Building a Network of Hate #Accelerationism

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[size=1.25em]In August 2014, a band of four then-pseudonymous contributors to the white nationalist blog The Right Stuff (TRS) gathered for what the site’s founder would deem an “experiment”: The onetime racist blog founded by Mike “Enoch” Peinovich had decided to pivot to audio. Over the course of the next hour, the four men lambasted immigrants, libertarian women, and ethnic and racial minorities.

[size=1.25em]TRS dubbed this hour-or-so roundtable, which featured racist banter and commentary on the news, “The Daily Shoah.” The name was an antisemitic riff on the popular news and comedy show “The Daily Show,” though “The Daily Shoah’s” co-hosts saw themselves as following more in the footsteps of the “edgy shock comedy” a la “The Howard Stern Show” or “Opie and Anthony” than Comedy Central’s popular satirical news program. (Later, hosts leaned on this comparison in an effort to pass off their descriptions of, say, torturing Black children with large-gauge IV catheters as detached, irony-drenched humor.) In the end, Peinovich’s self-described “experiment” proved to be a success, and as the listenership of “The Daily Shoah” grew, so did the podcast offerings on TRS’s website. The network advocated for white supremacist ideals in a way that was digestible and appealing to a generation of budding extremists who had grown up either with or alongside the internet.