White House Appointee Called Neo-Nazi-Supported March "Beautiful"
UPDATE as of November 18, 2020:
On November 18, 2020, Donald Trump appointed Beattie to be a Member of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, a commission responsible for preserving historic sites tied to heritage of American immigrants from Eastern Europe. The commission is also charged with preserving places targeted by the genocide of minority groups, particularly sites associated with the Holocaust.
On August 1, 2020, Berlin was the site of a far-right march against public health measures to stop the spread of COVID-19. The march was called “the End of the Pandemic - Day of Freedom,” and was supported by German neo-Nazi groups. “Day of Freedom” is the title of a Nazi propaganda film from 1935.
The following day, Darren Beattie, who at the time worked for Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), shared a tweet from The New York times which included the information that the march was supported by neo-Nazis, adding one word of commentary: “Beautiful.”
This was far from Beattie’s first time expressing public support for far-right extremists, white nationalists, and antisemites. Beattie, who formerly worked as a speechwriter in the Trump White House, once spoke at a white nationalist conference frequented by extremists like Richard Spencer. He regularly espouses his own white nationalist views, and associates with extremists like Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier, and anonymous white supremacist writer, Bronze Age Pervert.
It is unclear precisely when this occurred, but at some point over the summer of 2020, Beattie departed Gaetz's office and co-founded a right-wing news site, REVOLVER News, which markets itself as the new Drudge Report. Beattie posted his first tweet about REVOLVER in July of 2020, the same month Beattie was mentioned in articles about Gaetz’s questionable ethics practices.