Republican Paul Gosar promoted an antisemitic website that praised him for condemning ‘Jewish warmongers’
Jerod Macdonald-Evoy, Arizona Mirror
April 17, 2023, 6:57 PM ET

Paul Gosar (AFP)

Arizona Republican Congressman Paul Gosar on Sunday promoted an antisemitic website that denies the Holocaust, praises Adolf Hitler as “a man of valor” and features a large number of admittedly false articles.

In Gosar’s weekly newsletter to constituents, he included several links to stories about himself, one of which was titled “Congressman Gosar: Warmongers Nuland & Blinken ‘Are Dangerous Fools Who Can Get Us All Killed,’” referring to the on-going conflict in Ukraine.

But the headline of the actual article was edited by Gosar’s staff to remove obvious antisemitism. The article the congressman linked to was headlined “Congressman: Jewish warmongers Nuland & Blinken ‘Are Dangers Fools Who Can Get Us All Killed,’” and was published by a far-right website well known for publishing antisemitic content that includes Holocaust denialism and conspiracy theories around 9/11.

A review of the authors on the website by the Arizona Mirror found that one is currently promoting a book in which he claims the Holocaust was a “fraud,” and many of the site’s articles spread common antisemitic tropes.

The site is also heavily pro-Kremlin, often republishing articles from the Russian state-run propaganda websites Russia Today and Sputnik. The story shared by Gosar was originally published by Sputnik, but had its headline changed to reflect the antisemitic tone of the site.

Rory McShane, a spokesman for Gosar, said that the congressman uses a “third-party aggregating service” for headlines, and claimed that the website changed the article’s headline on April 17.

That’s the day Media Matters for America published a piece about Gosar’s promotion of the site, and the day the Mirror sought an explanation from Gosar’s camp. The article does not say it was updated on April 17, only that it was published on Feb. 26. McShane did not respond to follow up questions asking how Gosar knew it the headline was changed on April 17.

“We will not be using this website as a reference for any future articles,” McShane told the Mirror. He added that Gosar “is well known as one of the top advocates of the State of Israel and a defender of those of the Jewish faith across the world and has regularly been asked to speak to Jewish advocacy groups like the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.”

But this is not the first time Gosar has promoted content from websites that are connected to white supremacists who traffic in antisemitism.

In 2021, Gosar promoted the work of known white nationalist Vincent James Foxx, who became the unofficial propagandist for a neo-Nazi fight club. Gosar spoke at the same white nationalist conference as Foxx a few years earlier, alongside Holocaust-denier and antisemite Nick Fuentes, the first sitting politician to do so.

That work mentioned the “great replacement theory,” the idea, popular among white supremacists, that white Americans are being replaced by immigrants. It has been seized upon by extremist groups such as the American Identity Movement and Generation Identity.

It has also inspired violence. Fears of immigrants undermining his vision of a white Christian Europe motivated Anders Behring Breivik’s murderous rampage in 2011 at a Norwegian youth summer camp.

In the U.S., the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018 was the deadliest attack against the Jewish community in United States history. Just before it took place, the killer took to right-wing social media site Gab to say he believed that immigrants were being brought in to replace and “kill our people.”

The next year in New Zealand, 51 people would be killed and 40 injured but not before the shooter would post a 74-page manifesto titled “The Great Replacement.”

Again in 2019, in El Paso, Texas, a shooter who would kill 23 in a Walmart would cite the manifesto in one of his own saying it was a response to the “hispanic invasion of Texas.” Then again in 2022 in Buffalo, New York, where a shooter killed 10 people, most of them black.

Gosar has frequently seized on meme culture used by white supremacists and neo-nazis on his Twitter account, including the #DarkMAGA movement, which has roots in accelerationist neo-Nazi meme culture and many memes related to it often express a desire for violence against perceived enemies. In many cases, they are accompanied by neo-Nazi imagery.

Gosar’s staff said they were unaware of #DarkMAGA until it was brought to their attention by the Mirror.

“Congressman Gosar continues to show us exactly who he is and what he stands for. The man has no shame, and remains a stain on Arizona’s political landscape,” Paul Rockower, executive director for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix, said in a statement to the Mirror.

Neither the Arizona Republican Party nor the Mohave County Republican Party responded to questions about Gosar’s promotion of an antisemitic website.

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