North Jersey native has spent years fighting white supremacists

Daryle Lamont Jenkins shared a post on social media last month that ignited a storm in his former hometown.

"Heads up! We got ourselves a Nazi Concert Happening in NJ!" he wrote.

Jenkins was referring to a controversial heavy metal festival scheduled for June 26 and 27 at a Garfield club. His announcement led to an outcry by area residents, condemnations of the event by local officials and cancellation by the private club where it was booked.

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Kyle Powell, the producer of the VengeanceFest VII festival, said he had been prepared for such blowback and moved the event to a Bloomfield Veterans of Foreign Wars hall.

But on a recent video he posted to his Facebook page, he sounded angry. "You just wait, Daryle Lamont Jenkins. I got some [expletive] coming for you."

Jenkins, 58, an activist who aims to expose White supremacists and neo-Nazis, is accustomed to such threats from his opponents. "It just rolls off my back at this point," he said with a shrug.

Jenkins said he's gratified that he succeeded in raising awareness about the dangers of the event. "It wasn't just a concert," he argued. "It featured bands promoting Nazi ideas."

The Facebook page of K.E.P. Productions, which promotes the festivals, also contains extremist memes, he said.

But Powell, in an interview with The Record last month, insisted he's not a Nazi and that as a person of color he can't possibly be a White supremacist.

Jenkins noted that a small but growing number of Black, Hispanic and Asian people have been joining the White supremacist movement. "You don't have to be White to be a fascist," he said. "You can be of any color."

The Somerset resident founded the One People's Project in 2000 to quell the influence of hate groups. He said he started his nonprofit in response to a White supremacist rally in Morristown held that year on July Fourth. "We built a website to coordinate our activity and to let people know what racists would be participating," he said. By that time, Jenkins had already been compiling information about local hate-mongers for over a decade.

After the rally, he expanded the website, and it gained traction. Several months later, he warned the Manville VFW that an event booked there as a financial seminar was actually a hate event, and the group shut it down, he said.

The anti-fascist watchdog group, based in New Brunswick, is composed of roughly 20 volunteers who research and report on right-wing groups. It also publishes an online newsletter called Idavox.com, inspired by Ida B. Wells, the 19th-century Black journalist who wrote about the lynchings of Black people that were happening at that time, Jenkins said.

Operating under the motto "Hate Has Consequences," Jenkins' group videotapes its neo-fascist enemies at protests to expose them to the public. He has been known to confront the Proud Boys, White Lives Matter and other right-wing groups in Charlottesville, Virginia; Portland, Oregon; New York and Princeton and, more recently, in Somerset and at Delaney Hall.

Many of them, like Powell, talk about their right to free speech, he said.

"But if you're going to defend their free-speech rights, you better also use it to defend yourself," Jenkins said.

Other left-wing activists praise Jenkins for his work. Luis Enrique Marquez, an anti-fascist activist and the author of several books on the topic, including the recently published "How the Antifascist Saved Christmas," said Jenkins has been "at the forefront of anti-fascism way before it was the cool thing to be. He really just wants a world that is equitable."

Jenkins' nonprofit is supported primarily by donations, and he has worked over the years driving trucks and cabs to support himself, but he has been plagued recently by health issues. He suffered strokes in 2024 and 2025, and they affected his speech.

Yet Jenkins is not letting that slow him down. He has a podcast called Antifascism O.G. on Substack and says he will continue to conduct his research and will keep outing the bad guys.

"You have to stand up to hate," he said. "Otherwise it spreads,"

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: North Jersey native has spent years fighting White supremacists