James Chambers

Also as of October 2023, Chambers was the “owner/weightlifting coach” of the East Atlanta Barbell Club, a gym in Atlanta, Georgia. Chambers banned police officers from using the gym in 2017.

On the gym’s website, Chambers goes by “Jim Chambers.” He is also reportedly known by the names “Jim Cox Chambers” and “James Cox Chambers.”

As of the same date, Chamber’s Twitter said he was located in New England and Atlanta.

As of December 2023, Chambers reportedly resided in New Hampshire’s Upper Valley, where Lebanon, NH, is located. He also owned a 300-acre commune in Alford, MA, which is in Berkshire County. Chambers has called the commune a “liberatory training space,” and it is home to the Berkshire Communists.

Armed Communist Agitator

On November 17, 2022, Chambers posted on Instagram a photo of him holding a shotgun and wrote: “The original Mahican name for Alford, MA was Podunk. @berkshire_communists other ‘land projects’ may be involved in programs aimed at disarming the people. That ain’t us. #ofcourse.”

On January 26, 2023, Chambers posted on Instagram a photo of one of his firearms and wrote: “I love Massachusetts, but I don't love that my guns have to go to jail when I'm a resident there. New Hampshire has Georgia-adjacent gun laws, so all my buddies get to come home to papa. There are only a few, for any feds or liberals out there stalking. No cache of weapons, lol. Here's my very fave, this ultracompact, ultra-light, foldable Kel Tec .40cal Sub2000. #armtheleft #traintheleft #staystrapped #fromthebarrelofagun #livefreeandalsodie #ofcourse.”

The hashtag “#fromthebarrelofagun” is a reference to a quote by Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong who said: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

On July 6, 2023, Chambers was quoted in an interview with the New York Post as saying: “Being anti-cop and pro-gun from a revolutionary perspective is the only sensible stance you can take.”

The same article said that Chambers claimed “that the country’s issues with guns stem from the fact that ‘we don’t live in a workers’ state’ but rather one that’s ‘controlled by the few and powerful.’”

Promoting Incitement and Arrested at a Violent Protest

On December 4, 2023, Chambers was profiled in an article in The Free Press that said: “‘Make Zionists afraid,’ Fergie wrote in a post on his Instagram on November 15. In another he wrote: ‘We need to start making people who support Israel actually afraid to go out in public. We need to make all of white America afraid that everything they have stolen is going to be burned to the ground. That’s what makes them listen.’”

On November 4, 2023, Chambers featured in a Palestine Action US Instagram video where he was being escorted by the police after he was handcuffed and arrested. The video began with a short video clip of the front of a Mcdonald's restaurant that had one of the front windows cracked and “GAZA” spraypainted twice over the entrance.
 
Palestine Action US wrote: “Palestine Actionist is arrested for defacing McDonalds genocide collaborators across from the White House. / McDonalds is donating free meals to the Israeli Occupation Forces as they bomb and starve Palestinian men, women, and children in a concentration camp. Mcdonald’s = genocide caterers.”

In the video, while being escorted by police, Chambers led the chant: “There is only one solution!” Others responded: “Intifada, revolution!” He then chanted: “Intifada, intifada! Long live the intifada!”

The term “intifada,” which translates from Arabic as “uprising” or “insurrection,” carries the connotation of violence. Palestinian intifadas waged against Israel have been marked since 1987 by hundreds of hijackings, shootings, stabbings, bombings and suicide missions.

On October 12, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “We out here / #shutElbitdown / #Globalize the Intifada.” His tweet included a photo of him with other Palestine Action US agitators in front of the entrance of an Elbit facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Chambers was one of three Palestine Action US agitators who used [slides 1, 5] bike locks to chain themselves to the facility’s entrance to block the entrance. He sat in front of a sign that said: “ELBIT PROFITS FROM GENOCIDE.” The agitators vandalized [slide 1] the facility by splashing [slides 2, 4, 8] red paint in front of the building and spray painting graffiti [slide 3] on its outer wall that said: “SHUT ELBIT DOWN.”

One of the other Palestine Action US agitators who joined Chambers was Calla Walsh. In a separate incident, she was arrested and charged with riot and sabotage in November 2023 after she was one of three agitators who damaged and vandalized an Elbit facility in New Hampshire. Chambers reportedly paid for their bail, which totaled $30,000, through his funding entity called the Babochki Collective.

Celebrating and Justifying a Hamas Massacre of Israeli Jews

On October 7, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “There *is* beauty in this violence, not bc the physical acts of violence are triumphalist gore porn / Bc the courage & strength required for such brutally necessary measures is a rare glimpse at the extent of what the people are capable of, despite the seeming invulnerability of the enemy / Stand with the Resistance, the Intifada / Globalize the Intifada.”

