An Alaska man named Joshua Wahl who posted videos on YouTube under the name Laseranon was charged on Monday with cyberstalking, reported the Court Watch newsletter, after repeatedly threatening a Florida sheriff.
In February 2023, Sheriff Michael Chitwood of Volusia County, Florida held a press conference calling out a group of people who distributed antisemitic propaganda, including digitally broadcasting messages of support for Adolf Hitler.
Chitwood came out forcefully against a loose group of neo-Nazis who organized on Telegram group chats. On Halloween weekend last year, the so-called “Lazer Nazi” took credit on Telegram for projecting antisemitic propaganda on buildings in Florida, California, and Texas. One message read “Jews owned the slave ships and most of the slaves.”
In the wake of Chitwood’s press conference, Wahl sent a series of threats to Chitwood by email and through posts on 4chan.
Chitwood responded forcefully to the online threats, calling those who made them “scumbags.”
“His strategy?” reported the Washington Post in April. “Go nuclear. Shame the organizers on the radio and television. Roast them on the internet. Keep at it for months. Keep going even though no one knows if it’s working.”
On March 31, the indictment said, Wahl sent an email to Chitwood saying that he was armed with lasers and explosives.
“I just wanted to thank you,” the email began. “Your toothless threats to arrest me for the last 3 weeks have woken me from my funk.”
The email included a link to a video posted March 23, titled IN MINECRAFT on Wahl’s Laseranon YouTube account where he burned a hole in a picture of Chitwood’s face.
Since at least 2021, the government has prosecuted violent threats made with the qualifier “in minecraft.”
According to one legal filing in a Jan. 6 prosecution, “Based on information provided by the FBI, the government understands that it is common for persons discussing criminal activity online to refer to such activity as occurring ‘in Minecraft’ to conceal the true nature of the activity.”
In March, a different New Jersey man was arrested for making threats against Chitwood using the same qualifier.
“Just shoot Chitwood in the head and murder him. In Minecraft,” Kotaku reported the New Jersey man said.
On April 5, Wahl posted on 4chan that he wanted to ”Blind and kill shitwood in irl, not fucking Minecraft…I am an actual terrorist!”
The same day he posted “Until you get the balls to arrest me irl I’ll still be here. Kill shitwood irl, shoot him the fucking head with a overpressure 10mm round.”
On April 21, Wahl posted an image from the video of him burning a hole in the picture of Chitwood’s face, again ditching the Minecraft facade.
“Kill Mike Chitwood in irl, not fucking videogames,” he wrote. “Come and do something about it fedbots. My depleted uranium dust launcher wants to shred your lungs.”
He’d posted previous antisemitic sentiments on YouTube and elsewhere.
On Nov. 6, 2019, Wahl posted “Kill all Jewish and Israeli children” on 4chan next to a photo of a pipe bomb, the indictment alleged.
Alongside threats made against Chitwood, Wahl’s laseranon YouTube channel included many videos about how felons could arm themselves.
“What they are trying to do, essentially, is wipe people like you and me out,” said a nearly half-hour video titled “Armamentum Primarious: a guide for felons and prohibited persons”
“So it’s finally happened, you’ve finally been arrested or charged with a crime that has resulted in you losing your second amendment rights according to the ATF,” the video said, referring to the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Agency. But, according to Clarence Thomas, the video says, you still have a right to arm yourself, before going on to describe some of the many ways to do just that, including by building your own firearms through 3D printing, carving, and ordering parts off eBay.
The Laseranon channel also has a video demonstrating the use of smoke grenades and how to buy them, a compilation of blinding people with laser guns, and another long 40-minute documentary on the history and practice of blinding with laser guns.
