But the white nationalist quoted in the story defending the Nazis’ cooption of the brand wasn’t Spencer, but a 26-year-old named Eli Mosley.

Mosley, whose real name is Elliott Kline, has become a leading figure in the racist alt-right since this summer, when he helped Jason Kessler organize the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Later in August, Mosley took over leadership of Identity Evropa, the white nationalist group known for flyering at college campuses across the nation. And Mosley’s been a regular presence at Spencer’s side during his ill-received college campus tour.

Despite Mosley’s ascension to the upper ranks of the alt-right, he’s a controversial figure in white nationalist circles, blamed by some former allies for the violent disaster at Charlottesville, and even doxed by his own people, accused of being a Jew.

Like many newer alt-right organizations, Identity Evropa tries to cloak its white supremacist ideology with pseudo-intellectualism meant to appeal to young, white, male college students — no swastikas here, but clean-cut boys with fashy haircuts and pressed khakis.

But not that long ago, in spring of this year, Mosley a/k/a Kline wasn’t shy about the bigotry in his polemics whatsoever. In a report for Andrew Anglin’s Daily Stormer about a pro-Trump demonstration in March, Mosley wrote, “In Philadelphia, the city of f------- love, played out an alliance between the Nazi led marchers and local police departments against their oven-dodging enemies… Spoiler, the Nazis won bigly.” He continues, “This is a sign that we have moved into a new era in the Nazification of America. Normie Trump supporters are becoming racially aware and Jew Wise.”

From Reading, Pennsylvania, Mosley was a member of Gavin McInnes’s Proud Boys in 2016, later joining Identity Evropa and growing close to its founder, fellow veteran and white supremacist Nathan Damigo, another Spencer ally who gained notoriety for punching a female anti-fascist protester in the face at the April 15 far-right rally in Berkeley. (Damigo also did time in prison for armed robbery after pulling a gun on a cab driver for “looking Iraqi” and stealing $43, resulting in an Other Than Honorable discharge from the Marines.)

Damigo and Mosley were both heavily involved in planning the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville; Mosley authored the “General Orders” document instructing racist participants about the weekend’s plans, including the “secret” torch lit rally on Friday night.

After the violent disaster in Charlottesville, where 32-year-old Heather Heyer was killed by a white supremacist plowing a car into a crowd, fractures in the organizers’ alliance appeared. Kessler posted a tweet about how Heyer deserved to die, which drew online condemnation from Mosley and Spencer. Kessler blamed Mosley for the multitudinous failures of the rally, saying, “There is an individual who has done a coordinated smear job on me, from within the movement; that person is Eli Mosley, Elliott Kline. From the beginning he was f------ things up.”

Nathan Damigo emerged as a casualty of Charlottesville; the negative media attention (he called the violence in Berkeley where he punched a teenager a test run for Charlottesville, and Spencer was happy to let him take credit for the latter rally; Damigo’s family also publicly disavowed him). On August 27, Damigo stepped away from Identity Evropa and announced Mosley would take the reins.

Not long after, on the online message board 8chan, fellow white supremacists attempted to out Mosley/Kline as Jewish.

But Mosley and his allies from “Unite the Right” would soon have bigger trouble on their hands. Mosley is among 21 racist leaders being targeted in two lawsuits, one federal and one in the state of Virginia, seeking damages for the violence in Charlottesville. Some civil lawsuits against hate groups, including ones brought by the SPLC, have resulted in the financial decimation of those groups.

Specifically, the federal lawsuit accuses the defendants, Mosley included, of an “anti-civil rights conspiracy,” while the state suit says Mosley and Kessler “solicited the presence of paramilitary organizations, facilitated attendees’ instruction in military techniques, and issued tactical commands to the other alt-right” participants, with the militias’ presence violating Virginia law. The state suit cites messages sent by Mosley on the Discord chat app which were leaked to the media collective Unicorn Riot.

The threat in the courts hasn’t slowed or quieted Mosley, though. On October 7, he returned to Charlottesville with Spencer and a contingent of Identity Evropa members for another tiki torch march, replete with chanting, after protesting at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. earlier the same day. Mosley also served as an opening act for Spencer when they were both shouted down at an October 19 appearance at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Mosley called the protesters “wild hyenas,” “brainwashed by anti-white propaganda from their professors, from the media,” Florida Today reported.

“This right here, what you’re doing, is the best recruiting tool for us that you could possibly ever give us,” he told the crowd of hecklers in Gainesville. True or not, Mosley’s quest to convert young white males on campus to his racist white nationalist cause continues on.

Eze Amos/Instagram @ezeamosphotography