LEICESTER  — For sure, West Asheville’s Firestorm Books & Coffee “is the hub for Antifa in the Southeast — here we have Torch Antifa,” according to Chad Nesbitt, the conservative Republican Leicester-based founder of SKYline News, which has a website and Facebook page that conducts what is billed as  “investigative journalism.”

“It’s run by one particular trust fund kid,” Nesbitt said, declining to be more specific, during a telephone interview on July 26 with the Daily Planet. At times, his wife Nancy also addressed the newspaper during the interview.

As an example of the threat to public safety that Firestorm Books represents, Nesbitt said it offers for sale a book titled “How to Kill a Police Officer.”

In the interview, Nesbitt said one of his main concerns about Firestorm Books is that “they’re getting their money from the taxpayers.

“Evan Scott runs the store, but he goes by Liberty Valance. ‘He’s a male-to-female transgender. He runs the Center for Participatory Change. He got grant money for that nonprofit from … (George) Soros, foundations, etc. It’s like a huge, big umbrella.

“It goes all the way back to James McClure Clarke (a former Democratic state congressman). Elbeth was his wife. There was a trust and then all these properties went to all these projects, such as Firestorm Books.”

As for the new location at the other end of Haywood Road, “It will hold more people, plus if there is a space in the back, they can house more heroin addicts.

“They hosted Bill Ayers (when he visited the area) and these terrorists who come there.”

Put simply, Nesbitt said of Firestorm Books, “They tell everyone how to be anarchists. That’s their number one goal — not to sell books, but to advocate anarchy.

“With this new location, it’s just going to be more people, more seminars and more needle exchange and more of an outreach area for their agenda.

“The problem is the average citizen out here is going to have to get out here to vote. Seventy-five percent of the people in Buncombe County didn’t vote in the last election.

“The crime is going to have to end up hitting their (the voters’) pocketbooks — and in their homes — before it starts changing.”

Nesbitt said Firestorm Books is the leader in the organizing” of local radicals — “and they’re the leaders in the organization of  — and also help — the Sunrise Movement 

“Everywhere where they (are located en masse), the radical left has a big Antifa movement — and they have a bookstore” as a base.

“They call it ‘anti-fascist,’ but they are more ‘fascist’ than anyone else.

“Like their (Firestorm) bookstore, they don’t have books on all the subjects. Their bookstore is literally straight propaganda.

“Some of their books are for little children, telling them it’s OK to tell your mommy ‘no.’ They are teaching children — immediately — to defy their parents and everyone else.”

Nesbitt also lamented that “Firestorm Books has no conservative books on its shelves, along with no Christian books.”

So would Nesbitt feel safe in walking into Firestorm Books?

“I’d certainly feel safe going in there. But they’d ask me to leave— and I would.They’re harmless unless they’re in numbers.What they’ll do is rile up their base, finding the stupidest” to commit violent acts.

“They put out people’s addresses that they don’t like — in the hopes that some of the stupid people will do something” to harm their enemies....

“Well, we’re in the United States, the ‘land of the free,’ so if they (Antifa) want to have a bookstore promoting witchcraft, that’s their right, but if they are promoting rioting and violence in the streets, then every one of them needs to be arrested.”

Nesbitt’s wife Nancy added, “ They talk such a big game — how they believe this and that. But when they go out in the streets, they cover themselves (completely) in black. They’re like an anonymous army.”

So what would Nesbitt’s solution be for the Firestorm Books issue?

“I think the solution is what the federal government is doing with the FBI,” he replied. “They’re going over there and asking questions.”

As for Kim Roney, who is running for Asheville mayor, Nesbitt said the following:

“Kim Roney is part of Antifa — and Firestorm Bookstore has endorsed her (candidacy for mayor) — and so have the Asheville Socialists of America. She (Roney) is full-blown Antifa.

“I highly recommend that the Republican Party really look at the next election closely because there are people on the (Buncombe) Board of Elections who I question their motives  and their character.

“What’s going to have to happen is the business-owners are going to have to come together and say, ‘Enough is enough.’

“Now we’ve got crimes happening — a cartel selling drugs — and not just wholesale.”

Nesbitt added that Asheville has recorded 11 murders in (the first) seven months (of 2022) —  possibly 12 (murders), signifying what he termed “more crime (skyrocketing), with children getting hurt, if not killed.”

In reference to Firestorm Books’ recent announcement that it will be moving in early 2023 from 610 Haywood Road to 1022 Haywood Road to the former Dr. Dave’s Automotive location, Nesbitt said, “I think Firestorm moving up there… the whole area of West Asheville — the Haywood Road area — is subject to socialism and that culture of anarchy. I think the biggest thing people can do is what they can do now.

“People need to start picking up the phone and complaining to the APD (Asheville Police Department) that they (Firestorm and its constituents) are an absolute nuissance. It’s terrible for the public — needles, drug-dealers, homeless people” around the store.

Nesbitt reiterated that, to him, Firestorm Books represents “anarchy — it’s the people who are causing the riots. 

“They’re sending out a message to all of their mentally incompetent friends of Firestorm. They’re telling everyone not to talk to the FBI... Of course, nobody would threaten the Firestorm Bookstore.”

Meanwhile, Nebitt’s wife Nancy added, “The laws have to be changed. (Former Asheville City Councilman) Vijay Kapoor said (after resigning recently) that ‘we the people don’t run Asheville — the nonprofits run Asheville.’

“They (Antifa, based — in her view — out of Firestorm Books) attacked several local churches during the ‘Roe v. Wade (abortion) thing.’ They spread red paint” on the churches. Also, in her view, Firestorm Books represents “just hating and hurting people — and that’s not OK.”

Her husband, Chad Nesbitt concluded the interview by asserting, “The power is with the people. The people are the majority — and Firestorm is the minority. If the majority would get off its rear-end, all they (Firestorm Books) can do is “organize and issue threats,” Nesbitt said.