University of Nebraska-Lincoln Refuses to Cut Ties With Student Linked to Atomwaffen and ‘Unite the Right’

What does it take to be kicked off campus? Well, it seems if you are a neo-Nazi in Nebraska, you can’t. Daniel Kleve, who has referred to himself as “the most active white nationalist in the Nebraska area,” was seen attacking a clergy member at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville with a metal flashlight, and also has been photographed posing for pictures with groups linked to bombings and murder, such as Atomwaffen Divison. But moreover, Kleve has also been documented planning acts of harassment against other students and community members, and in online videos claims that he walks around campus with “a smile on his face,” because he knows that the campus administration will do nothing to remove him.

On Thursday, February 8th, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln declared that Daniel Kleve would not be expelled, citing free speech rules, after launching an exhaustive and eventually pointless series of “listening sessions,” in which students were encouraged to engage in dialog with administrators. The campus also attempted, through statements and emails, to distance itself from Kleve, yet ultimately did nothing to expel him, and instead, claimed that local police would keep everyone safe. Just like in Charlottesville, right?

According to Kansas City:

In his email Thursday to students, faculty and staff, the chancellor said security on campus is his highest priority and that campus police and other “safety experts” are keeping an eye on the situation.

“I trust their judgment, competence and professionalism to manage this situation in a manner that protects the safety of all members of our campus community,” wrote Green.

Despite concerns from students for their safety, especially after Kleve’s online posts inside a Discord chat room were revealed that showed he was planning to harass those opposed to him and even included references to violence, the local police claimed that students had nothing to worry about:

“We don’t believe at this time that there are safety concerns that are a threat to students on this campus,” the university’s police chief, Owen Yardley, told the group according to the Daily Nebraskan. Yardley said that over the past 17 years university police have been “very successful in handling situations like these.”

In short, police and school administrators are dead set on enforcing a new normal under Trump, one that sees neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies as legitimate parts of the spectrum and openly allows the Alt-Right to organize and carry out acts of violence and harassment as long as this violence remains leveled against common enemies: autonomous grassroots movements, and not the State.

As Nebraska Antifa commented:

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is aware they have a campus neo-Nazi problem. This is not disputed. They are “aware of the situation” with Daniel Kleve, a 23 year old junior biology major, and have reaffirmed this awareness in email and phone calls many times since August 19, 2017, a week after Dan Kleve attended the deadly “Unite the Right” rally. UNL knew six days after he was photographed with other Vanguard America members attacking someone from a group of anti-racist clergy with his large metal flashlight on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. UNL knew there was an armed self-identifying neo-Nazi on campus planning revenge on students he suspected had alerted the administration.

In a Google Hangouts video chat hosted by Blake Lucca, Kleve tells the others “Trust me, I want to be violent. Trust me. Really violent. But now is not the time. So we need to build ourselves up. We need to be disciplined … so that when the time comes, we can, you know, do what needs to be done basically.”

In an email to It’s Going Down, a student who wished to remain anonymous wrote:

Over the past 6 months countless emails and complaints have been sent to the University by concerned students and community members regarding the presence of an active violent fascist who’s enrolled at our university named Daniel J. Kleve. Kleve marched in Charlottesville with Vanguard America (same group responsible for the murder of Heather Heyer) and was photographed beating counter-protesters with a mag light.

Throughout these 6 months the university has done nothing, not even so much as warning their students as to the dangerous fascist that provides imminent danger to students of color. In that 6 months he has continued his violent actions, traveling to Tennessee for a White Lives Matter rally where he hung out with members of Attomwaffen.

Why is the University so concerned about ruffling the feathers of a local neo-Nazi? Nebraska Antifa writes:

UNL has taken such a stance because they are afraid, but not of Daniel. They are afraid of the backlash they received from the governor and state legislators about the more palatable young conservative group Turning Point USA getting “harassed” by a grad student for tabling stale piss Reaganomics during a recruiting drive. The University fired the student-lecturer for expressing an opinion after a pressure campaign by TP USA; both the news director and chief communication and marketing officers resigned.

On September 12, one month after the Unite the Right, the Lincoln city council proposed a resolution against hate. Two people spoke against the resolution: Katie Mullen, the TP USA student that cost three people their jobs, and Dan Kleve “who identifies himself with the white nationalist movement.” Mullen said she fears police could “come to my door for standing up for freedom.” UNL is outright protecting a violent self-identifying white nationalist because they’re scared of bad press backlash from some young Republicans.

In response to the above video and news of Kleve getting out to the student body, the University responded to the growing crisis and student unrest by setting up a series of “listening” events and also putting out an open letter which attempts to distance the institution from Kleve. This has become a standard practice by colleges and universities across the US, and offers a way for students to blow off steam and feel like they are listened too by those in power, but in the end, does nothing to remove the problem or protect students.

But thanks to the investigative work by Unicorn Riot, we were also able to take a sneak peak into the world of Daniel Kleve, and see that in the aftermath of Unite the Right, he along with other neo-Nazis and Alt-Right activists, was working to organize harassment and possible violence against anyone that he deemed to be a political opponent.

As Unicorn Riot wrote:

After Kleve was identified in Charlottesville and exposed online, people began calling the head of his department at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and demanding that he be expelled.

In an apparent retaliation for this, Kleve created the ‘Pony Power’ server to seek revenge by maliciously publishing the personal information of alleged antifascists and encouraging others to harass them and bring them harm. “There was a coordinated effort to get me kicked out of uni,” Kleve wrote in one Discord message. “Plus a bunch of death threats. This is war.”

Conversations eventually progressed to some Discord users discussing cyber-attacks against antifascists, which led some chat participants to express concern about risk of conspiracy charges under federal hacking laws.

Dan Kleve, referring to people to be listed in this database, asked “Do we go Turner Diaries on them?” – this comment made by Kleve appears to be advocating murder, as he refers to the 1978 novel The Turner Diaries, in which white supremacist insurgents overthrow the US government and exterminate all non-whites on the planet. The Southern Poverty Law Center has referred to The Turner Diaries as “the bible of the racist right.”

Eventually, the users in the chat seemed to target any person they saw ‘like’ anti-racist posts on social media, sometimes going after liberal, Democrat-connected “The Resistance” groups, as well as progressive elected officials. Several senior citizens were also among the list of harassment targets named by Kleve and others.

The white supremacist Discord users in ‘Pony Power’, particularly ‘NSJW’, also expressed a keen interest in targeting reporters, with messages in the chat logs including “we need to make an example out of journalists” and “we need to dox journalists.”

All of this has created a climate where large scale Alt-Lite groups like Turning Point USA feel like they have free reign of the campus and where an Alt-Right and neo-Nazi organizer can walk around “smiling” because they know the school administration will do nothing. Students must understand this reality, understand that the school administration is designed to manage campuses, including students, and will do nothing to push back against the rise of the Alt-Right. Students on their own terms must protect and organize themselves and defend their interests.

As one student wrote in an email to It’s Going Down:

[S]tudents are afraid, many aren’t going to class, many have missed tests, so many have no idea how they could ever possibly feel safe on campus again with this person present in their educational environments. The University continues to show a lack of care for this fact and their ignorance stems not only from systematic racism but from some events that happened earlier this year. At this point the system tasked with working for us is no longer doing so, so we have to bring our own awareness and call for action ourselves.

Students across the US must ask themselves if they are going to come together and defend themselves, or allow their lives to be managed and controlled by a set of spineless bureaucrats who bow to the same people that would gladly put them to death.