On October 7, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “Revolutionary Violence / Is beautiful.”

On October 7, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “Laughing / My / F**king / A** / Off.” His tweet featured a video showing the “state of fear and panic” among Israeli civilians at an airport after hearing a siren alerting them of an incoming rocket attack from Gaza.

On October 8, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “Shut up you liberal coward There are no non-combatant settlers.” His tweet responded to actor Mark Ruffalo who said that he showed solidarity with the “innocent civilians killed and held hostage” by Hamas and that he prayed for the “safety of the innocent people of Gaza.”

On the same thread, another Twitter user asked Chambers: “How about tourists?” Chambers answered: “The resistance has made it extra clear that tourism to the occupying entity is unacceptable. / We stand with this line.”

The same Twitter user then asked Chambers: “So that justifies the murder of tourists?” Chambers responded: “The liquidation of settler accomplices, yes.”

On October 9, 2023, Chambers was told by someone on Twitter: “You went off the rails when you justified and practically advocated for the murder of unarmed people. Take a break to think …”

Chambers answered: “Settlement is violence.” The same Twitter user replied: “How does that justify the murder of unarmed people?” Chambers responded: “They are invaders. They have had 75 years to leave.” Israel was founded 75 years earlier in 1948.

On October 9, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “Hamas>>>>Gandhi.”

Denying Hamas War Crimes

On October 8, 2023, Chambers’s Instagram Stories Highlights titled “Intifada” posted [slide 6] a graphic that said: “Reminder that there is NOT ONE SINGLE VERIFIED REPORT of sexual violence against Israeli occupiers during this uprising. / They are playing on your implicit racism, and weaponizing white women, like they always do / The resistance is principled. The resistance is devout. The resistance seeks only freedom and self-governance, nothing else. / Don't buy this crap.”

On October 10, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “I’m expressed that I’m not esp concerned about settler casualties, bc I’m not / But that’s simply from a theoretical standpoint, given the context of resistance to a brutal, ongoing genocide / Don’t think I believe for a minute that any of this crap about rape & massacre is accurate / Totally out of step w everything we know of the resistance.”

On October 10, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “Worth noting: In the 36-year history of the group, Hamas, a deeply devout Islamist formation, has never even been accused of committing sexual violence. This holds across the resistance.”

Anti-Semitism

On October 28, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “I find it completely insulting and predictable that liberal Jewish orgs get to control 98% of the ‘respectable’ narrative in the Palestinian solidarity movement in the US.”

In the next tweet in the thread, Chambers wrote: “...I can’t stand those with relations to the primary class position in this genocide centering their identities in ‘resistance.’”

In the next tweet in the thread, Chambers wrote: “...The oppressor cannot be the arbiter of liberation.”

On October 27, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “This faction of @DemSocialists is no different from those who sold out the German Revolution to the Nazis / What an #AllLivesMatter a** joke / Long Live the Resistance.”

Chambers’s tweet was in response to a Democratic Socialists of America tweet that said: “‘As we have said publicly, we abhor the deaths of Israeli and Palestinian civilians alike. Every life is precious. What we are also determined not to do, though, is abandon our calls for Palestinian liberation, and for an end to Israeli apartheid.’”


On October 25, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “Settle en masse, agitate unceasingly, foment a phony ‘war’ (resistance to settler colonialism can hardly be termed as trad ‘war’), eradicate, liquidate, displace, & physically replace Arabs w European Jews / For these maniacs, the Shoah [Holocaust] was a politically convenient instructional.”

Violent Hatred of Israelis and Zionists

On October 10, 2023, Chambers was asked on Twitter to denounce Hamas war crimes, including “Killing innocent babies” in the Israeli towns surrounding Gaza. Chambers responded: “Nope. / Also, Settler lives don’t matter.”

Also on October 10, 2023, Chambers tweeted about Israel and Israelis: “...Being there is an act of war.”

On October 17, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “Inshallah [God willing] both of these settlers will meet their maker shortly.”

His tweet was in response to a tweet by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that said: “Blake Jory grew up in Noosa. Last year on a European holiday, he fell in love with an Israeli woman. Now he's experienced war firsthand and his partner is soon off to the front line.”

Support for Terrorists (PFLP, Lions’ Den, DFLP)

On October 28, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “PFLP statement today / AKA / Shut up and turn up / Long live the Intifada.”

