This white nationalist group has done everything it can to keep GOP Rep. Steve King in office

Matthew Chapman
06 March 2019

A career of overt racism is finally catching up to Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

His antics, from retweeting neo-Nazis to saying that "we can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies" to suggesting there's nothing wrong with white supremacy to sitting for an interview with an Austrian Nazi-founded party while on a Holocaust education tour, have become so repulsive that even his fellow Republicans have had enough. In recent months, King has been condemned by the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, stripped of all his committee assignments, been rebuked in a near-unanimous House resolution, and now faces multiple primary challengers for 2020.

But King still has his supporters, and according to the Huffington Post, many of his most active defenders hail from the hate group Identity Evropa:

Newly leaked chat logs linked to a prominent hate group reveal that white nationalists have actively worked to keep King and his racist ideology in office — by donating to his campaign, calling members of Congress to show their support when King stumbles or by attempting to reach the congressman directly.

On Wednesday, an independent media organization called Unicorn Riot released a searchable database containing what the company says are “more than 770,000 messages from chat servers associated with Identity Evropa,” a white nationalist collective designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center that prides itself on its college campus recruiting campaigns.

The database revealed that Identity Evropa members are desperate to keep him in office, as one of the only members of Congress who overtly supports white nationalist ideology, and are scared that his mouth will cost him his job. "Steve King is more useful in Congress than as a nobody," said one user, TMatthews. "He needs to be more careful about who he talks to."

Another user, Reinhard Wolff, directed Identity Evropa members to call the office of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and protest King's loss of committee assignments. When King retweeted white nationalists like Faith Goldy and Lana Lokteff, Identity Evropa members urged each other to promote the content themselves, in the hope that King would reply to them too and legitimize their organization.

Identity Evropa, which was founded by Iraq War veteran Nathan Benjamin Damigo in 2016, seeks to mainstream white supremacist ideology, and frequently distributes flyers on college campuses, seeking to recruit young people with memeable slogans like "Our Future Belongs to Us" and "Keep Your Diversity We Want Identity." They refer to themselves as "identitarians" and claim their goal is merely the preservation of Western culture.

Some Identity Evropa members were involved in planning the 2017 "Unite the Right" white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which culminated in violent clashes and murder.

It is clear that in Steve King, white nationalists see a critical ally. And they will do whatever they can to prop him up.