Elliot Kline, a leading figure among the so-called “alt-right” movement better known by the alias Eli Mosley, repeatedly lied about serving overseas with the U.S. military, The New York Times reported Monday.
A nearly five-month-long investigating into the alt-right movement and Mr. Kline, a white nationalist who helped organize the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, uncovered discrepancies involving his supposed military deployment, The Times reported.
Mr. Kline boasted during interviews of having served in both Kuwait and Iraq, but interviews with his former friends and a review of military records obtained by The Times revealed he was never actually deployed, the newspaper reported.
Mr. Kline enlisted in the Pennsylvania National Guard after graduating high school in 2010, but he “quit before his contract was up” and never served abroad, The Times reported.
Instead he became associated with the alt-right, and in August he helped organize “Unite the Right,” a massive white nationalist gathering in Charlottesville subsequently linked by authorities to the deaths of three people, including two state troopers and Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal killed while demonstrating against white supremacists.
Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who had been scheduled to headline the Unite the Right rally before it descended into chaos, said The Times report contained “serious allegations” about Mr. Kline, who he called “an important collaborator and friend for almost a year.”
“These allegations are disturbing and, if they are shown to be true, would lead us to reconsider our relationship,” said Mr. Spencer, 39, the head of the National Policy Institute think-tank and one of the most prominent voices within the alt-right political movement.
Mr. Kline said a clerical error was likely to blame for the supposed discrepancies uncovered by The Times, but so far he’s failed to produce any evidence supporting his deployment claims, according to the report.
Unite the Right had been billed as a rally held to protest Charlottesville’s decision to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, but the event was canceled after clashes erupted between counterprotesters and demonstrators including white nationalist and neo-Nazis.
Two police officers later died in a helicopter crash while monitoring the chaos, and Heyer was killed after a motorist drove into a crowd of counterprotesters, including 19 others, according to police.
Mr. Kline assumed a leadership role later that month within the white nationalist group Identity Evropra but has since gone his separate way, The Times reported.
A report released last week by the Southern Poverty Law Center watchdog, meanwhile, called Identity Evropa one of the most prolific white nationalist groups in the U.S., and said its fliers were at the center of 158 of 346 recently campus incidents involving white supremacist propaganda.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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