Valley Christian High School Teacher Suspended Over Alleged White Nationalist Ties

A Valley Christian High School teacher with suspected ties to a white supremacist group has been put on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation.

School officials confirmed Wednesday that they suspended 30-year-old instructor Kyle Scheuerlein after anti-fascist watchdogs published claims of his involvement with Identity Evropa, an organization widely denounced as a white nationalist hate group.

Valley Christian COO Rob Valiton said the private high school acted as soon as it heard of the accusations against Scheuerlein.

“Any membership of affiliation with a racist group of any kind is not only against our conduct standards, it is in conflict with our mission,” Valiton wrote in an email to San Jose Inside. “If proven true, these allegations are not acceptable and will not be tolerated. This matter will be thoroughly investigated and addressed accordingly.”

The claims against Scheuerlein stem from chats exchanged by Identity Evropa members that became public last month when nonprofit media collective Unicorn Riot leaked the entirety of the group’s so-called “Nice Respectable People” server. By culling those chat logs for information, the group has exposed suspected neo-Nazis in the U.S. military, various police agencies and schools throughout the country.

Scheuerlein—an Azusa Pacific University alumnus and aspiring web developer who has taught journalism, coding and study skills at Valley Christian since 2012—apparently joined Identity Evropa chats on a messaging app called Discord a year ago under the handle NuclearReactionary. In one chat exchange, he professed being a fan of neo-Nazi podcast Fash the Nation, calling it “amazing” and recommending it to others.

Scheuerlein has yet to respond to a request for comment.

Identity Evropa gained notoriety in 2017 for helping orchestrate the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, where members chanted, “Jews will not replace us!,” and where a white supremacist killed counter-protester Heather Heyer.

The organization, which advocates for a white ethno-state, has since tried to distance itself from its founder—Iraq war veteran, convicted felon and San Jose native Nathan Damigo—by rebranding under a new leader, Patrick Casey, as the more innocuous sounding American Identity Movement.

Casey has reportedly tried to clean up the group’s image to appeal to white college-aged conservatives through campus flyering, banner drops and reframing its mission as pro-white and “identitarian.” Yet the Discord leaks show that conversation among the 800 or so members participating in the chats routinely veered into anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic, ableist and other hateful rhetoric.

Jennifer Wadsworth is the former news editor for San Jose Inside and Metro Silicon Valley. Follow her on Twitter at @jennwadsworth.

59 Comments

  1. I always like to look at these sorts of articles with a bit of skepticism. I read through the “proof” and here’s my issue. It doesn’t pass the litmus test of non-repudiation.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-repudiation

    Non-repudiation refers to a situation where a statement’s author cannot successfully dispute its authorship or the validity of an associated contract. The term is often seen in a legal setting when the authenticity of a signature is being challenged. In such an instance, the authenticity is being “repudiated”.

    What’s to stop a student he gave an “F” to from logging into Discord and pretending to be him? That’s the biggest fault with this article. All of the info leaked in the discord channel is publically avaliable (part of the proof they provided was his Linkin profile) It’s also the issue with Discord as it doesn’t feature anything that proves the senders IP address as IRC would. I suppose you can call that a feature of discord as well because people don’t enjoy being ping flooded or hacked.

    • That’s very unlikely. In the leaked Discord chat transcripts, it requires that Kyle list out who “interviewed” him, and the person he mentioned must verify that he in fact did interview him. I don’t think a kid would go through that just because they got an F on a test. Plus, with all of the other factors lining up, if a kid was smart enough to be able to piece all of these together in order to frame a story against their teacher, I don’t believe they would’ve gotten an F on their test.

  2. Sorry never heard of any of those groups, would the reaction be the same if he belonged to ANTIFA, BLM, La Rasa or SPLC. I believe his first amendment right are being violated with nothing but hearsay.

      • > Hang on so you’re saying being a white supremacist is protected by the first amendment?

        The short answer is: YES! ABSOLUTELY.

        You’re posting is so spectacularly stupid that it really raises the larger question of: “Who in the United States of America DOESN”T realize that the First Amendment protects the right of an American to be a “white supremacist”?”

