Category: Exposed

Update 10/4/2019: new article on IBM’s botched investigation of Clemmer.

Update 5/15/2019: We have received multiple indications that John L Clemmer is no longer working for IBM. We welcome more information on this white nationalist – please get in touch.

John Lee Clemmer, a metro Atlanta resident who works as a Managing Consultant for IBM, has a secret life as a racist propagandist and member of Identity Evropa (IE). In late 2017, Clemmer paid for an expensive flash protest by IE in Atlanta, designed to boost the white power organization’s profile. In early March of this year, independent media site Unicorn Riot leaked IE’s internal chats in which Clemmer’s alias “Why Tea” frequently participated. Soon after the leaks, IE held their second national conference in Kentucky, and rebranded under the name “American Identity Movement” (AmIM). It is unknown whether John Lee Clemmer is also a member of AmIM; leaked chats indicate that Clemmer was active in IE up to the time of the data leak. 

Identifying Clemmer as “Why Tea”

Since mid-2017, it was apparent that a Twitter account named “Why Tea”/@WhyTea7 was connected to major players in the metro Atlanta Alt-Right. Although “Why Tea” gave his location as “Berkeley, CA” on his Twitter bio, his connections suggested that he was based in or near Atlanta. The “Why Tea” Twitter account linked to a YouTube channel and a blog, both of which attempted to put a “scientific” and intellectual face on white nationalism. 

With the leak of Identity Evropa’s main discussion server – only used by dues-paying members – we learned that Discord user “Why Tea” lived in a “yuppie suburb in ATL”. This Identity Evropa member not only had an identical alias as the Twitter account we were interested in, but also had a similar writing style and insisted on some of the same points. For example, the “Why Tea” blog stressed that it was important to “retain Roe v Wade” as part of his broader “demography scheme” to “Make America White Again”. Similarly, Identity Evropa member “Why Tea” stated that “you totally have to have abortion for blacks and hispanics and undesirable whites” while he enthused about eugenics, a long-discredited movement to channel breeding within human populations.

“Why Tea” on the leaked Identity Evropa chat server provided more than enough information to identify him as John Lee Clemmer of Smyrna, Georgia:

• “Why Tea” gave his age as fifty in September 2018 and again as fifty in January 2019. This corresponds with John Lee Clemmer’s age (born August 31, 1968.)
• “Why Tea” shared a link to correspondence he had sent to the University of Georgia (UGA), but with his real name redacted at the end of the text. This correspondence identified the author as part of UGA’s class of 1991. In a different comment on IE chat, “Why Tea” mentioned having a Master’s degree in Business. John Lee Clemmer graduated UGA in 1991 with a Fine Arts degree, then received a Master’s in Business Administration from Kennesaw State University in 2011.

• In the IE leaked chats, “Why Tea” also stated that his wife has a Master’s degree from the Franklin College of Arts & Sciences at UGA. Clemmer’s wife, Lisa Yvette Freeman, received a degree from UGA’s Industrial-Organizational Psychology Master’s Program. The Psychology Department is part of UGA’s Franklin College.
• “Why Tea” writes in a discussion about gardening that “I’ve got acreage”. In a different discussion, he posted a map of Fannin County near Blue Ridge, Georgia, noting how sparsely-populated and how white the area is. Clemmer owns a five-acre parcel of land in Fannin County.
• “Why Tea” writes a lot about his work to other Identity Evropa members. He says that his employer is a “big big company” that is a “huge player” in the field of machine learning (though “Why Tea” is not employed in machine learning). “Why Tea” also writes:

“For more context my work is in the Security / Authentication & Authorization part of the stack/platform. Even more context, a couple of the biggest companies in the world use security code I and my team wrote and designed.”

Clemmer works for International Business Machines as a Managing Consultant. On his LinkedIn page, Clemmer notes that: “I specialize in enterprise information security management, Identity & Access Management (IAM) solution architecture, design, and engineering.” In another online bio, Clemmer states that his consultancy is for Cloud Identity Services with IBM.

• “Why Tea” also mentioned to his IE associates that he chats with Black Pigeon Speaks – a far-Right YouTube commentator – “around once a month with a few other people from his Patreon supporters.” Clemmer lists himself as one of Black Pigeon Speaks’ Patreon supporters.

• Finally, in Identity Evropa’s “Literature” server, “Why Tea” highly recommends an obscure science fiction author named John L. Clemmer, whose books were issued through Amazon. “Why Tea” writes about author John L. Clemmer:

“This guy’s books are worthy of note […] no cursing, no sex, no gratuitous violence, no homosexuality, etc. And nothing but whites–no tokens, no obligatory interracial relationships! He’s […] at the very least sympathetic to our goals.”

“Why Tea” also had easy access to a book cover for Clemmer’s first novel and included the image file “The_Way_of_the_Dhin_2nd_Edition_Ad_with_Cover.1” with his comment. “Why Tea” followed up with an image of the cover for Clemmer’s second novel.

Having established that “Why Tea” – a member of the white power group Identity Evropa / American Identity Movement – is none other than John Lee Clemmer, we will now discuss Clemmer’s activity in the racist movement.

Clemmer’s Behind-the-Scenes Racist
Activism

Before he became a white nationalist, Clemmer was a libertarian who “switched on immigration”. Clemmer states that he had a “visceral reaction against the idiocy of BLM [Black Lives Matter]”, using the racist term “chimpouts” to describe their protests. In response to Black-centered anti-racist mobilization, Clemmer came to the belief that “diversity [… is] a weakness”.

Clemmer issued his first YouTube video in April 2016, using an effect to alter his voice. The “Why Tea” channel tried to dress its white supremacism in scientific garb, selectively citing studies in psychology and population genetics to promote its racist worldview. In some instances, Clemmer laid his bigotry bare, for example in the August 2016 video he posted after that summer’s tumultuous wave of Black Lives Matter protests. In the video, Clemmer blamed Black people for police killing Black people, urged “any force necessary” to be used against riots and unruly protest, and in general argued for “environmental dampener[s]” being applied on populations he contended were predisposed to crime. While speaking, Clemmer used language like “a certain part of the population” instead of directly naming the group he believed was predisposed toward violence and crime. Any subtlety was lost with the written caption he added on the screen: “You know exactly who I mean. Blacks!”

