(C) Arizona Mirror
This story was originally published by Arizona Mirror and is unaltered.
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Ex-Gosar staffers have voiced racism, antisemitism and homophobia on social media [1]
['Jerod Macdonald-Evoy', 'More From Author', '- January']
Date: 2024-01-05
Two staffers that worked previously for Arizona Republican Congressman Paul Gosar in his congressional office since 2021 have expressed deeply racist, homophobic and antisemitic beliefs.
The two that the Arizona Mirror confirmed, Alexander Katsnelson and Samuel King, were hired as interns in Gosar’s D.C. office. A third staffer, Wade Searle, a high-ranking member of Nick Fuentes’ inner circle, was revealed in 2023 by Talking Points Memo. This story contains descriptions of images and phrases of a racially charged nature, as do some of the links.
None of the three currently work for Gosar.
Gosar’s congressional office did not respond to a request for comment or answer questions about the congressman’s knowledge of the employee’s beliefs, but his campaign sent a statement condemning the views expressed by the two former interns.
“Congressman Gosar has the longest and most thorough record of support for Israel and the Jewish people in the House, since 2011 and has been honored by several Jewish-American organizations for such,” the Gosar campaign said in a statement to the Mirror. “He condemns antisemitism, racism, and homophobia in all its forms, whether it is from Rashida Tlaib or an intern. None of these interns work for the Congressman and they are responsible for their own statements.”
The Mirror requested interviews with Katsnelson, King and Searle, but none of them responded.
In August, Searle was photographed alongside King outside of former President Donald Trump’s arraignment, where they reportedly claimed to be part of Trump’s legal team.
King interned for Gosar in May and June 2023. King used his account on X, formerly Twitter, to voice his support for white nationalist leader Fuentes and air deeply misogynistic, racist, antisemitic and homophobic beliefs. King also called the events of Jan. 6, 2021, the “best day ever.”
King has since made his X account private, though many of his posts were archived and can still be viewed.
Katsnelson worked with Gosar as an intern for two stints between September 2021 and June 2022. After that, he was hired on as a “temporary employee” until August 2022.
Posts on X by an account previously named “RepGosarCreator” included memes and images created for Gosar that the congressman would later post on his social media, including the infamous anime video depicting Gosar killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which led to Gosar being formally censured.
“Big things tomorrow,” the account posted the day before Gosar posted the edited anime clip on his own social media account.
Although the account does not explicitly say it is Katnelson, its author on multiple occasions said it was the intern responsible for the video. It’s posts align with Katsnelson’s employment history with Gosar.
The account went dormant between April 2022 and September 2023, when it reemerged with a new name and handle including an acronym that is widely seen as a slur encouraging violence against Black people.
The Mirror used a program that provides historical screen names from X to confirm that the @RepGosarCreator and the account that began posting two months ago share the same unique user ID.
Since resuming posting, the account has posted a litany of offensive content aimed at minorities, Jewish people, women and others. Some of the posts include graphic photos of lynchings with the acronym in its name accompanying it. The account operator also continued to speak about its love for Attack on Titan, the source material for Gosar’s infamous tweet, and other anime.
Shortly after the Mirror reached out to Katsnelson and people close to him, the account went private and changed its name again. This time it changed its name to the address of a property that purportedly belongs to Fuentes.
Neither Katsnelson nor King works for Gosar currently. Searle stopped working for Gosar shortly after the TPM story was published in May. Requests sent to the three men for comments went unanswered.
Critics denounced the hirings.
“It is sickening, but not surprising,” Chuck Tanner, research director for Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, said.
Critics of Gosar, including those in the Jewish community, say that the Republican lawmaker deserves to be under a stronger microscope given the continued connections he has had with extremists.
“We called for investigations from Congress (after TPM’s report on Wade Searle), and it seems like nothing was done,” Paul Rockower, executive director for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix, told the Mirror. “We continue to call on Congress to investigate this matter fully, because we don’t know what we don’t know.”
When Searle was exposed by TPM, Jewish Democratic members of Congress called on then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy to censure Gosar. Nothing became of those calls. McCarthy has since been ousted as speaker and replaced by Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson.
Moving further to the right
The Mirror examined the timeline of the account believed to belong to Katsnelson and archived tweets by King.
