During the 2016 election, Posobiec was a special projects director of Citizens for Trump, a pro-Trump organization[19] but not an official group.[20] In March 2017, Posobiec resigned from his full-time civilian position at ONI, saying that his support for Trump led to a "toxic work environment". As of August 2017, his
security clearance was suspended[18] and was under review.[21]
Political activities
Posobiec describes himself as a "Republican political operative".[22] During the 2016 election, Posobiec was a special projects director of the political organization Citizens for Trump.[19]Semafor found he was by far the most influential voice with dozens of Republican strategists going into the 2024 campaign season.[23]
He said in 2017 that his work was "reality journalism—part investigative, part activist, part commentary",[24][25] and that "I'm willing to break the fourth wall. I'm willing to walk into an anti-Trump march and start chanting anti-Clinton stuff—to make something happen, and then cover what happens."[17]Will Sommer, then an editor at The Hill, said in 2017 that Posobiec "make[s] stuff up, relentlessly", and that "there's no one at that level."[26]
On June 16, 2017, Posobiec disrupted a
Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar that depicted the title character as a Trump-like figure. Posobiec was prompted by
Mike Cernovich, another alt-right conspiracy theorist, who had offered a $1,000 prize for anyone who interrupted a performance.[27] "You are all Goebbels, you are all Nazis like Joseph Goebbels", he shouted at the audience in a video he posted on Twitter.[18] Posobiec was escorted from the event along with another protester,
Laura Loomer, who was arrested for
disorderly conduct after refusing to leave the stage.[22]
Posobiec organized a "Rally Against Political Violence" in
Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2017, to condemn the
shooting of Steve Scalise.
Richard Spencer, another alt-right figure who organized a separate, competing rally at the same time, ridiculed Posobiec's event and called it "pathetic".[31] In November 2017, Posobiec encouraged his Twitter followers to target a woman at her workplace after she came forward with
allegations that Alabama Senate candidate
Roy Moore had attempted to have sex with her when she was 14 years old.[32][citation needed] In
Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district special election in March 2018, Posobiec supported Democrat
Conor Lamb over Republican
Rick Saccone. Posobiec described Lamb as a "Pro-Trump Dem veteran".[33]
Posobiec's social media and political activities are linked to neo-Nazi and
white supremacist movements. He has published multiple posts containing the white supremacist code "1488", or the
Fourteen Words, and supports the use of the slogan.[9][10][34][35] The 88 stands for HH, or Heil
Hitler.[36][37] In October 2016, Posobiec posted a
tweet that included
triple parentheses, an
antisemitic symbol.[8] In response to a 2017
Anti-Defamation League report on the alt-right, which included Posobiec, he tweeted a selfie of his visit to the
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial in Poland: "The @ADL_National would be wise to remember what happened the last time people made lists of undesirables".[34]
In August 2017, following the
2017 Unite the Right rally in
Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to violent clashes between
white nationalists and anti-protesters, Posobiec said that the rally had become "massive propaganda" for the left and that the mainstream media was "fanning the flames of this violence." He said that Trump should have disavowed
Black Lives Matter. Posobiec later tweeted that he had consistently disavowed
white nationalism and violence.[22] He also tweeted that he was "done with trolling" and that it was "time to do the right thing." Posobiec has frequently tweeted about the white supremacist
white genocide conspiracy theory.[7][38]
In June 2020, in Washington, D.C.'s
Lincoln Park, Posobiec was shoved and chased for several minutes by a dozen
protesters at the
Emancipation Memorial. The protesters called Posobiec, who was filming speakers, a Nazi and forced him from the park. Police arrived in a van and, after trying to quell the fracas, helped Posobiec into the van before driving away. Posobiec tweeted later that he was "totally fine" but "filing an assault report with DC police".[39][40]
On February 22, 2024, Posobiec, speaking at the
Conservative Political Action Conference, welcomed the "end of democracy," before adding that "we are here to overthrow it completely." Praising the
January 6 United States Capitol attack, he then endeavored to "get rid of it and replace it with this right here”—holding his fist in the air. Clips of his remarks were widely shared on social media.[42]
Media work
Between September 2016 and March 2017, Posobiec described himself as having previously worked for
CBS News in his Twitter profile. CBS News told the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2020 that he had never worked for them.[35]
Between early April and May 2017, Posobiec was employed by Rebel News, a
far-right[50] Canada-based website, as its Washington bureau chief,[19] and was granted press access to the
White House in April 2017. According to
Philadelphia magazine, Posobiec "seem[ed] to have been charged in the press briefing room with haranguing legitimate journalists and running out the clock on press conferences with inane softball questions and
Dear Leader obsequiousness" during his short time in the White House press pool.[51]
In May 2017, Posobiec hired neo-Nazi brothers Jeffrey and Edward Clark to help create a documentary about the
murder of Seth Rich for Rebel News. Jeffrey Clark was arrested by the FBI on gun charges after saying that the Jewish victims of the October 2018
Pittsburgh synagogue shooting "deserved exactly what happened to them and so much worse".[52] Posobiec later said that he had never heard of Jeffrey Clark and had never made a documentary about Seth Rich, even though HuffPost published photographs of Posobiec and the Clarks working together.[53][54] He left Rebel News after allegedly
plagiarizing a video script from white supremacist
