A new report says seven members of the U.S. military have been identified as members of a white nationalist group.
Chat logs obtained by HuffPost as part of its investigation reveal a member of the Texas National Guard, one member of the Air Force, two Army ROTC cadets, two Marines, and an Army physician to be part of Identity Evropa.
The publication used the logs from a server on a group chat app popular with the alt-right called Discord, the complete server contents of which were released by independent media collective Unicorn Riot last week, to sift through chats. HuffPost verified seven men as current members of the U.S. armed forces.
Identity Evropa has espoused racist views but claims to promote pride in European ancestry. It rose to prominence in 2017 when it helped organize the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that turned deadly. Since then, attempts have been made to cast aside that association and Identity Evropa has aligned itself with Donald Trump supporters. It has also renamed itself as the American Identity Movement since the Unicorn Riot leak, another way to distance itself from far-right violence.
In the meantime, HuffPost has reached out to the military, which confirmed it’s investigating some of the men’s possible ties to Identity Evropa. Apparently, past tips have led the military to already begin investigating the men, looking to see if they have engaged in discrimination and extremist activity.
The Marine Corps, the Army, the Air Force and the Texas National Guard confirmed that the men identified in the HuffPost’s investigation — Marines Stephen T. Farrea and Jason Laguardia; ROTC members Jay C. Harrison and Christopher Hodgman; Air Force member Dannion Phillips; Joseph Kane of the Texas Army National Guard and physician Christopher Cummins — are currently serving in the military.
Among the things each of the men did, Farrea, a corporal in the Selected Marine Corps Reserve, wrote in Discord chats under the user name SuperTomPerry-RI that “Portsmouth my town 95 percent white very nice” and said he was eager to post “It’s okay to be white” flyers in Rhode Island. SuperTomPerry-RI’s photos match those Farrea shared on Instagram.
Laguardia, another Marine who is a lance corporal in the Selected Marine Corps Reserve, was seen at an Identity Evropa gathering in Kentucky.
Laguardia constantly posted on the app pictures of Identity Evropa flyers and stickers he plastered up in Connecticut and New York City. Most of the time he took the flyers to college campuses, including New York University and Yale University.
As for the ROTC cadets, one of them, Harrison, is in the program at Montana State University at Bozeman and is also a part of the Army National Guard.
“Go play niggerball if you aren’t tough enough for wrestling,” Harrison, who used the name Lawrence of Eurabia and posted biographical information consistent with Harrison, wrote in on the leaked log. “God I hate basketball so much.”
Hodgman, another ROTC cadet and Army Reserve member, possibly posted on Discord under the name Alex Kolchak-NY. Hodgman had admitted in a police investigation to posting Identity Evropa flyers and stickers throughout Brighton, New York.
Discord user Alex Kolchak-NY posted photos to the app of stickers he said he put up in that same town and they came at around the same time of Hodgman’s admission. Hodgman’s lawyer, however, would not confirm or deny to the HuffPost that Alex Kochak-NY is Hodgman or that his client belongs to Identity Evropa.
Army Reserve lieutenant colonel physician Cummins was identified by his links to Discord username giuseppe398, which matches biographical information tied to the doctor and is also part of his email address on neo-Confederate group website Military Order of Stars and Bars.
Like those listed before him, giuseppe398 also posted flyers in his area, including Mississippi — where he is originally from — and his current town of Jackson, Tennessee. He boasted about the flyers and told members of the extremist group he enjoys Tennessee because it’s “conservative & Christian – implicitly white.”
More obvious is Kane, a Texas National Guard member who used his last name as his user name on the app. His biographical details match with those Discord user Kane posted about. Kane shared a popular white supremacist meme reading “It’s okay to be white” on Facebook and had previously been accused of being a white supremacist during his time as a precinct chair for the Denton County Republican Party.
Another obvious link came from Discord user DannionP, who is Dannion Phillips of Oklahoma in chats and arranged to pay dues for Identity Evropa. He posted pictures in October of the organization’s stickers that he plastered around Oklahoma City.
