AS THE FALLOUT from the story
reverberated, there was a sense among
the alt-right that Gebert had been
sloppy, and maybe, naive. Greg
Johnson, the editor of white nationalist
publishing house Counter-Currents—
which both Matthew and Anna
Gebert, under their respective aliases,
had written for and which is based
in San Francisco—said in an email that
Gebert was “an intelligent, educated,
racially aware white man,” but that he
had fallen in with an “East Coast” set
that followed Spencer—“unserious and
trashy people: akes, drunks, drug
abusers, women-haters, and embittered,
used-up groupies.”
Over the years, Johnson and Spencer
have sparred. A lot of the con ict,
according to alt-righters, had to do with
personal style. (Spencer became
the best-known face of the “frat” style,
polo-and-chinos alt-right; Johnson
has dispensed with such pretenses.) But
the tension also underscored a debate
about how best to save America from
itself. In Johnson’s view, the far right had
to win the war of ideas before it could
move on to the “real world” battleeld.
That meant books and articles, speaking
engagements, conferences, symposia.
He had a way of explaining things that
made racism and Jew hatred sound
like post-structuralism or supply-side
economics—something that was once
new or avant-garde or even suspect and,
over time, acquired a large following.
Spencer was more of a would-be
Vladimir Lenin. He wanted to be in the
middle of things. He had pondered
a congressional campaign in Montana,
where he usually lived. He felt let
down by Trump. (“His administration
is not fundamentally dierent than a
[Mitt] Romney administration—or even
a Hillary [Clinton] administration,”
Spencer said in an interview, “I never
expected him to be me. But I expected
him to do something.”) The feeling
on the alt-right was that Charlottesville
was a disaster because it fragmented
the movement. For Spencer, political
outcomes mattered.
Both Johnson and Spencer, having
been open about their white nationalism,
seemed resigned to the ostracism
When I stopped by the Gebert
house in January, a gray-white cat
loitered near the door. No one
appeared to be home. I was later told
that someone at Greenway Farms
had texted Anna a photo of me knocking
on doors. By midafternoon, yellow
buses were dropping o kids. At
around 4 p.m., outside lights came on
automatically, and about an hour
later, commuters started coming
home. But not the Geberts.
Recently, there was a Gebert sighting,
which created a minor furor on the
neighborhood Facebook page. One
resident, Brandon Miller, posted:
“FYI—everyone’s favorite Nazi/White
Supremacist, Matthew Gebert, was
taking a stroll this afternoon taking
pictures of certain houses.” Miller
included the number of the Leesburg
police, just in case. “Obviously not
illegal, but just be advised.” Other
residents wondered whether Gebert
was singling out houses that had put
up lawn signs. Some board members
speculated that Gebert was taking
pictures of comparables, real estate
jargon for houses valued similarly to his
own. Fedders thought that might be
the case. Gebert, he said, had “requested
HOA documents from the management
company,” which he said is typically a
sign that a homeowner might sell.
At the end of January, Hatewatch
reported that, since it published
its initial report exposing Gebert, he
had hosted 18 episodes of a white
nationalist–themed podcast and been
a nearly nonstop presence on Twitter
and Telegram, and that he’s used
his old avatar, Coach Finstock. This
seemed odd: Now that he’d been
exposed, why pretend it wasn’t him?
“It makes sense,” Spencer said
in a text. “That’s his ‘identity.’ ”
This sparked a new wave of outrage.
“To be honest, we’re all preparing
for the inevitable,” one of Gebert’s
neighbors wrote in an email. “He’s
casing the neighborhood while pushing
the methodology of lone-wolf attacks.
While I doubt he has the commitment
to do something physically harmful,
some alt-right cat on the other end of
those podcasts might.” Qthat came with it. Gebert was not that.
He was like most alt-righters—
especially those who wore a suit to work
and had colleagues who weren’t white
men. He didn’t want to be found out. He
wore sunglasses to Charlottesville.
He reportedly had a rotating cast of
anonymous handles: @TotalWarCoach,
@UnbowedCoach, @RisenCoach.
He built a life for himself and his family
around the same kind of mainstream
institutions that Johnson and Spencer
spurned, and he didn’t want to give
that up. He wanted white nationalism
and his security clearance.This didn’t sit right with Spencer.
Gebert’s downfall, he told me, “is
a lesson on how to be a fellow traveler.
You can’t do dissident, revolutionary
politics in your spare time, or for fun.”
Gebert’s neighbors were mostly
shocked. When the story broke, Gebert
was on the board of the Greenway
Farms Homeowners’ Association and,
until recently, had been its president.
Soon after, Peter Fedders, who lives in
Greenway Farms, organized a Hate
Has No Home Here lawn-sign campaign.
The HOA bylaws bar lawn signs,
but the association’s board of directors
made an exception. So Fedders ordered
200 signs—signs run $ 25 apiece if
you buy them individually but $ 5 if you
get 100 or more—and, according to
another neighbor, threw a “distribution
party” at the park that Gebert, as
president, had helped create.“The IDEA that
there’s only one
white nationalist
RISING IN THE
RANKS of the
national-security
establishment
is DIFFICULT to
imagine.”APRIL 2020 47