Nicholas Bauer is the founder of Crew 319, a short-lived neo-nazi group that was responsible for a slew of racist flyers, antisemitic banner drops and attention-seeking publicity stunts throughout Eastern and Central Iowa in 2022.
Since relocating back to his hometown of San Diego, CA, the one-time leader of his own one-man crew has joined the ‘white power activists’ of Clockwork Crew in dropping banners and spreading hate – and fucking around and finding out the hard way.
IDENTIFYING & BACKGROUND INFORMATION
NAME
Nicholas Matthew Bauer
ONLINE ALIASES
Bauer
AGE & DOB
26 | November 1997
LOCATION
CURRENT LOCATION
San Diego, CA
FORMER LOCATIONS
Oelwein, IA
Oceanside, CA
CRIMINAL RECORD
Arrest Date: 01-04-2023
Arrest Location: Oelwein, IA
Charges: Harassment (3rd degree), Mischief (5th degree)
ONLINE ACCOUNTS & SOCIAL MEDIA
TELEGRAM
CURRENT ACCOUNT
STATUS
Currently Active
USER ID
1636464882
USERNAME & HANDLE
Bauer | @BNS1488
Archive: Profile
Nick Bauer, who uses the super stealthy alias ‘Bauer‘ on Telegram, was identified in 2023 based on data from social media leaks, documented sightings of his truck in San Diego, CA, an arrest record in Oelwein, IA, and a sloppy attempt by someone very close to him who tried (and failed) to make a quick buck by dropping a dime on him to a disinterested journalist.
Unlike other members Clockwork Crew, Bauer wasn’t named in The Guardian article exposing the hate group in August 2023. He did, however, put his full FOMO on display by aggressively pushing to provide an unsolicited statement before the article was even published. The offer went ignored and he was left attention-starved, though he was fed a hint that he’d been identified (but failed to recognize it).
His exposure is long overdue, and in light of the events at Clockwork Crew’s most recent banner flop it’s finally time to give Nick Bauer a taste of the attention he so badly craves.
CREW 319: LESS OF A ‘CREW’, MORE OF A SOLO VENTURE
Nicholas Bauer founded Crew 319, a now-defunct neo-nazi “activism group”, in mid-2022. The group’s name was an unoriginal nod to the Iowa area code covering the region he lived in (and possibly a rip-off of Clockwork Crew’s original name: Crew 562).
A review of archives from Crew 319’s now-deleted Telegram channels show that the “group” was primarily a solo endeavor, though Bauer did recruit a single straggler into his new nazi club for one banner drop. He was a bit more successful in attracting subscribers for his Telegram channels (though not by much). Of the tens of neo-nazis who followed his channel, most probably did so out of a sense of obligatory support. The rest likely subscribed to watch the stunts he ripped from other hate groups like Goyim Defense League.
WHITE POWER PROSELYTIZER, LOCAL MENACE
On September 11, 2022, Bauer embarked on a solo hate tour in a rented U-Haul. He strapped a GoPro to his head, draped a Crew 319 flag across the box truck’s grill and proceeded to drive aimlessly through the streets of Des Moines, IA yelling at passersby and flipping them off before parking in front of the Capitol building and giving a “Sieg Heil” salute to a group of strangers on the street.
Two months before that, he’d littered a local park in the small town he’d recently moved to with flyers promoting antisemitic messages and his Telegram channel. He also took his hateful messages to towns like Strawberry Point, Waterloo and Cedar Rapids.
Oelwein residents believe he was possibly behind three earlier incidents: A vandalized billboard in November 2021, tagging on a performance arts center around the same period, and spray-painted swastikas and antisemitic messages on a Masonic Temple in April 2022.
It’s unknown whether Bauer had moved to Iowa by the time the earlier incidents had occurred (or if he was indeed responsible for them), but showing up and acting like the town menace did eventually catch up to him: He was arrested on January 4, 2023 on a warrant issued by Fayette County and charged with 3rd degree harassment and 5th degree criminal mischief. It appears that he was convicted on the harassment charge later that month and was ordered to pay a fine, interest and court costs.
