U.S. Army reservist Christopher Woodall organized a “white nationalist” paramilitary camp while serving in the North Carolina Army National Guard.
He boasted of his Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi ties.
He openly supported Russia’s war on Ukraine.
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But seven months after Raw Story revealed Woodall’s extremism, an Army investigation — prompted by that reporting — remains ongoing, with no conclusion in sight, military officials acknowledged.
Woodall, meanwhile, remains a member of the Individual Ready Reserve, which the Army describes as “trained soldiers who may be called upon, if needed, to replace soldiers in active duty and Army Reserve units.”
Woodall’s continued connection to the Army comes at a time when the Biden administration has publicly vowed to combat extremism within the military’s ranks.
Lt. Col. Allie Scott, a spokesperson for the Army Human Resources Command at Fort Knox in Kentucky, confirmed to Raw Story that the command is currently pursuing a “fact-finding investigation” on Woodall for alleged extremist activity. One potential outcome, she said, is that Woodall could be removed from the Individual Ready Reserve.
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“For the past six months, we have attempted to find the facts from the North Carolina National Guard, and also any reports within our [military] judicial system,” Scott told Raw Story. In a follow-up interview, she added: “I can’t confirm whether they have responded or not.”
Scott added: “Paramilitary training — that would have been grounds to say that person does not uphold Army values, whether they were on duty or not.”
A spokesperson for the North Carolina National Guard confirmed that a National Guard lawyer has received a request for information about Woodall from the Army Human Resources Command.
But despite Woodall acknowledging to Raw Story in August 2023 that he ran a “white nationalist” training group, it remains unclear what, if any, progress Army investigators have made in his case. Scott declined to comment on when the investigation might be completed.
For a month following Raw Story’s publication disclosing Woodall’s extremist activities, action on the case stalled due to confusion about which agency held authority over him.
And today, seven months into the investigation, public affairs officers at several installations — including Army headquarters at the Pentagon, Army Human Resources Command and the North Carolina National Guard — responded to Raw Story’s inquiries with statements indicating they were unfamiliar with basic facts of Woodall’s case.
“This is outrageous,” Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project on Hate and Extremism, told Raw Story. “It’s been months since you disclosed this. There’s no question about this guy’s involvement in prohibited extremist activities. I’m not sure what’s going on at DOD, but this guy should have been bounced immediately.”
Beirich noted that Woodall has a long documented history of participation in hate groups, and this is not a case of a soldier merely making one racist social media post.
A cut-and-dry case?
In January 2023, when Woodall was still a member of the North Carolina Army National Guard, he hosted one of his white nationalist paramilitary training sessions.
Woodall, now 35, separated from the National Guard in April 2023 after four years of service. The total enlistment period is eight years for the National Guard; members who leave active duty are required to spend the remainder in the Individual Ready Reserve. Barring special circumstances, Woodall’s obligation to the Individual Ready Reserve would last through April 2017.
Members of the Individual Ready Reserve can be involuntarily called up for deployment in a time of national emergency, as happened during the 1991 Gulf War, the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
In August 2023, when Raw Story published its initial report on Woodall’s white nationalist activities, questions about which military entity even held authority over Woodall caused an initial delay into what later became an investigation.
The Army’s confusion was palpable: The Army first referred questions about the matter to the North Carolina National Guard, which in turn indicated that questions about whether any action would be taken would “be brought forth to the appropriate NCNG sections.”
Members of the North Carolina National Guard watch as demonstrators march in the rain on Sept. 22, 2016 in Charlotte, N.C. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
Almost four weeks later, a spokesperson for the agency told Raw Story that “the North Carolina National Guard does not hold any administrative control or oversight for service members” in Woodall’s status.
Another two weeks passed, with multiple emails and phone calls, before an Army spokesperson at the Pentagon told Raw Story in an email that the matter had been “referred to the appropriate agency for review and action, as appropriate.”
At Raw Story’s insistence, the spokesperson eventually divulged that the agency handling the investigation was the Army Human Resources Command.
Raw Story’s effort in April to obtain updates on Woodall’s status met with more delays.
More than a week after Raw Story requested an update from the Army spokesperson in mid-April, she told the publication: “I don’t think we’re going to have anything more.”
Then, after being reminded that she herself had confirmed the existence of the investigation, she referred Raw Story to a spokesperson at Human Resources Command.
‘Societal collapse’
Raw Story’s investigation reviewed messages sent by Woodall and others on the social media platform Telegram. Their telegram chat went dark last year, shortly after Raw Story contacted Woodall for comment.
But in August 2023, Woodall acknowledged in an interview with Raw Story that he had described his paramilitary training group as “white nationalist,” saying, “If you want to really split hairs, yes.”
And while he disputed the notion that the group was conducting military training, he told Raw Story that they were “talking about teaching people to use and operate firearms” and that they were training in preparation “for a societal collapse.”
In his comments to Raw Story, Woodall defended his involvement in a paramilitary training group geared specifically for white people.
“I don’t see it as an issue to have a white-friendly group of people that get together and teach each other,” said Woodall, who also worked for 16 months as a jail guard in Greensboro, N.C., which overlapped with his National Guard service. Woodall also said he served in an Army combat role for eight years, prior to joining the National Guard.
