The recent appointment of a controversial far-right activist to a senior role in the State Department is drawing renewed scrutiny to his past ties to white nationalists, promotion of conspiracy theories and long trail of bigoted comments on racial minorities and women, among other groups.

Darren Beattie, a former White House speechwriter in the first Trump administration who was fired for attending a white nationalist gathering, was named acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs — a role that includes overseeing “messaging to counter terrorism and violent extremism,” according to the State Department’s website.

But his offensive statements on a wide range of issues have raised questions about his fitness for the key diplomatic post, even as he is viewed as an intellectual leader among America First loyalists who are seeking to shape the new Trump administration.    

Beattie’s appointment comes despite his past criticism of Marco Rubio, suggesting that the newly confirmed secretary of state is acquiescing to employing staffers who share radical views at odds with his longstanding record.  

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment about Beattie’s new role and how long he is expected to serve in the post, which reportedly began on Monday. Beattie could not be reached for comment.

In a statement posted on Monday to Revolver News, a far-right website founded by Beattie, he confirmed he had joined the State Department, which he called a “great honor,” while claiming that the U.S. had “entered the beginning of a new Golden Age — of success, prosperity, legitimacy, and accountability.”

Previously, Revolver had attacked Rubio as part of an alleged “globalist cabal now ‘cheerleading’ for nuclear war.” But in recent statements, Beattie has used a more admiring tone for his new boss, who had built a reputation as a leading foreign policy hawk in the U.S. Senate but has since evolved to conform with the ascendant populist wing of the GOP.

Speaking on a podcast debate with the conspiracy theorist Max Blumenthal two months ago, Beattie defended Rubio’s new direction and predicted the former senator would not work to undercut Trump’s policies as some MAGA loyalists had feared. “I think he is politically evolved,” he said, “and understands that his success is very much tied in with embracing the Trump agenda.”

Beattie’s rise underscores a broader pattern in Trump’s new administration as key departments led by relatively traditional Republicans are staffed by more ideologically extreme senior advisors poised to shape U.S. foreign policy. In addition to Beattie, Michael Anton, a former Trump speechwriter who is fiercely loyal to the president, is now serving as Rubio’s director of policy planning — in another appointment interpreted as a concession to the base.

Meanwhile, Republicans have been raising alarms about several appointees in the Pentagon who espouse a neo-isolationist worldview that is skeptical of Israel and urges the U.S. to vastly scale back its military presence in the Middle East, sowing confusion about Trump’s vows to engage in the region.

But among such recent appointments, Beattie stands out as particularly controversial, owing in large part to an extensive series of troubling past comments in which he has openly voiced white supremacist views, demeaned women and Black people as “complaining minorities,” amplified the Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, among other remarks now circulating in the wake of his hiring.

On sensitive foreign policy issues, Beattie has been equally incendiary, dismissing China’s brutal repression of its Muslim Uyghur population, which the U.S. has called a genocide, while arguing that China’s territorial claim to Taiwan is “not worth expending any capital to prevent” — breaking with a bipartisan commitment to defend the island nation.

“There needs to be a very deep and very radical reevaluation of the public principle of justification for Israel as a state that takes into reality that the victimhood component of this narrative is no longer a viable option,” Darren Beattie said in a podcast interview with Glenn Greenwald. 

Beattie has also suggested that an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Trump had “more likely” been orchestrated by U.S. intelligence officials, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is greater than NATO and accused the U.S. government of backing Ukrainian “neo-Nazi groups in its obsessive proxy war against Russia.” In a 2020 essay on his website, he likened the so-called “color revolutions” that had pushed for liberal democracy in some former Soviet republics to “coordinated efforts of government bureaucrats, NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump.”

Meanwhile, shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks, Beattie criticized what he called Israel’s “victimhood narrative,” arguing that the Jewish state would need to rethink that formulation to justify its continued existence.

