AMERICA’S NAZI YOUTH MOVEMENT CONTROLS COLLEGE REPUBLICAN SPACES

HARVEY EISNER, ABNER HÄUGE

CASEY BURNS BRIDGES WITH GROYPERS

Patrick Casey sat in his suit against a green screen backdrop of a generic stock image cityscape. His viewers commented things like “pee pee poo poo” and “anyone else have no audio?” Casey’s drowsy-looking, almost-unblinking face rarely changed expressions as he spoke.

“I’m 100% certain Nick is under FBI investigation,” Casey said.

He was talking about Nick Fuentes–the figurehead of the white nationalist ‘Groyper Army,’ alternatively called the ‘America First’ movement. Fuentes is indeed likely in hot water. He stood outside the Capitol building in DC on January 6th and told a cheering crowd through a bullhorn that “we will accept nothing less than four more years of President Donald Trump!” An influential Groyper named Christian Secor would later be arrested by the FBI after entering the senate chambers during the coup attempt, and another groyper and follower of Christopher Polhaus’s aka “The Hammer’s” network of Neo-Nazis ended up stealing Nancy Pelosi’s laptop and bragging about it online, leading to her arrest.

Casey laid out his case for not going to the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC)–Fuentes’s second annual answer to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). For one thing, there was too much heat. Fuentes’s bitcoin transactions were frozen and it seemed foolish to attend a white nationalist conference so close to the failed coup attempt.

For another thing, Casey claimed the ‘Groyper Army’ was getting paranoid and cult-like. Fuentes surrounded himself with cheering followers at #StoptheSteal rallies and the January 6th Capitol storming. Casey said Fuentes was constantly testing his “lieutenants’’ loyalty. Fuentes would ask Casey to surveil Discord chats of Groyper propagandists that were either “unoptical,” meaning their white nationalism was too explicit, or who questioned his decisions. Casey alleged and other sources corroborated that white nationalist influencers such as “Beardson Beardly”, aka Matt Evans, and Jaden McNeil acted as enforcers for Fuentes’s political line in these online spaces. These lieutenants would call out and verbally harass Fuentes’s internal political rivals within his corner of the white nationalist scene. All of that coupled with the heat from the feds forced Casey to wash his hands of AFPAC, fearing he was about to be pushed out of the movement, burning bridges with the Groypers along the way.

But Patrick Casey, who sometimes gets called the “CEO of the Movement,” isn’t just a rat jumping ship. Casey used to be the head of Identity Evropa, a group that played not only a key role in shaping the ‘America First’ movement, but the alt-right that came before it.

HOW DID WE GET TO “AMERICA FIRST?”

The America First Movement has always been led on the surface by Holocaust denier and Neo-segregationist Nick Fuentes. But for all of Fuentes’ flashy victories in the “Groyper Wars” of 2019 and vile but lucrative bluster, he isn’t the architect of the movement. The real driving force of “America First” is a mixture between the cadre of “veterans” of the “alt-right” who have the institutional experience to promote and grow the movement.This cadre wage campaigns like the Groyper war and #StopTheSteal rallies, hold American Renaissance style conferences like AFPAC and the Groyper Leadership Summit, and solicit donations from behind-the-scenes donors and the movement infrastructure inherited from Identity Evropa and the various propaganda networks that coalesced into the “Groyper Army”.

A crucial part of this movement infrastructure is the eager alliances the Groypers have found with “ghost skins” embedded within local conservative and Republican organizations. “Ghost skins” are people who infiltrate positions of power in normal society and leverage them to push white supremacist ideas and policies. The term comes from neo-Nazi skinheads in the 80s who would hide their tattoos, clean up their look and become cops and city councilmen. Those who try to change the system from the inside are often called “movementarians.” But the ghost skins, or as they sometimes call themselves, “identitarians,” who groomed Fuentes and his clique of online Hitler Youth are much more media savvy and have a much farther reach than yesterday’s boneheads ever could.

