GAINESBORO, Tenn. (WTVF) — Here, in a small red-brick office building purchased by the developers trying to build a Christian nationalist community in rural Jackson County, two men are also attempting to build a right-wing podcasting business.
As NewsChannel 5 previously revealed, Pastor Andrew Isker and his sidekick C.Jay Engel want to “repeal the 20th Century.” They want to go back to America as it existed before the Civil Rights movement. They want to take away the rights of women to vote. And they are prepared to accept a Protestant dictator to achieve their goals.
FULL STORY: Watch NewsChannel 5 at 6 p.m.
But a recent guest on their Contra Mundum podcast — which they bill as the "Number One Christian Nationalist Podcast in the World” — also highlights their willingness to flirt with ideas that critics call antisemitic and with characters who engage in Holocaust denial.
Isker himself believes Jews should be treated as second-class citizens because, as he puts it, “this country belongs to Jesus.”
“We deny accusations of antisemitism and see them as evidence that there is no actual story here, but merely the obsession of an activist journalist in the midst of Legacy Media’s decline,” Isker and Engel responded in a written statement.
Still, critics say that recent podcast and other public pronouncements by the pair suggest otherwise.
'Jews need to apologize to the world'
"Today, we will be talking about one of the great American heroes of the 20th Century, Charles Lindbergh,” Engel declared at the beginning of a recent show that launched a subscription service for their Contra Mundum podcast.
A part of the America First movement of the 1930s, the famed aviator opposed U.S. entry into Europe's war against Adolf Hitler. Lindbergh faced public backlash after he blamed Jews and what he saw as Jewish-controlled media for pushing the nation into war.
Isker and Engel’s guest defending Lindbergh, American technology entrepreneur Ron Unz, runs a controversial website that publishes often-vile white supremacist and antisemitic screeds, including articles mocking the murder of millions of Jews at the hands of the Nazis.
One article argues that "the Holocaust narrative must be turned on its head."
"Instead of the world apologizing to Jews for not having done enough to prevent the evils of Nazism, Jews need to apologize to the world," the headline continues.
Unz, who has tried to dismiss accusations of antisemitism by arguing that he is a Jew, portrayed his website as an intellectual pursuit.
"We try to provide a convenient venue for views that are excluded, important controversial views that are excluded from the mainstream media,” he told Isker and Engel.
Aryeh Tuchman, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, has been tracking Ron Unz's work for years.
"Ron Unz is an idea man, and unfortunately, the vast majority of his ideas are antisemitic and the vast majority of the people who he platforms share many of those antisemitic ideas," Tuchman said.
The so-called Unz Review routinely republishes pieces from neo-Nazi and white supremacist web sites — such as the Daily Stormer, the Occidental Observer and American Renaissance. Still, those questionable associations did not stop Isker and Engel from holding up Unz as an expert on American and European history.
In fact, near the end of the podcast interview, Isker spoke glowingly of a series of essays authored by Unz that he calls “American Pravda.”
Unz uses those essays to push debunked ideas such as the claim that "per capita Jews were the greatest mass murderers of the 20th Century” and “religious Jews apparently pray to Satan almost as readily as they pray to God."
He even endorses the "notorious Christian superstition" that Jews once "kidnapped small Christian children in order to drain their blood for use in various magic rituals."
Unz has also appeared on Iranian TV to downplay the Holocaust. He has claimed without evidence that Jews killed President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy, and that they orchestrated the Sept. 11 attack on America.
"Essentially, they are promoting him as a source of truth, as a trusted source of opinion about historical issues — and this is the person who has denied the Holocaust and has cast the history of the world as one in which Jewish people are the villains," Tuchman said.
In their statement to NewsChannel 5, the podcasters said: "From time to time we have guests on our podcast that we think will be interesting to our audience. We don't share all their views on every topic."
Tuchman said Isker’s and Engel’s decision to give Unz a platform speaks volumes about them.
" I believe it says quite a bit about the willingness of these people to essentially raise up an antisemite and essentially create an on-ramp for their viewers to engage further with Mr. Unz and his ideas," he continued.
While Isker and Engel pointed to Unz’s claim to be a Jew, Tuchman said: “It's a pathetic and laughable defense that antisemites use when they are called out.”
Jews 'at odds with the Old American way of life'
Still, for Isker and Engel, flirtations with such figures are nothing new.
In 2023, their podcast featured controversial guest Peter Quinones, who views Adolf Hitler as a victim of World War II.
"Up until England started World War II, Hitler, all he wanted to do was be at peace in England,” Quinones told the podcasters.
On his X account, Quinones has predicted that if America "starts to fail completely," it "will be caused by many Jews" who will then "get forced out of the land [they] just destroyed."
Engel himself has argued that "the Jews as a collective have largely operated at odds with the Old American way of life, rooted as it is in European Christendom."
The Jews as a collective have largely operated at odds with the Old American way of life, rooted as it is in European Christendom.
— C.Jay Engel 🌲 (@contramordor) November 9, 2024
In 2023, Engel faced criticism online for liking a meme featuring the words “the more you notice” and the star of David — which critics perceived as an allusion to a common antisemitic notion that one can discover the evil influence of Jews by noticing patterns of behavior by people of Jewish descent.
— Lacey Lynn (@Lacey_LLynn) June 8, 2023
Yes, I liked a meme I found amusing. This is outright hatred.
— C.Jay Engel 🌲 (@contramordor) June 8, 2023
“Yes, I liked a meme I found amusing,” the podcaster responded to a critic on X.
In another exchange, Engel posted "I don't hate the Jews," but added that he had "never even opined on that the debate and the Holo" — apparently, a reference to the Holocaust.
