Marine Booted From Corps for Flying White Nationalist Banner
One of two active-duty Marines arrested in May for hanging a white nationalist banner during a Confederate Memorial Day celebration has been booted from the service, Marine Corps Times reported on Sept. 12 — one month after violent clashes between neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and counter-protesters at a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, sparked worries of extremism festering within the U.S. armed forces.
Staff Sgt. Joseph Manning, of the Marine Corps Engineer School at Camp Lejeune, was charged with first-degree trespassing after unfurling a banner with the letters “YWNRU” — short for “You Will Not Replace Us,” the favorite maxim of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa established by Marine vet Nathan Damigo in 2016. Manning had mounted the flag in Graham, North Carolina, across from town’s historic courthouse during a rally by Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County, a neo-Confederate group.
Manning, a Purple Heart recipient who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, is currently “in the process of being administratively separated,” a Training and Education Command spokesman told Marine Corps Times. Sgt. Michael Chesny, the EOD technician from Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point who drove hours with Manning across North Carolina to participate in the stunt, has already been slapped with an administrative punishment.
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