Do you remember way back, oh, about ten months ago, when Breitbart tried to convince the world that alt-rightists were really just a bunch of lovable scallywags who didn’t actually believe all the horrible racist and anti-Semitic garbage they were so energetically dumping on the internet (and in the email inboxes of their assorted enemies) every day?
“Just as the kids of the 60s shocked their parents with promiscuity, long hair and rock’n’roll,” wrote Breitbart star Milo Yiannopoulos and his less colorful colleague Allum Bokhari, “so too do the alt-right’s young meme brigades shock older generations with outrageous caricatures, from the Jewish ‘Shlomo Shekelburg’ to ‘Remove Kebab,’ an internet in-joke about the Bosnian genocide.”
They don’t really hate Jews and Muslims, the Breitbart duo insisted. They just love memes too much!
Tell that to former alt-right podcasting star Mike Enoch, who plummeted to earth last weekend like some kind of Neo-Nazi Icarus after his fans found out that he’s married to … A JEW!
Enoch — whose real name turns out to be Mike Peinovich — is the founder of the alt-right blog The Right Stuff and was the host of the rather depressingly popular podcast The Daily Shoah. Yes, the name is a HILARIOUS Holocaust pun.
“In his online persona,” Salon notes in a fairly detailed post on this imbroglio,
Peinovich routinely cracked jokes about killing Jewish people and forcibly deporting Muslims and people of African descent. The weekly program had roughly 100,000 regular listeners, many of whom regularly sent in financial donations by PayPal or bought merchandise from the site.
Peinovich’s secret life as a Jew-loving Nazi ceased being secret after he was pretty thoroughly doxed — apparently (as far as I can figure out) as a result of some complicated internecine warfare between The Right Stuff and 8chan, with an assist from some anti-fascist activists and a cameo from none other than Juicebro Lawyer Mike Cernovich.
After initially lying to Salon about his identity, Peinovich ultimately decided to fess up.
“As I am sure you all know,” he wrote in a message to his fans and detractors,
I was doxxed and an ill advised attempt to fool the media about my identity led me to not talk to you people and to try to simply ride it out by being silent. This was irresponsible and a disservice to all of you. Yes my wife is who they say she is, I won’t even bother denying it, I won’t bother making excuses. …
I could try to explain my whole life for the last ten years to you but what difference at this point would it make. Life isn’t perfect.
Shortly afterwards, he resigned from TRS.
You may be wondering: did his wife know? Yes. Weirdly, as Salon notes,
Peinovich’s wife … even appeared on “The Daily Shoah” several times, including a special holiday-season segment in 2015 where she read a neo-Nazi parody of “The Night Before Christmas.” Introducing the clip, which can be found online, Peinovich said his wife was “very proud of it.”
I’m afraid I will have to resort to a gif to convey my thoughts on this aspect of the story.
As Salon points out, “[s]ome listeners of ‘The Daily Shoah’ were crestfallen” about the Jewish wife revelations, with one poor fellow complaining:
It’s pretty bad for your WN, fourth reich, neo-nazi, facist movement when one of the head guys happens to be married to a Jew.
The reverberations of NaziDudeMarriedToAJew-Gate continue to (((echo))) across the alt-rightosphere.
On The Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin has been trying to convince his fellow Nazis not to fall headlong into conspiracy theory. Despite what he calls the “Jew wife situation,” he defends Peinovich as an effective propagandist against the allegedly evil Jews, despite being married to one of them.
I don’t think that Mike is a shill, or that this Jew wife situation indicated that he is part of a Jewish conspiracy.
Mike and TRS have been at the forefront of exposing the Jewish problem. They are, along with this website, and some older figures such as David Duke, the only people really going hard on the Jews.
The situation seems pretty self-explanatory. He was married ten years ago, long before he was aware of the Jew problem, and so he felt was locked into a situation.
That is not to say he handled it well. At the very least, he should have known that eventually he was going to get doxed, and been prepared for this. Really, he should have gotten a divorce.
But hey, Nazi water under the Nazi bridge.
As far as if he actually did betray anyone – no. He was obviously dishonest on some level, but if we look at his contribution, and ask ourselves “did this forward the 14 words?” we will see that it did, and the weirdness in his personal life doesn’t change that. …
I mean, this is the guy responsible for the (((echoes))) meme, which was one of the biggest propaganda coups since the death of Adolf Hitler. Dismissing everything he did over a personal failing would be wrong.
