National hate group monitor unmasks a Lehigh Valley-area publishing company peddling Nazi and fascist literature

By Daniel Patrick Sheehan
The Morning Call

LEHIGH VALLEY NEWS
Jun 15, 2022 

“In His Own Words: The Essential Speeches of Adolf Hitler.”

“Burning Souls,” described as a “poetic memoir” by Leon Degrelle, a Belgian who enlisted in the German army during World War II, became an officer in the Waffen SS and — sentenced to death in absentia — lived out his days in the fascist Spain of Francisco Franco.

“A Handbook for Right-wing Youth” by Julius Evola, an antisemite and Nazi sympathizer considered a hero among the “alt-right,” a group that embraces racism, white nationalism, antisemitism and populism.

Antelope Hill’s owners — Macungie native Vincent Cucchiara, 24, his wife, Sarah Cucchiara, 25, and their partner, Dimitri Anatolievich Loutsik — operated anonymously until this week, when the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights foundation that tracks hate groups, published a lengthy story about the business and its principals on its Hatewatch blog.

The four reporters identified the owners through document searches and by navigating a labyrinth of websites and podcasts where the Cucchiaras, who appear to be more active in the business than Loutsik, have periodically done interviews under pseudonyms.

Vincent Cucchiara graduated from Emmaus High School. He was a Boy Scout and became an Eagle Scout in January 2016, earning the rank with a project that restored trees to part of a community park. He also served as a VFW bugler.

None of the owners spoke to Hatewatch. Two reporters who visited a house in the tiny Montgomery County borough of Green Lane, which is listed in public records as the Cucchiaras’ address, met a man who didn’t identify himself.

“I know who you are. I know who both of you guys are,” the man told the reporters during the June 10 encounter, after indicating he was familiar with the SPLC. “We’ll see each other again one day.”

The Cucchiaras blocked a Morning Call reporter who contacted them through their Facebook pages, and no contact information was available for Loutsik.

This striving for anonymity is typical of white supremacist culture, said Michael Edison Hayden, a senior investigative reporter and spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. Few supremacists ever use their real names in communications or publications.

“The most important thing to understand about pseudonyms and white supremacy is that they know what they’re doing is wrong,” said Hayden, who began covering white supremacy in the wake of the violent 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“They may tell you it’s not wrong, but they know it’s anti-social behavior,” he said. “If they felt that this was something they wanted to put their names to they would do it. This is something they want to do to people.”

Hayden said the Hatewatch team started looking into Antelope Hill because the publisher’s titles ― which include children’s books under the company’s “Little Frog” imprint — kept cropping up at white supremacist rallies. And recently, an Antelope Hill author who goes by “Raw Egg Nationalist” appeared in a preview for a documentary on masculinity by Tucker Carlson of Fox News.

Hayden said investigations of white supremacists and other hate groups can take many months or even years, but he and the three other reporters on the inquiry pulled this one together in a few months after getting some leads on the publishers’ identities.

The reporters determined that the Cucchiaras and Loutsik, who were friends at Penn State, started the company in early 2020, concealing ownership information by using an out-of-state business registration and listing the address as a private mailbox at a UPS Store in Quakertown.

It didn’t take long for the publisher to find its audience.

“Antelope Hill has profited from hate by translating historical works by 20th-century Nazis and fascists, offering a publishing platform to contemporary white power propagandists and shipping books around the world using selling platforms including Amazon,” the article says.

Hatewatch also found “considerable evidence of close cooperation between the Antelope Hill principals and a network of far-right actors associated with the white supremacist National Justice Party (NJP) and The Right Stuff (TRS) podcast network.”

Neo-Nazis, alt-Right and white supremacists march in Charlottesville, Virginia, the night before the "Unite the Right" rally in 2017. The Southern Poverty Law Center says a Montgomery County publisher has ties to groups that took part in the rally. (TNS)

The National Justice Party, which was suspended from Twitter, was formed in 2020 by white supremacists who attended the “Unite The Right” rally. The Anti-Defamation League calls the group “virulently anti-Semitic.” Among its platform positions is a 2% cap on Jewish employment in “vital institutions.” The party was formed by members of The Right Stuff network.

The Cucchiaras and Loutsik haven’t always worked in the shadows. During their Penn State days, Loutsik and Vincent Cucchiara organized a pro-Trump movement called the Bull-Moose Party and occasionally landed on the pages of the college paper.

On one occasion, two students who vandalized Trump signs at one of the group’s rallies were fined more than $700. They mounted an online campaign to raise twice that amount and donate the extra money to Planned Parenthood in Loutsik’s name.

In 2016, Loutsik resigned from the Bull-Moose Party when someone leaked a transcript of the group’s private chats, which were full of homophobic and racist slurs.

Vincent Cucchiara is a real estate agent, according to Hatewatch, and helped Loutsik buy a $290,000 house in Harleysville, Montgomery County, this year.

Sarah Cucchiara was a teacher in the Norristown Area School District but left in 2020 after racist postings on her Facebook wall became public, Hatewatch said. Public records show she once lived in Macungie.

Hatewatch linked her to a Twitter account under the name Maggie, where she frequently decries mixed-race marriages and makes antisemitic comments.

Hatewatch notes that the number 88 in Maggie’s Twitter handle is often used by neo-Nazis as code for “Heil Hitler,” because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. A previous Twitter account linked to Sarah Cucchiara contained the number 14 in its handle, commonly used to refer to a 14-word statement of white supremacy, Hatewatch said.

Hayden said the white supremacist movement is smaller now than it used to be in terms of organized hate groups, but at the same time, the level of conflict it promotes has increased. One explanation is that white supremacists in the social media age no longer need in-person groups surreptitiously distributing hate literature to spread their message.

“There is an entire subculture around putting a pseudointellectual sheen on what is essentially just racism,” Hayden said. “To people who are predisposed to a simplistic way of looking at things, they can really believe they are doing something impressive or cutting edge.

“They refer to themselves as dissidents. Pardon the language, but it’s really just a-hole behavior.”

Morning Call reporter Daniel Patrick Sheehan can be reached at 610-820-6598 or dsheehan@mcall.com