Fuentes claims he was originally “redpilled” by white nationalist “irony bro” and gossip streamers Beardson Beardly (real name Matt Evans) in addition to 4chan’s /pol/ board. Fuentes was also politically groomed by James Allsup of the Nationalist Review (later a co-host of Fash the Nation), a Identity Evropa/American Identity Movement member who got his start as president of the Washington State University College Republicans (2015-2017). Under Allsup’s wing Fuentes attended the deadly Unite the Right neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 with Allsup along with white nationalist live-streamed Baked Alaska, who would also become a major America First figure. Allsup and Beardson both passed along their experience, both successes and failures, in the “alt-right” to the younger more media-savvy Fuentes. It also let them ditch the old “alt-right” brand, which at that point had too much blood on its hands. But the agenda was being set by the same group of people: the top-down authoritarian fascists at Identity Evropa, its continuations, and its movement peers.

Identity Evropa (IE), was a top-down, authoritarian “ghost skin” organization. While many remember the later reign of Patrick Casey in which IE tried to rebrand as clean cut and non-threatening, the group was founded by Nathan Damigo, who went to jail for robbing a man at gunpoint because he “looked Iraqi.” Damigo famously punched an antifascist woman in the face during a rally he helped organize in Berkeley in April 2017. That event was used as staging ground to prepare for the deadly Unite the Right Rally months later which IE had a major presence at. Following Unite the Right, Damigo stepped down and after a brief three month stint of Elliot Kline aka “Eli Mosley’s” leadership (a chronic liar, Kline bragged about killing Muslims as part of his fictional wartime service), Patrick Casey took the group over.

During his brief stint, Elliot Kline openly talked of the Nazification of America. Casey, who went by “Reinhard Wolff” online and got his start with the pagan Neo-Nazi media company Red Ice TV, would try to steer the group away from its street brawler and explicitly Nazi roots and towards the media-friendly suit-and-tie Nazism of Richard Spencer. It was effective—at one point even landing Casey an interview on the Today Show. Fuentes’s mentor Allsup stayed with IE after it rebranded as ‘American Identity Movement’ in 2019 and stayed with the group until it eventually dissolved in 2020 after its chats were leaked and dozens of members were doxxed. Allsup and Fuentes had a falling out over mutual antagonism with the production of the Nationalist Review. IE’s thought leaders, particularly Patrick Casey, didn’t go anywhere. They shaped the political strategy of the “America First” movement and arguably achieved their goal— entering mainstream partisan politics.

WAGING WAR ON THE CULTURE WAR

After the initial “Groyper War” of 2019, where Fuentes gained notoriety harassing Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA’s “Culture Wars” speaking engagements on college campuses nationwide, he set to work finding new avenues to recruit. The Groyper Wars proved an effective publicity stunt for recruitment. Fuentes’s adherents forced Kirk and other conservatives they viewed as part of the Jewish controlled establishment, “Consertive Inc.” or “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only) to embrace political positions that would prove unpopular to their eagerly racist, reactionary, gen-z, audience. Fuentes and the groypers would then seek to redpill Kirk’s audience to outright homophobia, misogyny, absolutist anti-immigration measures, antisemitism, and vicious anti-Black racism. By appealing to their audience with much more edgy conspiracist narratives of Jewish control of the government, the Groypers were able to largely invalidate the work of Charlie Kirk, someone quite far from being a political moderate, and absorb and recruit the College Republican cadre Kirk wished to join TPUSA.

Quickly following the Groyper Wars came the highly propagandized “defection” of former Kansas State University student and TPUSA member Jaden McNeil to America First. The stunt was played up to make it seem like Fuentes was a cutting-edge campus conservative silenced and cancelled by the “RINOs” or “controlled opposition,” for asking the tough questions about Jewish control of the government and “race realism.” McNeil exited TPUSA with a public statement and eagerly adapt to America First’s style of outright bigotry.

McNeil would eventually become fully absorbed into the movement and stream immediately after Fuentes on DLive, and carved out a brand of unabashed anti-Black racism, transphobia, anti-semitism, and all around bigotry paired with the video games like Rust, Minecraft, Call of Duty, or Cyberpunk 2077. Jaden’s particular niche within the movement has largely been delegated to being the “gamer” groyper leader, and his content appears to appeal to the younger Groypers who delight in his openly racist gameplay streams. Many such Groypers would hyper-fixate on the police murder of George Floyd. Outside of his gaming streams and later appearances at #StopTheSteal protests and other Groyper rallies, Patrick Casey’s only other core political contribution

to America First was the formation of America First Students out of the TPUSA chapter at Kansas State University.

Interestingly, during Casey’s recent stream “Why I’m Not Going to AFPAC” key information about Jayden’s primary role in the formation of America First Students were called into question.

