Earlier this yr, the Worldwide Brotherhood of Teamsters briefly employed a person whose picture was synonymous with the notorious “Unite the Proper” rally that introduced white supremacists to Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
The Teamsters employed Peter Cytanovic for an administrative job on the union’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., earlier than firing him throughout his probationary interval, in line with a supply with information of the state of affairs. The union was unaware of Cytanovic’s previous when he got here onboard, the supply stated.
Greater than seven years earlier, Cytanovic, then a school scholar, traveled from Reno, Nevada, and marched amongst neo-Nazis within the “various proper” demonstration on the College of Virginia grounds. The dramatic Getty picture of a screaming, white-polo-clad Cytanovic — then 20 years previous, his face lit by tiki torches — turned maybe essentially the most iconic picture from the rally. He has since stated he’s not a white nationalist.
Cytanovic declined to debate his stint with the Teamsters throughout a short change outdoors his dwelling on Wednesday.
“They will suck dick,” he stated of the union, “and you may get the fuck out of right here.”
The Teamsters declined to touch upon the matter.
JS has discovered that Cytanovic instructed the Teamsters he had beforehand labored as an organizer for the Service Staff Worldwide Union, one other powerhouse within the labor motion. SEIU declined to remark.
Cytanovic’s hiring at one of many largest and strongest U.S. unions first surfaced publicly in an nameless Reddit submit final month. Somebody who recognized themselves as an worker at Teamsters headquarters stated they discovered about their new co-worker’s Charlottesville journey after googling his title. The poster stated they reported their findings to a supervisor, and Cytanovic was terminated.
On Tuesday, John Palmer, a member of the Teamsters’ govt board, shared on Facebook a letter he had despatched to the union’s president, Sean O’Brien, asking vital questions concerning the rent, together with how the background examine was accomplished. Palmer is a vocal O’Brien critic who’s introduced a run in opposition to the incumbent president within the union’s 2026 election.
“After we rent anyone on the worldwide, they vet individuals and it takes no less than three or 4 individuals signing off,” Palmer instructed JS, referring to the principle union, quite than its native associates. “I can’t converse to the vetting course of.”
Cytanovic has maintained because the days instantly following the Charlottesville rally that he’s “not the offended racist [people] see in that picture.” He stated he was drawn to the rally largely to defend the statue of Accomplice Gen. Robert E. Lee as an emblem of white, European heritage. Anti-racist activists had urged native officers to take away the Lee monument from a Charlottesville park.
“I hope individuals acknowledge that being a celebration to the choice proper doesn’t make me an evil Nazi, and that being pro-white proper now’s harmful, and being pro-white doesn’t imply I’m anti-anyone else,” he instructed Nevada’s Channel 2 News after the rally.
That article described Cytanovic as a “self-proclaimed white nationalist,” a label he disclaimed in a 2019 interview with The Beaver, a publication on the London College of Economics, the place Cytanovic was learning for a grasp’s diploma on the time.
“I assumed white nationalism on the time was American nationalism, being pleased with our historical past with out condemning,” he stated. “With out being an atomised particular person, being a part of a wider neighborhood. I’m ethnically American.”
Cytanovic additionally stated he and different rally individuals bear blame for the loss of life of Heather Heyer, the counterprotester who was killed when a far-right demonstrator drove a automotive right into a crowd the weekend of the rally.
“I triggered damage. There’s nothing I can do to alter that now,” he stated.
The viral 2017 picture of Cytanovic has dogged him professionally and academically for years, lengthy earlier than his transient time with the Teamsters.
As JS’s Christopher Mathias reported in 2021, Cytanovic joined the Nevada Nationwide Guard however was rapidly booted earlier than attending primary coaching. Though he had handed prison and fingerprint checks, a guard spokesperson stated Cytanovic was expelled because of his “affiliations.”
Earlier than that, fellow college students on the College of Nevada, Reno, had pushed for his expulsion, although the varsity’s administration resisted such calls on free-speech grounds. Nonetheless, Cytanovic did find yourself resigning from his job with a campus escort service that gives free rides to college students at evening.
