US State Department employee is prominent white nationalist leader, report says

An explosive new report says a US State Department official was the head of a Washington chapter for a white nationalist group and published extremist propaganda online. Matthew Gebert, who serves as a foreign affairs officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources, actively promoted white nationalist sentiments and was a prominent member of white nationalism circles, the Southern Poverty Law Centre’s Hatewatch reported Wednesday. Hatewatch said Mr Gebert often discussed the need for a country exclusively built for white people that featured a “nuclear deterrent.” His wife, Anna Vuckovic, was also a blogger who published white nationalist views, according to the report. The two went by the pseudonyms “Coach Finstock” and “Wolfie James,” according to the researchers’ sources. They also regularly invited other white nationalists over their house in Leesburg, Virginia, Hatewatch reported. “[Whites] need a country of our own with nukes, and we will retake this thing lickety split,” Mr Gebert reportedly said on a podcast last year while using his alias.“That’s all that we need,” he added, “we need a country founded for white people with a nuclear deterrent. And you watch how the world trembles.”Mr Gebert first joined the State Department as a fellow in 2013 before eventually being promoted to his current position at the Bureau of Energy Resources. In 2017, Mr Gebert said he was “prepared” to lose his career and paycheck in order to continue promoting white nationalist ideologies, according to Hatewatch. “There are bigger things than a career and a paycheck, and I don’t want to lose mine,” he reportedly said in a podcast at the time. “I am prepared to lose mine. Because this is the most important thing to me in my life … in tandem with my family, of course.”The team of researchers at Hatewatch said they used open-source intelligence methods to connect Mr Gebert to the Twitter handles and online pseudonyms he used to reportedly promote his ideologies. His wife also reportedly shared racist sentiments while offering dating and parenting advice for white nationalists on the right-wing site The Right Stuff. It was previously reported in July 2018 that Mr Gebert donated $200 (£165) to a Republican congressional candidate in Wisconsin who was condemned for promoting anti-Semitic views on Twitter.Neither Mr Gebert nor the State Department have commented on Hatewatch's reporting.