Inside the American Identity Movement’s Rocky Mountain Chapter
Denver, CO – Newly leaked chats provide a glimpse inside the Colorado and Rocky Mountain region chapters of Identity Evropa, the neo-nazi alt-right group that recently renamed itself the American Identity Movement.
The chats obtained by Unicorn Riot stretch from March into May 2019 and took place on ‘Columbia’, the American Identity Movement’s online chat platform for members, which runs open source chat software called MatterMost on a web server hosted by Amazon.
(Before the group rebranded under a new name, Identity Evropa made extensive use of the chat app Discord to organize. Unicorn Riot reporting earlier this year made over 250,000 messages from their chat server publicly accessible on our DiscordLeaks database. Since the Discord leaks, the neo-nazi group now calling itself the American Identity Movement mostly relies on their new MatterMost chat, although Discord is still used for short-term activity such as audio broadcasts in which leaders give directions to members.)
The American Identity Movement’s MatterMost chat for the Rocky Mountain region includes several dozen rank and file members of the group, as well as some of their more influential leaders, such as the group’s official web server administrator, and another who was exposed as an Air Force Master Sergeant actively serving in the US military.
While the Rocky Mountain regional chat group is relatively inactive, the logs provide an overview of the activities of the neo-nazi group’s members in the Rocky Mountain states as well as the locations they frequent. For instance, on March 24, 2019, a member using the chat handle ‘jackson-co’ shared a meetup location at the east end of Rocky Mountain Lake Park in Denver.
According to the leaked chats, the Colorado chapter also gathered at Valley View Hot Springs in southern Colorado the weekend of April 23, and held a camping trip in Sand Dunes National Park on April 27-28. The chapter also held a “fitness” meetup outside of Boulder on May 26 (Identity Europa/American Identity Movement leader Patrick Casey had previously instructed members to no longer openly discuss meeting up for martial arts training but to refer to such trainings as “fitness“).
MatterMost chat user ‘jackson-co’, who identified himself as the leader of the Colorado chapter, was identified by Colorado Springs Antifascists as Jeremy Reisberg of Colorado Springs. Reisberg also arranged for members of his chapter of the racist group to participate in a park trash cleanup sponsored by the city government of Colorado Springs. Reisberg explained that picking up trash bags could be a propaganda opportunity for the group, explaining that “I’m going to put AIM stickers on the bags I fill when I leave them.”
Liam Stevens, another Colorado-based member of Identity Europa/American Identity Movement, posted about his efforts to spread stickers and flyers to promote the racist organization. He described putting up propaganda in high volumes in both the North and Downtown areas of Denver, and also shared a picture of a flyer he put up at the college he was attending, where he claimed to have recently received a scholarship. Stevens uses the handle ‘ribose-co’ in the MatterMost chats.
One member of the Colorado chapter demonstrated the virulent racism driving the group when he shared a link to a racist podcast entitled “Separation or Mongrelization – your choice“. Another member posting under the username ‘argument_of_perigee-co’ joked that the chapter was the “CO master race.” ‘Argument of perigee’ was identified in March 2019 as Cory Reeves, an Identity Evropa leader in Colorado who has also been serving as a Master Staff Sergeant in the US Air Force.
Reeves’ posts in Identity Evropa’s leaked Discord chats suggest that he had posted racist flyers and stickers in as many as a dozen towns and cities across Colorado. Reeves is currently under investigation by the military, according to the Huffington Post, which reported on Reeves’ neo-nazi activities. Reeves has been very active in placing racist propaganda across Colorado, including placing a “thank you” gift outside an ICE detention center in Aurora as well as flyering the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver.
The Colorado chats that Unicorn Riot obtained from inside the American Identity Movement’s MatterMost server also include records of the group’s wider activities in the Rocky Mountain regional section of the group, which includes states such as Montana, Utah, and Wyoming.
One member, ‘epictetus-wy’, from Wyoming, described driving to meet another member and place flyers at a college campus in Casper, South Dakota. Another member posting under the handle ‘mallard’ shared an image of an American Identity Movement sticker he put up in Red Lodge, Montana (‘mallard’ later posted that he was planning on moving from Montana to Idaho.)
On April 28, a member using the chat alias ‘Gimlet‘ posted that he had spent the previous day, April 27, posting flyers at the University of Utah. ‘Gimlet‘ is an alias that shows up in both leaked Identity Evropa Discord logs as well as the American Identity Movement’s MatterMost chat.
A University of Utah spokesperson confirmed to Unicorn Riot that they found and removed “several unauthorized propaganda postings from various organizations during spring 2019.”
‘Gimlet‘ has been serving as the neo-nazi group’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and was identified this week by Eugene Antifa as Salt Lake City area resident Dustin Phipps. Antifascists said they were able to identify ‘Gimlet‘ as Dustin Phipps due to Phipps appearances in old videos posted from Occupy protests in Houston, Texas, where Phipps once lived and seems to have once been active as a leftist activist. Videos of Phipps from Occupy Houston protests, as well as recordings of his voice, match up with his appearances in photos and podcasts released by Identity Evropa. Gimlet‘s postings in leaked Discord and MatterMost chats also corroborate his employment history, which is listed online. Dustin Phipps has not responded to our phone call and voicemail inquiring about his affiliations; however, his public Facebook page was taken offline shortly after antifascists identified him.
While recent chat leaks have led to many members of the American Identity Movement being identified, the group is still looking to build political power and resources on both a local and national level. While Identity Evropa was banned from Twitter, the social media company is allowing the rebranded American Identity Movement to make full use of their platform. Recent tweets from the group show that they have continued placing racist flyers and stickers in the Rocky Mountain region, including in Bozeman, Montana (including Montana State University), Cheyenne, Wyoming, as well as in Denver and Park County in Colorado.
Download ‘Columbia’ (MatterMost) chat screenshot archive:
Title image: Tyler Cipriani via Wikimedia Commons