In addition to the dozen videos placed on the “Why Tea” YouTube channel between April 2016 and July 2017, Clemmer kept a blog about similar themes from May 2016 to June 2017. Clemmer also launched the “Why Tea”/@WhyTea7 Twitter account in June 2016, which occasionally posts to this day. In his written propaganda, Clemmer maintained a stance of preferring “soft-segregation policies” rather than the crude violence of “deporting, sterilizing, or killing millions of people.” However, there is no doubt that Clemmer’s goal of ethnically cleansing America would involve wholesale injustice and oppression, even if we accept his premise that death camps would not be required.

Clemmer’s blog and YouTube videos seemingly never gained the traction he desired, and his efforts wound down after about a year, in mid-2017. It is unclear whether Clemmer joining the white power group Identity Evropa coincided with him winding down his blogging, or whether Clemmer signed up with IE earlier.

IE recreated its Discord server five days after the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 2017. On the new IE discussion server, Clemmer / “Why Tea” was added back and “auto-verified as an existing member [of Identity Evropa].” Identity Evropa’s role in the “Unite the Right” – which the organization is currently facing a lawsuit over – did not scare Clemmer from the organization, since he has continued with IE since then.

As a member of Identity Evropa who was older than average, without children, and with a well-paying job at IBM, Clemmer was able to help fund the racist organization. According to IE leader Patrick Casey (“Reinhard Wolff” on the IE chat server), Clemmer “funded the expenses” for Identity Evropa’s December 2017 flash demonstration on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta. This brief anti-immigration protest was important for Identity Evropa since it was Casey’s first action in his new role as IE’s leader. (IE had two leadership changes in the wake of “Unite the Right.”) The Georgia Tech protest’s giant banner was designed to create maximum online buzz for IE. As we have noted elsewhere, the choice of Georgia Tech was not accidental: in earlier months IE’s propaganda had consistently been removed on the Tech campus and replaced by anti-fascist materials. In addition, Tech campus was still reeling after student and intersex activist Scout Schultz was shot and killed by police officer Tyler Beck in mid-September, with a cop car burned after police attacked those protesting the killing. Given this context, it appears that IE chose Tech partially to further rile the student body. Clemmer’s financial support for the December 2017 protest was likely not small: in addition to giant lengths of material and paint for the banner, the action debuted IE’s camera drone, required Patrick Casey to travel to Atlanta, and featured a slick online video published afterward.

During his time publishing as “Why Tea” and as a member of Identity Evropa, John Clemmer also self-published two science fiction novels and one novella. Clemmer’s first novel, The Way of the Dhin, was released in May 2016 – Clemmer had established his “Why Tea” YouTube channel just the month before. Clemmer released a follow-up “Dhin Universe” novella in late 2016, around the same time he was posting on his “Why Tea” blog about “How to Make America White Again”. While we do not know the exact time Clemmer joined IE, he was certainly a member by the time his second full novel, The Power of the Dhin, was released in October 2017. 

When promoting his own novels on the IE chat server while referring to himself in the third person (a practice also known as “sock puppeting”), “Why Tea” stated that John L. Clemmer has “got very subtle redpills in the books”. With the term “redpills” – popular among internet anti-feminists and the Alt-Right – Clemmer meant that his novels highlight alleged truths which most people avoid or ignore. In other words: Clemmer admits that his reactionary ideology is subtly conveyed in his novels. Clemmer may have written his science fiction novels out of a sincere love for the genre and a desire to participate in the fandom, or at least its white enclaves. However, Clemmer’s writing genre fiction is also in keeping with the broader strategies of the Alt-Right, which put a heavy stress on changing culture and values with the goal of enabling broader political shifts down the line. Interestingly, Clemmer sought support from far-Right racist YouTube commentator Paul Ramsey to promote his books — Clemmer sent Ramsey his book, and Ramsey then issued a YouTube video and a website post asking his followers to vote for one of Clemmer’s books on Amazon so that the title could be printed and promoted by the company. In his YouTube video, Ramsey stated that this effort was a way of “helping people with our views to get some publicity”. John Clemmer is also one of Ramsey’s sponsors on Patreon.

In another instance of mutual aid between white nationalists, Clemmer gave investment advice to IE members based on his Master’s degree in Business and his “20 years of investment experience”. Clemmer also advised members of the racist organization interested in pursuing a career in technology, telling one member of the organization “you just need to be able to do the work, show you can do the work and we’ll give you the job.” Clemmer advised another IE member that knowing SQL would be desirable “If you applied for a job on my team” at Cloud Identity Services / IBM.

Clemmer’s activity within IE appears to be mostly behind-the-scenes work. This year, Clemmer was most active campaigning against a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the University of Georgia’s Philosophy Department, Irami Osei-Frimpong. After a recent UGA graduate and Republican activist began cultivating outrage about some of Osei-Frimpong’s statements – for example, that “Fighting white people is a skill” – Right-wing campaigning groups such as Campus Reform and sites such as Infowars began carrying stories about Osei-Frimpong’s alleged hate speech against white people. These stories were a willful mischaracterization of Osei-Frimpong’s comments, which were provocative but addressed white complicity in racism. As we noted on social media, explicit white nationalists were quick to take up the campaign against Osei-Frimpong.

When the story reached Identity Evropa, Clemmer began a campaign of systematic outreach to UGA, leveraging his status as a graduate and a donor to the University while he contacted UGA Human Resources, its Philosophy Department, the Dean’s Office, and finally the President’s Office. While campaigning against Osei-Frimpong and demanding that he be fired, Clemmer did not disclose that he was a member of a white nationalist group. Clemmer encouraged his wife (who received her Master’s at UGA) and other associates to contact UGA. Clemmer argued for Osei-Frimpong to be expelled because his PhD candidacy allegedly contravenes “American values of tolerance and inclusion, and flies in the face of the hard work the university has done regarding diversity.” This language is pure cynicism from Clemmer, since elsewhere he explicitly rejects diversity and works to undermine it. The UGA administration, bowing to Right-wing and organized racist pressure, is seemingly still pursuing disciplinary action against Osei-Frimpong. 

