Ohio Republican state Sen. Jon Husted has dismissed political director Stephen Woytek after Nazi-related material appeared on social media accounts associated with him.
Woytek, 25, was appointed political director last month as Husted competed in a closely contested re-election campaign against former state Sen. Sherrod Brown. According to The Washington Post, Husted ended the relationship after learning that Woytek followed the LAH Living History Unit on Facebook, a military reenactment group portraying the 1st SS Panzer Division.
The group’s website says its members dress as the Leibstandarte, a Waffen-SS armored division that began as Adolf Hitler’s bodyguard unit. LAH describes the Leibstandarte as having come to symbolize “the highest dedication to duty and individual as well as collective loyalty.” The group calls itself non-political and says it disavows the political and religious persecution that occurred during World War II.
A Spotify playlist created by an account bearing Woytek’s name praised Rhodesia, the former British colony now known as Zimbabwe, which has been embraced by some white supremacist groups.
In a statement to The Washington Post, a spokesperson for Husted confirmed that the campaign had ended its relationship with Woytek.
“While he denies negative intent, his social media activity displays a complete lack of judgement and disregard for its impact on others,” the spokesperson said. “Senator Husted demands better of those who represent him. Upon learning about the social media posts today, Senator Husted made the immediate decision to part ways.”
The campaign did not answer The Washington Post’s questions about whether or how Woytek’s social media activity was reviewed before his appointment.
Woytek’s departure follows several damaging incidents involving young Republican groups found expressing pro-Nazi sympathies in group chats and online forums. In Georgia, Republican Senate candidate Mike Collins’s campaign has also faced controversy over staff members’ online activity. This summer, Collins replaced his top aide, Kip Talley, after Slate reported that Talley had participated in a group chat with white supremacists.
Woytek, who serves in the National Guard and graduated from The Citadel military academy in Charleston, South Carolina, issued an apology. He said he wished he had “exercised better judgment when posting about my activities online.”
“I want to be unequivocal: I reject the racist and antisemitic ideology the SS and Nazi Germany represented. I believe it is important to educate our younger generations, which is why I participate in historical reenactments,” he said.
LAH shared a Flickr photo from 2018, when Woytek was 16, showing him wearing an SS uniform and marching in a location decorated with Nazi flags. Woytek also follows several SS uniform suppliers on Facebook.
On a Quora account bearing his name, Woytek answered a question about whether anything positive had resulted from Hitler’s rule. In 2017, he wrote that “Hitler started an anti-smoking campaign.”
More recently, he created a public Spotify playlist of pro-Rhodesia songs titled “Tales from Rhodesia,” captioned, “Homesick for a place that no longer exists.” One of the songs contains a slur referring to African troops.
Rhodesia’s white-minority government waged a prolonged war against guerrilla groups after declaring independence unilaterally in 1965. International recognition of Zimbabwe under majority rule followed in 1980, after the government accepted in 1979 that its position was unsustainable and entered peace negotiations.
White supremacists have invoked Rhodesia as a symbol of what they claim is the superiority of white rule.