“Some other people’s projects–some people who are currently stabbing me in the back– I did most of the work to get these projects off the ground, right. Something like AFS (America First Students)–I wrote the initial–right when Jayden stepped down from TPUSA, I wrote his statement that he posted right, why he stepped down. When Jayden launched AFS, I wrote the launch statement. I got him in touch with the graphic designer. It’s just the whole thing, and as far as I can tell that’s all that ever happened with AFS. I had some good ideas for content he could create, political content, YouTube channel there. It’s not worth getting into all this, but the point is, I feel like this whole talk of loyalty really only goes one way. I’ve done quite a bit for the cause and for these people personally,” Casey said in his stream.

Patrick Casey, who spent years trying to carefully craft a form of white nationalism that could successfully infiltrate the Republican Party, succeeded. The Trump administration largely did what Casey asked them to do in the immigration letter he drafted and his Groypers signed. Even America First’s failures are a testament to how much power they were able to wield. One Groyper made it onto the Senate floor during the coup attempt and another stole Nancy Pelosi’s laptop. Casey’s doing the smart and cowardly thing and stepping back now that the people he radicalized are getting in trouble. But the infrastructure he built isn’t going anywhere, even if all the Groyper leaders end up in jail. This generation’s College Republican leadership are all Groypers now.

The damage is done.

Jaden McNeil’s personal discord server “THE J-DEN” can be viewed here. Inside the server McNeil and other heavily involved Groypers discuss entryism into the $GME and r/wallstreetbets trend, AFPAC II, and gossip about former America First ally Patrick Casey.

AMERICA FIRST STUDENTS AND THE FIRST AFPAC

In early 2020, Michelle Malkin joined the Groyper Army. She was removed from Young Americans for Liberty after openly supporting Fuentes, a fairly explicit Holocaust denier. Malkin was previously a relatively more mainstream conservative blogger and political commentator who has contributed to MSNBC, Fox News, and C-SPAN. She’d also had long had associations with white nationalist outlets like VDARE.

Following a college campus tour aided by AFS Groypers, Malkin would end up as a headline speaker for Fuentes’s white nationalist answer to CPAC, AFPAC. The first AFPAC was emceed by Patrick Casey and done in the style of suit-and-tie white nationalist conferences like American Renaissance (of which Fuentes has spoken at.) Malkin appeared alongside outed white nationalist contributor to the Daily Wire, Scott Greer, Casey, and Fuentes.

Groypers often have a perverse Oedipal fascination with mother figures, memeing phrases like “Mommy Milkers” to describe women they approve of. Malkin certainly knew the crowd. She opened up to a conference attended in no small part by underage pubescent boys with the sexually inappropriate line, “Mommy is in the house.”

“Boys and Girls — but no E-girls right, have I proved my Bona Fides?” Malkin continued.

It was clear she was willing to flirt with the Groypers’ racist sexual fantasy to purchase legitimacy within the movement. Besides the especially vicious antisemitism of the speech it was largely unremarkable. Malkin and other speakers trotted out the main Groyper talking points. But the significance was that America First had gained another high-profile “defector.” Just two days before AFPAC (Feb 28, 2020,) Malkin wrapped up her speaking tour at Arizona State University, as in the ASU section below. Michelle Malkin’s speaking tour, America First Students, and their letter asking Trump to revoke F-1 and H-1B visas.

Part of Jaden McNeil’s “defection” stunt from “Con Inc.” involved creating “America First Students” (AFS) as a response to the traditional and not-hardline-enough College Republican groups on campus. What Patrick Casey said about AFS was true–they weren’t that active on the surface. But the people involved with AFS had a lasting impact on how Groypers organized. One of their more effective campaigns during the start of the pandemic last years was pushing a letter calling for a broad immigration ban using COVID-19 as an excuse. The letter in particular targeted foreign students on F-1 student visas who more often than not were their fellow classmates as well as H-1B “skilled foreign worker” visas. It was no coincidence that Identity Evropa/American Identity Movement’s own political messaging scapegoated immigrants for COVID-19 at the time before they, like much of the right, plunged headlong into COVID denialism.

The following sections are about the AFS and College Republican chapters which signed on to the immigration letter. The letter was ultimately successful. Trump temporarily banned both programs infamously on June 24, 2020 due to pressure from the College Republicans. Aided by coverage from white nationalism’s favorite pundit, Tucker Carlson of Fox News, and FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), an SPLC designated anti-immigrant hate group, AFS’s success with the revocation suggests that the “ghost skin” strategy was largely effective. White nationalism had been mainstreamed from the Groypers to the executive office.

