An Army ROTC cadet at University of North Carolina-Charlotte was kicked out of the school’s detachment after officials learned she posted content online that was sympathetic to Nazism and the Ku Klux Klan.
The cadet, who was reportedly kicked out of Davidson College in the fall over the same allegations, is currently listed as on a “Leave of Absence,” pending final disenrollment, according to Army Maj. Robert Carter, chief of public affairs at Army Cadet Command.
“Cadet Martha Gerdes of UNC Charlotte was investigated by the United States Army Cadet Command for online behavior that is not consistent with the Army values,” Carter told Army Times. “During the investigation Cadet Gerdes admitted to posting anti-semitic, racist and ant-LBGTQIA statements on her Twitter account ‘@femanon.’"
That Twitter account is suspended now. However, some of the postings were archived online by an activist group.
Other posts that appear to advocate for a race war, defend the Nazi party and mock a mass shooting event in which Jewish worshipers were killed were also collected by the group.
“Army ROTC remains committed to leadership excellence through diversity. The activities conducted by Ms. Gerdes are inconsistent with the high moral expectations of a future Army officer,” Carter added.
Gerdes was originally dropped from Davidson College in November and then enrolled at UNC Charlotte sometime in the winter and spring semester, Cadet Command confirmed.
ROTC officials at UNC Charlotte did not provide comment, citing privacy restrictions. Gerdes could not immediately be reached for comment.
“She was enrolled at Davidson and transferred to UNC Charlotte. She has been notified by official memorandum that she is to be dis-enrolled from ROTC," Carter said. "This is a final administrative action that must be taken to ensure she cannot return to any of our programs in the future.”
“While we can ensure Ms. Gerdes no longer participates in our program, we cannot speak for UNC Charlotte or any other university or college as to her status as a student,” he added.
The allegations were originally brought forward in the fall by a leftist group. The group linked Gerdes, a student and teaching assistant in Davidson College’s German department, to the racist and anti-Semitic Twitter account by matching photos and other details that the accounts shared at around the same time, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Those online activist posts were spotted by U.S. Army WTF Moments, which notified Army ROTC in November.
The issue was later rekindled when those same activists noticed a picture on UNC Charlotte’s ROTC Facebook page that showed Gerdes during a field training event with the detachment in the spring.
The former ROTC cadet’s social media postings include statements like: “the only thing Hitler did wrong was making German National Socialism into his own cult of personality.”
Gerdes also tweeted that “the 1920′s was the best decade, I was born in the wrong era,” alongside photos of Ku Klux Klan members.
In September, she responded to another Twitter user with the comment “gas the kikes race war now.” That was followed the next month by postings that appear to support a domestic terrorist who targeted Jewish worshippers.
“I actually don’t give a shit about Jews getting shot up except insofar as it’s going to make it a lot harder for a lot of white people to just exist,” she tweeted on Oct. 28, one day after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that took the lives of 11 worshippers.
Kyle Rempfer was an editor and reporter who has covered combat operations, criminal cases, foreign military assistance and training accidents. Before entering journalism, Kyle served in U.S. Air Force Special Tactics and deployed in 2014 to Paktika Province, Afghanistan, and Baghdad, Iraq.
