State Department staffer outed as white nationalist

WASHINGTON—The U.S. State Department has suspended an employee accused of secretly serving as a prominent member of the white nationalist movement. The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report Wednesday claiming that Matthew Gebert, a State Department civil servant since 2013, used the alias “Coach Finstock” to correspond with other white supremacists and advocate for a “whites only” country via social media.

How involved was he? Gebert attended the 2017 white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., where counterprotester Heather Heyer was killed. He said on a podcast that white people needed “a country of our own with nukes. … And you watch how the world trembles.” He and his wife, Anna Vuckovic, would host other white nationalists at their home in Leesburg, Va. At the State Department, he most recently worked as a foreign affairs officer for the Bureau of Energy Resources.

Dig deeper: Read Sophia Lee’s report in WORLD Magazine about former white supremacists “leaving hate behind.”