#IdentifyEvropa: Neo-Nazi Student at UT Austin

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

There’s a Neo-Nazi student at UT who works with a national Neo-Nazi organization named Identity Evropa. How’s that for a hook? Although if you’ve been following along with events on campus the past few years, this probably isn’t that surprising. We believe his name is Clayton Ray Leonard, and will explain why & what we have found about him below.

In March, autonomous media collective Unicorn Riot leaked a series of discord chats for the group Identity Evropa. IE had a hand in organizing the catastrophic “Unite the Right” fascist rally in 2017, which ended with many antifascists injured and one dead. Soon after the leaks, IE rebranded to “American Identity Movement,” but has struggled as many of its members have been doxxed and faced consequences for their white supremacist activities. 

Identity Evropa is no stranger to the UT campus. In 2016-2017, the group sporadically flyered the UT and Austin area–in many ways sparking the shift to antifascist work from groups like the Autonomous Student Network.

One Identity Evropa member, Stratton Gaines, attended UT and graduated in 2017. After his graduation, Stratton mostly seemed to disappear and, aside from a few sporadic flyers, Identity Evropa seemed to mostly vanish in Austin.

However, it seems that in the past few months, another UT student has gotten involved with Identity Evropa. We were tipped off by our comrades at AnMarcos about someone in the chat logs saying they were a UT student and decided to investigate.

The username in the Discord server is Clayton_H_ATX [full chat log here]. He seems to have gotten involved around September. His username indicates he lives in Austin, and in his first message he asks to be put in touch with his coordinator–which turns out to be user @greg_p, AKA Greg Paulson, AKA Stratton Gaines.

Now meet Clayton Ray Leonard. We suspect that he is the student behind the discord account. Here is why:

In the discord chats, Clayton says he is in Kinesiology/Health and is graduating in May from UT.

According to the UT directory, Clayton R. Leonard is a Physical Culture & Sports Senior. Physical Culture & Sports is one of the majors listed under the Kinesiology & Health Education undergraduate program at UT [source].

In the chat logs, Clayton says he joined the Navy as a deep sea diver at the age of 17.

According to a linkedin profile we found, someone named Clayton Leonard was a deep sea diver in the Navy and attended school at ACC for Kinesiology. We can’t confirmed whether Clayton Ray Leonard attended ACC, but it seems likely that he may have taken classes there at one point and then transferred in, neglecting to update his linkedin. Additionally, a photo from Clayton Leonard’s old myspace (yes, myspace), shows him in high school in a military uniform.

 

In the discord chat logs, Clayton claims to be working on recruiting his wife to the organization & ideology. He claims his wife is a hairstylist who helps run a salon, and is interested in opening her own salon “Identity Salon.”

Clayton Ray Leonard’s wife, Jessica Leonard (nee Bruns), is a stylist at Blo & Glo in Austin. She has 2 facebook accounts: [1] [2]. Both accounts share some common photos, including one of her working at Blo & Glo. Both accounts are also friends with & interact with Patsy Clayton Leonard, the facebook account of Clayton’s grandmother. Jessica also has two instagram accounts, @jlenzz and @beautybyjlenzz

Additionally, a whitepages search places a Clayton R Leonard as living in the Pflugerville area–which fits the Austin/Round Rock location that correlated to the Clayton of the discord chat, Linkedin account, & Jessica’s profile. The page also lists Patsy Leonard as his grandmother, which fits the man in the photo above. From the Facebook of his grandfather, Lawrence Leonard, we also know that the listing of Brandi Leonard–who is Clayton’s mother–is accurate. Additionally, the previous locations listed in San Angelo & Ballinger correspond to what the myspace account tells us about Clayton’s upbringing in West Texas, where he played for the Ballinger High School Bearcats until his graduation in 2010. The whitepages also lists Oak Harbor, Washington as a former location–likely a site Clayton was stationed at. In the discord logs, Clayton says he was stationed on Whidbey Island–which is very close to Oak Harbor. This also matches with Jessica’s profile, which says she graduated from Oak Harbor High School–this is likely how the two met.

Now that we’ve established the clues that led us to believe that Clayton Ray Leonard, as pictured in the photos above, is the Identity Evropa member, let’s look at what else Clayton tells us about himself.

Clayton shares a tweet in response to the campus outrage against YCT for the pro-Kavanaugh demonstration they held, and indicates his desire to flyer. He also says he is going to work on a YCT & College Republicans counter protest. In another instance, Clayton again indicates he has a relationship with College Republicans by stating he is trying to produce some posters for the group. 

In another message, Clayton indicates he signed up for LOPF. LOPF is the “Leading our People Forward” conference which IE held in March, during which the discord leaks were released.

In other messages, Clayton indicates that he is going to law school in the fall, with goals of becoming a politician in the future. We have been unable to confirm whether the Clayton we have identified is going to law school, and if so what law school he is attending. We encourage anyone with more information to please come forward and contact us at any of the options offered at the bottom of this article.

Clayton also shares the results of a political ideology test showing his fascist leanings.

In the discord leaks, Clayton also shares the fact that he had a twitter with the handle @chad_trad. Although that Twitter is now deleted, some of the archived tweets we dug up show his racist beliefs. We also found a facebook account for a Clayton R Leonard, although it appears to be scrubbed and so provides no real identifying information. https://www.facebook.com/clayton.r.leonard

There’s little time to do much to get Clayton off campus, since he graduates in less than a month anyway. Given UT’s history of permitting white supremacist activity on campus, we doubt they’d act anyways. However, we do ask those who read this to spread the information, see if anybody else has more information about Clayton, and use this information to take action to alert the University, his future law schools, and community to his presence. Contact College Republicans about their affiliation with this Neo-Nazi and demand they expel him from all organizing. We hope that this article & action based off it will help torpedo his dreams of a political career–or at least pose an obstacle.

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Send any intel about Clayton or other fascists to us on facebook, twitter, or at our email listed below!