
Suspected White Nationalist Leader 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 departmentâs Bureau of Energy Resources.Â
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 âThe Fatherland,â a white nationalist podcast.
â[Whites] need a country of our own with nukes, and we will retake this thing lickety split,â Gebert said under a pseudonym, Coach Finstock, the SPLC blog Hatewatch reported. âThatâs all that we need. We need a country founded for white people with a nuclear deterrent. And you watch how the world trembles.â
Gebert, as Coach Finstock, also said he was prepared to lose his job over his beliefs because âthis is the most important thing to me in my lifeâ 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 Gebertâs northern Virginia home that included Enoch and another prominent white nationalist, the host of a podcast called âFash the Nation.â
Gebert began working at the State Department in 2013, according to a note in the George Washington University alumni magazine.
Hatewatch reported that Gebertâs radicalization began around 2015, citing a blog post made under the pseudonym.
Gebertâs wife, Anna Vuckovic, was also linked to white nationalism by four sources who spoke to Hatewatch.
A Twitter account linked to her suspected pseudonym, âWolfie James,â featured this post in 2017: âStill justifying that you live in a neighborhood bc itâs âsafeâ or there are âgood schoolsâ? Admit it: you want to live near #WhitePeople.â
Although the SPLC has archived versions of the tweets cited in its report, the specific accounts are currently suspended on Twitter.
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