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The far-left extremist group Antifa receives support from The Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAN). They have also commended and disseminated far-left conspiracy theories.

In an article in The Federalist, CANs relationship with Antifa was uncovered, in which the organizations members were found to be supporting Antifa by advising and protecting the extremist group in the media.

The latest example involved free-speech rally in Hamilton that took place on Mohawk Colleges campus. The event was organized jointly by Dave Rubin and Maxime Bernier. Before the rally was held, a member of CAN published an op-ed in a local newspaper where they demanded the group be de-platformed. This was because the rally was allegedly ushering people into the neo-Nazi movement.

Following this op-ed, Rubin claims Antifa activists threatened the venue and its participants, resulting in higher security costs.

They absolutely got threats which is why the security fee was increased. Also at the event itself there were clearly plenty of threats outside, Rubin told The Post Millennial.

College spokesperson Bill Steinburg told the CBC Mohawk did not receive any threats to cancel the event.

When the rally began, Antifa activists appeared and subsequently gained nation-wide attention when they refused to allow an elderly woman with a walker to cross the street. They did so by blocking her path so they had sufficient time to scream, nazi scum at her. They refused to listen to the women and were thus unaware that her family had fought against the Nazis in World War Two.

When The Post Millennial approached CAN for a comment, they responded by saying that the op-ed wasnt what alerted anti-fascists to the event. Organizing was already underwaywhich we had absolutely no involvement with. The CAN spokesman went on to say that I didnt say the rally was ushering people to neo-Nazism, but that a study analyzing 79 million comments and 330,000 videos found that Rubin is part of a radicalization process on Youtube my intention in the op-ed is quite obviously to have Mohawk make the principled decision not to host the event.

CANs executive director Evan Balgord has also provided advice to the extremist group, stating that they should be media aware in response to the group harassing an elderly woman. When The Post Millennial approached Balgord for comment, he did not address the tweet, stating instead that he condemned what happened.

Appalling to think this could happen to anyones mother -grandmother Event at Mohawk College Antifa harasses this elderly women who cant defend herself ..cowards hiding behind masks pic.twitter.com/1t08dsPrsn Ruthann (@TeaBoots) September 30, 2019

More seriously, however, the Chairman of the CAN, Bernie Farber, praised a journalists lauding of Antifas muscular resistance.

When Balgord was asked about the allegation from The Federalist that Farber himself praised Anitfas use of muscular resistance, he said, Bernie didnt say that. Youre quoting Bernie [Farber] quoting [another journalist]. Further, muscular does not necessarily equal violence. Farber is quite explicitly anti-violence, and any implication to the contrary is defamatory.

Nevertheless, Farber quoted the journalists comments and then went on to praise the journalist who said it, saying the understanding [the journalist] brings to a difficult issue is well worth your read.

Farber has also been tied to people who promote extremist ideology and has protected individuals who preach hate. Earlier this October, for instance, Farber spoke at an event with Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) speakers, which has been described by Canadian Jewish advocacy group Bnai Brith as a hateful and racist movement that singles out Israel. The Centre for Israel and Jewish affairs describes BDS as antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism.

Additionally, Farber has regularly defended allegedly anti-Semitic individuals. In one case, Farber stated that an Imam who said slay them one by one and spare not one of them. Oh Allah! Purify Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews, had been treated unfairly.

When approached with this, the CAN spokesman said At the time it was believed to be a mistranslationI dont know that its possible to know the truth of that one way or another given the different interpretations by different linguists thats the information Bernie [Farber] had.

Balgord has a history of defending Antifa. In a blog post, he defended the amorphous organization by stating that there were many examples of anti-fascists (Antifa) using violence to protect other protesters. Balgord proceeded to state that the media presented a distorted image of the movement. He also co-wrote an article for Rabblewith Kevin Metcalf, one of the protesters arrested by Hamilton Police three weeks ago for allegedly attacking a man at the aforementioned free speech rally.

In response to this, Balgord stated that he was a proud supporter of the anti-fascist movement [not to be confused with the extremist Antifa group]. The vast majority of violence at the many Canadian demonstrations I have attended or reviewed footage of is began [sic] by supporters and sympathizers of hate groups, not anti-fascists.

On writing an article with Metcalf, Balgord stated that Metcalf is not affiliated with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, but I wish him the best of luck with his charges.

For some context, U.S. Antifa has assaulted prominent journalist Andy Ngo (who is also now The Post Millennials Editor-at-large), leaving him with a brain bleed. The Canadian branch of Antifa has also attacked independent journalists in Quebec City. In response to this event, Antifa stated that sometimes, it is necessary to go against what the mainstream considers acceptable, to break the law in order to do the ethical thing.

South of the Canadian border, Antifa has been criticized for its intimidation of broadcasters with the intent to de-platform speakers. They are also known todisseminate malicious conspiracy theories and attack innocent bystanders. Public intellectual Noam Chomsky has described Antifa as a major gift to the right.

Concerning the malicious conspiracy theories, the Yellow Vests Exposed group, who call themselves CAN contributors, have also encouraged outlandish conspiracy theories. This includes the organization repeatedly stating that Andy Ngo is a threat to our community and provides kill lists to Atomwaffen on Twitter without any evidence.

Balgord stood by these unproven claims. It [was] not a conspiracy. Andy Ngo is dangerous and by pushing that non-study he got journalists on a kill list.

This conspiracy theory has been widely disproven. Claire Lehmann, the editor of the magazine that published this article, has gone on record stating that Andy Ngo played no role in the production of this article. As well as this, Lehmann stated that the whole situation is absurd and [the kill list] has no connection to Quillette.

If anyone is still unclear, Andy Ngo is a threat to our community and provides kill lists to Atomwaffen. Yellow Vests Canada Exposed (@VestsCanada) November 11, 2019

CAN are only too eager to label conservative figures and groups as far-right. In a report, for instance, CAN stated that there were 300 hate groups in Canada. According to their arithmetic, there are 160 percent more hate groups in Canada than the U.S. per capita.

Clarification: An earlier version of this article claimed Mohawk College received threats before the Rubin interview with Bernier took place on the campus, in part from an op-ed written by CANs Evan Balgord. Balgord brought to The Post Millennials attention that Mohawk College spokesperson Bill Steinburg told CBC there were no threats received. Rubin maintains otherwise, telling The Post Millennial: They absolutely got threats which is why the security fee was increased. Also at the event itself there were clearly plenty of threats outside. All of this has been added to the article to clarify the differing accounts of what happened.

