Andrea Marks
Contact Andrea Marks on X Contact Andrea Marks by Email View all posts by Andrea Marks May 18, 2026
Dalton Eatherly's booking photo from May 9, 2026. Metropolitan Nashville Police Department/Getty Images Last week, Chud the Builder, an ostentatious live-streamer who revels in using the N-word and incendiary racist phrases, shot a man multiple times outside a Tennessee courthouse. The 28-year-old streamer, whose real name is Dalton Eatherly, is in custody as he faces an attempted murder charge, among other felonies, although the arrest seems to have only boosted his brand among his audience. He has not yet entered a plea.
Who is Chud?
Before he allegedly caused a man to be airlifted to a hospital for emergency surgery, Eatherly was what some call a nuisance streamer. Eatherly’s journey seemingly began around early 2025 after he called a Black woman the N-word in a road-rage incident, and her daughter took his picture and posted it online. The reaction online led to Eatherly getting fired from his job as a contractor, he said on Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes’s podcast, leading him to start his own business. (On that podcast he also denied that his actions were racist.) However, following overwhelming negative attention from the community — locals in Clarksville, Tennessee, began to recognize him from his viral content — people began to post information about his business, discouraging others from hiring him. In response, he started a page on GiveSendGo, a fundraising platform known for its popularity among the far right. “Hundreds of people in my city are slandering my business, spreading lies to tear down everything I’ve worked for,” he wrote. Other people sided with him, however, and he garnered thousands of followers who connected with his “resilience” and his “refusal to be silenced.”
His online presence grew as he continued to film himself antagonizing Black people in public, claiming that it was his First Amendment right to call people racist names, often flashing his gun when people reacted with anger. Joshua Fisher-Birch, a researcher of online extremism at the Counterextremism Project, calls him a ragebaiting streamer, or simply an outrage merchant. “He’s trying to build this following by angering people,” Fisher-Birch tells Rolling Stone. “He’s yelling racist statements, being a racist public nuisance in the hopes that this will lead to positive financial contributions.”
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Before the shooting, Chud was beginning to gain a toehold, but he was by no means well-known. He has about 229,000 followers on X, recently launched a Discord channel (when X took down some racist posts), and had created a memecoin called $CHUD.
When outrage generates engagement, it can be tempting to push the envelope, explains Fisher-Birch. “They are incentivized over time to do more and more radical actions in the real world to gain followers online,” he says. As Asmongold, another controversial creator, recently put it on a livestream, “Anybody whose content is built around confrontation in real life, there is like, an escalation trap that they fall into.”
What happened with the shooting?
In the early afternoon on May 13, Eatherly got into a “verbal altercation” with a man named Joshua Fox outside the Montgomery County Courthouse in Clarksville, Tennessee, according to a warrant obtained by Rolling Stone. During the exchange, Eatherly “turned his body in a bladed stance towards Mr. Fox and reached for his firearm located in his right jacket pocket.” Eatherly allegedly began firing, hitting Fox multiple times. Fox survived, but had to be airlifted to a hospital for emergency surgery. Surveillance footage also showed a “projectile” ricocheting off walls in the courtyard, with several bystanders present, the warrant stated. Eatherly, who also allegedly grazed himself with a bullet while firing repeatedly, was treated for minor injuries in the hospital before being arrested. Though the shooting itself was not live-streamed, audio of Eatherly speaking with police was uploaded to Pump.fun, in which he claimed he was acting in self defense. Video posted by ClarksvilleNow shows Eatherly leaving the scene on a stretcher.
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Eatherly’s sudden fame from the shooting and felony charges seem to have only heightened his appeal as a warrior for white supremacists on the villainous far-right. As of May 18, he’d raised more than $250,000 on his GiveSendGo.
What’s the status of his case?
On Friday, May 15, Eatherly made his first court appearance, shoulders slumped, no swagger or imposing Stetson hat, just handcuffs and a Montgomery County Jail jumpsuit. He closed his eyes for a moment when the judge announced he was setting Eatherly’s bond at $1.25 million. The judge also scheduled a bond hearing May 21 and a preliminary hearing May 26. In addition to attempted murder, he faces charges of employing a firearm during a dangerous felony, aggravated assault, and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon.
