“Was Hitler Really An Evil Guy?” “Heil Hitler,” Nazis “Did Some Good Things”: Marty O’Donnell’s Discord Server Full of “Slurs and Nazi Talk” [Associated Press]

• “Was Hitler really an evil guy?”
• “Heil Hitler”
• The Nazis “Did Some Good Things.”
• Reacting with nose emojis to posts about Jews, Judaism, and anti-Semitism.
• Multiple slurs for Black people.

REMINDER: Cozying up to anti-Semites and racists is nothing new for O’Donnell. He was under fire last year for hosting a well-known “neo-Nazi influencer” on his podcast.

READ THE NEW BOMBSHELL REPORTING FOR YOURSELF.

The Associated Press: Online forum controlled by Nevada GOP House candidate contains slurs and Nazi talk, AP review finds

• O’Donnell has served as the group’s de facto leader, referring to himself as its “benevolent dictator” while tapping its members for campaign cash and harnessing their enthusiasm in his bid.
• An Associated Press review of thousands of posts made on the forum between 2022 and 2026 found racial slurs, minimizations of Nazi Germany and defenses of white nationalist conspiracy theories.
• “It wasn’t a couple of crazies. The popular sentiment was, ‘Yes, slavery should be legal,’” said Deacon Dameron, a former group member.
• Many views espoused in the forum, which is controlled by O’Donnell and his handpicked moderators, are at odds with some of the values articulated by the candidate and his campaign.
• Others reacted to the post using letter emoji to spell out — incorrectly — a racial slur for Black people. More soon chimed in, using emoji letters to invoke another anti-Black slur.
• His candidate website contains a link to the Discord chat group, which he has also publicized from his account on the social media platform X.
• A user suggested in March 2024 that the Nazis “did some good things” that were “completely overshadowed by the terrible things they did.”
• Another that month asked, “Was Hitler really an evil guy?”
• In February, a third member posted, “Heil Hitler.”
• [O’Donnell] shared a photo of himself wearing what he said was a mask of Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator and key Hitler ally.
• The news site Jewish Insider reported that he hosted Charles Cornish-Dale, a far-right influencer with Nazi sympathies, on his own podcast, “The Marty O’Donnell Show.”
• Users responded to his post with an emoji of an exaggerated nose and “GOY,” a sometimes disparaging Yiddish term for non-Jews.
• Wendy Melillo, an associate professor of journalism at American University who researches extremist chat rooms, said such comments were clearly “coded antisemitic hate speech.”
• Melillo said other posts she reviewed were more explicit.
• “There is nothing coded,” she said, “about ‘Heil Hitler.’”