Members of the
ShieldWall Network,
an Arkansas-based
neo-Nazi group,
celebrate the birthday
of American Nazi
Party founder
George Rockwell
in March 2019.white supremacists who constitute
some of the president’s fringiest
supporters. Eventually, he became
a xture in the alt-right scene,
reportedly running a local chapter
called the D.C. Helicopter Pilots,
according to Southern Poverty Law
Center blog Hatewatch, in an
apparent allusion to the late Chilean
dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose
supporters were known to throw
political opponents out of helicopters.
In those circles, Gebert was known
mostly as Coach Finstock. (It was
an odd pseudonym. Coach Finstock
was a character on the MTV series
Teen Wolf, and he was played by Orny
Adams, a Jewish comedian.) Among
his acolytes, he was just Coach.
He mostly played the role of den
father for 20 - something latchkey
haters. The former alt-right provocateur
Katie McHugh, who last year publicly
denounced the movement, is said
to have crashed at the Geberts’ house
for several weeks. (McHugh did
not respond to a request for comment.)
Anna Gebert served on the board
of a local tourism association, Visit
Loudoun, while complainingprivately that Loudoun County was
becoming too diverse, according to a
Washington Post column. The
couple reportedly served swastika
cookies to like-minded guests.
Gebert’s evolution happened
slowly, and then all at once. He grew
up in the Democratic stronghold
of Stratford, New Jersey. Race didn’t
appear to be a big deal—at least
not openly. There was some gang
violence, but heroin was a bigger
problem, according to a source. Gebert
was a standout. He read, traveled
to Ukraine and Russia, and studied in
Moscow through a program at
American University; he acquired an
aection for all things Slavic; he
met his wife, who was studying abroad
through Northwestern University,
according to Hatewatch.
In 2015 , Gebert escaped the
“conservative reservation,” as he
reportedly put it. In a 2018 appearance
on a podcast hosted by alt-right
gure Ricky Vaughn, speaking as Coach
Finstock, he traced his shift to the
immigration bill cosponsored by John
McCain and Ted Kennedy. “That was
sort of what got my wheels turning
was McCain, Kennedy in 2006 , when
they were trying to do that amnesty,
as I saw MS- 13 proliferating throughout
Virginia.” In 2015 , 2016 , everything
started to coalesce, both online
and o: Donald Trump, the wall, the
obvious passions and furies the
Republican nominee was tapping into,
the fecklessness and hypocrisy of
GOP “leadership.”
In alt-right parlance, Gebert was
red-pilled. Alt-righters may present
better than run-of-the-mill bigots, but
their beliefs are hardly sophisticated;
they subscribe to the same anti-Semitic
mythologies that have been coursing
through the ether for centuries. But
because they read newspapers and have
a glancing familiarity with big ideas,
they sound credible to those on the
precipice—those in search of an identity.
Gebert is believed to have socialized
with leading alt-right gures like
Richard Spencer and Michael Peinovich.
Spencer, in 2016 and 2017 , was best
known as the face of the movement.Peinovich, who goes by the name
Michael Enoch, founded the alt-right
blog and podcast network the
Right Stu. (Peinovich, in a rambling
telephone conversation, denied
having heard of Gebert, despite reports
of Gebert hosting Peinovich at
his home.) Gebert, like Spencer and
Peinovich, was in Charlottesville
in August 2017 , for the Unite the Right
rally that left one protester dead, his
brother Michael Gebert told Hatewatch.
In 2018 , he reportedly donated $ 225
to the Republican congressional
candidate Paul Nehlen, best known
for his anti-Semitism.
According to a complaint of
discrimination one of Gebert’s
colleagues led against him with the
State Department’s O¥ce of Civil
Rights, Gebert debated the pros and
cons of Charlottesville in an online
post just after the rally: “Dude, we
smacked the hornet’s nest with a big
fucking stick.... [T]he only question is
whether this is valuable accelerationism
or whether we just provoked the red
guards, like, a year before we had
enough time to spare.” The complaint
also cites one of Gebert’s now
deleted tweets, posted under his Coach
Finstock alias, which featured a
photograph of Nazi soldiers forming
a massive swastika while carrying
torches, with the caption: “It’s
that time...again.” (Sources told me
the complaint was dismissed,
largely on First Amendment grounds.)
Several months before Gebert
tweeted the swastika photograph, he
appeared on Vaughn’s podcast to,
in his words, “defend the movement,
to defend my friends.” (Vaughn,
whose given name is Douglass Mackey,
has come under attack from fellow
alt-righters for not being adequately
alt-right. Not long after the podcast
aired, Nehlen, the Republican
congressional candidate, doxed him,
sending Vaughn’s life into a tailspin.)
Gebert was angry with Vaughn for
sowing discord among the movement.
He said, more than once, that it was
important to “name the Jew,” alt-right
speak for using openly anti-Semitic
terms. Vaughn said Ann Coulter and45MA
RK
PE
TER
SO
N/R
ED
UX
APRIL 2020