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Jordan Peterson is not a gateway drug to the alt-right - The Post Millennial

Richard Viguerie, the conservative activist who invented direct-mail marketing, once said that fear and anger are much stronger motivations than support for a cause.

The Republican Party is now finding that out first-hand as its battling a white supremacist insurgency for the hearts and minds of Generation Z.

It wasnt supposed to be this way.

The ranks of the alternative right political movement were decimated in the aftermath of the August 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Many of its top leaders faced arrest, lawsuits, or were banned from online fundraising and social media platforms.

But after two years in the political wilderness, white nationalist activists have managed to regroup thanks to a new effort to attack the highly lucrative right-wing infotainment industry that has sprung up around conservative think tanks, Fox News, and talk radio.

Unlike the original alt-right, which was mostly driven by lone trolls collaborating ad hoc on social networks, the far-right resurgence is being led by a single figure: Nick Fuentes, a 21-year-old YouTube pundit who originally made a name for himself as a host on the Right Side Broadcasting Network. He wasfiredfrom that post in 2017 for saying it was time to killthe globalists at CNNfor allegedly being unfair to President Donald Trump.

Since starting his own YouTube program (called America First after Trumps slogan) shortly after his sacking, Fuentes has amassed a following that is just as dedicated and belligerent as the original alt-right via a re-calibrated message. Rather than using Hitler memes, Germanic sculptures, and mocking religion, Fuentes serves up a steady diet of Christian nationalism and hatred of immigrants, secular people, and Muslims.

Over the past several weeks, Fuentes and his fanswho call themselves Nickers and Groypers after a cartoon toad that serves as their mascot instead of Pepe the Froghave been tapping into conservative Christian anxieties and melding them with concerns that President Donald Trump has failed to deliver on his campaign promises of mass deportations and a big beautiful wall on the Mexican border. Their preferred mechanism of attack has been to overwhelm question-and-answer sessions following the speeches of mainstream conservative figures.

These appearances are typically organized by groups like Turning Point USA, Young Americans for Freedom, and the College Republicans. Their purpose is to recruit young adults into the conservative movement. Its not an easy task, however, as surveys increasingly indicate that socialism and pluralism have more appeal to students than unregulated capitalism and Christian nationalism.

Taking advantage of the fact that conservative college events are often sparsely attended, Groypers have easily mobbed the eventsespecially those of 25-year-old Turning Point founder Charlie Kirkto ask questions designed to embarrass the speakers and question their fealty to the conservative cause. In addition to invoking biblical injunctions against homosexuality, the hecklers have questioned whether the Republican Party can have a long-term future absent a complete stop to legal immigration and some sort of deportation of existing immigrant citizens.

Their crowd manipulation tacticswhich are very similar to practices taught for decades at the conservative Leadership Institutehave succeeded over the past several weeks at embarrassing Kirk, Congressman Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas, and Christian nationalist commentator Matt Walsh. In response, event organizers have often curtailed audience participation.

For the most part, the national press ignored the protests and the burgeoning insurgency until the Groypers employed the same tactics at a Nov. 10 event where Donald Trump Jr. was touting his new book, Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us.

Reports from the scene in Los Angeles indicated that the Groypers comprised about a third of the audience for the event and utterly dominated the proceedings. Even before the presidential son took the stage, Nickers began booing and jeering as an event staffer announced that Don Jr. and his girlfriend, former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, would not be taking any questions after their remarks.

The taunts, which also included audience members laughing at inappropriate times in a manner similar to Joaquin Phoenixs Joker character and chants of America First, grew so loud that Don Jr. stopped speaking as he tried to figure out what was going on. Guilfoyle lashed out at the audience, claiming they were not making their parents proud and that they probably couldnt get dates. Eventually, the couple and a silent Kirk exited the stage as the Fuentes fans kept booing.

Since then, the scene has repeated itself at several other events, particularly those of Kirk. He and many other conservative figures have been forced to answer inconvenient questions about various topics including past criticisms of President Trump, transgender rights, and immigration. More often than not, Kirk has faced overwhelming audience jeers and has struggled to respond.

It remains to be seen what the commander-in-chief, who is reportedly extremely sensitive to embarrassment, will think of all this but one thing is clear: the conservative establishments nightmare is just beginning.

Long before Trump came along, conservatives have had a complicated relationship with extremism, both encouraging and shunning it.

William F. Buckley, founder of National Reviewand the most prominent early conservative figure, began his political career denouncing Dwight Eisenhower and atheist professors at Yale. His magazine published several pieces defending Jim Crow and South African apartheid.

Over the years, he often told supporters that they should always support the furthest right candidate that they believed to be electable, setting up a perpetual cycle of GOP candidates who constantly assert that they, alone, are the true conservatives out to save the nation from Republicans in Name Only (RINOs).

In fairness, Buckley strenuously opposed the John Birch Society, a conspiracy group funded by Fred Koch, father of Charles and David Koch, which was highly popular among the conservative grassroots. And National Revieweventually relented and came out against segregation and apartheid.

Former president Ronald Reagan also had a decidedly mixed record on racial matters, spending decades opposing sanctions on South Africa for apartheid and the creation of a national holiday to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr. but eventually taking liberals positions on the two matters. He was also recently revealed to have privately referred to African United Nations delegates as monkeys who were uncomfortable wearing shoes.

Conservatives were also more than willing to welcome Strom Thurmond, the one-time segregationist senator who broke from the Democratic Party as it began supporting civil rights for African-Americans. Young Americans for Freedom, the group that preceded todays Young Americas Foundation, hailed Thurmond as a Man of Courage in 1964 before he broke with his racist positions.

Many conservatives also had no problem with George Wallace, the Alabama Governor who ran for president on segregationist platforms. Richard Vigueriewho still is raking in the GOP direct-mail money todayhandled Wallaces fund-raising in 1976.

In light of the many ways in which conservative leaders were willing to side with them on particular issues, white nationalists have sought to openly enter Republican politics for decades. Jared Taylor and his American Renaissance magazine were big promoters of Ron Pauls presidential runs. As Ive written previously, many alt-right activists were also strong Paul supporters before branching off to start their own movement. Former Klansman David Duke has repeatedly run as a GOP candidate in his native Louisiana but been rejected by party leaders.