Conclusion / Outreach to Clemmer’s
Neighbors

John Lee Clemmer is an example of the upper-middle class membership Identity Evropa / American Identity Movement aims to recruit as it tries to put a respectable face on racist organizing. Clemmer is a valuable asset to the group, not just giving funds but also advising its membership about careers in tech. In addition, Clemmer issued naked racist propaganda as “Why Tea” and inserted “subtle redpills” in his self-published science fiction novels.

In drawing attention to Clemmer, we
hope to dispel the idea that organized white nationalism is largely or
exclusively the product of poor and uneducated white people. The movement has
upper- and middle-class constituencies, who are arguably a greater danger due to
their increased access to resources and heavier political clout.

We will update this article if we receive a statement from International Business Machines / Cloud Identity Services about their employment of a white power activist. In the meantime, we have mailed over 100 flyers to Clemmer’s neighbors in Smyrna, Georgia, informing them of the racist propagandist in their area.

If you have further information about Clemmer or his racist associates in IE / AmIM, please get in contact.

Update 2021: We placed posters in the Carver Hills neighborhood of northwest Atlanta, where Huggins now co-owns a house.

Introduction

On Sunday, March 10, racist organization Identity Evropa held its first protest under its new name of “American Identity Movement” at the State Capitol in Nashville, Tennessee. The protest took place after the national conference of Identity Evropa (IE) / American Identity Movement (AmIM), held the Friday and Saturday beforehand at the Dale Hollow Lake State Resort Park in Burkesville, Kentucky. (Note: we use the acronym “AmIM” for the “American Identity Movement” out of respect for AIM, the American Indian Movement.)

Patrick Casey, the IE leader, announced the name change to “American Identity Movement” late on the Friday night of the conference. While Casey claims that AmIM is a completely new organization, all evidence supports AmIM being a cosmetic rebrand of IE. The rebrand was necessary since IE’s reputation is so tarnished by its role in the violent “Unite the Right” rally of Charlottesville, VA, 2017, and also by its association with the broader “Alt-Right.” This name change may also be an attempt by IE to evade legal liability, since IE is currently being sued for its role in Unite the Right (UTR). Shortly before IE’s conference, communications on their Discord chat server were leaked to the public by the Unicorn Riot journalism collective.

One participant in IE / AmIM is Metro Atlanta white nationalist Jared Alexander Huggins, who seemingly appeared in the crowd at AmIM’s rally in Nashville. Huggins has been involved with Identity Evropa – and has been on the radar of antifascists – since 2016. We have mentioned Huggins in passing several times, but until now have not profiled his activity in depth. 

IE / AmIM pretend to be different from Alt-Right white nationalism. The organization now states that it is non-violent. However, Huggins joked about the violence of UTR, which he attended as a member of IE. Huggins also joked about white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr.’s vehicular attack on that day, which murdered Heather Heyer and injured dozens of others. 

AmIM has also tried to distance itself from the recent Christchurch, New Zealand mosque massacres, even though the organization pushes similar anti-immigrant rhetoric and fear of white displacement as the New Zealand gunman. After mass murder in Christchurch, AmIM issued a single Twitter message with canned language about the New Zealand “tragedy” and about renouncing “violence and terror”. In fact, the Christchurch gunman crawled from the same Alt-Right swamp as Identity Evropa / AmIM. Indeed, the European leader of the “Identitarian” movement – which IE / AmIM models itself on – received a large donation from the Christchurch murderer.

On social media after the killings, Jared Huggins circulated a Twitter post that white nationalists should take a stance of “Never defend, always offense” in response. Huggins also retweeted a message beginning, “my heart goes out to the white community of Christchurch”, an inflammatory statement designed to mock the murdered victims and anyone who grieves them. An archive of Huggins’ Twitter account as “Mordecai McFly”/@FashyScience is included at the end of this article, containing many messages targeting Jewish people, Muslims, racialized groups, immigrants, and women.

Huggins’ racist radicalism is a
consequence of his deep immersion in the white nationalist scene. We begin our
account in 2016, when Huggins first came to our attention.

2016: Libertarian Party of Dekalb
County and the Alt-Right

In 2016, Jared Huggins worked with clear white nationalists, Libertarian Party members, and Trump boosters, encouraging overlap and cross-fertilization between these three circles. A photo posted to Facebook in mid-2016 illustrates this overlap. Huggins, wearing a t-shirt celebrating “anarcho-capitalist” Murray Rothbard, sits with Patrick Sharp, who was then best known for his attempted “White Student Union” at Georgia State University and for littering that campus with racist propaganda. Sharp has gone on to become a prominent member of Identity Evropa / AmIM. At the time of the photo, Sharp was also networking with Republican Party activists, trying to broaden his political support. 

It is unclear when Huggins first met Sharp, but the two must have known each other since at least early 2016. Sharp was photographed at the February 22, 2016 meeting of the Libertarian Party of Dekalb County (LPDC). At that meeting, Huggins – “the newly elected Vice Chair of Dekalb Libertarians” – gave a presentation arguing that “a Trump presidency will be an even greater victory for libertarians than Rand Paul or Gary Johnson.”

Patrick Sharp may not have announced his white nationalist sympathies when he attended Huggins’ February presentation. However, with Huggins as Vice Chair of the LPDC, the Party would show itself as a safe space for racists. Two months later – on April 25, 2016 – the LPDC hosted white nationalist leader and Atlanta attorney Sam Dickson to speak on real estate and gentrification issues, alongside Republican Party activist Greg Jackson. (Both Dickson and Jackson were replacement speakers, as the original guest cancelled.) Jared Huggins was photographed at the event, seemingly introducing one of the speakers. By inviting a notorious white power leader and treating him as a reputable voice in the community, the LPDC normalized racist organizing. This occurred just as Donald Trump was edging toward the Republican nomination and the Alt-Right was beginning to boom.

