For some time, the religious right has insisted that all it wants is a place for social conservatives at the table. But all too often, when they don’t think the cameras are rolling, they reveal their real goal—they don’ t just want a place at the table, they want to shove everyone else out.
The latest example of this came from Andrew Torba, the founder, CEO, and impresario of Gab, one of the earliest deplorable alternatives to Twitter. Torba, for those who don’t know, envisioned Gab as a platform where free speech would reign supreme. What he has actually served up is a platform that caters to some of the worst people in the world—racists, anti-Semites, white nationalists, QNuts, etc.
Gab recently made headlines when it emerged that Pennsylvania’s cartoonishly extreme Republican candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, paid Gab $5,000 for what he described as “campaign consulting.” As it turns out, what he really bought was new followers on Gab; every new Gab user’s profile is set by default to follow Mastriano’s profile. Apparently Mastriano didn’t seem to mind that the gunman in the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh—the worst anti-Semitic attack on this nation’s shores, ever—was a prolific Gab user.
The fact that Mastriano chose to associate with a platform that traffics in such bile would be reason enough by itself to make him unfit to be governor, even without his open and unashamed promotion of the Big Lie. But Torba was kind enough to provide another. In his world, there is no place for Jews in the conservative movement.
On July 15, the Democratic standardbearer, state attorney general Josh Shapiro, sat down with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace and unloaded on Mastriano for crawling into bed with Gab.
In response, Torba used one of his frequent Gab livestreams to go mask off. Right Wing Watch got a clip.
Torba claimed that he and Mastriano were helping lead “a Christian movement.” In his view, that movement had no room for promoters of “pseudoconservatism” and “Big Tent nonsense” like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Dave Rubin, since “they’re not Christian” and “don’t share our values.”
Just in case Torba hadn’t made himself clear, he took to Gab again and declared that people like Shapiro were more than welcome to have a voice in the conservative movement—if they renounced their Jewish faith.
This isn’t just an anti-Semitic dog whistle. This is an anti-Semitic yacht horn.
Looking into Torba’s history, this is actually pretty mild for him. Last October, he used Gab’s official Twitter account to rant about the need to create a “parallel Christian society” rather than stay in a “Judeo-Bolshevik one”—recycling one of the Nazis’ favorite anti-Semitic smears. He then claimed that those who criticized him were just mad at him for sharing “Biblical truth.”
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the man whom the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania sees fit to use as a spokesman. If there wasn’t already enough evidence that Mastriano was not fit for office, here’s more.
Unless I missed something, there have been crickets so far from Mastriano himself. However, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is trying to prod him; in a recent editorial, the Post-Gazette called Mastriano’s relationship with Torba “heinous,” especially since Mastriano almost certainly knows that posting on Gab will trigger “anti-Semitic backlash” against Shapiro. But if Mastriano had even an iota of decency, he would throw Torba and Gab overboard—or get the hell out of the governor’s race and the state senate. Indeed, in a more civilized political environment like Canada, the UK, or Australia, he wouldn’t have a choice in the matter.