'Not the angry racist': Teamsters Union hires — then fires – face of Charlottesville march

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters reportedly employed and promptly dismissed Peter Cvjetanovic (also spelled Cytanovic), the 28‑year‑old former white nationalist whose fiery image at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, made him a flashpoint of far‑right extremism.

Hired into an administrative role at the union’s D.C. headquarters earlier this year, he was fired during his probationary period once the union became aware of his past, HuffPost reported Thursday.

Teamsters executive board member John Palmer, who is challenging President Sean O’Brien in the union’s upcoming 2026 election, has publicly questioned how the hire bypassed the usual vetting process. He said senior-level hires are customarily subject to sign-off by “three or four people,” but said he was unaware of how Cytanovic was vetted, per the report.

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A source familiar with the situation told HuffPost that Teamsters did not know of his involvement in the rally at the time of hiring. As a college student from Reno, Nevada, Cytanovic marched alongside neo‑Nazis on UVA grounds in 2017.

A widely circulated Getty photo captured him screaming with his face illuminated by tiki torches — a striking symbol of the white supremacist demonstration.

According to the report, his brief tenure was outed by an anonymous Reddit post from a Teamsters HQ employee, who wrote that they discovered Cytanovic’s name linked to Charlottesville after googling him, reported it to management, and saw him terminated soon after.

The report further noted that Cytanovic has consistently argued since immediately after the Charlottesville rally that he is “not the angry racist [people] see in that photo.”

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He claims that his primary motivation for attending the demonstration was to protect the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, which he viewed as representative of white European heritage.

At the time, anti-racist groups were calling on Charlottesville officials to remove the Lee monument from a local park, per the report.

He told Nevada’s Channel 2 News, “I hope people acknowledge that being a party to the alternative right does not make me an evil Nazi, and that being pro‑white right now is dangerous, and being pro‑white doesn’t mean I’m anti‑anyone else”.