On September 10, 2016, Jared Huggins was recorded as part of an “Alt-Right” group hiking up Stone Mountain. They jeered a passer-by with sexist and antisemitic abuse after she said something about their Confederate battle flag. While part of the Alt-Right racist scene, Huggins continued his LPDC work. He also networked with pro-Trump Republicans, for example attending a late October rally of Trump supporters outside the CNN building in Atlanta.

On election night 2016, Huggins attended a party at racist organizer Casey Jordan Cooper’s family home in Sweet Bottom Plantation, Duluth. The event was a “who’s who” of Alt-Right white nationalism in metro Atlanta. Later in November, Huggins traveled to Washington, DC for the conference of the National Policy Institute (NPI), the major think tank of the Alt-Right at the time. At this conference, NPI head Richard Spencer gave a speech that concluded with “Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!” and received Nazi salutes from the audience. Upon his return to metro Atlanta, Huggins defended Spencer and the speech, claiming that the media’s portrayal of Spencer was an “obvious instance of deception” and that the whole performance was non-threatening, ironic, and fun.

At the National Policy Institute conference, Huggins participated in a group photo for Identity Evropa members, confirming his membership in the white power organization. Huggins seems to have continued with the group ever since then.

2017 – Present: Huggins’ Work with
Identity Evropa / American Identity Movement

The Libertarian Party of Dekalb County disbanded in January 2017, stating that “after many years” it would be “merging into the Libertarian Party of Atlanta”. A different account was provided to our organization in 2017, when a local Libertarian Party activist told us that the LPDC had not been properly sanctioned by the Party. It remains unclear to us when the LPDC’s charters with the national and state Libertarian Party ceased. Whatever the case, with the disbanding of the LPDC Huggins’ activist energy was concentrated on the Alt-Right and Identity Evropa.

On May 13, 2017, white nationalists held two demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, ostensibly in defense of Confederate monuments. The events were organized on a Discord chat server and were not publicly promoted in advance. The main organizer for the May 13 rallies was Atlanta-based Identity Evropa leader Evan Anderson, who received support from the “ATL-Right,” an umbrella grouping for Alt-Right sympathizers in metro Atlanta. The daytime rally took place at Jackson Park and featured speakers such as Richard Spencer and Sam Dickson. Huggins and many of his Atlanta associates attended. That night, the white nationalists gathered at Lee Park for a torchlit rally, where they chanted “Blood and soil!” among other slogans. The May 13 demonstrations paved the way for Unite the Right in Charlottesville three months later. Indeed, the “#SaveJacksonAndLee” protests are frequently referred to as “Charlottesville 1.0”, with UTR being “Charlottesville 2.0”.

Back in Atlanta, Huggins attended the Islamophobic “March Against Sharia” rally at Piedmont Park on June 10, 2017. There, Huggins chatted with Justin Wayne Peek, a Hitler-celebrating bigot who went on to become Identity Evropa’s “Director of Activism” and IE’s Georgia coordinator.

A few days before the Piedmont Park rally, Huggins confirmed on the “Charlottesville 2.0” Discord server that he would attend UTR in August. Huggins is clearly visible in footage from Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12. Later that day, Heather Heyer was murdered and dozens of others injured in a vehicular attack by white supremacist James Alex Fields, Jr. The very next day, Huggins shared his thoughts to Facebook about how everything had gone, writing: “This weekend was fucking metal.” Huggins continued to joke about the violence of UTR later that month, when he posted a meme about James Alex Fields Jr.’s murderous attack in response to a Twitter post by Richard Spencer.  

We identified the Twitter account @FashyScience / “Mordecai McFly” as belonging to Huggins after he recorded a video which briefly showed his face, then posted it to the Twitter account. The handle “FashyScience” combines a reference to fascism (“Fashy”) with one about science – Huggins studied physics while at Georgia Tech.

Although Huggins considered UTR to be “fucking metal,” he also stayed in Identity Evropa while that organization struggled to distance itself from the racist violence of the day. IE is currently being sued for its role in Unite the Right. As well as changing leadership twice since UTR, IE tried to improve its image by encouraging local groups to engage in acts of “service,” which were then photographed and placed on social media. For the IE “Weekend of Service” in June 2018, Huggins was pictured painting over graffiti alongside Atlanta IE members Patrick Sharp and Justin Peek.

According to his profile on LinkedIn, Huggins started working in “acquisitions” for the Hartford Trust in 2018. This job is a sign of Huggins’ entrenchment within the white power scene. We have written a couple of articles about local lawyer/white power leader Sam Dickson and the involvement of Dickson and other white nationalists in the Atlanta property market. Although its exact membership is opaque, the Hartford Trust is yet another business venture linked to Sam Dickson. Fulton County records for property owned by the “Hartford Trust” gives this Trust’s mailing address as 512 Angela Street, Key West, Florida – Sam Dickson’s “Villas Key West”, which he often uses in business filings. Huggins’ employment with the Hartford Trust reveals how the Sam Dickson’s network can keep people afloat even after being publicly exposed as racist organizers.

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In early February 2019, Huggins traveled to participate in Identity Evropa’s “Defend Utah” protests in Salt Lake City, meant as a display against immigration and “progressivism.” Under Justin Peek’s tenure as Director of Activism, IE has often organized flash protests in areas where they have a core group of organizers, importing members from other locations to boost numbers. 

About a month later, on March 8 – 10, IE held its second annual conference in Kentucky, where it changed its name to the “American Identity Movement.” Despite the claims of its leader, AmIM / IE has only changed its name and some imagery, essentially continuing where IE left off. Judging from photos, Huggins participated in AmIM’s inaugural protest in Nashville, Tennessee on March 10. Huggins later shared pictures of the Nashville protest on his @FashyScience Twitter account. 

