Neo-Nazi Hipsters Identity Evropa Exposed In Discord Chat Leak
Unicorn Riot is releasing more than 770,000 messages from chat servers associated with Identity Evropa. This is the first report in a series about this large US-based neo-Nazi organization.
Newly leaked chat logs from the alt-right group Identity Evropa show a continuing dynamic of racism and fascism, despite ongoing attempts to reform their public image following the deadly 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville.
Content Advisory: explicit racism and anti-semitism
Since the violence in Charlottesville turned much of society against the alt-right, Identity Evropa (IE for short) has changed their strategy, focusing on presenting clean “optics” to the exclusion of most other considerations. The group today tries to present itself as entirely nonviolent, with its public appearances carefully groomed by its young leader, Patrick Casey, a racist propagandist who makes his living producing media for the neo-Nazi YouTube channel Red Ice TV.
(Founded in 2016 by Nathan Damigo, leadership of Identity Evropa passed on leadership to Eliott Kline, who used the alias ‘Eli Mosley’, who was disgraced upon being exposed as lying about his military service record, leaving Casey with the reins.)
While Identity Evropa presents itself as “identitarian” and merely “pro-white” without advocating hate for other races, a look behind the curtain lays bare the group’s basis in crudely watered-down National Socialist ideology.
Over 240,000 leaked messages from the main server, shared over the chat platform Discord, have been obtained by Unicorn Riot and published in full as part of our Discord Leaks platform. The leaked chats provide what is to date the most intensive look at the behind-the-scenes workings of Identity Evropa, which is perhaps the most active fascist group in the United States today.
The national Discord chat server used to coordinate Identity Evropa’s activities is called ‘Nice Respectable People Group’. Browse and search the chats for yourself here.
Identity Evropa’s internal communications further cement the evidence that they were closely involved with the deadly Unite The Right neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville in 2017. Over 70 Discord usernames from Identity Evropa’s national Discord chat server were also present in the leaked planning chat for Unite The Right, including the group’s current ‘CEO’ Patrick Casey, who posts on Discord as ‘Reinhard Wolff‘.
Identity Evropa’s chat logs also show that Florida resident and IE member Erica Alduino, who took a primary organizing role in the Unite The Right planning chats, was sending messages in the IE Discord chat server up until April 2018 and was involved in collecting funds from members. IE leadership and members were also present in other alt-right chats previously leaked by Unicorn Riot, such as ‘Vibrant Diversity‘ which featured memes praising racist mass shooter Dylann Roof, and the ‘Anticom‘ chat in which users shared PDFs of manuals for making explosives.
Identity Evropa is currently being sued for their role in organizing Unite The Right and Patrick Casey frequently references the lawsuit to solicit donations during the group’s semi-regular ‘Identitarian Action’ podcast. Numerous chat messages show that the group’s leadership is concerned about liability from the Unite The Right civil suit, but they also attempt at times to soothe members concerns and assure them that they will ultimately beat the case.
Since Charlottesville, Identity Evropa has been much more careful about PR. They now avoid working directly with any groups, focusing on flyering runs, banner drops, and flash mob protests that can quickly disperse before encountering any opposition. Their public image is carefully crafted as well, with rules even in place in their Discord server to try to keep their chats clean in order to avoid compromising leaks.
The rules posted in Identity Evropa’s Discord group chat ostensibly forbid members from posting things that could fall under “extremism”, “ethnic chauvinism“, and “vulgar language“. However, these rules were not always followed, even by those involved in IE leadership, highlighting the internal contradictions of a deeply racist group trying to craft a non-racist reputation for themselves.
For instance, in December 2018, Identity Evropa member ‘NITRODUBS‘ posted a meme that appears to praise Charlottesville murderer James Alex Fields, promoting the debunked conspiracy theory that his car attack was carried out in self-defense. Identity Evropa has avoided speaking out publicly in defense of Fields, who was given a recommended sentence of life plus 419 years in prison in his Virginia state trial in December 2018.
Another area where Identity Evropa’s basis in fascist and Nazi ideology betrays itself is their attitudes towards Jewish people. While the organization only allows white people to be members, this does not include Jews, who Identity Evropa considers to be non-white. Discord user ‘FACINEMA‘ asked the group “were you asked if you were of non-semetic heritage during your interview? I was.” CEO Patrick Casey, who used the Discord username Reinhard Wolff, clarified that “Jewish individuals cannot join IE, and we screen for this during the interview process.” A search of Identity Evropa’s chat logs shows that members have mentioned the ‘JQ’ or ‘Jewish question’ over 150 times.
The ‘Jewish question’ is a clear example of the tension in Identity Evropa seeking to work with the general public while also hiding some of their less PR-friendly views from non-members. While Identity Evropa Discord user ‘Josh M – OH‘ said “the JQ is unavoidable“, others agreed with him but also cautioned against openly discussing hatred for Jews. “JQ discussion is not meant for widespread normie discussion” wrote IE member ‘Wood-Ape – OK/MN‘ in October 2018. In a similar discussion a month later, IE Discord user Sam Anderson discussed slowly leading potential recruits towards anti-Jewish bigotry, cautioning that introducing someone to the “JQ” “needs to be done gradually.” Leaked chats also show that at least one IE member referred to Jews as “kikes“.
