BUSTED: Teacher who secretly penned white nationalist screeds put on leave after explosive exposé

An elementary school teacher at a Boston-area private school was placed on leave following a bombshell exposé that he was writing white supremacist screeds under a pen name, the Boston Globe reports.

"Administrators at Star Academy were 'shocked by the disturbing social media posts and other publications' allegedly written by teacher Benjamin Welton that a HuffPost reporter shared with the school, directors Larisa Bankovsky and Margarita Druker wrote in an e-mail to the Globe on Thursday," the newspaper reported. "The administrators placed Welton on 'immediate leave' to conduct an internal investigation, and 'Mr. Welton will not be returning to Star Academy,' they wrote."

Welton was described by HuffPost as "a 33-year-old Boston University history PhD candidate who, until this week, taught English, social studies and computer science at Star Academy, an elementary school in Massachusetts. When HuffPost contacted the school for comment, Welton was put on leave, and was fired shortly before this article was published."

The HuffPost report revealed his political transformation.

"In 2017, a writer named Sinclair Jenkins published an essay for the white supremacist website American Renaissance titled 'From Wide-Eyed Liberal to Race Realist,' which described a series of 'political awakenings' that he had experienced," Christopher Mathias reported. "Jenkins wrote that his radicalization began in the Navy, where it angered him to see 'blacks' be mean to his fellow white sailors. Later, in graduate school, he grew disgusted over the 'ingrained culture of anti-white hatred' in academia. 'Also, once I began paying attention to the news, I started seeing why so many people in my hometown took a dim view of blacks,' wrote Jenkins, who noted that he grew up somewhere in Appalachia. 'After Ferguson and Baltimore, I understood that pumping money into the ghetto would never fix things.' Later, he said, he discovered writers like John Derbyshire and Ann Coulter, who shared his distaste for immigrants, and websites like American Renaissance and VDare, which shared his firmly held belief in the 'biological foundations to race,' and helped shape his white nationalist worldview."

HuffPost reported that "Sinclair Jenkins" was actually Welton, who also reportedly used the aliases "Jake Bowyer" and "Elias Kingston."

"For years, he has also worked as a freelance writer for major media outlets, including The Atlantic and Vice, for whom he published articles about esoteric spy and detective novels. He also wrote pieces for the The Daily Caller and The Weekly Standard, which let him make his racist sympathies clear in print," he reported. "He was meanwhile using multiple pen names to secretly author fascist screeds online, in some cases advocating violence to establish a whites-only ethnostate."

"Like many conservatives, Welton has expressed anger about the teaching of "critical race theory" in American schools. Last August, shortly before he began teaching at the Star Academy, he tweeted under a pseudonym that a return to American greatness 'requires defunding critical race theory.' It's clear from his pseudonymous writings where his real objection lies: criticism of white people," HuffPost explained. "A group of anti-fascist researchers, the Anonymous Comrades Collective, figured out Welton's double life and shared the details with HuffPost. Many nameless fascists today lead double lives, hiding behind avatars to promote their noxious beliefs online while holding down respectable day jobs in education, military, law enforcement, medicine or the government."

Welton also reportedly used the username the "Spooky Nationalist" and wrote for major right-wing publications.

"And as recently as March 21, Welton's byline sat atop an article about spy novels in The Epoch Times, a right-wing newspaper with ties to the China-based spiritual group Falun Gong that was deeply invested in reelecting former President Donald Trump. Even when writing in major right-wing outlets, Welton wasn't exactly hiding his fascist sympathies. In December 2015, he wrote an article titled 'What Exactly Is The Alternative Right?' for the since-shuttered conservative site The Weekly Standard," HuffPost reported. "A year later, in December 2016, The Daily Caller published a virulently Islamophobic screed by Welton titled 'The European Quandary,' in which he lashed out at different European countries for allowing in Muslim refugees.

Read the full report.