Conclusion / Outreach to Huggins’
Neighbors

Jared Huggins has been active with
Identity Evropa / American Identity Movement since 2016. When we first
encountered Huggins, he simultaneously operated within white nationalist,
pro-Trump, and Libertarian circles. With the election of Trump and the end of
the Libertarian Party of Dekalb County, Huggins now devotes his energy to white
nationalist organizing. Huggins travels to major Alt-Right events. He was at
the bloody “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville, Virginia and joked afterward
about the murder that took place. Huggins claims online to be employed by the
Hartford Trust, a business linked to white nationalist leader Sam
Dickson. 

Huggins is now part of the American
Identity Movement, which continues the work of Identity Evropa. After fifty
worshippers were massacred at Christchurch, New Zealand mosques by a white
supremacist, Huggins circulated posts on social media which tried to focus
anger on Muslims, immigration and “multiculturalism,” rather than on organized
white nationalism. 

To coincide with the publication of this article, we have mailed over 200 of Huggins’ neighbors at the Bloom at Buford Apartments to warn them of the white power organizer living nearby. You can download our flyer about Huggins here.

If you have more information on Jared Huggins or other members of Identity Evropa / American Identity Movement, please get in contact.

Appendix: Archive of Jared Huggins’
Twitter Account as “Mordecai McFly”

Note: We redacted an image of the aftermath of the Bataclan theatre massacre shared by Huggins.

Download Twitter archive here.

Introduction / Overview

Justin Wayne Peek is the current Georgia coordinator for Identity Evropa (IE), a nationwide racist organization. Peek also serves as IE’s Director of Activism and organizes their protests across the United States, often personally traveling to participate in them.

Justin Peek became involved in the “Alt-Right” and white nationalism in early 2017. After the violence of the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA and the Alt-Right’s subsequent reversal of fortune, IE saw a need to alter its activist strategy. Peek was named as IE’s “activism coordinator” in late 2017 during the leadership of Elliot Kline AKA “Eli Mosley,” but his role only began in earnest under IE’s third and current leader, Patrick Casey. IE now deploys flash protests with just their own members, so that the organization can carefully stage-manage these events and maintain the correct “optics.” By orchestrating IE’s protests of 2018, Peek has played a key role in the organization’s efforts to attract new members and rebrand.

On his old Twitter account, Peek claimed that “Jew [sic] and arabs are disease to this planet” and that “black lives don’t matter.” Peek also circulated pro-Hitler propaganda. IE remains a white power organization, even if it now uses carefully-crafted language of wanting a “European-American super-majority” instead of publicly demanding a whites-only homeland.

Since “Unite the Right,” Identity Evropa has tried to portray itself as having high moral standards for its members, in contrast to other racist groups. Peek’s personal history gives reason to doubt this. In 2012 Justin Peek was arrested in Fulton County for sexual battery. The initial accusation charged Peek with “intentionally […] touching the genital area” of a woman without her consent. Peek eventually accepted a plea deal for the lower charge of simple battery, which involves intentional “physical contact of an insulting or provoking nature.” Court documents from this case are included as an appendix to our article.

Peek currently lives with his fiancée Amber Michele Wojcik in the Edgewater at Sandy Springs apartment complex. The couple are due to marry this September, with a ceremony scheduled at the River Dream Lodge in Blue Ridge, Georgia. To coincide with the publication of this article, we mailed flyers to residents at Peek’s apartment complex, warning them of the racist organizer in their midst.

Justin Peek’s Personas: “Wayne Peek”/“Wayne” and “Finn” 

Justin Wayne Peek has used the names “Wayne Peek,” “Wayne” and then “Finn” while doing white nationalist organizing. In this section, we connect these different personas, and show them all to be the same person: Justin Wayne Peek.

We begin with Peek’s old Twitter account. The Twitter account @jwpeek88 was active in 2017 and initially used the name “Justin Peek” before changing to “Wayne Peek.” The profile picture for this account is an image of Peek. The same photo now appears on Peek and Amber Wojcik’s wedding website. An archive of this @jwpeek88 Twitter account – which was deleted in late 2017 following “Unite the Right” – appears as an appendix to this article.

The name “Wayne Peek” also appeared as an author on the white nationalist AltRight.com website, and in the Discord chat server that was used for planning “Charlottesville 2.0” (the “Unite the Right” rally of August 2017). The AltRight.com author “Wayne Peek” wrote an article celebrating the earlier white power rally and torchlit protest which took place in May 2017 at Charlottesville. Footage shows that Peek attended the protest. The “Wayne Peek” who appeared in leaked “Charlottesville 2.0” planning logs was affiliated with ATL-Right, an Atlanta-area umbrella group for Alt-Right sympathizers, whose membership overlapped with IE. The “Wayne Peek” Discord account has a profile icon featuring IE’s logo.

Finally, the same voice appeared as “Wayne” and then later “Finn” on IE’s “Identitarian Action” podcast. In Episode 14 of “Identitarian Action,” “Wayne” discussed the organization’s 2018 flash protest in Fort Tryon Park, New York City. “Wayne” mentioned accidentally wrecking IE’s drone at that event. Footage from Fort Tryon Park that day shows Peek holding a drone controller.

Beginning with Episode 30 of “Identitarian Action,” “Wayne” appeared under the new name of “Finn”. During that episode, IE’s leader Patrick Casey slipped and called “Finn” by his earlier name of “Wayne.” The voice of “Wayne” and “Finn” match, as does the title of Director of Activism. In Episode 33, “Finn” states that his fiancée “was the head of her sorority” in college. Peek’s fiancée, Amber Wojcik, was a President for Kappa Kappa Gamma at Georgia Southern University. As a side note, we have no evidence that Wojcik is involved in the white power movement beyond her personal connection to Peek.