Progressives have long accused Republican strategists of trying to communicate indirect messages of support to white racists through the partys infamous Southern Strategy which succeeded at turning the South away from its decades of loyalty to the Democratic Party. Few GOP strategists have ever been transparent about these efforts, but one who discussed them honestly was Lee Atwater, the widely successful consultant who passed away in 1991.

Ten years before his death, while firmly ensconced within the Reagan White House, Atwater gave an anonymous interview (the audio recording was published posthumously) in which he stated definitively that Republicans used race to appeal to Southerners but did so in an effort to gradually wean them from bigotry in favor of small-government appeals.

According to Atwater, the idea only worked because whites favorable to segregation understood that cutting the government would disproportionately harm African-Americans.

You start out in 1954 by saying, N*****, n*****, n*****, he told interviewer Alexander Lamis, a Case Western Reserve political scientist. By 1968 you cant say n*****that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states rights, and all that stuff, and youre getting so abstract. Now, youre talking about cutting taxes, and all these things youre talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. We want to cut this, is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than N*****, n*****.

More recently, numerous reports have exposed the role of the late Thomas Hofeller, a redistricting expert who worked for many Republican organizations over the years, in masterminding GOP state legislatures successful attempts to use race as the primary factor in congressional redistricting. Journalists have also exposed Hofellers covert advocacy for a new Census question about citizenship which he believed would suppress Hispanic responses and thereby harm Democrats.

The ascension of Donald Trump from wrestling sideshow to the heights of Republicanism has greatly increased the prominence and power of racists within the party. The 2015 launch of his presidential campaign with portrayals of most Mexicans as rapists and murderers electrified the white nationalists who had formerly supported Ron Pauls quixotic efforts and they began flocking to the billionaire, producing hundreds of thousands of memes and trolling comments in his favor.

White nationalists have always sought to inject their ideas into conservative politics, Fuentes is just the latest person to be doing it, Howard Graves, a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center told me. Whats different now is that is that they feel emboldened by our commander-in-chief.

Steve Bannon, who eventually became Trumps campaign chairman, very carefully nurtured the online fascists. Referring to them as his killing machine, he threatened to use them as a force against any faction hoping to deny Trump the presidential nomination at a brokered convention. Bannon also boasted that he was fashioning Breitbart News into the platform for the alt-right as his editorial protg Milo Yiannopoulos allowed racist activists to line-edit articles.

Once in office, Trump pandered to extremist supporters in numerous ways including his efforts to ban all Muslims from immigrating to the United States, break up families of unauthorized immigrants, and enact legislation exempting far-right Christians from any law they felt restricted their freedom to discriminate. Most infamously, Trump, acting on Bannons advice, repeatedly claimed that very fine people had attended the fascist-organized Unite the Right rally in support of Confederate memorials.

Recently, Stephen Miller, Trumps top adviser on immigration was revealed to have regularly promoted white nationalist talking points to a Breitbart News reporter. He is one of a number of Trump staffers who have been revealed to have ties to racist groups.

The growing closeness between the extremist right and Republican elites during the Trump era and the recrudescence of white supremacism has prompted several prominent conservative figures to try to take active measures to block the incursion.

Fuentes himself became a target of Turning Point USA after students at Iowa State University invited him to give a speech under the TPUSA banner in March. The event attracted controversy and put Fuentes on the groups radar permanently. Kirks organization further aroused the anger of Nickers in September after it cut ties with one of its social media advocates after she appeared at a private event with Fuentes.

Egged on by Fuentess insults and a pre-existing infiltration campaign of a small alt-right group called the American Identity Movement, far-right young men began crashing TPUSA head Charlie Kirks lavishly funded Culture War college tour events in early October and the Groyper rebellion was born.

As the campaign has gathered steam, Sebastian Gorka, the former Trump national security adviser who now hosts a daily radio program also called America First became the first prominent conservative outside of TPUSA to attack Fuentes as racist. Ben Shapiro, a talk radio host and co-founder of the conservative website Daily Wire, condemned Fuentes as a garbage human being during a lengthy speech to Stanford University students earlier this month.

But the denunciations have done little to curb the insurrection, in part because Republicans have spent 50 years building their entire political edifice around implicit appeals to white Christian identity, granting at least some built-in support to anyone claiming to stand up for far-right Christians.

This lesson was made crystal clear during the 2016 Republican presidential nomination contest when Donald Trump kept amassing support among conservative fundamentalists despite his utterly irreligious demeanor and the many denouncements he faced from religious activists who supported Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). None of that mattered, however, because Trump promised that if he became president, Christianity will have power.

The Christian right has been remarkably effective at maintaining a market and culture of people who are fed hateful messages and that makes it almost inevitable that white nationalists would tap into that, especially during a time when many of those people feel like they are an embattled minority, Graves, the researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center told me.

Fuentes, who identifies as a traditional Catholic and is partially of Hispanic descent, is perfectly able to wrap his arguments in the Christian supremacist argot that has become central to almost all Republican rhetoric. Hes also been careful to disclaim the labelwhite nationalisteven as he has conceded that it could accurately describe his views.

While many in the Nicker Nation are obviously racist, its unclear what percentage of the people whove been disrupting conservative speeches are fully onboard with a white supremacist agenda. In fact, several of the questioners who have challenged establishment Republicans appear to be black or Hispanic.

The idea that minority Republicans would want to support a white nationalist makes little sense until one realizes that Fuentes is fond of using coded language to hide messages intended only for racists, a practice frequently referred to within the alt-right as hiding your power level. (He has slipped up a several times, however, including going on a profane and anti-Semitic rant in August and once joking about racial segregation.)

As might be expected, Fuentess dog whistles are based on more up-to-date references than Atwaters. Several of his fans were confused by them during the Nov. 5 broadcast of his America First show, when he used a coded reference to praise Andrew Anglin, the publisher of the racist Daily Stormer blog, a key figure in the original alt-right who has tried to re-brand himself from a neo-Nazi into a soldier for Christ.

But the sly reference, couched as a shout-out to Daily Wire podcast host Andrew Klavan, confused some of Fuentess viewers.

I know that Andrew Klavan from Daily Wire has been very supportive, Fuentes said in response to a viewer question. And I appreciate that I really do appreciate his support, I think hes very funny, I love what he writes. Hes very funny, very talented writer, Andrew Klavan of Daily Wire. And I appreciate his support, I think its been very helpful. I think Andrew Klavan has been right about this country from the beginning. I think hes been right about thisthe things hes been saying for the past two years, particularly about the right wing has been so true and we are vindicated together, Andrew Klavan from Daily Wire and me.