U OF MAINE COLLEGE REPUBLICANS

U of Maine College Republicans hosted Michelle Malkin on January 17, 2020 and would be the first to introduce the anti-immigration AFS letter. U of Maine CRs were Led by then-President Charles Honkonen and VP Jeremiah Childs. Childs claimed he had been falsely portrayed as “U Maine’s most notorious white supremacist.” He also threw his weight in with the white nationalists at “America First,” co-signing the Patrick Casey-tied America First Students anti-immigration letter. In a similar way to the 2017 era touring of “alt-right” provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, U of Maine College Republicans, led by their Groyper leadership, were able to force a culture war of their own.

AMERICA FIRST BRUINS/BRUIN REPUBLICANS

America First Bruins founder Christian Secor attended the first AFPAC conference, though he won’t this year because he’s in federal custody. When the FBI arrested Christian for participating in the Capitol storming, it was the culmination of months of Groyper stunts and organizing. Secor claims he interned for Groyper “mommy” and former Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin. He founded the America First Bruins chapter at UCLA, which quickly made a name for itself for its openly fascistic stances.

But Secor wasn’t the only person associated with America First Bruins. Ryan Sanchez, a former member of Identity Evropa and the neo-Nazi street fighting crew RAM, led Secor and two others in toppling the viral Atascadero monolith art installation while chanting “Christ is King!” They raised a wooden cross in its place. Sanchez, a former UC Irvine student, is also associated with the neo-Nazi Mannerbund network and claims he attended a recording of their anthem “By God We’ll Have Our Home.”

Sanchez and Secor became heavily involved in conservative student politics and were fixtures at Huntington Beach #StoptheSteal rallies where they fraternized with Republican organizers and Proud Boys alike. During one on-the-ground investigation, Sanchez even sicced a group of Huntington Beach Proud Boys on LCRW’s editor in chief and other reporters with them. Sanchez and Secor harassed locals during “IRL streams” to DLive. In one, Secor maced an unhoused Black man, who police later detained on Secor’s behalf. Sanchez would nickname Secor “Scuffed Elliot Rodger” in these streams, a reference to the 2014 male supremacist Isla Vista mass murderer.

Discord Chat logs obtained by LCRW reveal that while organizing alongside Sanchez, Secor used the handle “America First Bruins.” Later on January 6, Secor would storm the United States Capitol with an America First flag and “Weirmerica” shirt. He was photographed sitting in then Vice President Mike Pence’s chair. Secor would later be arrested by the FBI for a variety of charges including “Assaulting, Resisting or Impeding Officers and Aiding and Abetting”.

Chat logs from Ryan Sanchez’s “CULTURE WAR CRIMINAL” discord of which America First Bruins founder Christian Secor was an active poster of can be viewed here.

COLLEGE REPUBLICANS UNITED–ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

Founded as a breakaway group from the then-current College Republican organization, CRU-ASU’s entire existence has been plagued by its heavy ties to white supremacist organizing. Richard Thomas started CRU-ASU in 2018. The group is now lead by Jesse Fischer, an outspoken Groyper and chemical engineering student at ASU’s Barrett Honors College. Under Thomas’s leadership, College Republicans United, groups chat logs where leaked displaying numerous Neo-Nazi beliefs among their members. Photos circulated of Thomas and CRU member Cody Friedland posing alongside Tiki torches and a Dodge challenger and a gallon jugs of milk. The milk was an alt-right meme and the torches and car were references to the the torch-lit rally in Charlottesville where protestors chanted “Jews will not replace us,” and next-day march where participant James Alex Fields Jr. murdered Heather Heyer in a vehicular attack with his Dodge Challenger.

Under the intermediary leadership of Julie Hoffman (CRU President 2020), Malkin was invited to speak at ASU. Malkin trotted out her usual spiel, praising the groypers and dogwhistling antisemitic conspiracy theories. Current president Jesse Fischer facilitated a speech by a Groyper leader, white nationalist and AFPAC II speaker Vincent James Foxx. James’s outlet, the Red Elephants, was heavily responsible for propagandizing the neo-Nazi Rise Above Movement in 2017.