Justin Peek’s Racist Organizing, Part One: Early 2017 to “Unite the Right”

In the “Identitarian Recruiting” episode (#33) of Identity Evropa’s podcast, Peek provided an account of his path to “Identitarianism”. (Briefly, “Identitarianism” aims to “preserve racial, ethnic, and cultural identity” – although Identitarians also talk about culture, their project is a racial separatist one.) Peek claimed that it was his experience traveling and his concern about demographic and cultural change in the United States upon his return that initially attracted him to “Identitarianism.” Later in the same podcast episode, Peek claimed to have stumbled across an IE YouTube video which had a profound effect on him:

“As soon as I had seen it, I knew that I had to be a member of the organization […] I felt that there was something about this organization that I could experience… that I couldn’t really get that type of experience anywhere else, whether it be in contemporary conservatism or any strange fringe group that might pop up on the esoteric or in the occult or whatever, and that’s just not who I am.”

The YouTube video in question featured footage from Season Two, Episode Four of “Dark Net,” a series on Showtime. The “Dark Net” episode first aired on April 27, 2017. Peek mentioned in the January 2019 “Recruiting” podcast episode that he had been in IE for “about a year and a half.” That claim would mean that Peek signed up in mid-2017. However, our documentation shows that Peek was active in broader Alt-Right circles and was in contact with IE members before the footage even aired. Although the YouTube video may have played some role in Peek’s decision to become a formal member of IE, it is unlikely that the video was Peek’s primary motivation to join the organization, since Peek was already involved in the Alt-Right at that point. Peek’s account of his journey to IE minimizes his connection to the broader Alt-Right – a movement which IE now tries to distinguish itself from, despite having been born of it.

Peek’s @jwpeek88 account on Twitter shows that by March of 2017, Peek was a radical white nationalist. Peek declared that “America is at a race war” on March 2^nd, 2017 and on March 24^th claimed that other races “can’t even create for themselves.” In March 2017, Peek twice retweeted David Duke, a neo-Nazi and former Klan leader, and circulated posts by white nationalist leaders Richard Spencer as well as Nathan Damigo, who was then leading Identity Evropa. By April, Justin Peek’s rhetoric on Twitter had further escalated, with him stating that “Jew [sic] and arabs are disease to this planet.” Peek circulated pro-Hitler content, sharing a meme promoting the pro-Hitler documentary “Adolf Hitler: The Greatest Story Never Told!”. On Adolf Hitler’s birthday, Peek retweeted a message stating that “#HitlerWasRight”.

We first encountered Peek on April 18, 2017, when white nationalist leader Richard Spencer gave a speech at Auburn University in Alabama. Since Spencer was only able to speak on campus due to a court order issued earlier in the day, many of the Alt-Right crowd showed up ready to brawl. Peek was no exception, wearing a lacrosse helmet outside the venue. Although we did not know Peek’s identity at the time, it was clear that this individual was integrated within regional Alt-Right networks. Peek’s lacrosse helmet featured an “Alt-Right” sticker created by Atlanta Alt-Right organizer Patrick Sharp and distributed among Sharp’s associates. When Peek sat down for Spencer’s speech, he sat next to Bradley Dean Griffin, a notorious white power propagandist who maintains the “Occidental Dissent” website. Finally, when Peek left the University building after Spencer’s speech, Peek exited alongside Patrick Sharp. (Before Spencer at Auburn, we had commented on Patrick Sharp’s affinity toward Identity Evropa; at Auburn, Sharp wore an Identity Evropa “Dragon’s Eye” sticker on his helmet, openly broadcasting his affiliation with that organization.)

The next month, Spencer’s AltRight.com published an article by “Wayne Peek” arguing in favor of the Alt-Right movement and against conservatism, which Peek portrayed as weak and liberal-appeasing. Peek celebrated Spencer as someone who, unlike conservatives, possessed the American “warrior spirit.”

On May 13, 2017 – the day after his article was published – Peek surfaced in Charlottesville, Virginia for the white nationalist “#SaveJacksonAndLee” rally. This rally by white nationalists against the removal of Confederate statues had been organized in closed online groups and was not publicly advertised in advance. The rally is also known as “Charlottesville 1.0” since it was a clear precursor to “Unite the Right”, which was dubbed “Charlottesville 2.0”. Racist leaders such as Spencer and Atlanta attorney Sam Dickson gave speeches at the May rally at Jackson Park in Charlottesville.

The main organizer for the “Charlottesville 1.0” rally was Atlanta IE member Evan Thomas Anderson (Evan Thomas Kuettner before his legal name change). The “ATL-Right” group (now defunct) supported the May rally in Charlottesville, producing placards for the event and sending members to it. Peek is shown in video footage from Jackson Park on May 13, standing at the front of the white nationalist crowd as they taunted community members who arrived to counter-protest. That night, white nationalists held a second rally in Charlottesville, this time at Lee Park, where they gathered for a torchlit rally and chanted “You will not replace us!”, “Blood and soil”, and “Russia is our friend.”

Peek was clearly energized by the May 13 rallies in Charlottesville, rushing out an article as “Wayne Peek” for AltRight.com that was published May 17. Peek celebrated the “enormous [white nationalist] show of strength and power” that day which “overwhelmed the small southern town […] that is currently infested with some of the most disgusting and odious leftists in the country.” He ended his piece with “We hope to see you at the next rally” – a sign that there was more to come for Charlottesville.

Back in Georgia, Peek showed up on June 10 at Piedmont Park in Atlanta for the “March Against Sharia” anti-Muslim rally. The two largest groups at the Atlanta “March Against Sharia” were heavily-armed members of Chris Hill’s III% Security Force militia and a contingent from the Proud Boys. The event also attracted a small number of Alt-Right white nationalists, such as Peek and Jared Huggins. Another person who attended was Alex Michael Ramos, who is currently imprisoned for an attack during “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville.

Just days before the “March Against Sharia” rally in Piedmont Park, “Wayne Peek” confirmed on the private “Charlottesville 2.0” Discord chat server that he planned to attend the “Unite the Right” rally in August. Making clear that he was involved in the “ATL-Right” umbrella group, Peek wrote:

“We’re going to be there! The Atl right lives for this. It’s going to to [sic] get wild. Bring your boots.”

