A State Department employee recently revealed to be deeply involved in the white nationalist movement has been suspended, Politico reported Thursday citing two unnamed sources familiar with the situation.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, in a lengthy report Wednesday, explored foreign affairs officer Matthew Gebert’s involvement in the white nationalist movement, detailing his extensive racist posts online under various pseudonyms and his recruitment efforts for a white nationalist organization.
Gebert has appeared, using a pseudonym, on podcasts associated with the movement and hosted well-known white nationalists at his home, SPLC reported.
Gebert was assigned to the Bureau of Energy Resources and has been employed by the State Department since 2013, a department spokesperson confirmed to TPM Wednesday.
The spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry Thursday about the Politico report that Gebert had been suspended. On Wednesday, the spokesperson said, “The Department of State cannot comment on personnel issues but is committed to providing an inclusive workplace.”
Gebert, speaking on a podcast under a pseudonym, spoke about attending the white power “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, SPLC reported.
“I came back in one piece. Un-doxxed. Knock on wood,” he said. “Un-arrested. Just with some mild war wounds that frankly I’m kind of proud of.”
In another podcast appearance the SPLC reported, Gebert said of black people, “They do not belong around us for an ocean at least.”
This isn’t the first time the State Department staffer’s political activities have attracted media attention.
Sludge, a corruption-focused publication, reported in July 2018 on a donation Gebert made under his real name to the racist right-winger Paul Nehlen, a former Republican congressional contender who in one interview mused, referring to the man who killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, “I’m not opposed to somebody, say, leadin’ a million Robert Bowers to the promised land.”
Per SPLC’s report, Gebert once mused on a white nationalist podcast that white people “need a country of our own with nukes, and we will retake this thing lickety split.”
“That’s all that we need,” he said. “We need a country founded for white people with a nuclear deterrent. And you watch how the world trembles.”