I don’t hate the Jews but okay. I’ve never even opined on that debate and the Holo as a result of being pushed into it by wartime pressures is again pretty standard.
— C.Jay Engel 🌲 (@contramordor) September 10, 2024
Engel has also posted several times on X about starting an audio book company that offers recordings of the memoir of a Belgian Nazi collaborator, as well as books of a New Zealand white supremacist and Holocaust denier.
Three from Antelope Hill now. pic.twitter.com/JrlhW24tZB
— C.Jay Engel 🌲 (@contramordor) February 6, 2024
Contrary to Engel’s own posts, the podcasters insisted in their written statement that Engel does not own or operate that company — “though he did share it on behalf of a friend over a year ago as part of a broader interest in historical content.”
'We've seen this alliance before'
“Unfortunately, whether it's in Nazi Germany, whether it's in 1930s Boston, we have seen this alliance before,” said Bradley Onishi, a religious scholar and author of "Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism – and What Comes Next."
Onishi has examined the work of Isker and Engel as part of a book that he is now writing.
" They're brash, they're audacious and, because of that, they're making a big splash,” said Onishi, who hosts a podcast called “Straight White American Jesus.”
For example, in a recent podcast series with far-right Pastor Joel Webbon, Isker argued that Jews who rejected Christ have no right to claim to be Jews.
“Jews in the biblical sense, right, they do not exist today anymore, right? It's only Christians and non-Christians,” he said.
Isker also suggested that the people who now call themselves Jews are responsible for many of the evils in the world.
“Some groups do worse stuff than other groups,” he continued.
"Yes,” Webbon agreed.
Isker shot back, “It's a fact, right?"
Watch podcast excerpts in player below:
And they argued that Jews should not be treated as full-fledged Americans, rejecting the notion that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian principles.
"To use the phrase Judeo-Christian, you might as well put a co-exist bumper sticker on your car,” Isker said.
"That's right,” Webbon chimed it.
Isker continued, “This country belongs to Jesus."
"Right,” Webbon agreed.
At another part in the discussion, Isker agreed with the suggestion that Jews "get to ride in the car and be treated respectfully in the car, but they don't get to drive."
" It's like having a family, and you have foster children in your family," Isker continued.
"You wouldn't even give your own children the credit card or the family budget, but you're definitely not giving it to the foster — 'here just take the credit card and do whatever you want,'" he argued.
And in a 2023 podcast posted on YouTube, Isker suggested judging Jews based on the worst acts of Jewish individuals, dismissing the contributions Jews have made to American society — although he takes the opposite position about people from his own ethnic background.
Watch podcast excerpts in player below:
In their written statement, Isker and Engel said that “Andrew follows the historical Protestant theological tradition, which holds that Christ is the true Israel and that, like all other peoples, Jews are both called and welcome to the Christian Faith.”
'Historic' Protestant beliefs or 'KKK theology'?
Bradley Onishi had another take on Isker’s theological views.
"Unfortunately, we've seen this theology in the past in this country — and it's KKK theology," he said.
Such attitudes, Onishi said, helped fuel antisemitism and violence against Jewish people in the last century and inspired violent attacks on Jews in more recent times.
"So when I hear Engel and Isker talking about there are no more Jews, and there are no more need for the Jews and Jesus was the last one, I unfortunately hear the echoes of that theology, not only in Christian history, but also in American history," he continued.
NewsChannel 5 noted that Isker and Webbon had argued that their position does not mean that they would abuse Jewish members of society.
"It's hard to say in one breath that we don't want to treat somebody badly and then, in the other breath to say you don't deserve a seat at the table,” Onishi said.
“If I'm setting the table for Christmas dinner and I say to everyone, ‘I don't want to treat anyone here poorly, but you and this group are going to sit with me at the table and we're going to enjoy our dinner — and you and that group are going to go sit on the floor and unfortunately not be able to participate,’ I think that would be considered treating one of those groups pretty badly."
Watch the Bradley Onishi interview in player below:
The ADL’s Ariyeh Tuchman agreed.
"It appears that we are at a moment where it is increasingly socially acceptable to question the right of Jewish people to be full participants in American society,” he said.
And that’s why Tuchman argued that what Isker and Engel are trying to do in Gainesboro should be a wake-up call for the rest of America.
"To the extent that they are doing that, that they are marginalizing, that they are demonizing American Jews is something that we all as a society need to be on the lookout for and push back against."
Below is the full statement from Isker and Engel:
“From time to time, we have guests on our podcast that we think will be interesting to our audience. We don’t share all their views on every topic, and have never engaged topics like the holocaust. We respect the historical insights of Ron Unz, who is Jewish, and was happy to speak to us about the communist infiltration of the FDR administration.
“CJay doesn’t own or operate Based Audio Books. Though he did share it on behalf of a friend over a year ago as part of a broader interest in historical content. Andrew follows the historical Protestant theological tradition which holds that Christ is the true Israel and that, like all other peoples, Jews are both called and welcome to the Christian Faith.
“We find it fascinating that after going through 200+ hours of content you can’t find a single thing calling into question our views on Jewish conspiracy or holocaust denial so you are relegated to desperate tactics like guilt by association. We welcome the audience to look through for themselves and make up their own minds.
“We deny accusations of antisemitism and see them as evidence that there is no actual story here, but merely the obsession of an activist journalist in the midst of Legacy Media’s decline. We will not be intimidated by moral lectures from someone who runs cover for the transgender psychopath who murdered Christian children or supports the team pushing sex transitions on children.”
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Do you have information that would help me with my investigation? Send me your tips: phil.williams@newschannel5.com
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