Scott, the spokesperson for Army Human Resources Command, declined to comment on whether investigators have attempted to speak with Woodall.
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Having voluntarily left the National Guard more than a year ago, Woodall has given little indication that he holds any desire to continue his military service. So little, in fact, that when contacted by Raw Story last year, Woodall indicated he was not aware that he remained bound to a military service obligation as a member of the Individual Ready Reserve.
He said at the time that he had received an overture to extend his enlistment in the National Guard. He turned it down.
In March 2023, shortly before leaving the National Guard, Woodall told members of his Telegram chat that he had soured on the U.S. military.
He wrote that “it was time to leave” because of “all the gender s---, and frankly just the s--- state of the military in general anymore.
“Not to say it wasn’t a challenge to make it in, or that there weren’t some good times that I’ll miss,” Woodall continued, “but the overshadowing bureaucracy, favoritism, woke feminism, gender neutrality, and just general soft nature of it all is unbearable by now.”
Beyond Woodall’s advocacy for white nationalism, he also maintained a TikTok account in 2023 that commented favorably on Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine and interacted with a Russian propaganda account.
“I do have pro-Russia standpoints,” Woodall told Raw Story in August 2023. “I’m not shy about that.”
Raw Story attempted to reach Woodall for comment for this story. A woman who answered the phone indicated that she would pass along a message to him, and then hung up without answering questions..
Last summer, Biden issued an executive order to deploy up to 450 members of the Individual Ready Reserve for Operation Atlantic Resolve, a mission led by the U.S. Army that “dates back to 2014 when the United States began an effort to bolster the NATO alliance in the wake of Russian military actions in Ukraine,” according to the Office of Inspector General at the Defense Department.
Woodall told Raw Story at the time that he did not believe his pro-Russia views would preclude him from serving in the U.S. military, were he to be called up.
“Everyone is entitled to their opinion on any subject matter that they deem to be in their wheelhouse of understanding,” he said. “Even if I were still enlisted, it wouldn’t have any bearing on my serving. I’m not providing financial support to any side in the conflict. Having an opinion on who is right in a conflict is a First Amendment matter.”
Missing the weeds for the field?
Beirich, of the Global Project on Hate and Extremism, told Raw Story she hopes the Army Human Resources Command’s handling of the Woodall investigation is an outlier, and not indicative of how the armed forces as a whole is handling reports of extremist activity within the ranks.
In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, with media reports highlighting the participation of military veterans and active-duty service members, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced a “stand-down” to address extremism in the military.
“The Army has a standard on extremism and not living Army values,” Scott, the spokesperson for the Human Resources Command, told Raw Story. “The Army began a combating extremism campaign in 2021. It’s in our regulations. We’re taught it in Basic Training. The Army does not tolerate behaviors such as extremism, racism and sexual assault. They’re not in line with military values.”
Following the stand-down, Austin issued a memorandum in April 2021 calling for an independent study on extremism in the military.
Despite the fact that the report — by the Virginia-based nonprofit Institute for Defense Analyses — was completed in June 2022, it remained shelved for 18 months. Then, following repeated requests from USA Today, the Defense Department quietly released the report the day after Christmas in 2023.
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Far from a bracing call for bold action, the report urged military leaders to take a cautious approach when attempting to root out extremism within the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force and Coast Guard.
“Although disciplinary actions are necessary in some cases, they could become counterproductive if they are overused and alienate a significant portion of the larger force,” the report advised, adding that one commander interviewed by the authors told them “that military leaders need to be alert to the impact of their actions on ‘the whole field, not just a few of the weeds.”
Beirich, who has been pushing the Pentagon to address extremism for decades, said the report’s conclusions seem illogical.
“They indicate this could increase polarization or divisiveness,” Beirich told Raw Story. “I’m just hard pressed to understand how it’s polarizing to root violent extremists out of the military. It’s almost like you’re implying that there are a lot of violent white supremacists in the military, and you don’t want to anger them. That’s just not true…. Generally, people are united in not wanting white supremacists in the military.”
Beirich noted that the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act stripped out provisions for addressing extremism in the military, and the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report on a party-line vote controlled by Republican members calling on the Pentagon to suspend its efforts to root out extremism.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), a member of the committee, has said, when asked if “white nationalists” should be allowed to serve in the military, that he calls those white nationalists “Americans.”
“Because Republicans — many of them are on record saying things like, ‘You’re just besmirching the armed forces’ — the DOD under this pressure and maybe from within the agency is not taking this issue as seriously as in the months after January 6,” Beirich told Raw Story.
The authors of the report commissioned by the Defense Department recommended that, if anything, military leaders should signal to both service members and the general public that nothing has changed.
“Senior officials interviewed by the IDA team indicated that the military services are already taking a modulated approach to extremist behaviors and activities, avoiding the application of disproportionate disciplinary measures,” the report said. “A clear message from senior officials would be helpful to assure the Force that individual cases will continue to be judged on their merits and to ensure that the new policy is not construed either inside or outside the department as changing that approach.”