Jason Kessler.[55][56]
From 2018 to 2021,
One America News Network (OANN), a far-right cable news television channel, employed Posobiec as a political correspondent and on-air presenter.[13] In September 2018, he presented the pro-Hitler online poster known as Microchip on the network without indicating that person's affiliations, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC said the two men had worked together in spreading disinformation for several years, including the false claims propagated in Pizzagate.[57]
Posobiec left OANN in May 2021 to begin hosting a show for the conservative student organization
Turning Point USA, and to join Human Events as a senior editor.[13]
Conspiracy theories, falsehoods, and unsubstantiated claims
Posobiec has promoted many falsehoods,[26] leading to Philadelphia calling him the "King of Fake News" in 2017.[15] He was one of the most prominent promoters on
social media of the
Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed that high-ranking officials were involved in a
child-sex ring centered at a Washington, D.C., pizzeria.[15][11] He
live-streamed an investigation of the pizzeria and was asked to leave after attempting to broadcast a child's birthday party being held in a back room.[58] Posobiec later said he had always thought the Pizzagate theory was "stupid" and had filmed his visit to debunk it.[15]
Posobiec attempted to discredit
anti-Trump protesters in November 2016 by planting a sign at a protest reading "Rape Melania".[59][60][61] Posobiec denied his involvement to BuzzFeed News, but the same phone number was used in his contact with the website and the text messages he reportedly sent.[62] He said he had been questioned about it by the
Secret Service.[15] Posobiec organized the
DeploraBall, an event held on January 19, 2017, to celebrate
Trump's inauguration.[63]
In December 2016, Posobiec claimed without evidence that
Disney had re-written scenes in the Star Wars movie Rogue One to add "Anti Trump scenes calling him a racist", and called for a boycott of the Star Wars franchise. Disney denied the allegations.[64]
Posobiec falsely said that former FBI director
James Comey, at a
United States Senate hearing on May 17, 2017, "said under oath that Trump did not ask him to halt any investigation". The claim was later repeated by conservative personalities and media outlets, including
Fox News,
Rush Limbaugh and the InfoWars website.[25] Posobiec promoted the discredited conspiracy theory that
Seth Rich had leaked e-mails from the
Democratic National Committee to
WikiLeaks.[19] Posobiec promoted a hoax that
CNN had published and then deleted an article defending
Bill Maher's use of a
racial slur.[65]
In June 2017, shortly after Republican congressman
Steve Scalise was
shot and injured during a baseball practice, along with four others, Posobiec tweeted that it was a terrorist attack and blamed comments from liberal anti-Trump individuals. Later, he falsely tweeted that former United States Attorney General
Loretta Lynch had called for "blood in the streets" the previous March[66] and that
Bernie Sanders had ordered his followers to "take down" Trump.[67]
In June 2020, during the
protests against racism and police brutality in the wake of the
murder of
George Floyd, Posobiec falsely claimed that there were
pipe bombs planted at the
Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and that "federal assets [were] in pursuit". There were no pipe bombs nor was there any evidence that any "federal assets" investigated. The claim was, however picked up by The Gateway Pundit and retweeted by over 29,000 users on Twitter.[70]
In April 2021, the SPLC reported that between November 2019 and August 2020, Posobiec had tweeted 28 links to SouthFront, a website linked to Russian intelligence. In return, SouthFront promoted Posobiec as well, and cited his tweets in their posts.[71]
In February 2023, Posobiec tweeted a
deepfake video depicting
President Joe Biden announcing a military draft in response to a purported national security crisis. Posobiec tweeted false Biden quotes from the fake video, before calling it "a sneak preview of things to come". He later appeared in the video to acknowledge it was a "precreation...of what could happen."[72]
Personal life
From 2012 to 2016, Posobiec ran a blog and podcast about Game of Thrones called AngryGoTFan.[14] In November 2017, Posobiec married a social media influencer born in Belarus.[73][74] He told BuzzFeed News that he met his wife in 2015.[75] He is
Catholic.[76]
Published works
The Antifa: Stories from Inside the Black Bloc (Calamo Press, 2021)
ISBN9780999705971[77]
4D Warfare: A Doctrine for a New Generation of Politics (Castalia House, 2018)
ISBN9789527065655[78]
Citizens for Trump: The Inside Story of the People's Movement to Take Back America (2017)
ISBN9781546936534[79]
Bhatt, Chetan (June 23, 2020).
"White Extinction: Metaphysical Elements of Contemporary Western Fascism". Theory, Culture & Society. 38 (1).
SAGE: 31.
doi:10.1177/0263276420925523.
ISSN0263-2764. The vast ecology of online white supremacist personalities, both 'alt-right' and 'alt-lite', include Mike Cernovich, Christopher Cantwell, Gavin MacInnes, Paul Joseph Watson, Jack Posobiec, Tara McCarthy, Colin Liddell, Brittany Pettibone, Lauren Southern, Andrew Anglin, Lana Lokteff, Ayla Stewart, Kyle Prescott, Faith Goldy, Jason Kessler, Kyle Chapman, Colton Merwin, 'Vox Day', and Mike Peinovich, among numerous others.
Hawley, George (November 7, 2018).
The Alt-Right: What Everyone Needs to Know®.
Oxford University Press. p. 195.
ISBN978-0-19-090522-4 – via
Google Books. Aside from McInnes, The Rebel has employed several other figures whose views may be described as Alt-Right or Alt-Lite, including Lauren Southern, conspiracy theorist and pro-Trump political activist Jack Posobiec, and far-right Canadian political commentator Faith Goldy.
^Posobiec, Jack (2018). 4D warfare: a doctrine for a new generation of politics. Kouvola, Finland: Castalia House.
ISBN9789527065655.
^Posobiec, Jack (2017). Citizens for Trump: the inside story of the people's movement to take back America. United States: CreateSpace.
ISBN9781546936534.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jack Posobiec.