What the hell was this guy thinking? If you are a neo-Nazi, and you get out of your car just to pepper spray a black man, something is going to happen to you! Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. It was self defense he says – and that makes complete sense when you consider how he stopped his car, got out and sprayed the brother on the sidewalk. It looks like Columbus, Ga has grown tired of Michael Carothers (a/k/a Michael Weaver), who likes to annoy people around town with his National Alliance flyers (damn, when’s the last time we have written about THOSE dead letter idiots?) and his posturing as Columbus’ Great White Dope. So when he pulled this stunt all that stuff he had been doing for almost a decade came back to haunt him. If he wasn’t trying to be that Great White Dope he might have only had to deal with a battery charge from that Dec. 4 incident. Unfortunately for him cops decided to put two and two together and this week they gave his charges an upgrade – which is why he is sitting in jail today.

One People’s Project

COLUMBUS, GA – Police have decided to charge a National Alliance member known for his activism around town with assault stemming from a Dec. 4 incident where he attacked a black man with a can of pepper spray.

According to the Ledger-Enquirer, Michael Carothers, also known as Michael David Weaver, 31 was indicted and arrested Tuesday on aggravated assault charges and is currently being held without bond at the Muscogee County Jail.
According to police, a 26-year-old black man was walking on Rose Hill Street in Columbus around 6 p.m. Dec. 4, when Carothers slowly pulled up along side him in a car. When the man got on the sidewalk and kept walking,  Carothers stopped his car, got out, sprayed pepper spray on the man’s neck, returned to his car and drove away. He was arrested about an hour later and initially charged with a misdemeanor simple battery charge, but after a Columbus police detective familiar with Carothers contacted the Columbus Solicitor General Ben Richardson, whose office initially had the case, to take a another look at the misdemeanor charge, Richardson asked the office of Senior Assistant District Attorney Don Kelly to also look at it further. “That was more unusual than a usual battery — a hitting or touching,” Richardson said. “It was not a victim who knew the perpetrator.”

The District Attorney’s office agreed. “We felt like the use of Mace, it seemed to be completely unprovoked,” Don Kelly said, noting further that the incident might indeed have been racially motivated. While there are federal hate crime statues, however, there are no such statutes in Georgia.

Carothers, under his “Michael Weaver” alias, has made quite the name for himself in Columbus, GA as the local neo-Nazi, although much of his activism has been nothing more than posting flyers on the windows of cars, and outside gun shows, as well as internet activism. In 2004, he attempted to solicit his fellow posters at the white supremacist website Stormfront to harass his manager at a Publix Supermarket for not promoting him, citing “reverse discrimination”.  In 2008, he was described on the National Alliance website as “stalwart National Alliance activist” and named “Activist of the Year” for his work placing National Alliance literature on the windshields of cars around town.  In October 2009, he and his father David Carothers stood outside the Columbus Gun and Knife Show and personally handed out National Alliance pamphlets. According to a National Alliance article, National Alliance fliers, stickers, cards and pamphlets were also distibuted that month in Dothan, AL, where his girlfriend Lori Taylor resides. She is currently supporting him, saying he in jail as a result of defending himself.

On one blog that was critical of the literature drop, he attempted to promote the National Alliance, which has long since lost much of the strength they once had due to the death of its founder William Pierce in 2002 and the infighting that followed, prompting a massive split of the group. “The National Alliance will continue it’s outreach effort throughout Columbus,Ga.,until every White American wakes up to the dangers of multiculturalism!” he wrote. In 2010, Carothers started a blog called the White Information Network, where he reposted articles he felt were supportive of his worldview.

Carothers is facing up to 20 years in prison.