Not everyone watching the show could hear the dog whistle, however.

Why are you CRINGE shilling for Andrew fake Christian Klavan, a commenter on Fuentess live stream wrote.

Daily Wire? Isnt that Ben S? another wrote, referring to Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro.

Many of the viewers understood the reference, however, correctly pointing out that Fuentes was not actually praising Klavan.

Are you people stupid? Hes obviously talking about Anglin but framing it as Klavan, a third fan replied.

People are soo dumb who actually thinks [sic] hes talking about Andrew Klavan, said another.

For his part, Anglin seems to have understood the reference. He responded to the praise on the Daily Stormer by posting a meme of two men bowing to each other.

Fuentess habit of mostly sticking to standard-issue conservative talking points and masking his more extreme messagesincluding one in which he joked about the Holocaust through a Cookie Monster metaphorhas also led several prominent conservative figures to lend him their support. Michelle Malkin, the Asian-American columnist and former Fox Newscommentator, has repeatedly praised Groypers and Fuentes specifically for advocating against immigration, arguing that endorsing some of their views does not mean endorsing all of them.

Heres my message to the new generation of America Firsters exposing the big lies of the anti-American open borders establishment and its controlled opposition operatives: If I was your mom, Id be proud as hell, she said during a Nov. 14 speech at UCLA. In her remarks, she also condemned Shapiro as creepy and cringe for calling Groypers losers just days earlier.

Alex Jones, the dietary supplement kingpin and radio host, has also expressed support for Fuentes, inviting him twiceonto his InfoWars platform to attack Charlie Kirk. Cassandra Fairbanks, a popular social media personality and writer at the right-wing conspiracy site Gateway Pundit, has also tweeted in support of Malkins position that conservatives should stand up for Fuentess ability to speak, even if they dont like some of his statements. Ali Alexander and Wayne Dupreee, black conservatives who have built a following among Trump fans, have agreed with this sentiment.

The conservative establishments attempts to fight back against the growth of white nationalism have also been weakened by the fact that many of its voters have come to realize that American conservatism as presently constituted is heading for electoral extinction. Exit poll data from 2018 indicates that white Americans were the only racial group in which a majority voted for Republicans, but only by a slim margin. Fifty-four percent of people of European descent said they voted for a GOP House candidate while 44 percent picked a Democratic one. Among Hispanics, 69 percent went Democratic as did 90 percent of African-Americans.

Numeric analysis suggests that it is Republicans anti-government views and practice of white Christian identity politics that are driving voters away. African-American were formerly a Republican voting bloc but that changed after conservatives took over the GOP in the 1960s and forced the party to oppose civil rights and back massive spending cuts. A similar process, much less remarked upon, has happened among Asian-Americans, most of whom consistently voted for Republicans until the 2000 election and George W. Bushs decision to re-brand the GOP as the party for Christians.

As a demographic group, it is difficult to speak generally about Asian-Americans since they come from so many dissimilar countries. But the one generalization that can be made about the fastest-growing racial group is that todays Asian-American population is significantly less Christian than in prior decades. According to the American Religious Identification Survey, 66 percent of Asian-Americans were Christians in 1990. By 2008, this number had declined to just 38 percent.

The decline of Christianity among Asian-Americans has had an impact on their voting habits. In the 2018 election, 77 percent voted for Democratic House candidates.

But even younger whites are turning away from the GOP. In the 2018 election, only 43 percent of European-Americans between 18 and 29 voted for a Republican House candidate. Thats a decline from the 47 percent who voted for Trump in 2016, and the 51 percent who voted Republican in 2012.

Instead of facing the uncomfortable reality that Americans dont like their policies and presentation, most conservatives have simply ignored the partys demographic dilemma, offering insulting platitudes to racial minorities while utterly ignoring the concerns of secular young whites.

Heres how we look into the future, Rep. Dan Crenshaw replied when asked about the GOPs long-term future by a Fuentes supporter at a Nov. 4 event. We dont lie to minorities and tell them that were going to solve all of their problems. We tell them that they are included in this country and that the only colors that matter in this country are the red, white, and bluethat identity politics has no place in this nation.

While the Republican party itself issued an autopsy report after the 2012 election that indicated the party needed to do more to appeal to people who were not white, the documents recommendations were utterly ignored by Trump in his 2016 campaign and ever since then.

With conservative elites unwilling to talk about modifying some of their unpopular policy positions, the resulting vacuum in the conservative discourse has been mostly filled by immigration opponents who have been arguing that the GOP must stop legal and illegal immigration or risk electoral apocalypse. Its a partisan-oriented, proto-white supremacist argument that some of the rights biggest stars have repeated many times.

Fox Newshost Laura Ingraham has been one of its biggest boosters. During her Nov. 6 program she blamed foreign-born people for enabling Democrats to take control of Virginias state government. Last August, she said that the America we know and love doesnt exist any more thanks to demographic changes brought on by legal and illegal immigration.

Her colleague Tucker Carlson has also repeatedly pushed the same line. In December 2017, he claimed that Democrats were using a flood of illegals to force a demographic replacement which would bring them new voters. In July 2018,he asserted that Latin American countries are changing election outcomes here by forcing demographic change on this country. This past April, Carlson warned Democrats were trying to change this country completely and forever through immigration.

The two Fox Newsstars repeated statements about immigration and the GOPs future are eerily similar to ones made by Fuentes. During his November 17 show, he called legal immigration a critical threat to the Republican party that will make us unable to win a national election ever again. This past August, Fuentes argued that both parties were seeking a systematic replacement of the people that constitute the country.

Besides sounding like two of Fox Newss most popular prime-time hosts, Fuentes also has similarities to some of his most vociferous critics in the conservative establishment.

Sebastian Gorka, the former Trump aide and current radio host who first condemned Fuentes, has his own history of accusations of fascist sympathies. Like Fuentes, Gorkahas also called for executing people he believes have betrayed America.

Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, another one of Fuentess critics, has also made comments very similar to the embattled YouTube star.

While he currently argues that Republicans should not care about increasing non-white immigration levels and slams Fuentes supporters for saying otherwise, Shapiro had a very different stance in a 2014 video in which he argued that granting citizenship to undocumented immigrants was absolute lunacy that would doom the GOP because Hispanics lean left on big government. Three years later, he argued that Stephen Miller, the Trump aide who spread white nationalist material at Breitbart while Shapiro worked there, knows what hes talking about on immigration.