“There needs to be a very deep and very radical reevaluation of the public principle of justification for Israel as a state that takes into reality that the victimhood component of this narrative is no longer a viable option,” he said in a podcast interview with Glenn Greenwald. 

More broadly, the Trump appointee has favored a wholesale reinterpretation of America’s position on the global stage, suggesting nationalists “might not want a supreme American preeminence,” making moral equivalencies between the United States and totalitarian regimes like Russia and China. 

“China is not a free society, neither is Russia, neither is the United States — but the value of multipolarity and balance, however, is it’s better to have different types of authoritarian regimes rather than just one so at least we can arbitrage the difference,” Beattie said during a 2022 speech at a national conservatism conference, pointing to what he deemed a “profound disconnect between the well-being and flourishing of the American people and the geopolitical dominance of the globalist American empire.”

Echoing such remarks, Rubio, once seen as one of the strongest defenders of a muscular approach to international engagement, said in a recent interview with Megyn Kelly that “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power,” arguing the post-Cold War global power structure had been “an anomaly” and “foreign policy should always be about furthering the national interest of the United States.”

“He is typically more hostile to what he views as the western liberal establishment than non-allied foreign governments,” said Benjamin Teitelbaum, a professor of international affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder and an expert on the far right. “Our enemy is not China, Iran, or certainly not Russia, he claims, so much as it is legacy media, the deep-state, and mainstream academia.”

“It was a product of the end of the Cold War, but eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet,” Rubio said last month. “We face that now with China and to some extent Russia, and then you have rogue states like Iran and North Korea you have to deal with.”

Benjamin Teitelbaum, a professor of international affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder and an expert on the far right who has met and spoken with Beattie, described Rubio’s new public diplomacy hand as “extremely smart and unflinchingly radical.”

“He is typically more hostile to what he views as the western liberal establishment than non-allied foreign governments,” Teitelbaum said of Beattie. “Our enemy is not China, Iran, or certainly not Russia, he claims, so much as it is legacy media, the deep-state, and mainstream academia.”

An ally of Tucker Carlson, who has pushed for such officials to enter the administration, Beattie holds a Ph.D. in political theory from Duke University and published his dissertation in 2016 on the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who was a member of the Nazi Party.

Beattie, who served as a White House speechwriter and policy development aide in Trump’s first term, was dismissed in 2018 amid revelations that he had delivered remarks at a conference frequented by white nationalists. He was reportedly pushed out after refusing to resign and said afterward he would “absolutely” attend the conference again if given the chance to reconsider his decision. Beattie was later hired as a speechwriter for former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).

In 2020, he was also appointed by the White House to serve on the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, a government agency responsible for identifying and protecting historic sites in Europe, including those connected to the Holocaust.

The appointment drew condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League, whose CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, urged the Trump administration to revoke Beattie’s role and said it was “absolutely outrageous that someone who has consorted with racists would even be considered for a position on a commission devoted to preserving Holocaust memorials in Europe.”

“Throughout the years,” the ADL said, “Beattie has participated in several conversations and events organized by notorious racists, antisemites and white supremacists and has continuously promoted an array of conspiracy theories, including those related to the Jan. 6 insurrection and the ‘Great Replacement’ theory, embraced by antisemites and white supremacists.”

In response, Beattie, who has frequently criticized the ADL, said that he considered it “an honor to be attacked by” the group, adding it “pretends to be an organization that protects Jews, but it really exists to protect Democrats.”

Beattie’s three-year term on the commission was cut short in 2022 by the Biden administration, when he was among several members asked to resign or face termination. Beattie called the demand “better than a Pulitzer.”

The ADL on Monday raised concerns about Beattie’s new position in the State Department, arguing he “has no place in a role representing American values abroad.”

“Throughout the years,” the group said in a statement, “Beattie has participated in several conversations and events organized by notorious racists, antisemites and white supremacists and has continuously promoted an array of conspiracy theories, including those related to the Jan. 6 insurrection and the ‘Great Replacement’ theory, embraced by antisemites and white supremacists.”