Though both of the former interns have been closely affiliated with Fuentes in the past, Katsnelson eventually moved away from the controversial figure, according to posts on the account tied to him.
That break happened because the account moved further into neo-Nazism and found Fuentes’ allyship with a Black rapper and some gay conservative provocateurs distasteful.
The account replied to another user who had been posting about Fuentes’ connections to prominent political figures on the right and how the controversy with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kayne West, had a negative impact.
“As someone who was in the periphery of that whole mess, this is inaccurate,” the account said. The author characterized Fuentes’ influence in Republican politics as a “farce,” and said he was “too lazy and too mexican (sic) to maintain” any of his political allies. The account also used racist language to describe Ye, who is Black.
Gosar, who was the first sitting politician to attend Fuentes’ annual America First Political Action Conference, has in recent years moved away from Fuentes, saying he has a “problem with his mouth.” Fuentes has similarly distanced himself from Gosar in recent months, and strongly denounced the Congressman after he voted to retain McCarthy as House speaker, a move that angered Fuentes.
More than a year after Katsnelson ended his time in Gosar’s office, the account began posting under its new, racist moniker. Posting photos of Hitler, calling Black people “vile homunculi” and posted memes advocating for the killing of Blacks and Jews.
But before the account was ever created and before Katsnelson worked with Gosar, he was attending rallies alongside Fuentes.
In December 2020, Fuentes held a #StopTheSteal rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Katsnelson can be seen holding a Fuentes “America First” flag in a livestream by white nationalist and former Fuentes ally Anthime Gionet.
Katsnelson could be seen alongside Fuentes at a rally a year later in New York City, where Fuentes and his supporters were protesting Pfizer and COVID-19 vaccine mandates. King was also in attendance, according to photos of the protest.
Fuentes shared a photo on his Telegram account that showed Katsnelson with a man named Joseph Brody, who worked for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s campaign and pushed a U.S. Capitol Police officer over with a barricade on Jan. 6.
Fuentes did not respond to requests for comment about his connection with the two men and if he was in communication with them while they worked for Gosar.
Katsnelson and King were openly part of a larger movement, of which Fuentes is a prominent leader, known as “groypers” that aim to move conservative politics further to the right. Their goals broadly include normalizing racist and extremist views by aligning them with Christianity and so-called “traditional” values.
Groyper started off as a meme, a fatter and more grotesque iteration of Pepe the Frog, the cartoon that became something of a mascot for the alt-right as it began to coalesce into a political movement.
In 2019, groypers heckled Donald Trump Jr. at an event in California and asked antisemtic and racist questions at other events. They also disrupted multiple Turning Point USA events, and targeting the Arizona-based group was a main priority of Fuentes.
Another large goal of Fuentes and the movement is to cozy up to politicians in order to push their agenda.
A digital footprint
The Mirror examined the digital footprints left by both Katsnelson and King in order to gain a better understanding of their beliefs.
King’s account on X, which shares the same handle as his Instagram account, has been made private. However, many of his tweets were archived, and the Mirror reviewed the roughly 305 archived posts.
Those archived posts reveal deeply misogynistic, racist, antisemitic, homophobic and transphobic views.
“Women unironically shouldnt (sic) have rights,” one post said, echoing other sentiments he shared that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
Like Fuentes and other far-right influencers, King voiced support for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and wrote in one post that he was celebrating “Putin slaughtering every Ukrainian.”
He also made posts glorifying the events of Jan. 6.
“Jan 6, was a great day in American history,” King wrote. “[T]he climax of Trump’s revolution.”
Accompanying the post were images of chaos from the day, including a photo of the infamous gallows built just outside the Capitol during the riots.
“If they do cheat out the conservative candidate again though things will drastically escalate,” King said in a March 2022 post. “2024 is going to be the definitive answer on if we’re gonna have to do this the ‘easy way’ or the ‘hard way.’”
King also made racist posts, such as using racial epithets and claiming that slavery was not “oppression.” He also claimed that the Civil War was not worth fighting to end slavery.
The account associated with Katsnelson routinely praises Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, and regularly uses other neo-Nazi imagery.
“This is my 88th xeet, Heil Hitler,” the account said, using a portmanteau to describe posting on X. The number 88 holds significance for neo-Nazis: The eighth letter of the alphabet is H, and it is used as shorthand for “Heil Hitler.”
