White Nationalist Leader Is Plotting to ‘Take Over the GOP’

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As the executive director of Identity Evropa, [Patrick] Casey is on a bold mission. “To take over the GOP as much as possible,” he told NBC News.

Casey and his roughly 800 fellow members believe ethnic diversity damages the country. Emboldened by President Donald Trump’s rhetoric on race and immigration, they advocate for allowing only Caucasians to immigrate to the U.S. in order to maintain a “white supermajority.”

In Casey’s perfect world, whites would live among whites in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and South Africa, blacks would live among blacks in Africa, Asians in Asia, and Hispanics in Latin America. “Ethnic diversity has been proven time and time again in many studies to be very detrimental for social cohesion, social capital, and it’s just not a good model for society,” he said.

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Casey now sees politics rather than protests as the prime vehicle to carry his brand of white identity politics into the mainstream.

He knows that his extreme racial views are unwelcome in many corners of the country. So Casey takes pains to present himself as a clean-cut, upstanding young professional.

His group follows strict appearance rules: no visible tattoos, good grooming, only conservative clothing. When chatting up young people at events like CPAC, Casey knows it’s crucial that he looks the part of your typical Republican booster.

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Casey’s strategy is focused on that very demographic.

He has directed his members to blanket college campuses with recruiting fliers as part of a nationwide effort spanning schools from San Diego State University to New York University. The goal: seed College Republican groups with Identity Evropa members as a stepping stone to careers into politics.

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His philosophy calls for identitarians, the term he and his ilk use to describe themselves, to infiltrate the Republican party without broadcasting their polarizing views on immigrants and non-whites.

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A spokesman for the Republican National Committee declined to comment on Identity Evropa itself, saying he didn’t want to elevate the group. Instead, he referred to a resolution that the party passed in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville.

“The racist beliefs of Nazis, the KKK, white supremacists and other like-minded groups are completely inconsistent with the Republican Party’s platform that states ‘all Americans stand equal before the law’ and their racist agenda has no place in the United States,” it said.

Experts say groups like Identity Evropa represent a new wave of white supremacists who are more sophisticated and strategic than their predecessors. “These are very smart, very savvy groups and that’s one of the things that differentiates them from groups of the past,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor of education and sociology at American University. “You can’t just write them off as ignorant thugs.”

Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, described Identity Evropa as one of the “most active of the new hate groups” and “one of the foremost purveyors of white supremacist propaganda in the U.S.”

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The organization only accepts whites of European descent who are non-Jews. Members are banned from dating anyone outside of their race.

Casey runs Identity Evropa from a laptop in his home a few hours outside Washington, D.C. Much of the work involves posting podcasts online from members around the country, as well as disseminating photos of propaganda flyers posted around the country to the group’s 30,000-plus followers on Twitter.

Casey also leads the group in what he describes as “actions.” Over the summer, Casey and two dozen of his members unfurled a giant banner on a 50-foot archway over Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan. “Stop the Invasion. End Immigration,” it read.

In July, more than a dozen Identity Evropa members and supporters gathered outside the Mexican Consulate in New York City and held up giant green and white cut-out letters that spelled out “BUILD THE WALL.”

Casey, with a megaphone in hand and a “Make America Great Again” hat on his head, marched up and down the block revving up the group of young men.

“It’s predicted that by 2045 white people are going to be a minority in this country,” he said. “That is unacceptable.”

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