Nathan Damigo, a notorious white nationalist leader and co-organizer of 2017’s deadly “Unite the Right” rally, has relocated to Atlanta, where he now attempts to harass those he views as anti-racists, forest defenders, and leftists. Nathan Benjamin Damigo was the first leader for Identity Evropa (IE), a white power organization that eventually morphed into the “American Identity Movement” and disbanded in 2020. As IE’s leader until his resignation in August 2017, Damigo participated in street brawls—including punching a woman in the face—in Berkeley, California and helped organize the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Damigo has now been tied to the property of longtime racist leader, lawyer for Klansmen, and gentrification profiteer Sam Dickson in Buckhead, Atlanta. Damigo is currently operating with the “William McKinley Institute” (WMI), an anti-anti-fascist project that defines itself as “at odds with the Jewish values that dominate our civilization today, infecting every institution with perversion, degeneracy, confusion and chaos”.
WMI recently circulated photographs of Saturday’s protest in Atlanta over the death of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, who was shot and killed by the Georgia State Patrol during a multi-agency raid on the Weelaunee Forest / “Stop Cop City” protest site on Wednesday, January 18th. Some politically targeted property destruction occurred during the Saturday protest responding to the murder, and a series of violent arrests by police then followed. As part of a broader right-wing campaign to identify and harass those they claim are part of the movement to Defend the Atlanta Forest, WMI published video and still photographs from the Saturday protest after sending someone to spy on the event. These images were then picked up by the “Antifa Watch” doxing blog, and eventually circulated by far-right propagandist Andy Ngo. While Ngo promoted WMI to his mass audience, he did not note its white nationalist and virulently antisemitic nature.
We have now identified white power leader Nathan Damigo as a key “William McKinley Institute” participant, who is currently based in Atlanta.
Nathan Damigo, born in Maine in 1986 but raised in California, has an extensive history of white supremacist activism. In November of 2007 after serving in the Marines, Damigo pulled a loaded gun on a stranger because he “look[ed] Iraqi” and robbed the man of $43. While serving a prison sentence, Damigo grew more familiar with white supremacist ideology. On his release in 2014, he joined the youth wing of the America Freedom Party, the National Youth Front. This group would evolve into Identity Evropa in 2016.
Identity Evropa was especially active on college campuses, where they campaigned against perceived “anti-white” bias. In his time organizing with this group, Damigo was a close associate of Richard Spencer and moved in broader “Alt-Right” circles. On April 15, 2017, Damigo scuffled in the “Battle of Berkeley”, where he notably sucker-punched a diminutive woman who was a part of the antifascist protest. Damigo helped lead August 2017’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Identity Evropa had a large contingent. Not long after the deadly rally, Damigo left his leadership position with IE and claimed to be re-focusing on other parts of his life. He was later one of the defendants ordered to pay significant damages in the Sines v. Kessler civil suit over Unite the Right violence.
A brief look at the WMI website – which claims to document “anti-White terrorism and extremism” – shows that it is particularly focused on Atlanta, even including a blog post documenting leftist, anarchist, and anti-fascist stickers found around the city. On August 5, 2022, the WMI website published an incident report from the Georgia State University (GSU) police department. The report concerned an action at GSU’s downtown campus the month before, which WMI linked to the movement to defend the Weelaunee forest and to stop the “Cop City” development. Since the police report was clearly accessed through a public records request, we obtained that request. As a result, we can now confirm that Damigo has been living in Atlanta and is active as a white nationalist in our city.
As shown in the attached evidence, Damigo made the open records request for the GSU incident report and provided an address on Ridgeland Way in Buckhead, Atlanta on the paperwork. We have previously written about this address, which is owned by longtime racist leader Samuel Glasgow Dickson and serves as a hub of sorts for white nationalists.
Nathan Damigo’s presence in Atlanta is further corroborated by him speaking at the “Fall Retreat” held in metro Atlanta by Counter-Currents Publishing, a white nationalist propaganda project. That event was held at an undisclosed location from October 21-23, 2022. Counter-Currents subsequently released footage of Damigo’s speech.
While our documentation does not establish that Damigo is the only participant in the William McKinley Institute, he appears to be a trusted one. The anti-anti-fascist, anti-“anti-White” project takes its name from a US President who was assassinated by an anarchist in 1901. Its obscure blog was launched in 2019, with a Telegram channel and proper website appearing last year. WMI claims to work directly with the “Antifa Watch” website. We have already noted WMI’s profound antisemitism, and that the project is premised on white nationalist narratives that the US is being overrun by an “anti-White” wave. Although far-right propagandist Andy Ngo has shared WMI content after it was laundered by “Antifa Watch,” WMI have pointed to Ngo as an example of “degenerate liberals”. This may seem strange, but follows white supremacist logic: Ngo’s politics are fascist, but his status as a gay Asian male means that his white supremacist allies will never truly accept him, no matter his actions for the cause.
The purpose of WMI is to identify and then harass those they perceive as anti-fascists from around the country. The “Antifa Watch” project works with WMI to further promote its materials and to build broader harassment campaigns against those targeted. Damigo, whose Identity Evropa organization was undermined by diverse anti-fascist organizing, clearly has reason to detest “antifa” and aligned movements. It is very likely that Damigo also had a hand in the most recent photographs of Atlanta protesters published on the WMI site. If anyone has footage of Damigo or others who could have been the WMI photographer/videographer at the January 21st protest, please reach out to us. While some US protests have seen far-right agitators dressing in “black bloc” in order to infiltrate protests and gather information, it appears that WMI’s watcher simply took long-range photographs from a higher vantage point and then tailed the protest from a slight distance while recording video.
We are sharing this information to warn our community and the movement to defend the Weelaunee forest about Nathan Damigo and the “William McKinley Institute”. If you have more information about Damigo, his associates in our region, or the WMI, please contact us. If you are an activist in Atlanta, please be on the lookout for Damigo or for sketchy individuals who stand out from regular journalists, who are specifically taking pictures of faces at protests. We hope that this publication will also draw attention to Sam Dickson, his house on Ridgeland Way, and his mentoring and material support of young white supremacists. Dickson’s activities have long been tacitly condoned by the Atlanta power structure, and he maintains a friendly network of real estate connections as well as legal standing with the Georgia Bar.