Chutzpah! Anti-Semitic ‘Krazy Kari’ Lake Forms Jewish Voices For Kari

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Background

Before she became the MAGA/QAnon darling candidate for governor, longtime local Fox 10 propagandist Kari Lake mysteriously disappeared from the airwaves, and disappeared down the anti-Semitic QAnon, White Christian Nationalist, Neo-Nazi rabbit hole of the “dark web.” (BTW, this is the same radicalization process by which Muslims have been radicalized into militant Jihadi terrorist groups, see Online Radicalization to Violent Extremism).

In January 2021, The Phoenix New Times reported, Not On TV, Kari Lake Is Active on Site for Right-Wingers, Nazis:

FOX 10 anchor Kari Lake went viral in 2019 for bashing Phoenix New Times to a colleague while defending her affiliation with the far-right Twitter clone Parler. Now, she’s ventured even deeper into the shady ecosystem of far-right social media, joining a social media network known as Gab that’s favored by neo-Nazis and QAnon cultists.

Lake has been off the air since the beginning of the year, but she’s apparently been keeping herself busy at least partially with the site. Since she joined Gab on January 9, she’s shared three links from questionable news sites and drawn more than 700 followers.

“Join me on Gab,” she tweeted after midnight Wednesday evening, along with a screenshot of her profile on the service.

Parler recently went offline after being dropped by its hosting provider for not reigning in threats of violence in the wake of the U.S. Capitol attack. The far-right figures who had moved there in protest of Twitter’s decision to finally boot former President Donald Trump, or after being banned themselves, have in turn dispersed to a number of other sites. Some have landed on Gab.

In addition to following these users to Gab, Lake has also verified her identity on the site and had her account upgraded to “Gab PRO.” Gab advertises “PRO” membership, which starts at $100 for a year membership, as a way to verify your account and get the Gab equivalent of Twitter’s blue checkmark.

[F]or the unfamiliar, Gab was started as a free-speech-absolutist haven for conservatives, but quickly gained a reputation as the social media of choice for white supremacists due to its tolerance of hate speech and calls for genocide. This reputation was only furthered by a string of anti-Semitic posts from the company’s official account on Twitter.

Founder and CEO Andrew Torba practically condoned racism when he described the site’s objective in a Gab post.

[T]he website was dropped by its hosting provider in 2018 after a user with a long history of neo-Nazi posts shared his final message on it before killing 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

An extremist researcher warned at the time that neo-Nazis were using the site for recruitment and to spread their messaging.

“As someone who studies online extremism for a living, it’s hard to overstate how dangerous this flow of vile content is,” wrote SITE Intelligence Group director Rita Katz in a Politico column. “Anyone with an anti-Semitic outlook has their own, safe bubble wherein their hate can fester. Even Gab users who don’t ascribe to anti-Semitic views are naturally more likely to embrace those ideas when surrounded by such material.”

The website has since found a home with hosting provider Epik, which also hosts neo-Nazi messageboard Daily Stormer and Q-Anon home 8Chan.

In recent months, Gab has gained a new userbase in QAnon followers. Not only does the platform tolerate conspiracy theories, it also prompts new users with a list of groups to join that includes a QAnon group and a group related to election conspiracy theories.

Lake’s first post on the site came on January 9, the day Parler went offline after being dropped by its web hosting provider Amazon.

“Hope Gab is more civil than Twitter,” she wrote.

Lake was greeted by a number of fans of hers on the site, a few with QAnon hashtags in their bios.

[E]ven before joining Gab, Lake has danced around far-right conspiracy theories. Ten days after the presidential election in November, she created a Twitter thread about what she called a “sobering interview” by election-conspiracy-theory-pusher Sidney Powell. In the thread, Lake quoted Powell’s wild and unsupportedclaims that the election had been stolen in a scheme connected to Venezuela, Cuba, and China.

This past July, White Christian Nationalist Andrew Torba, the CEO of the far-right social media platform Gab, who said earlier this month that “Jewish people aren’t welcome on Gab — and should be exiled from the conservative movement altogether,” endorsed GQP Secretary of State candidate Rep. Mark Finchem, and state senator Wendy Rogers, including the hashtag #GabCaucus, the name that the Gab CEO has used for the collection of Republicans he supports across the country. Mark Finchem and Wendy Rogers are ‘honored’ to be endorsed by Gab founder, a prominent antisemite.

Do you know who else endorsed the anti-Semitic White Christian Nationalist state senator Wendy Rogers? Her new bestie, “Krazy Kari” Lake, back in June. Gruesome Twosome: Kari Lake Endorses Right-Wing Extremist Wendy Rogers:

Kari Lake can’t resist a right-wing, fringe fanatic for a friend and Wendy Rogers is no exception. Last week, Rogers announced that she’s been endorsed by Kari Lake in her bid to keep embarrassing the state Senate with hateful, bigoted tweets and actions. Rogers is on the fringe of fringe and has made her support of radical, white supremacist ideology clear.

