The Hacker Who Left Wall Street to Fight Fascists

Vlad Teichberg has spent the past decade creating new tools to take on the far right. He’s convinced his biggest battle is yet to come.

Photos by JB Nicholas

“It’s been a busy month,” Vlad Teichberg, a 45-year-old coder-by-day, activist-by-night, declared one day this fall. “More busy than average.”

This was an understatement. Over the course of 30 days in August and September, at his day job Teichberg helped solve a potential glitch in the server utility that companies use to assess damage to electrical grids after large storms, like the recent wave of hurricanes. In his spare time, he staved off the eviction of his Global Revolution TV media network from a space they have occupied without paying rent for more than a year. He also helped expose a former U.S. Army National Guard intelligence officer as a neo-Nazi and started discussions with other online activists about founding a news website to counter Breitbart News.

Much of what’s keeping Teichberg busy these days links back to the August weekend when white nationalist groups gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, bringing what had been a shadowy, internet-based move…