Elliot Kline

Elliot Kline (born 1991), also known as Eli Mosley, is an American neo-Nazi,[1][2] anti-semitic conspiracy theorist and military impostor.[3] He is the former head of Identity Evropa, and was a prominent organizer in the alt-right movement between 2017 and 2018. He was also a key figure behind the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, among other neo-Nazi rallies that Kline helped organize. Kline's pseudonym of Eli Mosley was inspired by British fascist Oswald Mosley.[3]

Kline is known for pretending to be a combat veteran, a ruse that he carried out in order to gain respect and a leadership position in the neo-Nazi community. Kline's lie was exposed in a February 2018 New York Times documentary,[3] which led to widespread ridicule, both from among Kline's political opponents and his supporters. After he was personally discredited, Kline withdrew from political activism.

As a far-right activist, Kline drew attention for his highly explicit use of racial slurs and his celebration of violence against non-whites. On neo-Nazi podcasts, he openly laughed as he described "firing niggers and spics" in his entry-level HR job,[4] and bragged about killing "muds" and "watching Muslims's brains sprayed on the wall" (a reference to his fabricated claims of service in the Iraq War).[5]

Biography

Kline graduated from high school in 2010 then attended several colleges before dropping out without obtaining a degree. He later joined the Pennsylvania National Guard. In order to bolster his reputation, Kline later pretended that he had deployed to and fought in Iraq, when in fact his unit never left the state of Pennsylvania during his service.[3]

Kline was part of the Proud Boys and helped organize the Unite the Right rally; after Kline condemned Jason Kessler's response to Heather Heyer's death, Kessler later tweeted that he "has done a coordinated smear job on me, from within the movement; that person is Eli Mosley, Elliott Kline. From the beginning he was fucking things up." Kline later became the head of Identity Evropa in August 2017.[3][6]

At the same time, Kline took a position as a writer for the neo-nazi Daily Stormer, for which he promoted race hatred and conspiracy theories about Jews. Describing a pro-Trump rally in Pittsburgh for the white supremacist anti-semitic Daily Stormer, Kline commented on "hooked-nose" Philadelphians, called a female protestor a "filthy Jewess" and a "kike", and said that the rally was "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. They are willing to stick up for themselves side by side with Nazis..."[7]

Kline was jailed in January 2020 after failing to comply with document production related to a Unite the Right lawsuit filed on behalf of Virginia residents by Integrity First for America. He is being held at the Albemarle-Charlottesville County Regional Jail.[8]

References
  1. Kuhn, Rick (2017-10-22). "Fascists take power in Austria. Could they do the same in Australia?". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2020-06-22.
  2. Kurmelovs, Royce (2017-08-17). "How the Alt-Right Trolled Triple J to Advance Their Agenda". Vice. Retrieved 2020-06-22.
  3. "How Our Reporter Uncovered a Lie That Propelled an Alt-Right Extremist's Rise". nytimes.com. Retrieved 7 January 2020. When I got paperwork back from the Army and the National Guard confirming that he had never deployed, I was not surprised. At the same time, I couldn’t believe he would lie so boldly, first to his fellow members of the alt-right and then to a Times reporter, on camera.His parents declined to speak with me, but I called some of his former friends and fellow soldiers, who told me Eli had wanted to deploy but his timing was off: He graduated from high school in 2010 and went straight on to a couple of semesters of college; by the end of 2011, the last troops had left Iraq. They also confirmed that Eli’s unit in the Pennsylvania National Guard did not deploy anywhere else during the roughly six years he served, and neither did he.
  4. Cott, Emma; Ellis, Andrew Michael. "How an Alt-Right Leader Lied to Climb the Ranks". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-06-03.
  5. Cott, Emma (2018-02-05). "How Our Reporter Uncovered a Lie That Propelled an Alt-Right Extremist's Rise". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-06-22.
  6. "Identity Evropa's controversial new ringleader". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 7 January 2020. 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 fucking things up.”
  7. Smolla, Rodney A. (2020). Confessions of a Free Speech Lawyer: Charlottesville and the Politics of Hate. Cornell University Press. p. 159. ISBN 978-1-5017-4967-4. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
  8. "Charlottesville rally planner jailed for contempt of court". whsv.com. Associated Press. Retrieved 7 January 2020. Kline served as leader of a white nationalist group called Identity Evropa, which was known for its campaigns to post white supremacist propaganda on college campuses. Kline receded from a public role in the white nationalist movement after The New York Times investigated and debunked his claims about his military service. Plaintiffs’ attorneys have said Kline has ignored court orders to turn over certain records, including credentials for email and social media accounts he has used.
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