Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

A former deputy editor for The Daily Caller severed ties with the conservative news site in light of the revelation that he had also written for a white supremacist website under a pseudonym, The Atlantic’s Rosie Gray reported Wednesday. Scott Greer, who stepped down from his editorial role earlier this year to write a book, said he would no longer contribute to the Caller after Gray presented him with evidence he had been “writing as ‘Michael McGregor’ for Radix, the online publication founded by the ‘alt-right’ leader Richard Spencer, who wants to turn America into a white ethno-state.”

The difference between Greer’s writing under his own name and at Radix appears to be one of degree, not of kind. At the Caller, Greer had defended the Confederate battle flag and referenced other white nationalist tropes, the Southern Policy Law Center reported last year in a piece documenting Greer’s ties to white nationalists. And his book No Campus for White Men: The Transformation of Higher Education into Hateful Indoctrination was favorably reviewed by white nationalist websites. As “Michael McGregor” at Radix, Gray reported, Greer “expressed racist antiblack views and anti-Semitism” and “disparaged other groups including feminists, immigrants, Christian Zionists, and the pro-life movement.”

The Caller’s leadership is reportedly shocked at the news that the publication employed someone with ties to white nationalists. Just last month, Editor-in-Chief Geoffrey Ingersoll had defended Greer from such allegations. But in light of The Atlantic’s reporting, the website’s co-founder and publisher Neil Patel said in a statement to Gray: “We won’t publish him, anyone in these circles, or anyone who thinks like them. People who associate with these losers have no business writing for our company.”

But as Gray notes, the Greer story shows that “members of an underground white-nationalist scene—emboldened by the rise of Donald Trump during the 2016 election—were able to operate relatively undetected in conservative institutions.” And the Caller has been ground zero for that phenomenon, publishing at least half a dozen writers with such ties over the last few years, in some cases cutting ties with the writer under scrutiny, in others ignoring the controversy. Notably, the Caller was co-founded by Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host whose show is beloved by neo-Nazis and white nationalists because he promotes their talking points against racial diversity and immigration and in favor of white anxiety.

Below are the writers with white nationalist sympathies and ties that we know about. Some were hiding in plain sight, publishing bigoted commentary at the Caller itself. But Greer’s pseudonymous work for a white-supremacist website suggests there may be others who have yet to arise.

Blake Neff (added 7/12/20)

Neff wrote more than 2,000 articles as a Caller reporter between May 2014 and January 2017, when he left to become the lead writer for Carlson’s Fox program. He also used “a pseudonym to post bigoted remarks on an online forum that is a hotbed for racist, sexist, and other offensive content” while working for both outlets, as CNN’s Oliver Darcy reported in an extensive investigation published July 10, 2020. Darcy identified instances where the “material Neff encountered on the forum found its way on to Carlson's show.” Neff had previously said in an interview that he wrote the first draft of everything Carlson read on-air. The morning after Darcy reached out to Neff for comment, a network spokesperson contacted the CNN reporter and said that Neff had resigned. The Caller declined to comment to CNN.

Jonah Bennett (added 8/29/19)

Bennett was a reporter for the Caller from June 2014 to January 2018, according to his LinkedIn profile. Splinter News' Hannah Gais reported in August 2019 on a “trove of emails from a private white nationalist group chat” that show Bennett, a frequent participant, detailing how he “used his perch at the site to launder far-right viewpoints” into the Caller. In one such email, he explained that the current political climate worked in their favor since the conservative movement is “extremely vulnerable to outside subversion.” Asked for comment by Splinter, Bennett claimed he had “never been a white nationalist” and that in his emails, he had simply “hammed it up in sometimes regrettable and cynical ways to go along with the temperament of the list.”

Dave Brooks (added 5/2/19)

In April 2019, Daily Caller News Foundation managing editor Dave Brooks was fired after BuzzFeed’s Rosie Gray inquired about email correspondence suggesting he had contacts with white nationalists. The emails show that after Breitbart fired Katie McHugh for bigoted tweets, Brooks asked her whether she would “have any interest in working for [white nationalist publication American Renaissance] if I talked to Richard?” and saying that “I also know [white nationalist] Jared Taylor has been looking for an investigative reporter.” Brooks told Gray, “I am not friends, professionally or personally, with these people. I inquired on [McHugh’s] behalf through people I knew, and I haven't spoken to any of them in years.”

Peter Brimelow

Brimelow wrote four op-eds for the Caller in 2017. He is a “zealous promoter of white-identity politics” whose anti-immigrant website VDare.com is “popular with the alt-right” and, by Brimelow’s own admission, publishes white nationalist writers, according to The Washington Post. Brimelow was a guest at the home of Larry Kudlow, President Donald Trump’s chief economic advisor, in August. His first piece for the Caller, in March 2017, defended Rep. Steve King’s (R-IA) racist remark that “we can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

Jason Kessler

The Caller contracted with Kessler in spring of 2017 “to contribute reportage,” and he produced three pieces for the site. The Caller suspended its relationship with him in May 2017 after ProPublica reported that Kessler “is supportive of white supremacist groups” and had “praised fascist and racist organizations.” Kessler subsequently organized the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA, which featured white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The site removed Kessler’s author page and all his pieces shortly after Media Matters reached out for comment about his relationship with the site.

Ian Smith

Smith wrote dozens of op-ed pieces for the Caller between 2014 and 2017, many of which call for harsher restrictions on immigration. Following Trump’s election, he joined the Department of Homeland Security, where he attended White House meetings on immigration policy, before resigning last month “after he was confronted about his ties to white nationalist groups.” Smith had also written for National Review and The Hill “during the period he was in communication with white-supremacist groups,” the Post reported.

Milo Yiannopoulos

In November 2017, the Caller published what it described as the “first installment in [a] new weekly column” from Yiannapoulos, a notorious troll who worked with the “alt-right” to smuggle white nationalist ideas into Breitbart.com articles. Following an outcry, Yiannopoulos and the Daily Caller’s opinion editor, Robert Mariani, were fired.

Moses Apostaticus

In August 2016, the Caller published a piece by the pseudonymous writer Moses Apostaticus titled “The Alt-Right: Young White Men Sick of Being Hated,” in which he criticized the idea that “white men being as proud of their race and identity as black men or white women is profoundly disturbing.” He contributed more than 20 op-eds to the website over the next eight months, under headlines like “Go Home, Barry Soetoro” and “Donald Trump Is America’s Julius Caesar.” In May, Vox.com’s Jane Coaston pointed out Apostaticus’ history of anti-Semitic commentary.

Ilana Mercer

The Caller published roughly 30 pieces from Mercer between December 2016 and November 2017. Her first piece, “The Curious Case of America’s Waning Whites,” argued that white birth rates are declining due in part to “systemic racial demonization” of poor whites. And her last, “Why Hatred of Whites is Here To Stay,” pushed the myth that white South Africans are experiencing genocide. The SPLC previously reported on Mercer’s writing for the Caller.

Ian Miles Cheong

A former Daily Caller contributor who last wrote for the site in May, Cheong “appeared on an alt-right podcast two months ago alongside hosts from the white supremacist podcast network The Right Stuff during which he told the hosts that he supported both nationalism and socialism,” according to Right Wing Watch.