On Infostormer — which is a whole different website than the Daily Stormer — the blogger who calls himself Marcus Cicero is urging other alt-rightists to “Move Forward From The Mike Enoch Jew Wife Incident Without Absolute Chaos,” as he puts it in the headline of his first post on the subject.
In a followup post, he tries to spin the news coverage of the “Mike Ench Jew Wife Incident” as possibly good for the Nazis.
“We need to look at this from a positive standpoint,” he writes.
The fact that this incident is getting any mainstream coverage at all illustrates how much of a political force we’ve become. A few years back, nobody would have paid attention to something like this.
This is also not the time for witch hunts. There will be anti-fascists and Jews posing as Nazis trying to use this situation to accuse other content producers of being Jews, untrustworthy or whatever. We should not fall into that trap. The best way to handle this is to simply move forward and continue calling out these vermin.
But the most, well, intriguing reaction comes on the podcast The Daily Traditionalist, the host of which is also urging fellow, er, “traditonalists” to remember all the good work Peinovich did in the eternal struggle against, well, people like his wife.
“It may be startling to some to hear the sort of behaviour his wife engages in,” guest Matt Parrott argues, according to the official summary of the show posted on The Daily Stormer, “but they do live in New York and it is the world center of that sort of degeneracy.”
I can only imagine what sort of filthy Jewishness this woman gets up to. Enjoying some lovely brisket? Humming “If I Were a Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof? Complaining about the humidity? It is too horrifying to contemplate.
Wow. I did *not* see that one coming. Obama has had a heart of stone with regards to whistleblowers.
IP:
Didn’t Assange say that he’d give himself up if that happened?
Dude, if forwarding 14 lousy words is all you’re about, why not just recycle endless “Heil Schicklgruber” e-mails until all your non-fascist relatives block you to get some relief from your incenssant fwd: fwd: FWDing? That’s how MOST people circulate words these days…
All kidding aside, though, I’m still shaking my head at the sheer colossal idiocy of these morons. They seriously think that 14 dull, paranoid words are somehow a magic incantation that will awaken “white blood” to fight against all the “mud people”???
Also, YAY, CHELSEA MANNING WILL BE FREE! (does a tiny happydance)
I think we can all agree that “The Daily Shoah” isn’t a good joke. However, I’d like to play devil’s advocate and propose that it’s a good opening to a joke, if that joke is that neo-Nazis are a bunch of tryhards.
Yes, yes he did.
On the whole making money from fascism thing, I think all of the nazis involved in this particular bit of nonsense are for better or worse actually quite sincere about it, not just trying to score easy money. Because making money off of small political websites is actually not easy at all, and can be more difficult for Nazis, because they can’t run ads on their sites. I don’t think any of them are making a lot from their sites and/or podcasts.
That said, the so-called alt-lite people — Cernovich, Milo, etc — are pretty obviously opportunists; they’re the only ones making big money off of all this, at least at the moment. I think they’re also true believers of a sort, just not true believers in Nazism.
I don’t know what “14 words” is, and I’m afraid to google it.
As always, David, thank you for wading into the sewers for us.
I don’t think I’m ready to let the wife off the hook; after all, she obviously participated in the podcast, at the very least, and presumably lived off some of the proceeds. As for what she knew and when she knew it, the fact of her participation makes that immaterial to me.
But ugh, at least one kernel of hate is off the internet.
Makes the cynic in me wonder if that particular point was part of the political calculation that went into the decision to release Chelsea Manning.
@dreemr
The 14 words:
I just want to run right out and have white babies after reading that, don’t you? /s
@Imaginary Petal
That’s great and wholly unexpected news! As an aside, I am incapable of reading the phrase “Thanks Obama!” without sarcasm even when it is intended sincerely.
@dreemr, It’s part of a white nationalist slogan:
“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
or, if you prefer extra sexism with your racism,
“Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth.”
Apologies for actually typing those
There are also examples of people becoming Islamist insurgents solely for money, too, in places like Iraq. Every extremist or violent movement attracts its own soldiers of fortune.
@Scildfreja
Wow, I had only ever seen the first version. I didn’t know it was possible to make that worse.
P.S. What happened to your avatar? I miss it.
@chesselwitt & @Scildfreya – thank you both. I am so, so sorry I asked.