The account also posted unabashedly racist content.
“Absolutely not, it’s all or nothing,” the account replied to a user who posted a meme saying that only some Black people need to die. The account shared a picture of the lynching of George Meadows, who was murdered by white vigilantes after being accused of raping a white woman in Alabama in 1889. A day after Meadows was lynched, the sheriff proclaimed that Meadows was not the suspect.
That post was one of several that the account deleted after the Mirror contacted Katsnelson and his parents. The account also deleted a tweet claiming to have spoken to neo-Nazi Richard Spencer.
“So Richard Spencer told me that the guy on the DeSantis campaign who stole my sonnerand edit is actually Jewish?” the post said, quote tweeting his own post of the “Gosar Grindset” video that uses a meme format favored by neo-Nazis and was quickly deleted by Gosar after it was posted.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign came under fire earlier this year after a staffer retweeted a video with Nazi imagery that followed a similar format to the Gosar video.
After the Mirror attempted to interview Katsnelson, the account also deleted another anime video of Gosar that the account said was “incomplete due to a hardware failure.”
That video, which was saved by the Mirror, showed Gosar as the main character in the anime show “Death Note.” In the anime, the protagonist receives a book that allows him to kill anyone who’s name is written in the book. The video depicts Gosar writing names in the book and people like Ocasio-Cortez, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer and U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi dying.
Both men have also claimed to be members of the incel community.
Incels are part of a subculture of men that stands for “involuntarily celibate” and hold deeply misogynistic beliefs. Incels have been responsible for a number of violent attacks, including the 2014 Isla Vista shootings, which resulted in the murder of seven people. The movement has been responsible for numerous deaths.
In 2020, an incel committed a mass shooting at the Westgate shopping center in Glendale, injuring three people.
“Yeah I’m an incel, keep crying,” the account believed to be tied to Katsnelson said when responding to someone stating that the anime video had to have been created by an incel.
Similarly, King shared that he was an incel in an April 2022 post when asking a fellow groyper if he had ever kissed anyone.
“[B]etter not have happened,” King said to the other user.
“I was a simp when I was younger ok, I’m an incel now,” the user responded back.
It is unclear if King still holds these beliefs, as his profile on X is now private and King did not respond to repeated requests for comment. It is also unclear if King remains a supporter of Fuentes.
A stone’s throw away
Tanner, with IREHR, said he was not entirely surprised to learn of Gosar’s further connections to the far-right, adding that it is indicative of a broader phenomenon within the GOP and the United States.
The phenomenon, which Tanner called “Middle American Nationalism,” is that a large bloc of the population sees themselves as being caught between “the global elites and people of color.”
These beliefs are leading to rises in antisemitism and racism, as online influencers are taking advantage of conspiracy theories and public distrust to push these narratives, Tanner said.
And, he said, Gosar has long been associated with the white nationalist right, even if his rhetoric has remained “a stone’s throw” from explicit racism and neo-Nazi talking points.
For instance, Gosar has pushed the racist “Great Replacement” theory that claims whites are being eradicated by global elites using mass immigration. The elites who usually end up the target of the conspiracy theory are often Jewish. The theory has been the driving force behind multiple mass shootings.
Tanner said that, with the election of Johnson as speaker of the House, the problem doesn’t appear to be going away. Johnson has been tied to far-right Christian groups and has flown the Christian Nationalist “Appeal to Heaven” flag outside of his office.
“Congressman Gosar has increasingly positioned himself as a de facto representative of America’s white nationalist movement,” Stephen Piggot, program director at the Western States Center, said in a statement to the Mirror. “Gosar has continually surrounded himself with and provided a platform to white nationalists, and this latest example of his ties to Katsnelson and King should come as no surprise. The question we must ask is: ‘How much longer will Gosar continue to engage in this type of behavior before his peers in Congress hold him accountable?’”
Tanner echoed Piggot’s statements as well, however, he doesn’t see GOP leadership addressing the issue any time soon.
“For a sitting U.S. representative to be anywhere near that is really despicable,” Tanner said. “It is going to take a lot of work to dislodge this stuff from our institutions.”
Haley Orion contributed to this report.
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