Nathan Damigo, the white supremacist who was captured on video Saturday punching a woman in the face and then running into the crowd during a violent confrontation in Berkeley, has military and criminal ties to San Diego County.

Depending on whom you asked at the showdown, Saturday’s rally was billed as a free-speech demonstration by alt-right groups, as an anti-racism protest by liberals and as a face-off between supporters and critics of President Donald Trump who converged from around the country.

The woman punched by Damigo identified herself as Emily Rose, a feminist who came to the event nervous but ready to fight against her foes.

On Monday, officials at California State University Stanislaus, where Damigo is attending school, said he’s being investigated because of the punch incident.


“The university has zero tolerance for the use of violence, and we will take all of the necessary legal and disciplinary measures to ensure that all students and everyone on campus have a safe and secure environment,” university President Ellen Junn said in a statement.

Damigo couldn’t be reached for comment Monday.

A native of the Silicon Valley, he attended a private Baptist school and then enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2004 at age 18. He was stationed at Camp Pendleton and deployed to Iraq for two combat tours.

In that war zone, he said, he saw firsthand the conflicts between the country’s ethnic and religious groups.


“I said, ‘This is dumb. Why don’t ... each one of them have their own country and they can all express themselves and ... they’re not, you know, fighting with each other,” he told the Los Angeles Times in December.

In November 2007, he had been home for a month after his second tour of duty and was suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, drug and alcohol abuse and paranoia, according to San Diego County court records.

A few days after the anniversary of a friend’s combat death, he spent a night drinking and went for a walk with a gun. He came across a cab driver, put a gun to his head and robbed the man of $43, the court records show.

He was convicted of armed robbery and spent a year in county jail and four years in prison.


Damigo told the Times that he started reading books about race and identity while in prison. He was greatly influenced, he said, by “My Awakening,” the book by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

Sometime after his release from prison, Damigo led the now-defunct National Youth Front, the youth wing of the nationalist American Freedom Party. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the American Freedom Party as an organization founded by “racist Southern California skinheads that aims to deport immigrants and return the United States to white rule.”

Last year, Damigo established the white nationalist group Identity Evropa, which posts flyers around college campuses nationwide with slogans such as “Let’s Become Great Again” and “Protect Your Heritage.”

The day after Trump’s presidential victory, Damigo propped his cellphone up in his car, turned on the Periscope live-streaming app and started talking.


“We as the alt-right are the reason why Trump won,” the Times quoted him as saying.

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hieu.phan@sduniontribune.com