You Decide
German-born, South African-raised neo-Nazi billionaire Peter Thiel doesn’t hide the fact that he’s openly gay. The persistent but as yet unsubstantiated rumors that he and Blake Masters— his protégé and former student and now Arizona Senate candidate whose campaign he is financing— were once lovers, is not something either of them cops to… to put it mildly. In fact, they react to it far more dramatically and hysterically, than when they’re accused of being Neo-Nazis. People can watch Masters’ deranged extremist campaign and decide for themselves: Neo-Nazi or just plain Nazi?
Yesterday, the Jewish Insider featured a report by Matthew Kassel, Neo-Nazi publisher Andrew Anglin gives ‘forceful endorsement’ of Blake Masters’ Senate bid. Kassel noted that experts on right-wing terrorism term it a move by the Daily Stormer publisher to exert more influence in a GOP moving further and further right. There are no good Republican candidates in the Arizona GOP Senate primary. They range from hard conservative to… well, whatever you want to decide Masters is, but he has certainly carved out the most fanatically fascist niche for himself… and without even trying. And now that his ex has bribed Trump for an endorsement, he has catapulted into first place.
Thursday, PPP surveyed likely Republican primary voters, the first poll released since Trump endorsed Masters. 53% of the sheeple admit that Trump’s endorsement has made them more likely to vote for Masters. So, he went from 3rd place in previous polls, to a strong first place in the current poll:
Undecided- 41%
Neo-Nazi Blake Masters- 29%
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich- 15%
Random rich guy Jim Lamon- 10%
Second random rich guy Michael McGuire- 5%
Although polling shows incumbent Mark Kelly (D) beating any of the 4 GOP contenders in a general election match, it shows him beating Masters more thoroughly than the other 3. That data, though, is pre-Trump endorsement… and before sugar daddy Thiel deploys his millions to buy his boy the Senate seat in November. (So far Thiel has spent around $7 million bolstering Masters— not counting whatever he paid Trump for the endorsement— and around the same amount attacking the other Republican candidates. He is expected to spend at least $20 million attacking Kelly Masters wins the primary.)
Anyway, back to Kassel’s explosive report for the Jewish Insider. The Daily Stormer is the most authentic and unabashed voice of American Naziism and anti-Semitism and notorious white supremacist Andrew Anglin is the publisher. A decade ago, he wrote “By the Grace of God, I found Adolf Hitler.” And now he’s found Blake Masters, who he enthusiastically endorsed last month. On June 9th he told his Nazi followers: “I cannot give a more forceful endorsement, and I demand that anyone in Arizona (who is not some kind of known neo-Nazi or whatever) get in contact with his campaign and see what kind of help he needs.”
The white nationalist agitator was gleefully responding to a recent viral incident, caught on video, in which Masters violently confronted a 73-year-old Democratic activist and former high school counselor, Peter Jackson, who had appeared at a local GOP event in Arizona’s Pima County wearing an anti-Trump hat and a Black Lives Matter T-shirt. While his ensemble drew the ire of those in attendance, Masters, 35, claims he lunged at the uninvited guest, who refused requests to leave, after seeing him “hit a woman in the jaw”— an allegation Jackson has denied.
In his blog post days after the altercation, Anglin dismissed Jackson as “scum” and noted admiringly that Masters had “moved in to take care of business” when he grabbed the man’s neck and forced him to the ground, according to footage of the confrontation.
“This is exactly the kind of man this country needs,” Anglin said of Masters. (Jewish Insider is not linking directly to Anglin’s posts.)
It is hardly surprising that Anglin, 37, would be inspired by such aggression, even if he spends most of his time behind a computer. The reclusive blogger is known to have orchestrated a series of vicious harassment campaigns against an array of unsuspecting victims, drawing several high-profile lawsuits that threatened to leave him financially crippled. Though he has evaded litigation for years while in hiding, Anglin has struggled to keep his operation online since he helped orchestrate the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., five years ago, as domain registrars have continued to drop the site.