In some cases, Shapiros statements appear to be even more radical than Fuentess expressions.

In 2014, he did an interview with a white nationalist podcast in which he argued that Jewish media executives were trying to wage a war on Christianity. During the conversationwhich was bundled alongside a promotion for a separate interview with white nationalist academic Kevin MacDonaldShapiro repeated several anti-Semitic tropes but directed them only at secular or leftist Jewish people.

There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood who feel the obligationthey have a perverse leftist view of history pushed by the Soviet Union that what really destroyed Europe was Christianity. It was not fascism, it was not communism, it was not leftism, it was Christianity, he told host Lana Lokteff. And therefore, the cure for intolerance is to bash the hell out of Christianity.

There certainly is a war on Christianity, its coming from some people who are secular Jews, its coming from a lot of leftists, he continued. Most Jews in America dont care about Judaism.

Ironically, Red Ice Creations, company which produced the show, is the former employer of Patrick Casey, the leader of the American Identity Movement which has been the boots-on-the-ground in the Groyper insurgency.

In the same broadcast, Shapiro also warned that entertainment studios seeking to condemn racism and sexism and include positive minority characters in their products are actually engaging in an insidious plot to pervert Americans minds as part of a very subtle war on white males in our society.

What they want is they want to destroy the foundations of American society, Shapiro said, speaking of media executives. Theres no question that this is what they want. I mean this has been the case for the left since the 1960s.

Shapiro has also endorsed ethnic cleansing in Israel of Muslims and Christians, writing in 2003 that forcibly removing Palestinians elsewhere is an ugly solution, but it is the only solution in the Middle East. Fuentes does not seem to have ever called for non-violent removal of Americans who are not white but Richard Spencer, one of the alt-rights first figureheads, has. In the years since, however, Shapiro seems to have turned against the idea of ethnic cleansing.

The Daily Wire did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this piece.

While most conservative pundits and activists appear blissfully unaware that their beliefs are generally unpopular, right-wing election consultants have long struggled to overcome this problem in their efforts to obtain winning electoral coalitions. Yet, rather than moderating their positions to appeal to centrists who disagree with conservative ideas on economics, religion, and social policy, they have opted instead to appeal to white religious fundamentalists who are anxious about a country thats become more educated, secular, and tolerant since the 1960s.

Murray Rothbard, one of the most influential figures in early libertarianism who was also heavily involved in GOP politics, described the concept in a shocking and prescient 1992 essay that touted David Duke and Joe McCarthy as the exemplars of an outreach to the rednecks strategy that would build a coalition of racist fundamentalists, business leaders, and anti-government ideologues under a platform of America First. Donald Trump, who employed McCarthys lawyer and repeatedly refused to disavow Duke, only slightly updated the playbook for 2016.

Expanding the Republican political tent to protect and include extremists was profitable for the GOP in the short-term. Among other things, conservatives effective use of religion and race as distractions from unpopular economic policies has enabled them to keep the United States as the only wealthy country in the world without universal health-care for decades.

But the conservative coalitions days are numbered. In the last five presidential elections, the GOP has won the presidential popular vote only once. The white Christian identity politics which Republicans have long offered as an emotional inducement to voters is of no value to the majority of Americans who now want religion out of politics. Young people, meanwhile, are more interested in voting for democratic socialism than worshiping capitalists with Ayn Rand.

Despite its advocates claims of believing in timeless principles, American conservatism is actually a historical anomaly, one made possible by its host countrys geopolitical struggle with the atheistic and communistic Soviet Union. As that struggle fades into the mists of time, so do Republicans electoral victories.

The prudent, and indeed the conservative, approach would be to refashion American conservatism into something decenta Republican Party that would promote efficiency while expanding the social safety net to support families, protect workers from exploitation, reduce immigration by improving life in other countries, and reject religious and racial bigotry while also making some space for people with traditionalist religious views.

In the face of overwhelming evidence that Americans want something different than what theyve been offering, however, the powers-that-be on the right have resorted to gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement to forestall the inevitable.

But now, in addition to facing pressure from the center and the left, conservative elites are now feeling the heat from angry white Christians who have been promised everything for 50 years while receiving very little in return. Nick Fuentes and the Groypers may seem like a social media sideshow now, but in truth, they are only the beginning of a series of troubles that will destroy the Republican Party from within even as its caught within a demographic death spiral.

While the presidents consistent verbal appeals to Christian and white racial grievances was enough to get him the far-rights loyalty in 2016, the serial humiliations of Donald Trump Jr., TPUSA, and their allies demonstrate that the resurgent alt-right wants more and that conservatives disingenuous attempts to portray themselves as free speech absolutists can easily be used against them. David French, a conservative writer and activist who has often been targeted by the alt-right, almost exactly described a year ago what the Groypers are doing today:

Hatred for political correctness has yielded an unhealthy fascination with and admiration for pure defiance. Young voices pride themselves on fearlessness and place attitude over thought in their words and deeds. They troll online and at school to trigger the libs, and nothing triggers the libs more than defiance on matters of race. If the ethos of the defiant Right is never, ever to accede to either a leftist or (what is, arguably, more hated) an establishment or elite conservative critique, then its easy to see how bigots can flourish.

Fuentes has echoed this sentiment in his own way repeatedly, including during the same November 5 episode in which he endorsed a neo-Nazi. In the segment, he vowed to continue embarrassing the conservative establishment, regardless of the impact on Republicans 2020 chances.

Were not asking for anything that is not just and owed to us, he said. Unless and until Charlie Kirk and these others are willing to give us what we deserve, which is a seat at the table in Conservative Inc. or the conservative movement or whatever, they allow us to spread our message in the same marketplace of ideas that they do, then this will continue. And if its a liability then so be it.

Go here to read the rest:
The Conservative Establishment's Nightmare Is Only Just Beginning - Washington Monthly

Most people use the Internet daily for perfectly innocuous purposes. But mainstream Internet users have been increasingly separated by a single click from violent discussion, virulent attacks against particular groups, and a push for social revolt. This is the voice of the Alt-Right, a voice that is becoming louder with the Internet as its ideal breeding ground. In the face of a reality where an everyday tool is also the perfect weapon for hate-mongers to radicalize and recruit new members, how does extremism manifest online, who is most vulnerable to hateful indoctrination, and why is it so easy to radicalize people via the Internet?