        This is your opportunity to spew, Amor. Tells how you came to think that the First Amendment DOESN’T protect people who think of themselves as “white supremacists”.

        You may be distressed to learn that the American system actually allows for punishment of people who DENY the right of Americans to express their “white supremacist” views.

        And further, you may be exposing yourself to legal repercussions by FALSELY defaming an American as a “white supremacist” if that American objects to being described as or characterized as a “white supremacist”. And if YOU’RE characterizing a person as a “white supremacists” results in a loss of job or economic damage, get out our wallet because YOU may be paying.

          • @Amor Fati: >Do either of you have a YouTube channel? You sound really intetesting

            Hmm ya actually.

            https://www.youtube.com/user/MrRobertCortese

            Not sure what your interests are, but you’d have to be really into video games, fishing, social commentary on the sanjose subreddit (which is trash btw, /r/sanjosesucks is better) soldering irons, lithium batteries, RC Aircraft, Science, fireworks, drunken hobos, drunken bar patrons, my kids there’s not really a lot of things up there.

            I have an older channel when I was younger and a bit more flamboyant.

            https://www.youtube.com/user/toqerkaraoke

            Here you’ll find a video archive of my karaoke singers from 7 Bamboo. Some videos of me sailing, some howto videos on using my karaoke software, some more RC airplane videos, Poetry, some videos of me singing and some other videos of me talking like a pirate.

            Hopefully you find these entertaining.

    • How does any of this have to do with the First Amendment? He is not being censored by the government, which is all the FA prohibits. He’s free to be a white supremacist to his heart’s content. The FA allows you to say stupid things. It does not protect you from consequences of those stupid statements, especially from a private organization like this school.

    • > Sorry never heard of any of those groups, would the reaction be the same if he belonged to ANTIFA, BLM, La Rasa or SPLC.

      Very likely, the “anti-fascist watchdogs” referenced by Jennifer as the “source” for this hit piece are “cat’s paws” for some of the organizations you mention.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat's_paw

      SJI apparently didn’t learn it’s lesson for relying on the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “moral authority” for recent articles.

      Jennifer shouldn’t be so gullible.

    • Probably because those groups aren’t considered hate groups that have had members murder people at their organized events.

    • Last I heard, all of the domestic terrorism being perpetrated is done by people that belong to or communicate with these white supremacy groups. I dont’ remember any news reports about Antifa, BLM, et. al. shooting up a bunch of people because if their racial identity or religious beliefs. This “both sides” BS is getting tiresome especially in the face of the ever-increasing incidents of white supremacy extremist violence.

  3. > “This matter will be thoroughly investigated and addressed accordingly.”

    And then Scheuerlein will sue the pants off of Valley Christian, the Metro Newspaper, and anyone else who piled onto the bogus “white supremacist” meme.

    Unfortunately for Scheuerlein, too money of the “mainstream media” organs who spread the Left’s toxic racialist identity politics memes are financial basket cases and winning in court for Scheuerlein may mean nothing more than owning a few beat up desks, some tablet computers, and some bong pipes.

    But “the times, they are a changin’ ” for the smear industry:

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/15/southern-poverty-law-center-fires-co-founder-declines-to-say-what-he-allegedly-did-3/

    https://www.foxnews.com/us/covington-high-students-legal-team-sues-washington-post

    https://www.westernjournal.com/covington-kids-attorney-reveals-news-outlets-next-list-wapo-cnn-suits/

    $250 million here. $275 million there. Pretty soon things start to add up

        • Obviously yours didn’t. The First Amendment allows you to say whatever you want, it does NOT protect you from the consequences of those words. Especially at a private institution.

    • >There’s actually substantial proof of this! You all got owned!

      I’ve had requests to monitor a few times in my IT career. If we do, it wasn’t mentioned in the article, all we have is what was presented in the story. What was presented in the story offers nada, zilch in terms of non-repudiation.

      Valley Christian IT would have some good tools at their disposal to figuring this out if he had been doing this from one of their computers. If they have SSL proxying setup, with their router setup as the certificate authority, then they could have had everything decrypted. Nobody really does that though, it’s a nasty security risk to run traffic meant for encryption as plaintext across your network.