So incredibly gross.
@Scildfreja: I’d run across the first one before, but not the second.
@SFHC: Agree 100%. The ‘true believers’ are sincerely wrong. Many of them have been brought up in a false narrative, and simply haven’t been exposed to enough different ideologies to realize it *. The people like Mike? They’re trying to profit off of maintaining that false narrative, WHEN THEY KNOW IT IS FALSE. That’s just pure evil.
*As an aside, my wife and I intend to raise our children (when we have them) in both her Catholic faith and my Protestant faith precisely to expose them to the notion of conflicting narratives. We’ll see how that turns out.
I can see reading “Thanks, Obama” sarcastically in this case. He waited so very long to do so. I know several Republicans who voted for Trump, and are happy that Chelsea M gets to go free soon-ish.
As at least one pundit put it, Chelsea was the one they could reach while Snowden got away, so maybe she was punished worse.
Anyhow, no one but the alt-not-even-right podcaster with the (hidden?) Jewish wife was actually surprised at the reaction of the alt-reich.
I’m a little disappointed that he was doxed, but apparently it was by the alt-right itself, and not one of us. Here’s hoping they keep spending time fighting amongst themselves instead of spreading the hate further.
Off-topic for this page, but on-topic for the blog in general:
From the CBC: Digital sexism: Why are all virtual assistants women?
The “14 words” stuff is part of why language can be so awful. The phrase seems so innocuous, but can wrap up such evil concepts within that neutral shell. It promotes fuzzy thinking and feelings of superiority, and reinforces the in-group vs out-group divide into a bright line. Jargon at its worst.
@chesselwitt, nothing, actually! I think Gravatar has been having troubles lately, because I’ve seen a lot of people lose their avatars, or get different ones, or things like that. I imagine that Gravatar will sort it out soon. Then you will see the lovely homeworld art again! I should change it, though, there’s so much good art from that game. It deserves some attention.
@Jenora, I’m glad to hear from you again, and I hope that things are going well for you out east <3
As for the gender labeling of digital assistants, that's a big question, and one of the biggest indicators of how far along the tech industry has come – i.e. not very far. I've actually done work in the area of digital assistants, or at least parallel; my products have always been persons, but agender. They also tend to communicate from a position of benevolent authority and not from a position of subservience. So, uh, I guess I'm building Skynet? That's how the joke goes at least.
I’d like to point out that two of the three main excuses given by companies…
… Are in direct contradiction of eachother.
I know nothing about their marriage or her involvement in The Right Stuff other than what David has written up here, but what is mentioned reminds me of another edgy/ironic racist, Jim Goad, and his Jewish wife, Debbie.
Ah, so that’s what this Twitter kerfluffle has been about. I saw mad-as-hell references to it but didn’t really want to dig further.
OT but must be shared so I picked this thread. A poet-person has written a tribute to Trump and it’s so awfully awful in its awfulness. Some tweeps claimed it was a hoax; the claim that it was to be read at the inauguration is what’s fake. The poem and the poet are all too real.
Here are his helpful notes at the beginning:
(TONE-all sounds like toenail to me)
Here is my favourite verse:
But you must read the whole thing. He claims that despite Marxist attempts to silence lyric poetry, he has managed to keep it going, and he feels that his work is on par with, or better than, Shakespeare and Yeats. He’s just astoundingly wonderful.
@ Mish: my brain went “NOPE” when I tried to read that. If there’s a category of “things worse than Vogon poetry”, I think this would define it.
Mish, that poem is…breathtaking.
As in, it’s killing me.
Shakespeare and Yeats? That poem is more aptly compared to this paean to Grover Cleveland:
“Ma, ma, where’s my pa?
Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!”
@IP
I wonder, could Trump interfere with this if he wanted to, or is it a done deal?
@ Mish, truly astonishing stuff.
I’m neither a man nor in Scotland, which may be why my thoughts are turning more to that other great poet, William McGonagall.
http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/gems/a-tribute-to-henry-m-stanley
Can we just all agree that the sincerity or lack thereof of racist language/web content/publications/speeches/etc. doesn’t matter at all, since it remains categorically harmful regardless?
And as a filthy red marxist with a shit ton of critical theory on my shelves, if *that* is the acme of lyric poetry, it should stay dead, and I’ll gladly show up with a scalpel of socialist free verse to assist.