The Alt-Right movementis made up of distinct subcultures.Incels areinvoluntarily celibatemales who identify as social and sexual rejects. Theycongregate online in communities where they can express feelings of frustration, depression, and intense isolation. However, amidst the activities of the largely support-oriented and non-radical incel community, a certain unsettling discourse comes into play which revealsarawhatred of both women and sexually-active males. Incel forums are inundated with discussionsabout punishingwomen for denying incels sex, praise for perpetrators of violent attacks with connections to the onlineincel community, andtalkwhich normalize[es] rape and encourage[es] mass shootings.

Whileincels represent one part of the Alt-Right movement, the Alt-Rights ideological and political radicals are neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and white genocideconspiracy theorists. These extremists use the Internet to gather new recruits and stir up hatred and resentment for various social groups. They rail against immigrants, ethnic and racial minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and Jewsas being responsible forunderminingtheir economic and sociopolitical power as white members of society.

Alt-right attitudes begin to bleed into one another, particularly when transmitted to wider audiences on sites that arent specifically designated to radicalism. This is especially apparent on anonymous imageboards such as 4chan, where users can discuss anything from anime and culture to their admiration for mass shooters and disgust for certain parts of the population. 4chan itself is not a political or radical site, rather it is home to countless threads that discuss ideologies and politics with varying levels of normalcy and radicalism. Such sites are used by extremist recruiters as testbeds for informal recruitment. A great deal of alt-right content, including memes, is first born and popularized on anonymous imageboards like 4chan, or travels from alt-right sites to these imageboards, before migrating to more mainstream sites with less charged discourse.

Such imageboards and anonymous-poster sites are particularly problematic because of their gateway contentwith a single click, users on 4chan for example, can be taken from neutral, everyday content, to a thread containing extremist discourse, all on the very same site. Additionally, alt-right threads on these imageboards tend to be full of dark, humorous content, making it easy for recruiters to exploitthe dangerous power of having ones most hateful thoughts validated in the same space, or even by the very same content, that makes them laugh.

With the double-cloak of anonymity and invisibility, is it possible to simply sketch a profile common to most members of the Alt-Right online? Dr. Ghayda Hassan, director of the Canada Practitioners Network for the Prevention of Radicalization and Extremist Violence (CPN-PREV) and a UNESCO co-chair on Prevention of Violence Radicalization and Extremist Violence, has done extensive research on this. She emphasizes that while there is no causal link between exposure to [online radical content] and becoming a violent, radical person, there are clear risk factors which, if present in an individual, suggest a greater vulnerability to radicalization.

Dr. Hassan mentions three [interacting] spheres within the radicalization process. The first sphere involves fears and psycho-social distress in a persons life, ranging from a search for purpose in life to more severe mental issues.Second is the toxic interaction of anger and despairdespair about isolation, loneliness, meaninglessness, or failure,combined with some form of anger and a desire to blame someonefor ones suffering. The third sphere involves contact with external and internal violence; an individual can bepropelled by violent inclinations internally or canbecome desensitized to violence by witnessing external representations of it.The interaction of these three spheres makes an individual more likely to be open to the idea of committing violence themselves, or at least ofpraising violence committed by others.

Radicalization begins with a conversation says Hassan. Individuals who feel isolated and misunderstood often seek connection, community, and brotherhood in the virtual world. Former incels describe the appeal of a communitythat lets users know they arent alone.Even more enticing is the invitation to take part in a heroic struggle: to be remembered and celebrated as a warrior for the noble cause of avenging perceived societal wrongs. Such collective fantasies not only offer a sense of purpose to individuals who lack a sense of meaning in their lives, but also [validate] their manhood. The more an individual despairs about their own life, the more willing they are to follow certain radical threads of conversation in search of understanding and connection. Despair in particular can thus be a potent ingredient in the radicalization process, just as Hassan explains.

Carrie Rentschler, an Associate Professor of Communications Studies at McGill University, studies social movements and media activism, with a particular emphasis on feminism and movements against sexual violence. She explains why the Alt-Rights online representation is so overwhelmingly young, white, and male.

A common trait among many online radicals is a sense that the world owes them something. Many are plagued by a sense of social insecurity, which can foster a sense of toxic despair bound to the reinterpretation of their own perceived failure and rejection as being the direct result of societal restructuring. Theirs is a powerful sense of being undermined by new social discourse that is reshaping and equalizing power structures; alt-right recruiters also manipulate recruits by convincing them that their own suffering is the result of anti-white discrimination.Rentschler explains that since it has historically been white men at the top ofsocial hierarchy, it makes sense that it is also white men who will react the most to a restructuring of society that equalizes and redistributes their power.

As positions of power and privilege once exclusive to white males become increasingly shared by a diverse population, certain disillusioned individuals will react against societal restructuring. These individuals will also seek to blame their own perceived disenfranchisement on the very groups which now benefit from equal recognition and status in society. Rentschler explains how negative experiences, including frustration, rejection, and failure, come to be reinterpreted as the result of societal movements towards equality: economic and employment woes are blamed on immigrants and racial minorities, while sexual and romantic failures areseen as the result ofthepower ofthe feminist movement, for example. Their actions and opinions are justified by a discourse that says we are victims, but are not recognized as such Rentschler states. What can result is a perception of society as unfair and unsympathetic to the needs of certain groups that once enjoyed special powers and privileges.Rentschler goes on to describesubsequent reactive impulses that can arise: the radical impulse to rebel against a society that has been corrupted and the desire to right perceived social wrongs committed against those who once enjoyed the greatest power.

What we appear to observe quasi-universally in those who transition to radicalism is serious vulnerability and insecurity. Despair, rejection, isolation, loss of social advantages, a search for meaning or purpose; all these experiences drive a deep emotional feeling of revolt within a person. As Dr. Hassan outlines, this internal revolt can evolve into the desire for an external one, as vulnerable individuals simultaneouslyseek community with one another, and fuel their resentment of society and desire for reactive action.

It is worthwhile to ask whether shutting down the controversial pre-radical discourse in our daily lives is truly the best way to protect ourselves from extremism. If already-disillusioned people are made to feel even less accepted, even reviled, where can they go but further into the misunderstood brotherhood of extremist reactionaries online?Perhaps, even in the face of hateful vitriol and horrific violence, compassion is the best course of action;acceptingthe individual but rejecting the ideology. Compassion, discussion,and an attempt at mutual understanding these may be the most effective guiding principles for standing up to hate speech and radicalismin our everyday midst.