      Next up, and most likely, they would have had various session shadowing tools. They could have run remote desktop, or apple VNC in shadowing mode and actually watched him in Discord as he typed away. If Valley Christian actually did this, and presented this evidence to the press, then I’d take back everything I’ve said.

      Smartest thing for Kyle to have done would have been to Discord from his phone.

      Unfortunately with the story given, we have none of these details. Not a whisper nor a mention. So I’m not exactly sure how anyone got owned. If Valley Christian did not pursue due diligence in figuring out the non-repudiation in this accusation, expect for them to be owned very soon.

    • I had Carl Marx in a pink Nehru suit teaching how to interpret the New York Times.
      He hated Christians, Jews, America, men, guns, Linden Johnson ( president at the time) The entire military and every one in it. Cops, chalk, American Cars ( Volvo driver), and I’ll bet he was a vegetarian by the pasty color of his face.

      He hated chalk because every time I would point out an error in his argument he would underline something and pound on the board till it shattered into dust.

      So much for Mr. Peterbone’s indoctrination into journalism, What I learned that year was how to pick apart propaganda.

      It was the only class I ever failed and didn’t care about.

  4. > Do either of you have a YouTube channel? You sound really intetesting

    If I had one, it would probably be shadow-banned by one of the algorithmic trolls at Google, San Jose’s future imperium.

  5. I actually had this guy as a teacher! This does not surprise me at all. He never seemed to accept or like other cultures and that was clear to everyone in his journalism class. Once he had us write a paper about freedom of speech, and I wrote that as long as someone’s actions do not hurt themselves or anyone else, nobody has a right to restrict their right to do those things. He contradicted that point and said, “What about gay parenting? That doesn’t hurt anyone else, but it’s still wrong.” I argued with him but he didn’t change his stance. He never made any clear racist statements because he didn’t want to get fired (he probably just stayed for the paycheck, all of his students hated him and he knew it), but I would have guessed that he was a racist because of the way he discriminated other lifestyles. Even if he does come back, he probably won’t stay for long because people will just hate him even more. Mr. Scheuerlein, just know that if you come back, we will match your disgusting hate with hate of our own.

    • What happened to innocent until proven guilty? Valley Christian really has sunk to new lows, don’t they teach anything anymore? Or is it all progressive BS?

      • Yes, it’s all BS at Valley. They just might be the most hypocritical school in the entire US. I went there for 4 years so allow me to enlighten you. The current principle got a DUI while I was attending, guess he couldn’t pray away the alcohol before the cops made him blow. The former track coach is under police investigation for sexual assault/abuse with 2-3 different girls (that didn’t stop Valley from recommending him to the parents of track and field students though). Lastly, they’re a school that preaches acceptance yet happily expels openly gay/lesbian students.

        The only way I could this school is if you’re good at sports (football and baseball primarily). You’ll be allowed to do anything you want and get away with it. LITERALLY ANYTHING. Ever wanted to assault someone on campus? Just make sure you’re good at football before you do it. I had the football coach’s son in my class countless times. He would baseball pitch oranges at the classroom walls during lectures (senior year), threaten people in class with baseball bats (freshman year), and just generally fuck around all class without any sort of punishment. But god forbid you suck at sports and do something wrong. You’ll be holed up in Machado’s office playing 20 questions all day.

        Now let’s talk about the teachers, I’ve had certifiably insane Bible teachers spray holy water at television sets to rid them of the devil. I’ve had ‘teachers’ force their students to teach themselves the curriculum at home so that they could spend class time crying and complaining about their shitty life. I’ve also had teachers that just flat out give up every class (constantly asking the students why they haven’t been fired yet). Honestly, this school isn’t worth $5 a year let alone the $22,000 a year they’re asking. I could have learned more hanging around homeless drug addicts for 4 years than I did during my 4 year stay at the White Castle they call Valley Christian.

        Sincerely,
        ex-Valley student.

    • >He contradicted that point and said, “What about gay parenting? That doesn’t hurt anyone else, but it’s still wrong

      Your counterpoint should have been along the lines of, “That’s a strawman argument, what does “gay parenting” have to do with Freedom of speech?