Rogers is an avid Kari Lake supporter, holding multiple events with Lake. When Rogers made headlines after speaking to a white nationalist group in Florida in February, Kari Lake declined to comment, even after the Arizona Senate voted to censure Rogers for her comments supporting white nationalism and calls for violence.

In the past, Rogers said white nationalists are ‘patriots’ and called for hanging political enemies. Just last week, the Arizona Senate Ethics Committee voted to move forward with an investigation into Rogers following her comments that the Buffalo grocery store shooting was a false flag operation. Back in February, s he  said  that her political opponents should face a “newly built set of gallows” while speaking at the America First Political Action Conference, a white nationalist gathering.

“All of this makes Rogers the perfect candidate for Lake to endorse, especially when Lake herself has cozied up with white nationalists and bigots from all walks of life,” said Josselyn Berry, Spokesperson for the Arizona Democratic Party. “No doubt all of this is alarming to everyday, decent people who are looking for a Governor who will represent and stand up for all Arizonans, and not one who proudly endorses the likes of Wendy Rogers.”

Jewish Voices For Kari – Seriously?

The Arizona Republic’s Laurie Roberts recently wrote, Kari Lake has formed a ‘Jewish Voices’ coalition? You can’t make this stuff up:

Fresh off of endorsing [an Oklahoma Republican] – but never quite getting around to publicly renouncing – a gay bashing antisemite who believes that Jews are evidence that “evil exists”, Kari Lake has announced her “Jewish Voices for Kari” coalition.

I’m guessing that’s a coalition that could hold its meetings in a broom closet. [Nah, Just Adam Kwasman’s closet of things for which he needs to atone on Yom Kippur].

“The coalition, which will be chaired by Adam Kwasman, will be rolling out ads in both the Phoenix Jewish News and the Arizona Jewish Post thanking Kari Lake for her support,” the campaign announced.

Rather than thanking Lake for her support, perhaps Lake could use those ads to explain herself and even apologize to the Jewish community. To at long last publicly renounce her comments about Jarrin Jackson, the Oklahoma legislative candidate she heartily endorsed but never quite got around to publicly repudiating once she learned who he really was.

Jarrin Jackson railed against Jews

Jackson is a particularly odious character, a born-again bigot who spews garbage across the internet. He’s written that being gay is “a gateway to pedophilia”, that Jews want to take over the world and that global elites want to erase white people “because of their Christianity.”

“All Jews will go to hell if they don’t believe the gospel of Jesus Christ … just like everybody else,” he wrote in a January post to Telegram.

Yet Lake endorsed him last month, calling him “an America First patriot” who “does so much to advance our America First movement.”

When told a few days later of Jackson’s social media sewage, she had this to say to Axios’ Jeremy Duda.

“If his reported comments are true, I obviously rescind my endorsement.”

But she never really did. Her campaign spokesman assured me a few days later that the above statement amounted to her withdrawing her support.

That’s not exactly a full-throated condemnation of the garbage that spills from the mouth of this Oklahoma “patriot”.

Why hasn’t Kari Lake made her views clear?

It’s puzzling. I’ve never seen Lake shy away from denouncing those things of which she disapproves. She regularly jumps into her home TV studio to rail about whatever she sees as the injustices of the world.

Yet there was only silence from Lake after she presumably did some research on this trash heap of a human being.

Her endorsement – along with endorsements from state Sen. Wendy Rogers and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem – remained on Jackson’s website through Oklahoma’s primary election, which, thankfully, he lost.

Now comes Kari, courting the Jewish vote.

“It’s an honor for our campaign to be supported by so many great leaders in Arizona’s Jewish community,” she said, in a statement announcing her “Jewish Voices” coalition.

Kwasman, the former state legislator and 2014 congressional candidate who is chairing the coalition, criticized journalists whose eyebrows broke through their hairline on this one.

Resnik, by the way, is Jewish. His father fought against the Nazis in the Jewish underground.

Me? I’m not Jewish but my dad fought against the Nazis, too, and I’m pretty sure he’d be flummoxed by Lake’s silence.

Still, I can’t say it any better than the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix, who had this to say upon learning about Lake’s “Jewish Voices’ coalition:

“We have a word for this: chutzpah! We’re still waiting for @KariLake to denounce herself Jackson’s antisemitic words. Her endorsement is still on Jackson’s website. She may not control what he does but she can & should resolve any doubt as 2 where she stands on his hate-filled views.”

By the way, “Krazy Kari” Lake’s fan base in the anti-Semitic QAnon, White Christian Nationalist, Neo-Nazi “dark web” are not happy with her for forming this Jewish group. Chill fascists! You know that she is just pandering and really doesn’t give a damn about Jews, except for how they all either must convert to Christianity or spend eternity in hell when the Rapture arrives. It doesn’t end well for Jews, so you fascists shoud be good with that.





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1 thought on “Chutzpah! Anti-Semitic ‘Krazy Kari’ Lake Forms Jewish Voices For Kari”

  1. Kari Lake’s Jewish Voices Coalition. Those “voices” will be the equivalent of Jewish capos in Nazi concentration camps. Allowed to thrive in those conditions as long as they don’t upset their Fascist masters.

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