# Identity Evropa **Identity Evropa** (rebranded **American Identity Movement** in 2019) was the most direct U.S. organizational copy of the European [[Identitarian Movement]] — the group that translated [[Génération Identitaire]]'s branding, tactics, and "we just love our own identity" messaging into American terms during the 2015–2017 alt-right surge. It is a case study in how European Identitarianism crossed the Atlantic. ## Founding and ideology Identity Evropa was founded in 2016 by **Nathan Damigo**, a former Marine and [[Iraq War]] veteran who had served prison time for an armed robbery and had previously been involved with the National Youth Front. Damigo built IE explicitly on the European Identitarian model: rather than openly proclaiming white supremacy, the group framed itself around the "preservation of white American identity" and the promotion of "European" heritage and culture — the [[Ethnopluralism]] move of laundering racial-exclusion politics through the respectable-sounding language of identity and heritage. Underneath the framing sat the standard [[Great Replacement Theory]] and the broader [[White Nationalism]] worldview. ## Tactics IE imported GI's metapolitical playbook for an American campus context. Its signature activity was **campus and public-space flyering** — posting professionally designed propaganda on university campuses and monuments, engineered to generate media coverage and an aura of a clean-cut, "identitarian" student movement. The group recruited young, college-aged white men and emphasized a suit-and-tie, "we're not the angry skinheads" presentation — the same rebranding strategy traced from [[David Duke]] through [[Richard Spencer]]. ## Charlottesville and rebrand Identity Evropa and Damigo were key participants in the August 2017 [[Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally]], alongside [[Richard Spencer]] and other alt-right organizers. The reputational and legal fallout from Charlottesville — deplatforming, doxxing, and civil litigation — fractured the organization. In late 2017, leadership passed from Damigo to **Patrick Casey** (who had used the alias "Reinhard Wolff"). In March 2019, after the Unite the Right brand became toxic and members were exposed in a leak of the group's Discord chats, Casey rebranded the organization as the **American Identity Movement** in an attempt to escape the Charlottesville association. The rebrand did not save it. The organization wound down, and its membership networks fed successor white-nationalist structures, most notably [[Patriot Front]], which itself emerged directly out of the post-Charlottesville fragmentation. Both the ADL and the SPLC designate Identity Evropa/AIM as a white-supremacist hate group. ## Significance for the KB Identity Evropa is the clearest single piece of evidence that the American alt-right was not a purely homegrown phenomenon but a deliberate **import of the European Identitarian template**. Its branding, its flyering tactics, its ethnopluralist framing, and even its name ("Evropa") were lifts from [[Génération Identitaire]]. It is an upstream node in the [[White Nationalist Radicalization Pipeline]] and a direct organizational link between Sellner-era European Identitarianism and the contemporary American white-nationalist scene represented by [[Patriot Front]]. ## See Also - [[Identitarian Movement]] — the parent ideology - [[Génération Identitaire]] — the European model it copied - [[Patriot Front]] — successor network - [[Richard Spencer]] — co-architect of the alt-right rebrand - [[Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally]] — the event that broke the group