The leader of a Georgia militia group that provided security for events held by Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-GA) has told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that his group, the Georgia III% Martyrs is joining another militia, the American Brotherhood of Patriots and American Patriots USA (APUSA), to coordinate efforts to take the state out of the Union.

“The way patriots are now being hunted down and arrested by fellow men and women who have taken the same oath has disheartened any faith I had in the redemption or reformation of the USA as one entity,” Justin Thayer, head of the Georgia III% Martyrs, said in a text exchange with AJC this week.

The militia groups are apoplectic that Donald Trump did not win reelection and that Republicans did not violate the Constitution to install him in a second term.  They are feeling victimized because law enforcement and the military acted to protect the Constitution during the January 6th attack at the Capitol, not follow their insurrectionist demands. 

APUSA is a relatively new group on the militia scene, having been formed in 2019 by Chester Doles, a leader of now-defunct neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups.  The two groups formed the alliance to promote the independence of Georgia through secession or the “collapse of the American experiment,” according to Thayer.

“For the last 150 years, the Imperial Yankee culture of the northeast has been molding Georgia — and the South in general — into its ‘perfect’ image,” he said.

“Things are different now. Everything has changed,” Doles said. “We’ve seen our last Republican president in American history. The ballot box — we tried as hard as we could try. It’s not working.”

The Georgia III% Martyrs provided security at a September joint campaign appearance between Greene and defeated Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler.  Greene claimed she needed the armed militia there for her protection against unspecified threats against her life.  She willingly posed for photos with many members of the group, and she even asked them to remove Doles from the event, a rift which they seem to have bridged.

Doles appears to want to shape the American Brotherhood of Patriots and American Patriots USA into a political movement, with the Georgia III% Martyrs being the militant arm of the movement in a Sinn Fein/IRA relationship.