Beyond the Pale: Andrew Anglin's Newest Case for 'Purity Tests'

The infamous Mike Enoch, founder of The Right Stuff (TRS), a neo-Nazi website and forum second only to Anglin’s Daily Stormer, was identified as Mike Peinovich, a website developer living on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with his allegedly Jewish wife.

“As most of you probably already know, we’ve had a minor crisis in the Alt-Right. As the k--- dox squad continues their rampage, Mike Enoch of The Right Stuff was doxed,” Anglin wrote in a post published yesterday. “And here’s the thing: Jew wife.”

“Wow just wow,” conceded Anglin.

Peinovich has been one of the most influential leaders of the racist “Alt-Right.” He is responsible for creating the Internet meme of putting triple parentheses around Jewish names, a meme that grew from the echo sound effect he used on The Right Stuff whenever Jewish names were mentioned.

The timing of revelation is particularly inconvenient for Anglin, who appeared just a month ago on Peinovich’s podcast to announce the formation of the “First Triumvirate,” tethering his website to Peinovich’s and Richard Spencer’s racist “Alt-Right” journal Radix. During the interview, Peinovich’s worked to bridge the divide between Spencer and Anglin, who feuded publicly prior to the interview. One of the main topics discussed was setting aside old beefs and ceasing character attacks for the good of the movement.

Peinovich’s was just one of the prominent voices from The Right Stuff to be outed: Ghoul was identified as Cooper Ward; Bulbasaur was identified as Van Bryant II; and Seventh Son or Sven was identified as Jesse Craig Dunstan. All three were regular hosts, along with Peinovich, on the popular podcast “The Daily Shoah.” Telephone messages seeking comment were left on Tuesday with Peinovich, Ward, Van Bryant and Dunstan.

The doxings came after a dispute broke out over Red Ice Radio, another neo-Nazi media hub, when a discussion on whether far-right Israeli nationalists sympathetic to white nationalism have a place in the alt right grew tense. The question, which has repeatedly divided the white nationalist movement since the beginning, outraged a cadre of hardcore anti-Semites on the anonymous image board 8chan.

Leadership at TRS defended Red Ice.

“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 on hard on the Jews,” Anglin wrote about the situation.

“I’ve always been pro-practicality, and believed that men should be judged on their works,” he continued. “And Mike’s works were objectively good. 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.”

Of course, Anglin would take this approach as he has his own history of dating outside the white race, including a Filipina woman who he referred to as “jail bait” in a video recorded before he created the Daily Stormer.

“What we are concerning ourselves with here is the “purity test” in relation to purity of personal character, rather than purity of ideology,” wrote Anglin earlier this month in defense of another Alt-Right leader, “Baked Alaska,” who has been accused misrepresenting his past writing for Buzzfeed and supporting Black Lives Matter.

“Purity of ideology is a separate thing, and sometimes it is valid to criticize members of the movement who have a less-than-pure ideology – for instance, people who say, “Jews are white people” can be subject to valid criticism and presumably be dismissed as a negative phenomenon.”

It is an unfortunately apropos choice of example for Anglin to cite, given that Peinovich’s wife has appeared on his virulently racist and anti-Semitic podcasts before, according to Salon. For instance, in 2015 she read a neo-Nazi parody of “The Night Before Christmas.”

Given Anglin’s own dating record, it’s unsurprising that his response to Peinovich’s inconsistencies was soft, even after arguing for months that the Alt Right is inherently anti-Semitic.

“Some people are going to attack him over this and some people are going to defend him and both positions are perfectly understandable. But we can’t let this become some kind of massive trigger issue, as that is exactly what the Jews want,” Anglin said in defense of Peinovich. “We also can’t let it kill TRS. TRS is too big to fail. And no one in that community, that I am aware of, knew about the Jew wife. Surely the whole community doesn’t deserve to be punished for a personal failing of one member.”

In a post over the weekend to the private TRS forum, Peinovich wrote:

Yes my wife is who they say she is. I won’t even bother denying it. I won’t bother making excuses. If this makes you want to leave the movement, or to have nothing to do with TRS, then I understand. … I could try to explain my whole lie for the last ten year [sic] to you, but what difference, at this point would it make. Life isn’t perfect. … I hope that we can continue and that our site and movement can continue. I am just a guy that puts ideas out there on the Internet. I want to save Europe, America and the white race. We are going to continue and not let this thing die. We have been hit hard and we need to not them [sic] do this to us.”

Peinovich then unceremoniously took an indefinite leave of absence from the movement. What that means for the future of the groups like Kyle Bristow’s Foundation for the Marketplace of Ideas, where Peinovich is on the board of directors, is unknown.  

After “Ghoul” was doxed, Ward offered to sell out TRS in exchange for the removal of his personal information. Bulbasaur followed his own doxing by abruptly disappearing from the Internet, leaving only Dunstan standing by his pseudonymous white nationalist positions.

Peinovich is schedule to appear later this month at “The Atlanta Forum – a Southern Nationalist conference of the Alt-Right” under his pseudonym along with white nationalist leaders like Brad Griffin, Michael Cushman, and Sam Dickson.

It might not be too late to change the name on the conference program.