White Noise

Purged from social media,white nationalists are finding a last refuge in podcasting. And Mike Peinovich has the hottest mic

- Michael Edison Hayden

IT WAS AUGUST 2017, AND WHITE nationalist shock jock Mike Peinovich was firing up his audience on The Daily Shoah, the signature podcast of an “alt-right” network that attracts tens of thousands of listeners a week. Many of them were preparing for the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Counter protesters, however, were promising to disrupt the event in Emancipation Park, where city officials planned to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Peinovich told his audience to come prepared for a fight. “Bring whatever you need, that you feel you need for your self-defense,” he intoned. “We don’t want them to have the impression that we are going to be showing up there unarmed.… That is not the case.”

Some of his listeners apparently got the message. Soon after, members of the Ku Klux Klan and droves of younger, more internet-savvy white nationalists arrived with guns, clubs and Plexiglas shields. Fights broke out, and men and women were attacked with blunt objects. A 20-year-old man who had marched with a neo-Nazi group drove his car into a crowd of counter protesters, injuring 19 people and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. (The driver is charged with first-degree murder.) The story became international news.