Don’t Vote for This Guy: White Nationalist Activist Id’d by Voter Guide Researchers
UPDATED: Candidate says he's no longer involved. Statement below.
It was all right there in plain sight.
An organizer for the American Identity Movement, known for playing a substantial role in spreading white nationalist messaging throughout the San Diego area over the 18 months prior to the Poway shooting, is running for San Diego Community College Trustee.
Volunteer researchers working on the 2020 Primary Voter Guide published today by San Diego Indivisible Persist sifted through hundreds of social media accounts, public documents and news media reports collecting data on 29 local offices (including judges) and 4 ballot measures.
(For those of you who don’t read my posts regularly, I’ve always been open about being a member of SD Persist Indivisible, which came about as the result of a merger between the Downtown and Central San Diego chapters. I was a coordinator for the project, but the discovery wasn’t part of my assigned research. I did participate in verifying the discovery.*)
A routine name search on Alex Loupe, candidate for District D Community College Trustee, revealed a possible connection with an individual known as “DeusVolk” in far right chat room sessions revealed in 2019.
Loupe’s day job was as a custodian with the San Diego Unified School District. It didn’t take long to discover the overlap between him and DeusVolk.
The American Identity Movement is the name chosen as part of the re-branding effort by Identity Evropa in the aftermath of the lawsuits and criminal charges following the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The group is identified as a white supremacist organization by the Anti-Defamation League and is designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
UPDATED: Following is an excerpt from an email sent by Loupe.
It is true that I was involved in Identity Evropa (IE) from 2018 to early 2019, a very turbulent and painfully informative period of my life to be sure. I have not been involved with IE in its current iteration (American Identity Movement, or AmIM) which occurred in March of 2019. I came to my own conclusions about IE, "identitarianism", et al and left on my own terms in the hopes of still having the possibility of a successful productive life without such regrettable involvements. I've spent almost as much time out as I was in, but it's something I have yet to speak publicly about because, well, I still haven't found the words. In many ways it feels like one long nightmare I hoped I could forget. Regardless, I do not look back on that period of my life fondly nor do I feel it is indicative of my true character. While this community college race in particular is of no extreme consequence to me, I would at least like the opportunity to correct the record on my affiliations and intentions.
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More About the San Diego Indivisible Persist 2020 Primary Voter Guide
There are three versions available:
The table of contents has links to each contest listed, so readers interested in a specific race can go directly to the section concerning those candidates.
Write ups of candidates include:
A basic summary (who is this person?)
A list of organizational endorsements (who is working to get them elected?)
Additional information (i.e., context)
A short analysis of the candidate’s chances based on available information
A glimpse at their fundraising
Links to websites and social media pages for more information
All candidates including third party and no party preference are listed for Assembly, County Supervisor, City of San Diego, Judicial, and San Diego School Trustee offices.
There are no endorsements in the Primary Voter Guide in large part because there are a substantial number of contests where quality candidates aligned in some fashion with the organization’s progressive outlook are running against each other.
There are, however, opinions included in the interest of better defining candidacies.
FYI - Indivisible National has published a scorecard for insight on the questions asked of each presidential candidates, and how they scored the response of each.
*Since I worked on both the Indivisible Guide and a series of columns on candidacies, there is some overlap in the language used in each.
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