Identity Evropa is an American neo-Nazi and white supremacist organization established in March 2016. The group is identified as a white supremacist organization by the Anti-Defamation League and is designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
Leaders and members of Identity Evropa, such as former leader Eli Mosley, have praised Nazi Germany and have openly pushed for what they say is the "Nazification of America". The group has also adopted anti-capitalist and left-wing positions on economics.
In an attempt to boost its numbers, Identity Evropa has allied itself with the broader white nationalist alt-right and identitarian movements, and the group particularly targets college campuses, by distributing slogans on fliers, posters, and stickers. It has been seen as one of several groups contributing to the rapid growth of white nationalism in the U.S. since 2015.
In March 2018, it was reported that the group was seeing steep declines in membership. The collapse has been seen in other alt-right groups, and has been contributed to widespread public backlash against neo-Nazism and white supremacy since the 2017 Charlottesville rally.
Video Identity Evropa
History
The organization's founder, Nathan Damigo, is a self-described member of the identitarian movement. Damigo grew up in San Jose, California, and was a member of the U.S. Marine Corps from 2004 to 2007. In November 2007, Damigo robbed a La Mesa, California, taxicab driver at gunpoint, believing that the man was Iraqi. Damigo was convicted of armed robbery and was incarcerated for a year in county jail and four years in state prison. He said of the event that "it's something that I'm certainly not proud of," attributing his behavior to "major issues" after returning from Iraq.
In prison, Damigo began to read works by far-right figures, including former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke. He was also influenced by J. Philippe Rushton and Nicholas Wade. After being released from prison in 2014, Damigo led the National Youth Front, the youth wing of the American Freedom Party. The group was classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Anti-Defamation League, with the SPLC reporting that it was founded by "racist Southern California skinheads that aims to deport immigrants and return the United States to white rule." The National Youth Front later disbanded. Damigo founded Identity Evropa in March 2016.
In the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally, the leadership position passed onto Elliot Kline, aka Eli Mosley. The group participated in the planning for the October 19, 2017 speech by Richard B. Spencer, a white supremacist, at the University of Florida, where Mosley also spoke. In addition to Spencer and Mosley, the speakers included Mike Enoch, a white nationalist blogger. The event drew about 2,500 protestors, vastly outnumbering Spencer's supporters.
Maps Identity Evropa
Views
Identity Evropa is a neo-Nazi and white supremacist group; the organization and its leader Damigo espouse white supremacist and white separatist views. The group endorses racial segregation. It "bills itself as a 'generation of awakened Europeans' who 'oppose those who would defame our history and rich cultural heritage'". Damigo describes it as "an identitarian organization" and says that the group's aim is to "act as a fifth column, over time shifting the edifice of our political establishment" in favor of what he describes as "pro-white" interests. Identity Evropa's spokesman and director of administration, Reinhard Wolff, states that Identity Evropa is engaged in a "culture war" in an effort to create a "90 percent white" America.
The white supremacist slogan "You will not replace us" originated from the group, according to the Anti-Defamation League, after Damigo and other members of Identity Evropa appeared on camera chanting the words during LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner's HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US project at New York's Museum of the Moving Image in February 2017.
Identity Evropa excludes Jews from membership because Damigo regards Jews as non-white. Only those "of European, non-Semitic heritage" may join the group. Damigo claims that "Jewish power, Jewish influence" has "been extraordinarily negative for people of European heritage". He has refused to say whether he acknowledges the Holocaust.
The Anti-Defamation League has labeled Identity Evropa a white supremacist group, and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks extremist groups in the United States, has designated it as a hate group. Their campus-centric advertising posters depict photos of classical greek sculptures of men overlaid with various short slogans which urge whites to embrace cultural elitism. Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the SPLC, states, "Identity Evropa is merely the latest iteration of the white-supremacist movement. Although you might think, based on their propaganda, that they're all about Plato and Aristotle and Socrates, in fact they're merely a gussied-up version of the Klan." Anna North, writing in the New York Times, states that the group promotes racism under the guise of white racial pride and cultural identity for those who are of European ancestry.
Activities
In December 2016, the group had roughly 200 members. In a February 2017 interview, Damigo claimed a membership of 300. The group has distributed fliers at on dozens of colleges campuses, including the University of Massachusetts Amherst, UCLA, Penn State, Ohio State, and the University of Washington. According to an ADL count, in Identity Evropa was by far the most active white supremacist group on college campuses in 2017, responsible for 158 of the 346 incidents nationwide of the posting of white supremacist propaganda fliers.
At Ohio State, the group has considered seeking recognized student organization status. The group's "#ProjectSiege" aims to "siege" college campuses with literature in order to combat what Damigo describes as a "false anti-white narrative" by teachers, whom Damigo calls "charlatans."
In late 2016, Damigo and Identity Evropa members traveled to Washington, D.C., for a post-election conference hosted by the white supremacist National Policy Institute, at which keynote speaker Richard B. Spencer and several other attendees rendered a Nazi salute.
During the 2017 Berkeley protests, Damigo punched a young woman, captured on video that subsequently went viral. Footage showed Damigo punching the woman in the face, then running away into the crowd. The attack prompted calls for Damigo's arrest or expulsion from Cal State Stanislaus, where he is a student; the university subsequently said that it was investigating Damigo.
Damigo has been identified as a leader in the August 2017 Unite the Right rally. A news source that has interviewed him states that "Damigo has made these rallies a key driver for recruiting new members of the group."
See also
- New Nationalism (21st century)
- White genocide conspiracy theory
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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