The group’s official chat also features dozens of posts denying the Holocaust as well as 28 messages linking to the Daily Stormer, a well known neo-Nazi hate site. At one point, Identity Evropa’s leader Patrick Casey expressed frustration that group members were unable to follow directions to stop posting a meme video featuring Adolf Hitler.
Please stop posting the Mouthy Buddha video about Hitler. It’s been posted in here at least five times. We get it.
Also, we have a “No Nazi stuff” rule on this server so that it doesn’t devolve into 1.0-tier shitposting. If you want to post NS [National Socialist] stuff, do it elsewhere.
– Identity Evropa ‘CEO’ Patrick Casey, October 10, 2017
At one point, Patrick Casey told the group that while IE avoided publicly associating with other alt-right groups, Identity Evropa members were also allowed to join local meetup groups associated with ‘TRS’ or ‘The Right Stuff’, a neo-Nazi podcast network. Racism against black people is also rampant in Identity Evropa’s chats, with several dozen uses of “dindu nuffin“, a racist codephrase popularized by the alt-right to mock protests against police shootings of unarmed black men. The chat logs also contain over 70 uses of “nibba“, a play on the ‘N-word’ currently popular amongst online racists looking to avoid social media bans.
Two additional Discord chat servers associated with Identity Evropa – ‘Nationalist Review‘ and ‘Nick Fuentes Server‘ – hosted months of chats for fans of podcasts and videos produced by James Allsup and Nick Fuentes. Allsup and Fuentes, both young white men in their early 20s, are prolific white nationalist YouTubers; both are involved with Identity Evropa.
While some transgressions in the IE group chat betray the group’s true nature, most of their posts present a more polished, PR-sensitive discourse. However, many IE members are also in other Discord chat servers where they post more freely about their racist and neo-Nazi views. For instance, Identity Evropa Discord user ‘Sam Southern – TN‘, who participated in Identity Evropa’s national chat server and claims to be a student at Vanderbilt University, also posted a fair amount in the Nationalist Review chat. His messages include anti-semitic rants like “I fucking despise jews in America…” and complaints about seeing a “young white guy out w his ni**er wife and their mulatto child“.
James Allsup, an Identity Evropa member and one of the hosts of the now-defunct Nationalist Review podcast, has openly encouraged other white supremacists to infiltrate their local county Republican parties. After a series of media exposés, Allsup was eventually stripped of his GOP voting power after he leveraged his role in his College Republicans chapter to get elected to a county party official position.
Other posts from Allsup’s Nationalist Review Discord chat show fans of his & Fuentes’ podcast sharing pictures of themselves giving Nazi salutes, fawning over pictures of Mussolini, quoting Mein Kampf, and insisting that “fascism is the best system“. Other posts in the Nationalist Review chat mention “the day of the rope“, a reference to The Turner Diaries, a popular white supremacist fantasy novel credited with inspiring Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Other memes and messages posted by fans of Nationalist Review also praised James Alex Fields’ deadly car attack that killed Heather Heyer in Charlottesville.
Nick Fuentes’ Discord chat also features messages comparing black people to monkeys, images of the ‘happy merchant’ (an old anti-Semitic trope), as well as a meme celebrating Parkland high school shooter Nicholas Cruz. Fuentes, mostly known for his alt-right YouTube show ‘America First’, recently spoke alongside Identity Evropa leader Patrick Casey at a gathering for white supremacists banned from attending the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Perhaps the most concise summary of Identity Evropa’s racist ideology comes from a group member who claims to have been involved in leadership, but deleted their Discord account before we obtained the chat logs. The nameless Identity Evropa leader suggested rebranding the group with a different name, since in his opinion, it was entirely fair for observers to link IE to hardcore neo-Nazi racism and violence.
“…there are things we want to move away from. A new org would provide some distance from our founder [Nathan Damigo] (he’s a great man who put his mark on the universe, and I think we all understand the nuance of his situation, but let’s call it what it is) “A felon convicted of a hate crime who became aware of white Identity via a book by former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke…”
…Right now they can DIRECTLY tie us to David Duke, and a leader who glorified killing minorities and the nazification of America – they don’t even have to lie.“
– Identity Evropa member, name unknown, October 2018 (source: 1, 2)
Watch out for more of Unicorn Riot’s investigative reporting into Identity Evropa – this is an ongoing series.
Title photo credit: Pat Boyle for Unicorn Riot
Browse the leaked Discord chat logs released as part of this reporting:
–Nice Respectable People Group (Identity Evropa main server): 241,941 messages, September 2017-March 2019
–Nationalist Review (James Allsup + Nick Fuentes podcast chat server): 35,865 messages, April-December 2018
–Nick Fuentes Server (‘America First’ podcast chat server): 492,795 messages, January-October 2018
