Mark Kessler, the small-town Pennsylvania police chief whose profanity-laden YouTube tirades against liberals, the United Nations, gun control advocates, and others have gotten hundreds of thousands of views online, has been fired, the Associated Press reports.

Council members in Gilberton, Pennsylvania, said Thursday night that they intended to fire Kessler. Two months ago they voted to suspend him from the police force. The former coal miner is the founder of an armed group with a stated mission to “defend the constitution and the country from tyranny,” the AP says. Critics call the group a private militia.

Kessler said the decision was “no surprise,” according to the AP. “We knew it was coming.”

“My message was to wake up the people who are independents,” he said, according to the AP, “to say, ‘We’ve had enough and something needs to change, because we’re in bad shape all around. Not only here in this little town but across the nation. It’s a mess.'”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QQW0RswpQ4&w=560&h=315]

[The Associated Press]