Fischer channeled his best Nick Fuentes to introduce James as, “a great guy in the America First movement who is one of the guys who knows how to talk about data and statistics and he knows everything about.” He was referencing James’s penchant for using purposefully misinterpreted data on race in his work for the Red Elephants. Kicked out of their main venue, James would only speak for about twenty minutes on a makeshift podium wrapped in an America First flag before a speech by CRU’s founder Richard Thomas and one other unidentified speaker. Outside of the Groyper leader, CRU-ASU signed on to the AFS letter. They’re also often retweeted by @/AmFirstStudents, collected donations for mass shooter Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal defense, and posted “Trumpwave” fascist adjacent edits of Donald Trump.

SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE REPUBLICANS

The SDSU College Republicans never invited Michelle Malkin to speak, but the role of their President Oliver Krvaric raises concern. The son of former GOP of San Diego Chairman Tony Krvaric, Oliver appears to be continuing his father’s tradition of being a “ghost skin”. Chairman Krvaric was met with controversy an old animated video he appeared in was uncovered. The video showed a dancing Hitler sprite, and two other young men, one of which is sieg heiling, another is later seen in the video with a swastika drawn on his neck. Krvaric himself is seen with a quote attributed to him:

“Kill a Commie for Mommy”. Krvaric, who’s identified in the video as “Strider,” was a member of a computer cracking group called “Fairlight.” He does not deny his appearance in the video.

Oliver and Viktor Krvaric, his sons, continue on his tradition of fascist entryism into the mainstream—Viktor is a corporal in the Army, and Oliver is the head of SDSU College Republicans. Oliver appeared on Tucker Carson’s show on Fox and personally met with Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump.

SDSU College Republicans heavily promoted the H1B AFS letter and claimed in a tweet to have “spearheaded” the effort. Additional social media posts seem to reveal SDSU College Republicans’ association with white nationalism and the Groypers, as they have made posts praising Enoch Powell, Huey Long, people on the speakers list of AFPAC, and numerous other more esoteric fascist dogwhistles. As for his father, Tony Krvaric stepped down following the neo-Nazi video’s re-emergence. He is, however, is an advocate for the social media platform Gab, and spoke against the “polticization” of the Poway Synagogue Shooting–a copycat antisemitic terror attack influenced by the Christchurch shooting.

BERKELEY COLLEGE REPUBLICANS

The Berkeley College Republicans have a long and sordid history with white nationalist organizing. While he was president of BCR in 2017, Troy Worden wrote screeds about immigrants plaguing Austria and the subtle differences between Generation Identitaire founder Martin Sellner and white genocide conspiracy theorist Lauren Southern’s

brands of white nationalism for ‘The Liberty Conservative.’ Worden would later pose for a photo with Sellner when he visited Berkeley that year. The Liberty Conservative also hosted the work of Fuentes’s mentor James Allsup and Augustus Invictus, the former Proud Boy leader who infamously sacrificed a goat on livestream and claimed to have power of attorney for Ted Kaczynski. Worden also invited former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos to campus in February 2017. Worden, former BCR Vice President Naweed Tahmas and 2019/2020 BCR President Matthias Ronnau were interviewed by Nathan Damigo for white nationalist outlet Red Ice TV of which Patrick Casey got his start. When Yiannopoulos came back to campus in September 2017, Tahmas and other BCR members handed out t-shirts that said “Lesbians aren’t real” and “Nuke Mecca.” BCR members were also in attendance at the April 15 , 2017 Berkeley rally that Nathan Damigo used as a test run for Unite the Right.

Out of this political lineage came BCR President and later California Federation of College Republicans president Matthias Ronnau. He would eventually worm his way to a position as a Presidential Elector for the 2020 election. Ronnau, a paleoconservative branded white nationalist, has appeared in photos next to the likes of eugenicist Charles Murray, Roger Stone, Nathan Damigo, Kyle Chapman aka “Based Stickman”, and Geert Wilders. Breaking away from the larger College Republican network like College Republicans United in Arizona did, Ronnau has advanced the America First line in CFCR, of which SDSU College Republicans is a member of with Krvaric listed as president on their website. Under Ronnau’s leadership BCR signed on to the AFS anti-immigration letter tied back to Identity Evropa president Patrick Casey. Ronnau additionally invited Ann Coulter to speak at UC Berkeley before his graduation, an event attended by numerous Proud Boys and white nationalists, including Kyle Chapman.