THE NATIONAL DAY OF (NAZI) INACTION
Nick Bauer was also responsible for the infamous ‘Day of Hate’ that caused widespread alarm, a hypervigilant police response and a lot of discussion about responsibly issuing warnings about neo-nazi activity versus the consequences of amplifying neo-nazi activity.
The earliest posts promoting the planned “mass anti-semitic action” came from Crew 319’s Telegram channel. Interested participants were instructed to contact Bauer directly, with a promise of featuring those channels in ‘Day of Hate’ promotional posts and a request to send footage of themselves “shock[ing] the masses” directly to him.
Clockwork Crew was an early promoter and the first group to publicly sign on to the event, though they didn’t appear to actually participate.
Despite the hype, the “national day of [nazi] activism” was largely a failure, having turned out little more than a handful of antisemitic incidents – most of which came from Bauer himself and a few teenagers from the neo-nazi youth group 2119 (whose ‘activism’ that day included tagging someone’s house). But for a needy neo-nazi like Bauer, the outsized attention it brought to his “crew” was exactly what he wanted.
RIDING CLOCKWORK CREW’S COATTAILS – ALL THE WAY TO THE WINDSHIELD REPAIR SHOP
Though Crew 319 was based out of Iowa, Nicholas Bauer has had close connections to California’s first ‘active club’ for nearly two years – both online and in real life.
In an October 2022 episode of the Achtung! Amerikaner podcast, Bauer shared a bit of background about himself and his group. He disclosed that he was originally from Southern California and that he had founded his own group in mid-2022 after moving to Iowa (though he did admit “It’s just me doing this, bro“).
He also name-dropped Clockwork Crew quite a bit, making it a point to mention that he not only knew the members but had even met up with some of them. Based on the full context of the conversation, it’s believed Bauer was referring to the group’s co-founder, Mohammad Wadaa, and Michael Halahan III, the first member of the group to be identified.
0/10: Would not recommend
Bauer’s early ties to Clockwork Crew may have been more than just a casual meeting between like-minded racists. In June 2022, the hate group had announced that it had a new chapter in Iowa. Though nothing more had come of it, it’s worth noting as the timing coincided with the earliest date he was known to be living in the state.
Maybe other nazis don’t want to be associated with the Clockwork clownshow. Or maybe they don’t want to join the group’s “CP” chat.
By summer 2023, Bauer was back to meeting up with members of Clockwork Crew after moving back to SoCal. He first appeared in a propaganda photo taken outside of a Jewish kosher restaurant in Encinitas in August and has been featured intermittently since then. He’s also become the group’s designated propagandist, churning out boring videos in an attempt to recruit fresh blood into the (mostly) skinhead crew.
They most definitely are not.
But Bauer and his fellow fascist travelers did pose for propaganda shots in front of a kosher restaurant in Encinitas and a Masonic Lodge in Orange.
His most recent involvement with Clockwork Crew was on April 20, 2024 when he joined John Gahagan, Jayde Milne and others at a banner drop in Santa Barbara, CA that ended with the group confronted by locals, chased off by the cops and Bauer’s windshield getting smashed.
🧵1/2
— Conejo Valley Antifascists (@CAntifascists) April 21, 2024
Early reports suggest cuckworm crew and goyim defense league nazis made the bad decision to try promoting hate in Santa Barbara on 4/20/24. Locals showed up and provided them with some finding out. Details coming soon – but DM if you have additional information! pic.twitter.com/dpdqXtMOz7
BAUER WANTED ATTENTION. HE GOT IT.
Nick Bauer has little online presence outside of his ‘White Power Bauer’ persona on Telegram. Still, it was possible to positively identify him as the former leader of Crew 319 and a current member of Clockwork Crew.
POAST LEAKS (AND PORN SITES)
The first big break in the identification process came when his email address was discovered in the data that had been leaked from the far-right social media platform Poast in July 2023.
The email address used to create the Crew 319 Poast account included the group founder’s full name: nicholasmbauer@gmail.com.
A review of the Google account showed that the account owner goes by Nick, and that Nick lived in Southern California (based on the reviews he left for two businesses: One in Los Angeles and another in San Diego).
Further research into the email address showed that it appeared in a previous data hack and that the name associated with that compromised account was Nicholas Bauer, further corroborating that the name he used in his email address was his real name.
