A white nationalist labored for the Trump marketing campaign in an necessary place in Pennsylvania for 5 months — till Friday, when the marketing campaign fired him after studying about his views from my reporting.
Final week, I confirmed that Luke Meyer, the Trump marketing campaign’s 24-year-old regional discipline director for Western Pennsylvania, goes by the net identify Alberto Barbarossa. As Barbarossa, he co-hosts the Alexandria podcast with Richard Spencer, organizer of the 2017 white nationalist Unite the Proper rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. On his podcast and others, and in posts on-line, Barbarossa recurrently shares white nationalist views.
“Why can’t we make New York, for instance, white once more? Why can’t we filter and reclaim Miami?” Barbarossa requested whereas visitor internet hosting a special white nationalist podcast in June. “I’m not saying we must be 100% homogeneous. I’m not saying we must be North Korea or Japan or something like that. A return to 80 %, 90 % white would most likely be, most likely the perfect we may hope for, to some extent.”
After I offered Meyer with proof that he was Barbarossa, he admitted the connection and stated he has been hiding his on-line id from his colleagues on Trump Pressure 47, the arm of the Trump marketing campaign that runs volunteer organizers. “I’m glad you pieced these little clues collectively like an antifa Nancy Drew,” he wrote in an e-mail. “It made me notice how draining it has been having to hide my true ideas for so long as I’ve.”
Meyer is yet one more instance of fringe politics working its method into the Trump-era GOP, as far-right teams see the get together as the perfect software they’ve to perform their targets.
Once I wrote Pennsylvania’s Trump Pressure 47 staff that Meyer was Barbarossa, my e-mail tracker confirmed the message being opened all throughout Pennsylvania and New York.
I acquired a remark from the Republican Celebration of Pennsylvania. “The worker in query was background-checked and vetted, however unbeknownst to us was working individually underneath a pseudonym. If we’d had any inkling about his hidden and despicable exercise he would by no means have been employed, and the moment we discovered of it he was fired. We’ve no place in our Celebration or nation for folks with such shameful, hateful views.”
Trump Pressure 47 is funded by every state’s GOP, however it’s working instantly with the Trump marketing campaign as this system accountable for producing volunteers. Staff Trump calls it a “joint effort” between the RNC and the marketing campaign itself. Sometimes, requests for remark about Trump Pressure 47 are answered by Trump marketing campaign officers. On this case, the marketing campaign declined to remark instantly, directing me to the Republican Celebration of Pennsylvania.
In his function as regional discipline director, Meyer helped prepare volunteer “captains” for the Trump marketing campaign. The marketing campaign has relied closely on volunteers for his or her get-out-the-vote packages, and the sector administrators have coordinated on-line and in-person trainings for people who find themselves then anticipated to kind their very own volunteer groups. These groups are then accountable for door-knocking and making cellphone calls to potential voters.
Meyer isn’t employed with the marketing campaign anymore. However he defined to me in an e-mail how he felt that his white nationalist concepts had already permeated it.
“Just like the hydra, you possibly can minimize off my head and maintain it up for the world to see, however two extra will quietly seem and be working within the shadows,” Meyer wrote. “Slating Trump to talk at [Madison Square Garden], placing ‘poisoning the blood’ in his speeches, organising Odal runes at CPAC, and many others. In a number of years, a type of groypers [white supremacists] may even quietly deliver me again in, with a stern warning for me to ‘be extra cautious subsequent time.’”
Hours after the assassination try in opposition to former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Barbarossa posted a photograph of a Trump workers badge from the rally on X. “What else can I say however that I lived by historical past?” he wrote.
Every week later, I acquired an nameless tip that Barbarossa was Luke Meyer. Like most reporters, I get loads of nameless ideas, lots of which lead nowhere. However in contrast to most journalists, I spent a yr undercover within the far-right and I write about far-right extremism. In consequence, I’m typically despatched info from a wide range of conservatives, everybody from By no means Trumpers and mainstream Republicans who wish to maintain extremists out of the get together, to neo-Nazis with a private ax to grind.
I discovered clues on-line that appeared to confirm this tip: Barbarossa proudly tweeted that he shared a July 1 birthday with former grand wizard of the KKK David Duke, and court docket information confirmed that Meyer additionally did. In line with his girlfriend’s mom’s Instagram pictures, Meyer was in Clarksburg, West Virginia, the identical day that Barbarossa posted on X that he was in Clarksburg. The nail within the coffin, for me, was when Barbarossa posted a photograph of a tv with a window mirrored within the display. Having spent an excessive amount of time scouring pictures of the Beaver County Trump Pressure 47 workplace, I instantly acknowledged the tv, the colour of the wall, and the home windows within the tv’s reflection as the principle room of the workplace. Any doubt I had beforehand was gone.
So, with lower than two weeks till the election, I rented a automotive and drove from Washington, to Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, for a Trump Pressure 47 occasion that Meyer had shared on social media.
I used to be certain Meyer would acknowledge me. Barbarossa and I comply with one another on X and infrequently have interaction with each other, and I’ve heard my identify come up on Alexandria greater than as soon as. I waited till the top to confront him.