      I fully support gay parenting. My daughter is attracted to girls, I know someday her and her wife will give me grandbabies. There has been no research that proves that a child growing up with gay parents results in a mal-adjusted adult.

      What I don’t support though is giving kids gender reassignment before they’re old enough to make informed consent. There is plenty of research that shows this does result in huge mental issues for adults later down the line. David Reimer is a classic example of this.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
      David Peter Reimer (born Bruce Peter Reimer; 22 August 1965 – 4 May 2004) was a Canadian man born male but reassigned as a girl and raised female following medical advice and intervention after his penis was severely injured during a botched circumcision in infancy.[2]

      David had a tough life. Constant mental manipulation from his shrink. Constantly wanting to be a boy, but forced to wear girls clothes. Eventually he killed himself.

      On the morning of May 4, 2004, Reimer drove to a grocery store’s parking lot in his hometown of Winnipeg[38] and took his own life by shooting himself in the head with a sawed-off shotgun.[39] He was 38 years old.

      I took journalism in High school. Sometimes a journalism teacher will make you write something you disagree with. Case in point, I’ve always been a proponent of cannabis legalization, but my teacher at the time made me write a story on why it should stay illegal, even though he knew my personal views on the subject. When I asked, “Why are you giving me this assignment, you know how I feel?” he responded with, “Journalism isn’t just about reporting the news, it’s about having the ability to present the facts from either side” I just took an F on that one.

  6. Bad idea. Political affiliation is protected under California law, and membership in a group like AIM clearly qualifies. Doesn’t seem like the smartest idea for his employer to violate his rights in this way.

  7. Like others here have said, first amendment protections aren’t absolute. Fire in a theater, anyone? Hate speech? Yep, those kinds of speech aren’t all that protected.

    Funny how some here are kinda protecting this guy, tossing out bits of doubt about what was in the story (et tu, Cortese? BTW, did your family used to grow cherries in the Evergreen area?). This kind of wannabe/gonnabe nazism is stuff to stay far, far away from. Nasty stuff to get out of your clothes if you get too close.

    • If he were on the web sites of ANTIFA, CAIR, ELF or maybe the Black Panthers would you feel the same way? Does he not deserve the same presumption of innocence as anyone else interacting with those other sites would? Or are you simply reacting to the most recent political posturing buzz words because it is the PC thing to do these days?

    • @SCC RESIDENT > Funny how some here are kinda protecting this guy, tossing out bits of doubt about what was in the story (et tu, Cortese? BTW, did your family used to grow cherries in the Evergreen area?)

      I’m not protecting him, I’m just pointing out that the story as provided, has nothing that proves he actually was the discord user they’re tying him to. I’m skeptical to the process they used as the foundation of these accusations. Again, this was the first comment as made by me. I’ll bold it for you to notice it.

      Non-Repudiation.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-repudiation

      Non-repudiation refers to a situation where a statement’s author cannot successfully dispute its authorship or the validity of an associated contract. The term is often seen in a legal setting when the authenticity of a signature is being challenged. In such an instance, the authenticity is being “repudiated”.

      Somewhere further down the story, I make another comment regarding how Valley Christian could have setup non-repudiation to cover their own butts. Again, bolding so you read it.

      Next up, and most likely, they would have had various session shadowing tools. They could have run remote desktop, or apple VNC in shadowing mode and actually watched him in Discord as he typed away. If Valley Christian actually did this, and presented this evidence to the press, then I’d take back everything I’ve said.

      This is the biggest problem with this story. If Jen calls Valley Christian, and verifies there was some sort of IT investigation that establishes non-repudiation, that VCH actually verified it was Kyle, I’ll gladly change my tune. If VCH got an admission from Kyle, that would be another form of non-repudiation. It’s not rocket science, nor is it computer science, but in legal terms it’s the only way to make this accusation stick. Without it, they’ve just left themselves open to a wrongful termination lawsuit.

      Yes we used to grow cherries. 100 acres of them. I grew up on the orchard across the street.

      • Robert:

        Different subject.

        What do your refined IT instincts tell you about the security, integrity, honesty of California elections in the age of universal vote by mail balloting and ballot harvesting?

