A California teacher was placed on administrative leave after alleged ties to a white supremacist group came to light, San Jose Inside reports.
Earlier this week, officials at Valley Christian School in San Jose, California, confirmed that 30-year-old Kyle Scheuerlein was suspended, pending the outcome of an official investigation into his alleged connection with Identity Evropa, an American neo-Nazi and white supremacist organization. The group, which was originally established back in March of 2016, has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Earlier this year, the group rebranded itself as American Identity Movement (AIM).
Valley Christian COO Rob Valiton explained, in an email to San Jose Inside, that the private Christian high school moved to suspend Scheuerlein the moment the accusations came to light.
“Any membership of affiliation with a racist group of any kind is not only against our conduct standards, it is in conflict with our mission,” Valiton’s email to San Jose Inside reads. “If proven true, these allegations are not acceptable and will not be tolerated. This matter will be thoroughly investigated and addressed accordingly.”
As San Jose Inside notes, Kyle Scheuerlein graduated from Azusa Pacific University before he started teaching at Valley Christian. Since 2012, he has taught journalism and programming at the California school. Scheueurlein allegedly began chatting with other Identity Evropa members last year through the anonymous messaging service Discord, where he used the online handle NuclearReactionary. During one chat, he lauded Fash the Nation, a neo-Nazi podcast, and recommended it to other Identity Evropa members.
“Any membership or affiliation with a racist group of any kind is not only against our conduct standards, it is in conflict with our mission. ” — Valley Christian on teacher with alleged ties to Evropa https://t.co/0l4JpbPDBe
— KTVU (@KTVU) April 26, 2019
Last month, Unicorn Riot , an online group and website which describes itself as “a decentralized, educational 501(c)(3) non-profit media organization of artists and journalists,” leaked all of the chat logs from Identity Evropa’s “Nice Respectable People” server. As a result of those leaks, the group has identified and targeted suspected white nationalists across the country, going so far as to report these individuals to schools, law enforcement, and other government agencies.
This is not the first time that a teacher in the U.S. has been “outed” by Unicorn Riot. As previously reported by The Inquisitr , Texas teacher Stephen Arquist, who previously taught at Skyline High School in Dallas, Texas, was suspended after school officials were notified that Arquist had made more than half a dozen posts on the aforementioned Discord server. A user going by the handle “Stephen — TX” claimed to be a Japanese teacher “in the ghetto,” and also made negative comments about the racial and ethnic demographics at his school.