his girlfriend a “dumb woman” for hanging out with Siegel and Kowalczyk criticizes Siegel for throwing a Nazi salute with the wrong hand. 

Social media posts captured from Hammans’ family members identify his girlfriend’s first name as Lucy. 

Connections to other groups

The club has networked extensively with other white supremacist groups across the Midwest. 

This past Labor Day, Dirzys and Hammans attended an Oktoberfest themed gathering hosted by The Midwest Network, a loose association of members of other neo-Nazi organizations. Greg Conte, a former ally of alt right darling Richard Spencer, was a featured speaker at the retreat. According to organizers, it was hosted somewhere in the Chicago area. The group shared meals together and even had a white power arts and crafts station for screenprinting shirts.

A November 2024 Telegram post shows Windy City Active Club training in the woods of Northern Michigan alongside members of the Great Lakes Active Club, Wisconsin Active Club, and Patriot Front, another white nationalist group who has made headlines traveling around the U.S. in U-Haul vans and marching through city centers. In chat messages, WCAC also mentions meeting up with an Indiana based active club.

Kowalczyk is apparently affiliated with several other European based hate organizations. 

He has shared photos of himself to a Telegram channel associated with a Polish nationalist group called Barykada (English translation “barricade”) dedicated to Polish diaspora. The group’s social media feeds are rife with virulently racist content. He and Dirzys displayed a banner promoting Barykada at a recent Constitution Day Parade in Chicago.

He also shares videos he has made with logos from National Radical Camp, a prominent fascist group in Poland that helps organize the country’s annual Independence March in Warsaw. The far-right gathering attracts neo-Nazis from around the globe and has, at times, erupted in violence. In captured chat messages discussing upcoming scheduling, Kowalczyk shares a screenshot of a flight reservation for a trip to Poland in November 2024 that aligns with the yearly meetup. 

James Hammans also mentions his friendship with a former Identity Europa member who hosted a “cookout” in Chicago.

Identity Europa is a now-defunct white nationalist organization that began in 2016. Its members, many of whom participated in the violent 2017 Unite the Right rally, were heavily surveilled and outed by activists and researchers before the group rebranded as the American Identity Movement and eventually collapsed. 

At least one former IE/AIM member is known to still reside in Chicago. Jason Finney, who was identified by local antifascists in 2020, briefly served as GOP Committeeman for Chicago’s 43rd Ward before purchasing a home on the city’s far northwest side in the 41st Ward. A Republican campaign website set up for his political ambitions after his time as Committeeman remains incomplete.