Mike Cernovich is the sort of person that makes you question whether the internet is a good idea. An outspoken promoter of the false claim that a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. was a front for a pedophile ring involving Hillary Clinton, Cernovich offers men advice like “misogyny gets you laid” and “the hotter the sex, the more closely it resembles rape.”
Cernovich once wrote that the only reason slain African-American teenager Trayvon Martin didn’t rape anyone was because he was killed first. He wrote that “a woman over 40 is indistinguishable from a tranny.” He seems to enjoy finding excuses to use a racial slur beginning with the letter “n” on Twitter.
And, Mr. Cernovich has a new, very high-profile ally: Josh Mandel.
Sad to see @ADL_National become a partisan witchhunt group targeting people for political beliefs. I stand with @Cernovich & @JackPosobiec https://t.co/N3nC78t4CS
— Josh Mandel (@JoshMandelOhio) July 20, 2017
Mandel was the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat held by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) in 2012. He’s Ohio’s state treasurer, and he’s currently running to face Brown again in 2018.
The Republican candidate decided to cast his lot with Cernovich after the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, named Cernovich as a member of the “alt lite,” a “loosely connected movement of right-wing activists who reject the overtly white supremacist ideology of the alt right, but whose hateful impact is more significant than their ‘lite’ name suggests.”
Cernovich responded to the ADL with a blog post accusing them of putting him on a “hit list” of people “they want their useful idiots to murder.” After Cernovich tweeted out the link to this blog post, Mandel retweeted it and announced his decision to “stand with” Cernovich.
Mandel did not say whether he also agrees with Cernovich that “date rape does not exist,” that men who care about breast cancer and rape are “fags,” or that “if you love black women, slut shame them.”
As recently as last April, the National Review published a piece arguing that Cernovich should be treated as a pariah. “The testosterone-obsessed conspiracist,” Ian Tuttle wrote for the venerable conservative magazine, “makes an unsavory social-media warrior for the White House.”
Nevertheless, Mandel does have some allies within the GOP who agree that Cernovich should be embraced. Allies like the president’s son.
Congrats to @Cernovich for breaking the #SusanRice story. In a long gone time of unbiased journalism he'd win the Pulitzer, but not today!
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 4, 2017