It’s worth mentioning that the email address was also found to have been used to sign up for no less than three porn sites, which is a bit ironic considering all of the “anti-degeneracy” rhetoric espoused by white supremacists.
CONNECTING THE DOTS FROM THE 319 TO THE 619
Nicholas Bauer’s identity was further confirmed two months later when his truck – with its bright blue paint job and large sonnenrad sticker adorning the back windshield – began grabbing attention. After images of the truck parked on a side street in San Diego’s Kensington neighborhood were first posted on Twitter in September 2023, it didn’t take long to make a solid connection between the vehicle and the co-founder of Crew 319.
He also confirmed that he drives a Nissan Frontier when Southern Sons Active Club co-founder David Fair casually posted a video of himself doing a DUI in a similar truck.
The truck, which obviously belonged to a neo-nazi, was noted to have an Iowa state license plate. Unlike the state the truck was spotted in, Iowa license plates include the name of the county where vehicles are registered, and this truck had been registered in Fayette County – the same area where most of Crew 319’s antisemitic ‘activism’ had taken place earlier that year.
Searches for Nicholas M Bauer yielded results showing he’d lived in both Oelwein, IA and San Diego, CA, and the locations were confirmed through various public records and resources. His January 2023 arrest and a traffic citation issued three months later both occurred in Fayette County during the period Crew 319 was active in Iowa. The San Diego address was found to be just a few doors down from where his truck has been repeatedly spotted since September of that same year.
But it turned out, Nick Bauer’s truck had been spotted in the wild two years earlier.
In June 2021, posts about a neo-nazi driving around Downtown San Diego appeared on both Twitter and the r/trashy subreddit. Though the driver’s face was covered with a skull mask and the truck didn’t have Iowa plates or a sonnenrad sticker on the back windshield, its distinct paint job and the swastika flag mounted to the tow hitch recently caught the attention of SubBass49 Tees and Conejo Valley Antifascists.
Shortly after this article was published, the truck was confirmed to be Bauer’s after a VIN search of the Iowa and California license plates resulted in a matching vehicle identification number.
‘WHITE POWER BAUER’ IS… LATINO?
The search into his background also revealed that Nick Bauer, who posts flyers with hateful messages like “RACE-MIXING IS WHITE GENOCIDE”, appears to be mixed-race himself.
He also appears to be either living with (or constantly visiting) some of his Latino family members, though it’s important to note that there’s no indication that anyone in his family harbors the same hateful ideology he does. In fact, some of his family members were found to be dedicated supporters of anti-racist activism and LGBTQ+ causes.
According to his family tree, Nick Bauer is mixed-race.
Unfortunately, the only full-faced photos of him that were found are very outdated. He was noticeably absent from the social media pages of his family members, which suggests that the white power activist may be the black sheep of his family.
ET TU, BRUTAL?
The final piece of evidence confirming Nicholas Bauer’s identity was provided by a woman who is either his girlfriend, wife or live-in cousin (the exact nature of their relationship was never determined).
In November 2023, a journalist received an email from “brutal queen” containing an offer they couldn’t refuse: The sender wanted to sell the ID of a Clockwork Crew member who hadn’t yet been outed.
But the offer was refused and the sender was quickly identified.
Various public sources linked the two-timing tipster directly to Nicholas Bauer, both in Iowa and California, and a review of the social media accounts linked to her email address showed that she’s every bit as racist and antisemitic as her maybe-lover, maybe-cousin.
Despite their shared hideous and hateful ideology, no evidence has been found showing that she’s actively involved in Bauer’s antisemitic ‘activism’ and attention-seeking stunts. If that changes in the future, the “brutal queen” will be exposed – but for now, the focus remains on Nicholas Bauer, whose entire life is centered on fucking around as a white power activist and finding out – the hard way.
UPDATE 2:
— SoCal Research Club (@SCResearchClub) May 1, 2024
Nicholas Bauer is finding out — again. https://t.co/akaG6DGgrl
| UPDATE May 1, 2024 This article was updated to include additional images, long-forgotten information about Clockwork Crew’s Iowa chapter, newly confirmed details about Nicholas Bauer’s earliest known racist stunt, and an update on how the latest phase of “finding out” has been going. A correction was also made to the date of the Masonic Temple defacement in Oelwein, IA. |