Featured image red lighted keyboard photo by Taskin Ashiq on Unsplash.

Edited by Hannah Judelson-Kelly.

See the article here:
Unmasking the Alt-Right: the Psychology Behind Online Radicalism - The McGill International Review

SaturdayNov23,2019at12:01AM

Jim Feeney (Letters, Nov. 20) states why he supports Trump. Using the same points, this is why I don't.

Pro-life: Trump is anti-choice, destroys programs that support the health and safety of children and women's right to make their own health choices.

Pro-religion: Using the courts to impose alt-right beliefs on others is in opposition to religious freedom.

Pro-Israel: He supports a government that steals the homes and ancestral land of Palestinians.

Pro-military: He mocks and disparages our heroes and loots the funds allocated by Congress meant to support military families.

Pro-law enforcement: Asylum-seeking immigrants are treated as criminals. Children including babies are kidnapped, caged and lost.

Pro-free-market-capitalism: Pharmaceutical companies are gouging us. Restrictions on pollution are trashing the air, water and oceans for personal profit.

Pro-limited government: He is ridding our agencies of scientists and foreign-service professionals.

Pro-Constitution judges: He promotes questionable candidates that Congress is not allowed to properly vet.

Pro-American: Trump denies our allies, refuses election security legislation, cancels treaties that protect our country, bypasses the separation of powers that keep us safe from tyranny, glorifies tyrants, installs unqualified lobbyists in positions of power and promotes division within our country.

Karen Mahoney, Florence

See the article here:
Pro? You mean anti, right? - Opinion - The Register-Guard

When it comes to shamelessly piggybacking on a major political story and tripping over ones own feet in the process, there is no more accomplished young man in America than Riversides own Jacob Wohl. The 21-year-old serial hoaxer and his fiftysomething partner in slime, lobbyist and conspiracy theorist Jack Burkman, are the Mutt and Jeff of American political sabotagehapless ideological hit men who have disastrously inserted themselves into just about every major scandal of the Trump era. Last year, at the height of the Mueller investigation, they hatched a scheme to discredit the special counsel by claiming that he had raped a woman. The alleged victim admitted that the charge was baseless. Six months later a similar attempt to smear Pete Buttigieg misfired when the college kid who was the supposed target of the mayors alleged amorous advances claimed that Wohl had duped him into making false charges. These setbacks have done nothing to diminish his notoriety. Before he was deplatformed from Twitter in February, Wohl had racked up 186,000 followers. Among his admirers was the president of the United States, who promoted his young acolyte by frequently retweeting him and meeting with him several times.

In September, as the Ukraine scandal engulfed the country, Wohl and Burkman unveiled their latest scheme: a $50,000 reward for information that would help unmask the CIA whistle-blower who reported the presidents phone call. Their bounty offer came a day after Trump suggested the whistle-blower was a spy who should be executed. Five days later the deceitful duo claimed they would reveal the Ukraine whistle-blowers identity at a press conference in the driveway of Burkmans Arlington townhouse. Spoiler alert: They didnt.

In the past, stunts like these attracted hordes of camera crews and reporters, but that production turned out to be a dud. While the conservative Washington Examiner dutifully reprinted every word of their press release, the mainstream media largely ignored it. One noteworthy exception was the news and opinion site Splinter News, which ran a withering post under the headline: Washingtons Biggest Idiots Offer $50K Reward to Expose Whistleblowers Identity.

Undaunted, Wohl and Burkman continued to insinuate themselves into media coverage of the incident. Wohl says he spent two months this past summer in Ukraine, digging up dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and he has promised to reveal his blockbuster findings since September. But a New Jersey Trump supporter, Deelip Mhaske, who claims Wohl burned him in a financial scheme, told me he didnt think Wohl ever stepped foot in the country. He showed me a bizarre video Wohl had sent Mhaske back in July when he was supposedly doing his oppo research. In it Wohl says the local time is almost 3 oclock, when in fact the time in Ukraine was 10 or 11. He might have been somewhere else, Mhaske said, but he wasnt in the location where he was saying.

Wohl is of one of a dozen social-media-savvy fanboys who became right-wing stars by embracing Donald Trump. Their all-consuming desire to own the libs seems to mirror the presidents. But even in this clique Wohl stands out. Fit and handsome in a creepy Patrick Bateman kind of way, he drops names of friends like Donald Trump Jr. and former Fox News chief Bill Shine. His father, David Wohl, is a recurring guest on Fox News and surrogate of the Trump campaign who had daily calls with the reality-TV-star candidate in 2016. This week, David announced the release of a 2020 MAGA calendar featuring boudoir photos of himself; hes selling it for $25 and donating the money to military charities.

Screenshot of @jacobawohl on Instagram

Screenshot of @jacobawohl on Instagram

Jacobs Instagram feed is packed with pics of Wohl clowning around with Trump world cronies such as Corey Lewandowski and Sebastian Gorka. They appear alongside dozens of vaguely porny photos of Wohl showing off his six-pack abs in a mirror or suggestively puffing on long cigars.

But as the 2020 election nears, the future of MAGA influencers like Wohl is uncertain. In the past year Twitter, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley giants finally started to crack down on targeted harassment and misinformation. Young celebrities of the far right are being exiled to lesser platforms such as Telegram and Gab. Wohls friend Milo Yiannopolous is a cautionary tale. After he was banished from Twitter and Facebook, the British journalist, who was once described as the Mick Jagger of the alt-right, could barely get himself arrested. He recently complained that he cant put food on the table because he is banned from major social media. Wohl shared the comments and added: I agree with all of this. But its not just dwindling followers that worry Wohl. He is facing possible prison time on a recent felony charge in Southern California that stems from a three-year-old incident in which his fraud may have led to a mans death. Prosecutors recently concluded what Wohls detractors have argued for years: The presidents biggest fan is a grifter who may land in jail.

In September I reached out to Wohl in an email, telling him I was interested in writing a story on his rise from teenage financial prodigy in Riverside to national media figure and troll for the Trump administration. He responded in 20 minutes. He officially resides in Irvine but frequently turns up in New York, DC, and tony hotels around the world. Despite his jet-setter lifestyle, its unclear how he makes a living. He describes himself as a political and corporate intel consultant. But the website for one of his ill-fated endeavors, Surefire Intelligence, featured photos of station chiefs that turned out to be stock images of people like supermodel Bar Refaeli.