At the time of writing, we have not located Peek within footage from “Unite the Right.” Regardless of whether Peek attended the rally after announcing he would, “Unite the Right” proved to be a turning point for his white nationalist movement. In the aftermath of murder and racist assaults at Charlottesville, the Alt-Right fractured. Lawsuits and criminal cases from “Unite the Right” continue to this day.

Reviewing Peek’s activity from before “Unite the Right” makes three things clear. First, despite IE’s claim to be motivated by high ideals and not mere racism, Peek is a clear bigot. Second, Peek’s public narrative about how he joined IE ignores his involvement with the broader Alt-Right during 2017. For example, Peek referred to being part of “ATL-Right,” which involved not only members of IE but also supporters of the racist/antisemitic TheRightStuff website. Third, Peek reveled in the intimidating displays of “Charlottesville 1.0” in May 2017. That rally – which in Peek’s inflated view “overwhelmed” the city – would become one model for how white nationalists could organize events, showing up without advance notice and controlling the space. In some of the events which Peek has organized as IE’s Director of Activism, Peek is clearly elaborating on that model.

Justin Peek’s Racist Organizing, Part Two: After “Unite the Right” to Present

Identity Evropa stumbled for a few months after “Unite the Right.” The organization’s first leader, Nathan Damigo, stepped down at the end of August following the rally. IE’s second leader, Elliot Kline (AKA “Eli Mosley”), lasted three months before being replaced by Patrick Casey, the organization’s current head. Since becoming leader, Casey has tried to distance IE from the broader Alt-Right. IE now organizes flash rallies involving just its own members, rather than working with other Alt-Right groups. In addition, Casey currently stresses “Identitarianism” as the official ideology of the organization, rather than using terms such as “white nationalism” or “Alt-Right.” Although IE is currently being sued for its role in the violence at “Unite the Right,” Casey labels his organization as non-violent and nominally condemns “extremism”.

According to Casey in Episode 33 of the “Identitarian Action” podcast, “Finn” (Justin Peek) was appointed as activism coordinator for IE “shortly before I [Casey] took over.” In the same episode, Peek states that “I’ve been pretty much all over the United States doing activism” for IE. Initially Peek’s role was described as “activism coordinator” but since mid-2018 this has changed to “Director of Activism.” In an October 2018 podcast episode (#30), Peek was also identified as IE’s “Georgia coordinator”.

IE’s main action in Atlanta in the wake of “Unite the Right” was dropping anti-immigrant/anti-DACA banners from four overpasses in a single morning, September 26, 2017. By the time Patrick Casey assumed leadership of IE a couple of months later, Peek was in place as the organization’s activism coordinator/Director.

The week after Casey became leader of IE, he traveled to Atlanta to participate in a banner action designed to generate maximum attention for the organization and his new leadership. As national activism coordinator, Peek was almost certainly involved in the Georgia Tech action. On Tuesday, December 5, 2017, IE members held a large – almost 200 feet wide by their account – “America First”/“End Immigration” banner across a bridge on Georgia Tech’s campus. Although the action did not last long and or involve many people – nine are visible in footage, with at least one other person operating a drone – the point of the flash protest was to make a splash on social media. The banner action also demonstrated to IE sympathizers that despite Casey’s tight control of the organization’s messaging, IE intended to ramp up its activity.

Georgia Tech was presumably chosen as the site for December banner action since it had been repeatedly targeted with IE propaganda in the past, although materials were quickly removed by antifascists each time. Further, in mid-September nonbinary student and activist Scout Schultz was shot and killed by Georgia Tech police officer Tyler Beck, with the campus erupting in protest in the immediate aftermath. A secondary goal of IE’s protest may have been antagonizing students while emotions were still raw.

In another action primarily intended for an online audience, in February 2018 IE posted a video on its YouTube page, showing IE flyers being thrown from a propeller plane as it flew over Orlando, Florida. In the video, Peek throws the propaganda from the plane.

IE’s March 8-9, 2018 national conference in Kentucky – with a rally the day after at the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee – was the organization’s most ambitious event since its changes in leadership. IE put conference attendance at 150, with almost 70 appearing in a group photograph from the event. White nationalist elders Sam Dickson (who lives in Atlanta) and Jared Taylor both gave speeches at the conference. An IE “Year in Review” video shows that both Peek and Patrick Sharp of Atlanta’s IE chapter gave presentations at the conference. In the group photo from the conference, Peek appears behind national leader Patrick Casey. Two key Atlanta Identity Evropa activists – Patrick Sharp and Casey Cooper – appeared on either side of Patrick Casey.

Approximately sixty people participated in IE’s flash protest at Nashville’s Parthenon the next day, Sunday March 10. In footage captured by an onlooker, Peek approaches the local and gives his typical line: “No matter what you do, we’re not going anywhere, bud.” The footage also shows Peek piloting the IE drone, apparently one of his standard duties.

Peek yet again traveled for an IE protest in April, this time for flash protests in Washington, DC.  In the first episode of “Identitarian Action,” Peek discussed how he spent approximately one month planning the protests at the South African embassy with “Matt”, the current IE Chief of Staff. The IE protests were intended to draw attention to alleged systematic violence against white farmers in South Africa. The tale of extermination campaigns against Afrikaners is a white nationalist fantasy which serves broader racist narratives of international “white genocide.” Later in 2018, this same racist narrative on South Africa was repeated by Trump.

The flash protests at the South African embassy were held on Saturday, April 21, 2018. From the podcast, it is apparent that Peek not only planned the event but also attended. Since Peek does not appear in footage, he likely played a support role.

The first demonstration at the embassy that day was a theatrical “die in” in front of a statue of Mandela, who is hated by white nationalists for his leadership against the Apartheid regime. Approximately six hours later, IE returned to the embassy. Members briefly held up a banner while Patrick Casey delivered a short speech through a megaphone. Others drove crosses into grass on the other side of the street, to symbolize victims of the alleged anti-white murder campaign. According to the podcast, the next day Peek led a third flash protest in Washington, DC, where IE members held a “No sanctuary – build the wall” banner near the Watergate Hotel.

