Hawaii Marine faces discharge over racist online posts

A Hawaii-based Marine is receiving an “other than honorable” discharge for posting racist and pro-Nazi material on social media.

Lance Cpl. Mason Mead, a 20-year-old infantry assault Marine with the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, admitted to violating Article 92, a broadly defined offense that covers failure to obey an order or regulation, by advocating supremacist ideology.

Mead will be discharged pending the completion of administrative and medical requirements, the Marine Corps confirmed. He will not be eligible for veterans benefits.

Mead, a native of Alabama who was serving a deployment to Okinawa at the time of his offenses, drew the attention of the Naval Criminal Investigative Unit after a series of inflammatory tweets associated with his @Jacobite_Edward Twitter account came to light in February.

While the account has since been closed, the military news site Task &Purpose captured and published several of the tweets, including one with a picture of explosives positioned into the shape of a swastika (“Epic”); an image of Mead in dark camouflage face paint (for an effect similar to blackface) with the caption “Hello, fellow black men”; an image of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and a Catholic priest saluting (“I look at this image before sleep and smile”); a quote from Nazi collaborator Leon Degrelle; and a photo of Wehrmacht soldiers taking Catholic Mass outdoors.

According to Stars &Stripes, another tweet features a photo of a man posing in front of Mount Fuji and the caption “ching chong” followed by emojis for a Japanese flag, a dog and a knife and fork. An accompanying comment from Mead’s account read, “excited to try Japanese teriyaki doberman!!!”

The military news service also reported a tweet from Mead’s account in which Mead claimed to be “to the right” of fascism and the neo-Nazi National Socialist movement and “would have fought in the Waffen SS” if possible.

In a statement released to multiple news agencies Tuesday, the Marine Corps stated, “The Marine Corps takes every instance of misconduct seriously, whether on duty, off duty, or online. Any form of racism or discrimination undermines the core values of the Marine Corps and is not tolerated.”

Mead’s dismissal comes amid a string of high-profile cases involving suspected neo-Nazi and white supremacist personnel in the Marines.

Lance Cpl. Vasillios Pistolis was court-martialed and discharged for his white nationalist affiliations and his involvement in violence at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.

Staff Sgt. Joseph Manning was discharged after he and and Sgt. Michael Chesny were arrested for hanging a banner with a white supremacy message on a building during a 2017 pro-Confederate rally in North Carolina. Chesny was later discharged in connection with white supremacist messages he posted anonymously and for his role in the Unite the Right violence.

More recently, two Marines were investigated in February after they were seen in a Snapchat video wearing blackface and making racist comments. In April a reservist was investigated for sending a photo of Marines forming a swastika with their boots to Jewish comic artist Max Uriarte.