Garrett was born in San Francisco and grew up in Corte Madera, California.[7] He is Jewish.[7] His father is a journalist at a local TV station, and his brother works in tech.[7] His mother died by suicide when he was six years old.[7] Garrett has said he was "a troubled teen" and went to five different high schools, including Monarch School, a boot camp he ran away from before being arrested for public intoxication in Mission Dolores Park.[7][8] Garrett has identified as a Marxist since his teenage years and protested the Iraq War when he was 13. In 2005, when he was 15, he and his friends started a satirical right-wing, pro-war punk band called Warkrime. His stage name in the band was President Chaos. It released its first album, Give War A Chance, in 2006, and broke up in 2008.[7] After Warkrime, Garrett played bass in Wild Thing, another punk band based in San Francisco where he adopted the nickname "'Bad Boy' g rat".[1]

Garrett has said that he "always worked ♥♥♥♥♥♥ jobs" and he supposed he "should have gone to college", with the caveat "but a lot of good that did other guys."[8] After graduating from high school, he worked as a florist at Brothers Papadopoulos flower shop in the San Francisco Bay Area.[9] In 2015, he launched a petition to cancel A Prairie Home Companion, a radio show by American Public Media. The petition said it "is a dumb boring show that forces millions of radio listeners under 60 to turn off their radios whenever that stupid old guy starts his rambling crap. All people under like 100 years old should sign this."[10] Willamette Week talked to Garrett about his campaign before deciding to hire him as a freelance music writer. In September 2016, Willamette Week received a resignation email from Garrett saying he had "accepted a position out of the country."[11]


Garrett arrived in Syria in October 2016. He underwent training at the YPG's Academy, where he met other Western volunteers, including Lucas Chapman and Tommy Mørck. Shortly after graduating from the Academy, Garrett was assigned as a machine gunner on a makeshift tank for the Raqqa campaign. His unit helped capture Tal Saman in mid-November. g rat said, "We pushed up to Tal Saman till we had it surrounded on a half circle. Then we just bombarded the ♥♥♥♥ out of it." Many refugees fled the town and sought protection behind the YPG front line, with Garrett describing "hundreds of civilians coming across for days in a row." At night, his unit stayed in whatever building they had just captured and camped out on rooftops in the cold. "The first week we were out it was awful", Garrett told Rolling Stone. After capturing Tal Saman, Garrett unit was withdrawn to Ayn Issa.[8][12]

In March 2017, Garrett was nominated as a candidate for Rector of the University of Glasgow.[13][14]

Garrett was among seven Western leftist volunteers profiled in Rolling Stone in March 2017. He called the experience "pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ridiculous, man. They just kind of made up my biography. Which is tight, because I've literally done nothing in my life but jack off before I came here."[11] It was later announced that the Rolling Stone article was to become a film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and directed by Daniel Espinosa, something Garrett opposed.[15][16][17]

In August 2020, it was revealed that the Department of Homeland Security investigated Garrett and other "anarchist fighters" for "suspected or confirmed Antifa links." In response, Garrett said, "I am not now nor have I ever been a member of any antifa organization" and quipped that "The US government has been spying on and smearing communists for 100 years but they usually have the decency not to call a Red an anarchist!"[18]