Suspected White Nationalist Suspended From State Department: Reports
The State Department has placed one of its employees on leave following a Wednesday expose from the Southern Poverty Law Center linking the man with white nationalist beliefs, according to reports from Politico and NBC News.
The employee, Matthew Q. Gebert, worked as a foreign affairs officer for the department’s Bureau of Energy Resources.
A State Department spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment, and HuffPost was unable to reach Gebert.
The SPLC, which runs a blog monitoring extremism, outlined copious evidence tying Gebert to the white nationalist movement. He reportedly espoused alarming beliefs about his desire to see a white ethnostate in a May 2018 episode of “The Fatherland,” a white nationalist podcast.
“[Whites] need a country of our own with nukes, and we will retake this thing lickety split,” Gebert said under a pseudonym, Coach Finstock, the SPLC blog Hatewatch reported. “That’s all that we need. We need a country founded for white people with a nuclear deterrent. And you watch how the world trembles.”
Gebert, as Coach Finstock, also said he was prepared to lose his job over his beliefs because “this is the most important thing to me in my life” next to his family.
On another podcast in early 2018, Hatewatch reported, Gebert explicitly says that he considers himself a white nationalist, speaking under his alleged pseudonym.
According to Hatewatch, Gebert also led a Washington, D.C., chapter of The Right Stuff, a group founded by white nationalist blogger Mike Enoch. Sources told the blog that they had witnessed gatherings at Gebert’s northern Virginia home that included Enoch and another prominent white nationalist, the host of a podcast called “Fash the Nation.”
Gebert began working at the State Department in 2013, according to a note in the George Washington University alumni magazine.
Hatewatch reported that Gebert’s radicalization began around 2015, citing a blog post made under the pseudonym.
Gebert’s wife, Anna Vuckovic, was also linked to white nationalism by four sources who spoke to Hatewatch.
A Twitter account linked to her suspected pseudonym, “Wolfie James,” featured this post in 2017: “Still justifying that you live in a neighborhood bc it’s ‘safe’ or there are ‘good schools’? Admit it: you want to live near #WhitePeople.”
Although the SPLC has archived versions of the tweets cited in its report, the specific accounts are currently suspended on Twitter.
Related Coverage
New Time Cover Shows 'Frightening Portrait' Of Gun Violence In America
Watch Donald Trump Boast About His Crowd Size At El Paso Hospital
Long John Silver's Drops Fox News After Tucker Carlson Said White Supremacy's A 'Hoax'
Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