Chambers’s tweet included a screenshot of statement by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group that said: “Providing justifications and excuses to lower the level of revolutionary and solidarity action to symbolic and formal levels is a stab in the back of Palestine and its people… The Front reaffirms its previous call for a mass flood towards the embassies, interests, and bases of the aggression forces and a greater role for solidarity parties and forces in escalating the struggle against the alliance of enemies worldwide.”


On October 27, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “When was Hamas anything else?” His tweet was in response to a tweet that said: “BREAKING: Hamas leader calls his organization a ‘national liberation movement.’”

On October 25, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “A small list of anti-colonial groups we ought not condemn.” His tweet was about another tweet showing [photo 3] “Palestinian Resistance” groups like the Lions’ Den and [photo 4] The National Resistance Brigades, the “military wing of the Marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”

The “Lions’ Den” [عرين الأسود]is an independent “armed group” with operatives hailing from various other Palestinian terrorist organizations. The group reportedly emerged from Nablus in August 2022. The Lions’ Den has claimed responsibility for the death of Israeli soldiers. They also targeted Israeli civilians in multiple terror attacks in October and November 2022.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) is known for organizing the 1974 Ma’alot Massacre, in which 28 Israeli civilians were killed, including children. DFLP terrorist Samer Issawi received a 26-year prison sentence in 2002 for manufacturing and distributing pipe bombs, and firing at Israeli civilian vehicles during the second intifada.  

On October 14, 2023, Chambers’s Instagram Stories Highlights titled “Intifada” posted [slide 26] a graphic that said: “...No faction of the Palestinian resistance, Hamas or other, has done *anything* wrong…”

Calling For the Destruction of Israel and America

On June 29, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “...US is an irredeemable settler colony which must evaporate, its flag a hate symbol...”

On October 7, 2023, Chambers tweeted in response to a tweet that said Israel has a right to defend itself, stating: “... Death to the Empire / Long Live the Global Intifada.”

On October 17, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “Never, ever forgive / Destroy ‘Israel,’ entirely / Isolate and ostracize everyone who associates with it.”

On October 27, 2023, Chambers was featured in an article in Los Angeles Magazine where he told the publication: “I chant death to America every day. Imperialism is the death of humanity.”

Hatred of Israel and America

On October 27, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “Uh….yeah you know what you’re doing / Burning the flag of a settler colony committing an ongoing genocide / As you should be.” Chamber’s tweet was about anti-Israel agitator about to light an Israeli flag on fire.

On October 9, 2023, Chambers tweeted: “My little boy, my youngest, is half Jewish / he will learn to love his Jewish heritage, one of beauty and struggle, to burn that filthy Zionist flag, and to understand that those two actions are precisely compatible.”

On September 25, 2023, Chambers tweeted that Atlanta was “the most structurally fascist city in Amerikka.”

The term “Amerikkka” uses the initials of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) as a way to demonize America as “fascist or racist.”  

On March 26, 2022, Chambers tweeted: “... Zionism *never* works for the greater interest of Jewish people, but only for the advancement of its own chauvinism and imperialism.”

Hatred of the Police

In 2017, as the owner of the EAV Barbell Club gym, Chambers posted a sign in front of the local business that said [00:00:03]: “Rules: Do whatever the f**k you want correctly, except crossfit cultism. No f**king cops.”

In an interview where he was asked about the sign, Chambers said [00:01:10]: “We wanted one space that was just a little different. It's not, you know, aggressive hetero jock space that's dominated by cops and soldiers. It's a place where you're safe from that. And we don't want to make police stronger so that they can hurt people more efficiently.”

Chambers continued and said [00:01:24]: “It's not a personal thing. You put a uniform on and, quite honestly, I view that as an occupying enemy army when you put that uniform on.”

In 2020, Chambers had the phrase “ACAB” tattooed on his neck. The phrase means “All Cops are Bastards.”

On October 13, 2023, Chambers tweeted referring to police officers as “pigs.”

On October 24, 2023, the Instagram page for the Upper Valley People’s Gym said: “The Upper Valley Peoples Gym is an experimental project taking shape in a new space in Lebanon, NH. We are not a business. / Our aim is to create a free, anti-fascist training space, where cops, active military, landlords, and Zionists are not welcome.”

On October 26, 2023, Chambers tweeted a photo of him with a scar on his eye and wrote: “Ah, the joys of grappling / Now at least I’ll have a scar on both eyebrows not just one! / At least this doesn’t affect my ability to #wristlockthepolice.”

As of October 2023, the bio for Chambers on the EAV Barbell Club website said: “Outside of the gym, Jim lives in a psychedelic trance, fights cops and writes things.”

BDS

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true. 

One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”  

Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”

In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.

BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.

The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.

Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.

BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.

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