In addition to organizing white power flash rallies and banner drops, Peek appears to be pushing racist politics within the Republican Party. In Episode 6 of “Identitarian Action” (released June 2, 2018) “Wayne” stated during a conversation about the Republican Party that “I work with a few political campaigns as well,” and that work within electoral politics is “a great way to network,” to “plant seeds” and “to get our rhetoric in-between people’s ears.”

Peek proceeds:

“As far as political activism goes, at the end of the day, we’re kind of all shooting for the same goal as a lot of people who are in the GOP, so it makes a lot of sense to team up with these people. My end goal here… I want to influence legislation, I want to change certain types of legislation […]

“I was speaking with a campaign manager recently, and I told him ‘I have a group of guys who are America First, we get together, we hang out, we go on rafting trips, we fish and we hike’ and stuff like this… I didn’t tell him it was my IE chapter but he was like ‘Oh wow. So these guys, they’ll vote?’ ‘Yeah, absolutely they’ll vote.’ We start appealing as a voting bloc.”

Peek seems to have only helped campaigns in low-level ways such as phone canvassing. However, he appears enthusiastic about white nationalist entryism within the GOP. We ask that anyone with information on Peek’s involvement in Georgia conservative circles to send it our way.

In addition to flash protests and behind-the-scenes work to influence Republican politics, a third element of E’s activist strategy appears to be acts of “service” designed to improve their organization’s reputation. Toward this goal, IE held a “weekend of service” in June 2018, with coordinated actions in several cities. A picture from Atlanta showed Peek and two other group members painting over graffiti. According to Peek (“Identitarian Action” #9) the anti-graffiti action had broader ideological justification:

“As far as doing graffiti clean-up, like we do in Atlanta […] This is erasing leftist culture. Leftist culture is graffiti – it is this rap music – it is all of these things manifest. I mean: ultimately it is a communist or a Marxist ideology, and these art forms take life inside of those ideologies. You know, it’s up to us to wipe it out – to do away with it.”

Ironically, one of the Atlanta IE members pictured in the “clean-up,” Patrick Sharp, was responsible for leaving graffiti against “anti-whites” in November 2016. Peek’s comments reveal that his true goal is cultural cleansing of whatever he deems “leftist”.

In his position as Director of Activism, Peek coordinates and approves all major IE activism. This is clear from other podcast episodes in which IE members discuss clearing their plans with Peek ahead of time. Last year, Peek traveled to at least two more large-scale actions by IE. The first of these was titled “Defend Identity,” which took place in New York City in late July. According to IE’s podcast, Peek planned “Defend Identity” in collaboration with Louis, the organization’s Assistant Director of Activism and its New York coordinator. The action had two parts: first, a demonstration at the Mexican Consulate in downtown New York City, followed by IE members unfurling a large banner in Fort Tryon Park (uptown NYC) later that day. According to IE’s podcast, the aim of the “Defend Identity” actions in New York was to “make our presence known” in the city and to “show force,” reminiscent of the way May 2017 white nationalist flash demonstrations in Charlottesville attempted to “overwhelm” city space.

In the first New York City protest, dozens of IE members held up letters spelling “BUILD THE WALL” while chanting anti-immigrant slogans outside the Mexican Consulate. Moving to Fort Tryon Park in uptown New York, IE members displayed an “End the Invasion” anti-immigrant banner over the Park’s archways. Later, IE members celebrated the national media attention they had garnered from the flash rallies and gloated about causing alarm to locals.

Over Veteran’s Day weekend in November, IE members assembled in Colorado for a weekend of activities including a reception on Friday night, a group hike in Eldorado Canyon State Park on Saturday, and a flash demonstration in downtown Denver on Sunday. Peek appears in footage from the Saturday hike, which suggests he also participated in the rest of the weekend.

Finally, Peek’s move to an apartment complex in Sandy Springs with his fiancée coincides with an uptick in IE activities in nearby locations. For example, IE posted on Twitter about a trip by Georgia IE members to Barrington Hall in Roswell, which seemingly took place at the end of September 2018. The Hall is approximately a ten-minute drive from Peek’s current residence. In mid-October, Peek and one or more others from IE placed posters against Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms near the State Capitol in Atlanta, in response to Bottoms ordering the city jail to not hold people for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to the IE podcast, after leaving posters around downtown Atlanta, Peek and company then left for Roswell Road to place materials. Peek described Roswell Road as having a “heavy Latino base” – people who Peek seemingly wished to agitate with posters calling them “Illegals.” Peek’s apartment is just off Roswell Road in Sandy Springs. In late December, IE members decided to place “Merry Christmas from Identity Evropa” posters in downtown Roswell, Georgia, which is only a ten-minute drive from Peek’s residence.

Conclusion

Justin Wayne Peek is one of the most active members of Identity Evropa. As Director of Activism, he manages its public displays and creates spectacle to draw in new members. In some of the larger rallies organized by Peek – for example, the ones in New York City – Peek revels in the alarm caused by his organization’s flash mobs.

Although Identity Evropa claims that it is not about hate, violence, or neo-Nazism, Peek shows the true face of the organization: he is a blatant racist who took a plea deal to avoid facing sexual battery charges and whose social media account celebrated Hitler. The organization scolds the broader Alt-Right for accepting participants of poor character, holding itself as the moral alternative. In reality, Identity Evropa members simply have richer parents and better lawyers than the average neo-Nazi.

We hope that by setting out Peek’s activity in detail, we also have provided insight into how IE currently operates and attempts to build. If you have further information on Justin Peek, Identity Evropa, or other racist organizing in our region, please get in contact.

Appendix 1: 2012 Fulton County Battery Case (Originally Charged as Sexual Battery)

Download as .pdf here.

Appendix 2: @jwpeek88 Twitter account archive

Download as .pdf here.