“I believe we comply with one another on Twitter,” I stated. “Do you go by Alberto?”
“No, I normally go by Luke Meyer.”
He then requested me how I’d know him as Alberto. “Oh, only a podcast I hearken to.”
“Do I simply have that particular of a voice, I suppose?” he requested me, after a little bit of forwards and backwards, seemingly admitting the connection.
Later, when offered with all my proof, Meyer himself confirmed his on-line id.
I anticipated the revelation, but it surely was nonetheless surprising.
Affiliation with Spencer is sufficient to finish a profession in Republican politics. Spencer rose to nationwide infamy in the course of the first Trump marketing campaign. Six weeks earlier than the 2016 election, Spencer gave a Nazi salute and shouted, “Hail Trump, hail our folks, hail victory!” in a room filled with white supremacists — and reporters. Lower than a yr later, Spencer led the tiki torch march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was a scheduled speaker for the next Unite the Proper rally the place a white supremacist drove a automotive right into a crowd, killing a lady. Spencer has disavowed her dying and people concerned, however he nonetheless has racially charged views and associates himself with white nationalists.
Right here was a member of the Trump marketing campaign — Meyer/Barbarossa — on the Alexandria podcast with Spencer, making white nationalist statements. His X account, which has round 1,500 followers, was additionally filled with racist tweets. (When reached for remark, Spencer stated that Meyer in his capability as a Trump staffer was “not working on my behalf.”)
On one episode of Alexandria, which is behind a paywall, a visitor host introduced up Vivek Ramaswamy and Usha Vance, JD Vance’s spouse, who’re each of Indian descent. “Indians are simply type of taking up. … It’s like, with Jews, proper? They’re simply going to be all over the place. And, like, it’s simply going to be one thing now we have to type of take care of on the margins.”
“The nation just isn’t going to return to Ben Franklin’s heady, wonderful beliefs of a pure, Hyperborean ethnostate,” Barbarossa replied. “However what you possibly can protect is one thing the place now we have full and whole management, one thing not in contrast to Rhodesia or South Africa.”
“Not each Black is Ben Carson, however even those who’re Ben Carson, you understand, who’s to say that their child doesn’t change into 50 Cent?” he stated on a special episode.
In his e-mail to me, Meyer wrote: “My commentary, as you’ve quoted, can typically verge on the outlandish aspect, however you need to have interaction in some extent of hyperbole to make an entertaining podcast and minimize by all of the noise on X.” Since Friday, Meyer has deleted his LinkedIn and X accounts, in addition to the Barbarossa X account.
Barbarossa has additionally pressured that he disagrees with lots of Trump’s insurance policies, believing the previous president “panders” an excessive amount of to Jewish and Black voters. “Trump will cease pandering to Blacks when the solar rises within the West and units within the East. When the seas go dry and mountains blow within the wind like leaves,” Barbarossa tweeted when Trump met with rapper Lil Pump.
On the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas assaults on Israel, when Trump stated that he would condemn “Jew haters” who’re against Israel, Barbarossa tweeted, “Trump out right here badly underestimating simply how a lot of his personal marketing campaign workers are ‘Jew-haters.’”
Barbarossa has posted pictures of his hand carrying a hoop with a sonnenrad, or Black Solar, on it. The sonnenrad image was utilized by the Nazis, and continues for use by neo-Nazis. (Final yr, the Ron DeSantis marketing campaign fired a staffer for making a video that includes this similar imagery.) On X, Barbarossa wrote that he doesn’t“are likely to put on it typically, in fact. … Principally simply once I know I’m amongst mates.”
“As for the ring…you’ve received me useless to rights,” he wrote in his e-mail to me. “I’m a REALLY massive fan of German Renaissance castles.”
On the podcast, Barbarossa has known as Trump a “con artist,” deriding the previous president’s branding offers. “He’s reworked that right into a political motion so nicely that he can rise up and promote $60 Bibles and $400 sneakers to his crowd of adoring followers, and none of them will query it.”
So why does Barbarossa help Trump?
He has defined that it comes from a want to trigger chaos and decline, within the hopes that the pro-white motion would be capable of rebuild the nation — a view often called “accelerationism.” “I WILL be voting for Donald Trump, the Accelerationist candidate, in my swing state in November.” (Spencer endorsed Harris.)
Individuals who embrace an accelerationist view consider the nation is extra chaotic when Trump is in energy. On this view, that chaos or unrest comes from Republicans — issues like Jan. 6. and Charlottesville — and from Democrats — for instance, massive scale racial justice protests and riots following George Floyd’s dying. White nationalists hope that unrest will scare Individuals into being extra anxious, afraid of range, nativist and racist.
In his e-mail to me, Meyer wrote: “I actually do assume Trump’s re-election will assist to hasten the inevitable, however I don’t take any credit score for pushing the Overton Window rightward, no less than not in my capability as a Trump staffer. The reality is that I’m a relatively small cog within the conservative machine, considered one of simply 1000’s on this nation.”
“Each second man underneath the age of thirty within the GOP believes 90 % of the identical issues I consider,” he wrote. “They simply don’t have the platform that I do, and may stay undetected as I had achieved.”