But while his current whereabouts are unknown, Anglin— a rabid antisemite who admires Adolf Hitler, believes “Jews should be exterminated” and once described “a craving to return to an age of violence”— continues to exert whatever influence he can muster as he cranks out a seemingly unending stream of racist and misogynistic incitement.
“Anglin habitually uses The Daily Stormer to celebrate and encourage right-wing political violence,” Luke O’Brien, a journalist who investigates political extremism and has written extensively about Anglin, said in an email exchange with JI on Thursday. “He has a tepid blanket disclaimer on the front page of his site in an attempt to create legal cover for himself.”
The comparatively tame entry in support of Masters, an author and venture capitalist now mounting his first bid for public office, “doesn’t mean much in a traditional sense,” according to O’Brien. “He’s not going to be turning out the vote.”
“But it is notable for other reasons, especially in this context,” O’Brien explained. “Anglin is a bellwether for authoritarianism in America. He also tends to signal what the master plotters in the global anti-democratic movement have in mind to damage democracy.”
The new endorsement isn’t Anglin’s first foray into political advocacy, despite an obvious disdain for the democratic process. The reclusive blogger was an early and outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump, for example, and once expressed admiration for former Rep. Steve King (R-IA) as “basically an open white nationalist,” after the now-disgraced Iowa congresswoman tweeted that “culture and demographics are our destiny.”
But as the GOP has shifted dramatically to the right in recent years, Anglin’s latest announcement represents what may be a more calculated effort to “mainstream his views,” according to Marilyn Mayo, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. By endorsing Masters, she explained, Anglin is attaching himself to a candidate who has openly espoused nativist rhetoric and championed hard-right causes that intersect with his interests.
“Anglin exploits that to make it seem like extremism is being normalized,” Mayo said in an interview with JI. “Unfortunately, that happens to be true these days.”
Michael Edison Hayden, a senior investigative reporter and spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, agreed that Anglin’s motives likely extend from a sense of identification with Masters that he can use to his advantage, even if the feeling isn’t mutual.
“White supremacists like Anglin have long telegraphed their desire to occupy our institutions, and the fastest way to get there is through political campaigns,” Hayden told JI. “He apparently sees an ally in Masters. I’d be very curious to see whether Masters will make any effort to disavow him.”
Masters’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
…Masters is now cementing his status as a frontrunner, even while he has carved out a lane for himself as one of the most extreme Republican candidates in the race, if not the country. Over the past few months, he has drawn scrutiny for a growing number of controversial assertions that often seem tailor-made to stir outrage as he gains prominence on the national stage.
Whether he is openly identifying as a “nationalist” in one of his eerily provocative online ads, falsely declaring that “Trump won in 2020,” denouncing critical race theory as “anti-white racism,” agreeing with an interviewer that campaign finance laws are akin to Kristallnacht or promoting the “great replacement” theory— which he describes as Democratic conspiracy to “change the demographics of this country”— Masters has insisted he is the only candidate willing to embrace such positions with unapologetic disregard for reputational consequences.
Even as his views have evolved dramatically since he abandoned his libertarian roots and turned to Trump’s increasingly popular brand of right-wing populism, Masters— a leading figure in the so-called “national conservative” movement— long appears to have hewed to a defiantly inflammatory argumentative style that has remained consistent for decades.
As far back as 2006, for instance, Masters was offering up a particularly tendentious thesis in an essay for a libertarian website where he referenced a “poignant quotation” from Nazi leader Hermann Goering, cited a noted conspiracy theorist who has been accused of espousing antisemitic tropes and casually suggested that “the U.S. hasn’t been involved in a just war in over 140 years.”
Sounds like a progressive? Believe me, Blake Masters isn't. He uses Bernie Sanders' and AOC's progressive critiques to attract working class Americans to his ugly brand of fascism-- just how the Nazis used socialist analysis to trck German voters in the 1930s.