        Should the public have any faith in California elections?

        • >Should the public have any faith in California elections?

          * They should not have faith in their elections
          * They should not have faith in their elected
          * They should not have faith in their electoral college
          * They should not have faith in their taxes

          It’s a train wreck. About the only thing they can have faith in is the weather, which is why I think it’s so popular. Then again it’s not that enjoyable when you can’t even find a place to enjoy it in solitude anymore.

      • Teachers sign contracts. You have no idea what is in that contract. Valley can fire anyone for violating their code of conduct. He is on “paid administrative leave” right now which means he’s not fired. If he violated the COC, then he can be fired.

    • > Like others here have said, first amendment protections aren’t absolute. Fire in a theater, anyone? Hate speech? Yep, those kinds of speech aren’t all that protected.

      SCCRezzy:

      This is your BIG chance to educate me.

      As far as I know, so-called “hate speech” is JUST AS PROTECTED by the First Amendment as any other kind of speech.

      The fundamental problem is that “hate speech” is ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE and subject to interpretation. Your designation of something as “hate speech” is entirely dependent on you past experiences, education, indoctrination, state of mind, and so forth.

      Letting addled and intellectually flawed individuals such as you impose criminal judgements and sanctions on other people would be a HUGE injustice to humanity.

      I doubt that any court has held that “hate speech” is NOT protected by the First Amendment. And if a court has so held, YOU CAN BE THE FIRST to bring the court’s idiotic ruling to my attention. I doubt that any such ruling is going to survive review by the Supreme Court. IF IT DOES, the First Amendment is dead.

      • If you get fired, or lose customers, because of your spewing all that hate, then you lose. There. Consider yourself schooled.

        (PS. Fix that caps lock key of yours, please. It seems to kick in at random times for no good reason.)

  8. I’m not so sure about this article… going through his messages on that discord, the only time he states anything that would indicate that he’s a Neo-Nazi is when he recommends a podcast which he also states listening to them aren’t good for people (which I noticed the article excluded…). He left 56 messages on that server, mostly about him trying to workout, recommending LoveandLogic, talking about stocks, and how he wants to go back to school to become a Computer Science major. It didn’t seem like he interacted with a majority of alt-right based discussions (only the podcast recommendation). In a honesty, could he be a white-supremacist, possibly. Can I say that for certain, not from what I saw in terms of his online messages. Being a journalism major, this seems like typical journalism stretching to get a public outcry and more clicks in al honesty.

  9. First Amendment and Hate Speech

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States

    “Hate speech in the United States is not regulated, in contrast to that of most other liberal democracies.[1] The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that hate speech is legally protected free speech under the First Amendment. The most recent Supreme Court case on the issue was in 2017, when the justices unanimously reaffirmed that there is effectively no “hate speech” exception to the free speech rights protected by the First Amendment.”

    TAKE THAT, SCC RESIDENT!

  10. Thanks Unicorn Riot for your great work in exposing fascists and actually contributing to the counter movement against hate in this country!

      • Its OK, we already know which side of this thing you’re on :^)

        Ya I’m on the side of people that are grammatically correct. It’s it’s, not ITS. A contraction for “it is” If I were a Nazi, the only kind of Nazi I’d be is a grammar Nazi.

        I’m also on the side of due process and doing things correctly, something I have not seen from this story as of yet. At this point if the school didn’t get remote desktop screenshots of the guy on discord, in a racist channel, they have no hope. Even IF they log in under his profile, he can just as easily change his discord password.

        Speaking of discord, join mine. SanJoseSUCKS.

        https://discord.gg/YBjRkhg

    • RC:

      They seem to have found an “anti-fascist” troll smart enough to post under multiple handles.

      I don’t see how they can claim to be opposing “white supremacism”. Whatever ethnic group they imagine themselves to be, their dimwittedness would make ANY other group feel superior.

      They probably even make Joe Biden feel superior.

