After receiving photographic evidence that one of its employees was affiliated with some of the most notorious hate groups and marched in Charlottesville, Va.’s Unite the Right rally in August, Wells Fargo announced that the man in question was no longer employed by the company, but that the company had had no idea he was a racist, they swear.
The Oregonian reports that 33-year-old Andrew Alexander Murphy Harkins had been employed as a home-mortgage consultant at the Tigard, Ore., branch of Wells Fargo since 2012. (Apparently, Harkins’ parents intended for him to keep all of the white names for himself.)
When the Pacific Northwest Antifascist Workers Collective began looking into Harkins’ activities, aside from asking, “Damn, are you sure he’s not 63?” they noticed that he had a troubling history of cozying up to white supremacists. Known for their use of words like “collective” and “troubling,” the group of anti-fascist activists from Oregon and Washington state is also infamous for tracking down people who affiliate with hate groups.
The collective discovered that Harkins attended the Charlottesville Hate-a-Palooza when they saw pictures of him marching with Identity Evropa, the white supremacist group known for boosting its subconscious penile insecurities by carrying tiki torches and screaming, “You will not replace us!”
Harkins also was caught on video the next day on the front lines of the Charlottesville no-class reunion with the Traditionalist Workers Party, the recently disbanded collection of trailer-park MMA fighters seeking to create their own white nation. TWP is recognized for its use of violence and its members’ weak jawlines.
In one picture, Harkins is seen next to James Alex Fields, who would go on to allegedly commit the terrorist attack that killed Heather Heyer later the same day.
The antifa group also uncovered pictures of Harkins after a June 4 pro-Trump rally in Portland, Ore. The mortgage consultant was having a beer with “alt-white” pioneers including James Allsup and Tim Gionet after a long day of inspiring hate. Allsup is a far-right political commentator on YouTube (which is the the Caucasian equivalent of an Instagram model, but with more-disappointing booty poses). Gionet—who goes by the name “Baked Alaska”—is a famous internet troll who was banned from Twitter for his racism.
In multiple photos, Harkins is sporting the hat with the logo for True Cascadia. According to the website, True Cascadia seeks to “promote white ethnic consciousness in the Pacific Northwest and prevent, as well as reverse, the increasingly discriminatory policies enacted in opposition to whites in our own homelands.” At the Identity Evropa tiki-torch jamboree, Harkins can be heard screaming the name of the organization in ecstasy. It is unclear if Harkins was rallying his troops or having a Nazi orgasm.
“Wells Fargo has a proud tradition of diversity and inclusion,” Wells Fargo spokesperson Tom Unger spokesman said in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive. “We are committed to treating all of our customers, team members and the diverse communities we serve with the utmost dignity and respect.”
Unger added that Harkins was no longer employed by Wells Fargo, but would not offer specifics on how or why Harkins was not working in the mortgage-consultant position the company’s website describes as someone “responsible for producing high-quality loans that meet Wells Fargo Home Mortgage guidelines by building relationships with realtors, builders, financial professionals, bank stores, past customers and other nontraditional sources, while providing excellent customer service.”
In January 2017, Wells Fargo settled a $35.5 million class action lawsuit alleging that the bank discriminated against African-American financial advisers. In May 2017, the city of Philadelphia sued Wells Fargo, charging that the financial institution steered black and Latino borrowers toward higher interest rates.
I’m guessing it’s all Andrew Alexander Murphy Harkins’ fault.