Two weeks ago, under the cover of night, dozens of antisemitic hate flyers were placed on windshields of cars parked around Coronado Middle School and Village Elementary. They were marked with the name “Clockwork Crew,” and were labeled with the group’s insignia, a Celtic cross with an arrow in the side.
The flyers were filled with antisemitic statements, and argued that a proposed bill, designed to crack down on “hate littering,” violated First Amendment protections. The bill was signed into law a few days later.
But who is the Clockwork Crew? Was it really them? And if it was, what were they doing in Coronado?
Chris Magyarics, a senior investigator with the Center for Extremism, is an expert on the Clockwork Crew. He says the group is a fitness-focused, neo-Nazi hate group based in Southern California that counts several active military personnel as its members.
“They’re known as an ‘active club,’ basically a white supremacist fight club,” said Magyarics. “They engage in combat sports and they recruit men through their fitness centers.”
The Clockwork Crew was originally formed in Long Beach in 2021 as the “562 Active Club,” named after the local area code. The group is known for organizing small, localized events, often in tandem with White Lives Matter and the Goyim Defense League, two other documented hate groups. Clockwork Crew uses their propaganda to get their messages out, which includes passing out flyers, to hanging neo-Nazi banners from highway overpasses and stenciling graffiti with their logo in attempts to mark their territory, according to Magyarics.
A defining feature of the Clockwork Crew is the fact that the group has several current and retired military personal in their ranks.
“This group will try to recruit active military and former military members to get status, to get information, and to learn certain combat moves, all for self-defense, they would claim,” said Magyarics.
In fact, the club was co-founded by Mohamad Wadaa, a United States Marine based in Camp Pendleton who was dishonorably discharged for advocating extremist ideology and having extremist tattoos, including a huge swastika on his chest. Now, Wadaa is fighting for cash prizes in Temecula in mixed martial arts (MMA.)
Another member of the Clockwork Crew, Gunnar Naughton, is a former Marine from Kansas who was reportedly caught stealing more than 10,000 rounds of grenades from Camp Pendleton. The group also reportedly includes members of the Army National Guard.
The Clockwork Crew’s focus on recruiting military personnel and its relationship with combat fighting begs the question: Are they dangerous?
They could be, according to Magyarics.
“It’s hard to say if they would be violent, but I certainly wouldn’t put it past them because of this whole fight club mentality,” said Magyarics. “I would advise definitely not going up to them and approaching them.”
Fortunately, there was no violence that night in Coronado.
When Coronado residents saw the men putting the flyers on car windshields, they called the Coronado Police Department right away. When CPD arrived around 11 pm, the men disbanded quickly, according to Coronado Police Chief Rick Martinez.
“We showed up and made contact with those distributing flyers,” Martinez said. “Of course, they were challenging us because they felt we were infringing on their First Amendment rights. So, they pushed back at first. But then, they quickly decided Coronado wasn’t a community worth pursuing.”
Martinez said the CPD identified the parties involved and that the men were well known to the CPD’s investigative resources, which includes the Joint Terrorism Task Force. The CPD is working to see if it can pursue a criminal complaint.
The takeaway, Martinez said, is that Coronado residents acted quickly, calling the police immediately.
“What’s important is that our community was on it,” said Martinez. “They were diligent in contacting us, which led to us showing up and contacting them before they distributed more hate in the community.”
Martinez says it was important that the CPD meet with the Jewish community leaders the next morning.
“We wanted to ensure that they understood that we were responsive, and we put every protection out to ensure the safety of the community,” said Martinez. “It wasn’t just us pushing people out of town. We wanted to make sure they had a full update on what happened.”
According to Magyarics, hate-focused activities, like the antisemitic flyers distributed in Coronado, are on the rise nationwide.
“We have seen a skyrocketing of white supremacist and antisemitic propaganda in general,” said Magyarics. “The last year—2023—was the highest on record.”
Each year, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) tracks the distribution of white supremacist propaganda and the number of events organized or attended by white supremacists. For the second year in a row, ADL documented its highest number of white supremacist propaganda incidents.
“There was also a 30% increase in specifically antisemitic propaganda, rising to 1,112 incidents in 2023 from 852 incidents in 2022,” reads a report on the ADL website. “There were 282 documented white supremacist events in 2023, a 63% increase from the 173 recorded in 2022.”
While many of these hate groups argue that they’re exercising free speech, Magyarics says their intentions are much more nefarious.
“They’re purposely trying to stoke fear among marginalized communities, whether they be LGBTQ+, the Jewish community, the Haitian migrant community,” he said.
Coronado community member Carl Luna, a professor of political science who lives where the flyers were distributed, said he’s concerned that the hateful words could turn into hateful actions.
“Academic and governmental studies in the U.S., Europe, and around the world would indicate a strong connection between increased hate speech and increases in political violence,” said Luna.
This is especially true when the hate speech targets a minority group, according to Luna. He refers to a page from the United Nations website that shows how, throughout history hate speech was identified as a “precursor to atrocity crimes, including genocide.”
“It’s not that every act of hate yields a corresponding act of violence, but the tipping points between the two become more likely as hate speech proliferates,” said Luna.
Just last week, lawmakers in California created consequences for individuals who participate in hate littering: The very legislation the flyers were speaking out against was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom last Wednesday. The new law makes perpetrators subject to a civil lawsuit.
AB 3024, which was introduced by Assembly Member Chris Ward (D-San Diego), expands state civil rights protections to those who are the target of hateful flyers or pamphlets that “contain threatening speech with the intention of intimidating members of a protected class.”
Ward said, “When hate groups are deliberately going into Jewish communities to leave antisemitic flyers on the doorsteps, vehicles and personal property of their victims to try to intimidate and harass them where they live, that’s not free speech. That’s attempting to turn neighbor against neighbor, and it makes the people these flyers are targeting afraid to be themselves and live their lives in their own neighborhood.”
Whether or not the legislation will curb the distribution of hateful flyers in California remains to be seen. But if a community is targeted with hateful propaganda, there are certain things residents should do…and not do, according to Magyarics.
First, reach out to law enforcement right away. If the propaganda keeps showing up, contact the local ADL office because they keep track and document these propaganda incidents.
“Next, throw the flyer away. Discard it. Do not keep it. You don’t want it to get the wrong place,” said Magyarics.
He says that often community members will often remove the flyers themselves, so their neighbors don’t wake up to hateful messaging. Do not ever publicly share any links or QR codes to the organization’s website, said Magyarics. That just encourages unsavory people to look them up and join.
Finally, residents should understand that they, themselves, were not the target. It’s just a way for the organization to get their hateful messaging out in the world, according to Magyarics.
“Clockwork Crew is like so many other ones that are all across the country doing this same thing,” he said. “They’re creating fear.”
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