When I finally got Wohl on the phone, he was unflappable and relentlessly on message. He twice mentioned his two-month trip to Ukraine. This was before the whistle-blower complaint was public knowledge, but on fringe sites like 4chan, the fabricated Biden Ukraine problem was already taking shape as Hillarys Emails 2.0. What did Wohl do over there? I asked him. Ukraine? he replied, eagerly. Just doing a little bit of Biden work, he said, looking into some of Bidens dealings over there, of which there were many.

He went on to brag about a range of things, including his supposedly gargantuan shoe size (I wear 15 or 16, depending on the brand), staunch anti-pot position (I think the war on drugs should be stepped up), his carnivore diet (I eat a lot of steak), his encyclopedic knowledge of cigars (My favorite all-time cigar is the Bolivar Libertador 2016 La Casa del Habano edition. Ill text you the correct spelling), and his self-taught fluency in Russian: I would describe my skills in Russian as on the border between conversational and fluent, he said. When I was in Ukraine for two months, I spoke no English.

Wohls detractors have long wondered how he has managed to avoid serious legal consequences despite his questionable practices.

Did Wohl ever visit Ukraine? Like most of his claims, the truth is rather murky. Internet sleuths noted that the pair of Instagram photos he posted of his trip were taken in two cities that are 2,200 miles apart. Oddly, both feature the same backdrop: a patio fence. Wait a sec, wrote r0kkitgirl in reply to one of the photos he had tagged as Minsk, Belarus. This is the same background as the Tel Aviv photo you posted the other day. Where are you? Doesnt matter, Wohl replied.

Two weeks later Wohl was caught in another Instagram lie. This time he had posted a bathroom selfie in front of a shabby-looking shower curtain and tiles and pretended it was from the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner, Virginia. Internet users ridiculed his shamelessness by posting photos of an actual Ritz-Carlton guest room in Tysons Corner, and photoshopping pics of Wohl in front of fictitious backgrounds like The Lord of the Ringss Mordor and the Star Wars Death Star.

Wohls detractors have long wondered how he has managed to avoid serious legal consequences despite his questionable practices. His campaign against Mueller is a case in point. In October 2019, Wohl and Burkman announced with great fanfare that they had found a woman who claimed the special counsel had raped her. But a few hours before the press conference was to begin, the accuser disavowed her accusation and ran off, later claiming that Wohl had catfished her, presenting himself as a Mossad-trained investigator named Matthew Cohen. Mueller referred the case to the FBI.

The accuser in the Buttigieg fiasco, Michigan college student Hunter Kelly, said Wohl planted the false accusation on the internet without his knowledge or consent. Like the Mueller accuser, Kelly skipped out before a planned press conference and quickly repudiated the duos allegations. Wohl insists the restaurant in Michigan where Kellys mother works threatened to fire her if her son didnt recant. I think its very sad that he was bullied out of standing up for himself, Wohl said. Kelly declined to comment for this story.

Since he was booted off Twitter in February, Wohl has allegedly branched out into seedier forms of grift. Two women estranged from perennial South L.A. congressional candidate Omar Navarro, an ally of Wohl, alleged in August that Navarro had hired Wohl to harass them with threatening text messages and death threats. The threats to Navarros ex-girlfriend and a former campaign aide came from a phone number associated with Wohl, the Daily Beast reported. In response to another incident, Deelip Mhaske has accused Wohl of bank fraud. He told federal prosecutors that he paid Wohl $20,000 to get Trump to keynote a conference Mhaske was organizing. Though the appearance never happened, Wohl kept the money.

Until the felony charge was brought against Wohl in September, however, the most serious consequence of his reckless displays of ineptitude was being kicked off Twitter after he admitted earlier this year to USA Today that he was creating fake accounts to influence voters in the 2020 election. (There is also the lifetime ban he earned as a teen from the National Futures Association and an order to cease and desist and pay a $5,000 fine and $32,000 in restitution that was issued by the Arizona Corporation Commission in 2017. He never paid, according to the Arizona Attorney Generals Office.)

That Wohl, like Trump, is Teflon may well have something to do with the fact that his father, David Wohl, is a criminal defense attorney in private practice in Riverside. One of the fathers clients is Laura Loomer, the far-right conspiracy theorist who was busted in February for trespassing on the lawn of the Governors Mansion in Sacramento.

The elder Wohl has had his own problems with the government. He has been the subject of at least a dozen state and federal tax liens in Orange and Riverside counties since 1995, USA Today reported. Though several of the liens were paid, a recent one for $22,002.31 remains active.

Jacob told me a few times he would do stuff, and his dad would always have his back, says Shane Bouvet, a pro-Trump celebrity and one-time friend of the younger Wohl. Bouvet says he blocked Wohl on all social media because he has the complex of a serial killer. He learned a lot from his dad, Bouvet continued. How to write up legal contracts. How to do law language where wording can get you out of trouble. He feels like hes bulletproof.

Wohls alleged crime in Riverside stems from the pre-Trump days of 2015 when Wohl, while still a student at Santiago High School, reinvented himself as a corporate raider he called The Wohl of Wall Street. A handicapped Arizona man who watched Wohl on Fox Business News, where he was portraying himself as the 17-year-old principal of a $500,000 asset fund, liked what he saw and gave Wohl $75,000 to invest. A year later the same man called in a tip to the Riverside County District Attorneys Office that Wohl and a business partner had lost it all. The investor subsequently killed himself. Wohl is awaiting trial on one felony count of unlicensed sale of a security stemming from the case. If convicted, he could be sentenced to three years.

When I ask him about this, Wohl replies that his counsel, by which he means his father, has advised him not to comment. Then he changes the subject to the big things hes working on, though he wont offer specifics. I mean big, as in number-one trending on Twitter in the news, he says. (Three weeks later he made national news when he tried smearing Elizabeth Warren.) It strikes me, not for the first time, that Wohls greatest strength is his ability to keep a straight face.

RELATED: Scientists Are Trying to Figure Out Why People Are OK with Trumps Endless Supply of Lies

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Original post:
Who Is Jacob Wohl? The Right-Wing Political Operative Faces a Felony - LA Magazine