      • Actually, they’re wealthy white kids discovering Esotericism at some level. Who knows, maybe Inca’s, maybe Barretts.
        Esotericism

        1. Feel a part of something.
        2. Feel they’re doing good in the world.

        Also how do I know they’re wealthy white kids? Read the personal accounts of former non-white, non-christian, LGBTQ kids on this reddit thread.

        https://www.reddit.com/r/SanJose/comments/bicpn7/valley_christian_hs_teacher_suspended_over/

        He ended up leaving and going to Andrew Hill due to him being bullied, even from teachers, for being from a lower income family.

        Another commnent.
        It was clear that the administration and many of the teachers they hired were very conservative; in my sophomore year during one of the assemblies, the dean very directly said that gay people who attended this school were basically not welcome and acting upon their sexuality would guarantee them a spot in hell.

        Yet another comment.
        As a fellow alum, yeah, you’re right. Being a white Christian, especially in sports really got you favored. Likewise, being a female christian in STEM clubs and classes, you got preferential treatment like crazy. They don’t treat students as equals, there’s no question about it. I just got so used to it the 5 years I was there I ended up dismissing it as normal, even though it clearly isn’t

        You really can’t expect better out of them SJO… Trying to intellectually bully people is what that school teaches, but what they don’t realize is we’ll just drag them down to our level and beat them with experience.

        • Speculation. You guys don’t know who posted the stuff here. But wow, I gott say, lots of those comments on reddit reflect exactly what I would expect from some religiosity school: feeling of superiority (on a hill? really?), bigotry, homophobia. And to think, some parents would pay twenty grand a year for that? I would barely consider joining boy scouts because of all that same kind of jesus stuff mentioned in that valley xtian thread.

          BTW, RC, where did you get that definition of esotericism? All my searches confirm that your definition isn’t what I thought it meant.

          • BTW, RC, where did you get that definition of esotericism?All my searches confirm that your definition isn’t what I thought it meant.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_consciousness_(Esotericism)

            I didn’t think it meant that either, but apparently it does.

            feeling of superiority (on a hill? really?), bigotry, homophobia. And to think, some parents would pay twenty grand a year for that?

            Apparently you haven’t been around rich people. I grew up around them. And people wonder why I post such disgusting comments. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

            Really though, this is the way they think, “We’re rich, everyone else here lives to serve us” If you don’t lick their boots, repeat their nonsensical world views, and go along with everything they say, you’re not in their “in” crowd. This is what drives them crazy about me. Most people feel horrible about not fitting in, for some reason I don’t have that issue.

            The entirety of the Democratic party has become those bootlickers, begging the next echelon up for a handout. At one time I started playing their game, but then I realized I hated who I was becoming. I wasn’t put on this earth to trash talk people in the lower echelons like they wanted me to, I’m here to trash talk THEM.

            Once I stopped focusing on trying to fit into their narrow world views, I started being happy again. The only fascist boogiemen that exist are the ones at the top of the pyramid.

        • > Esotericism

          > 1. Feel a part of something.
          > 2. Feel they’re doing good in the world.

          Robert:

          An excellent and perceptive insight. Right up there with Yoda.

          Maps very neatly to “tribalism”.

          Democrats/progressives want to “feel a part of something”: >> a “tribe”.

          They want to “feel they’re doing good in the world” >> “my tribe good, other tribe bad”.

          “Tribalism” is built into human DNA. You don’t need political science to explain Democrats, just anthropology.

          Civilization occurs when primitive people UNLEARN tribalism and LEARN how to get along with other people. That is the logic and benefit of trade and commerce versus tribal warfare.

          Also, check out the parable of the Good Samaritan in the New Testament: a homily on the virtue of rising above tribalism.

        • And another thought, Robert:

          The parable of the Good Samaritan is the moral essence of Christianity. It is a condemnation of tribalism.

          Tribalism is the DNA of the Left, which is why they HATE Christianity. And wouldn’t you know, Valley Christian is a Christian school. Go figure.

  11. Girls, Emi Kamiya, Devon Schuster, Carly and Melanie. Brette Polin when she sees these girls she can’t stand them she hates them just by looking at them and wants to fight. Becarefule of Brette Polin she is crazy!

  12. If they fire a “nazi”, will they get called nazis…
    a) more
    b) less

    Based on recent history, I am not so sure of the answer.

    Did he actually post any racist stuff or was he just lurking?

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