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Oct 17, 16
Filed under: Action, Anti-fascist, Southwest
Unsure why Identity Evropa has to lie about locations to peddle their Nazi trash? Ask them yourself! pic.twitter.com/8mStv21k96
— FireWorks (@FireWorksBAY) October 17, 2016
Submitted to It’s Going Down
Print and Read Flyer Here
Today, a mere handful of 10 members of Identity Evropa (one of whom came as far away as Michigan) ‘rallied’ in San Francisco against immigrants. This is an incredibly weak showing for IE, which claims to have “thousands” of applicants for membership and in May, drew about 20 Neo-Nazis and white nationalists to UC Berkeley for a similar rally. According to a short report online, things didn’t start off to good for IE in San Francisco:
Identity Evropa members were BRIEFLY on location at San Francisco State University and the Ferry Building handing out leaflets. According to witnesses they ran at the first sign of opposition and their leaflets at SFSU were found in trash cans on site.
They are claiming this was an intentional flash mob.
We say they’re a bunch of cowards who run at the first sign of anyone who doesn’t look just like them.
We do know for a fact one of them either attends or works at SFSU as they were able to reserve Malcolm X Plaza today.
As opposition built on the campus to the impending fascist rally, Damigo pulled the plug on a potential confrontation and moved the ‘rally’ to the pier in San Francisco, off the Embarcadero, thus making it appear that Identity Evropa and Red Ice Radio advertised a fake address (SF State) for their event through their own website and social media feeds. Despite all their attempts to get off the internet and beyond social media, Identity Evropa is still incredibly weak in the streets and we hope to keep them there. Also, we must be clear that a quick anti-fascist and community response literally drove Identity Evropa into (or by) the sea; forcing them to move their ‘rally’ for fear of their safety.
All this was done in less than a day and anti-fascists and anti-racists were able to turn out a much bigger showing at the campus than the Nazis who planned their action for months were able to. While Identity Evropa may have successfully moved their event to the pier, in doing so they also cut off any potential support they might have gotten from those looking to become part of the demonstration after reading about it online. Furthermore, the actual ‘rally’ lasted a pitiful 20 minutes before it was quickly shut down and people left the area before they could be confronted by anyone. Let’s become great again – yeah, alright!
Members of Identity Evropa from the bay Area and beyond. Included in this photo is Reinhard Wolff (also goes by ‘Trustfund Tucked In Shirt’), Chad Turner, Nathan Damigo of Oakdale, and Johnny Ramondetta of Berkeley.
But while Identity Evropa was pathetically holding a ‘rally’ in San Francisco and took every precaution to avoid a confrontation, anti-fascists in the Central Valley again blanketed the campus at CSU Stanislaus in Turlock, CA, (the campus that Nathan Damigo attends), with hundreds of flyers discussing his involvement in the Neo-Nazi and white nationalist movement. A banner reading, “Nathan Damigo is a Nazi! No Hate at Stan State!” was also dropped from the main building in the quad.
Flyers distributed at Stan State in Turlock, CA, where Nathan Damigo is a Social Studies student.
This is the second such action that anti-fascists have undertaken at the campus and it will not be the last. About two weeks ago, anti-fascists removed Neo-Nazi Identity Evropa posters and stickers around the campus and handed out flyers detailing Damigo’s involvement in IE and his fascist politics. It was revealed by talking with workers on the campus that the CSU Sacramento President had already been in talks with the President of CSU Stanislaus about Damigo and many were already aware of his posters and stickers – and not impressed. After anti-fascists revealed that Damigo was a student at Turlock, a flurry of online, print, and news media ran with the story and helped blast out awareness of Damigo’s white supremacist views and quoted from antifa articles at length.
While the attempts by Identity Evropa to rally in San Francisco are laughable, in Lindsborg, Kansas, Gabriel Wilson of Identity Evropa has begun to push IE into a much more violent and confrontational direction. There in late September, Wilson chalked racist messages around the campus and made threatening phone calls against the campus dean who has adopted black children. The targeting of migrant workers in SF and black children in Kansas cannot go unanswered; an injury to one is an injury to all!
As working-class people based in the Central Valley, we find Nathan Damigo’s fascist and Neo-Nazi ideas to be disgusting. The fascist and authoritarian society that he envisions based on hierarchies of gender, sexuality, race, and beyond are in no one’s interest, be they gay, straight, trans, man, woman, white, black, brown, red, or yellow. And, just as we fight Identity Evropa now, we remember that in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the Ku-Klux-Klan was protested against and shut down in various cities throughout Stanislaus County. Slowly but surely, the KKK was pushed out of the area. Now, we must come together to push out Nathan Damigo and Identity Evropa.
Seems the outreach to white workers didn’t go so well. Maybe stick to your yacht club.
Poor and working-class white people in the Central Valley have more in common with poor and working people of color than we do with those that own and control the means of existence in the region who happen to be white (or not). In fact, when many white migrant workers first came to California to work in the fields during the depression, they joined black and brown workers and together they organized in labor unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) to fight against their common conditions. In the 60s, white workers in labor unions also famously honored the boycott of grapes called by Cesar Chavez, helping to win the Latino strikers demands. Today, in the struggles against racist police violence in Stockton and against repression in the Merced jails as hundreds of men have gone on hunger strike, we again see people of all colors coming together to fight for a better way of life and against oppressive systems in the Central Valley. In response to these examples and more, the bosses have always used racism as a means to counter act multi-racial resistance – just like Nathan Damigo and Identity Evropa does.
Now, we must come together again. Those that own and control this system are killing the planet, our communities, and shooting us dead in the streets everyday. It’s time to build a real movement of poor and working people across color lines that builds power in our workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods and takes it out of the hands of politicians and corporate CEOs.
Neo-Nazis like Nathan Damigo can put up all the glossy photos of statues that they want; they’ll always be fascist scum and their ideas are disgusting. Whether they wear white sheets or sweater-vests and ties, they need to be confronted, shut down, and run all the way back to Silicon Valley where they come from.
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