‘Fuck Your Optics, I’m Going In’: Neo-Nazi Podcaster Draws Inspiration From Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooter

The hosts of The Gas Station, a Neo-Nazi podcast, indicated that they aren’t backing away from the trail of violence that has been following the online “alt-right” movement since its rise – in fact, they’re leaning in. The show’s hosts lauded white supremacist terrorists, hailing them as “saints” and likening non-whites to vermin.

“I’m getting to the point where, to steal a great quote, I can’t sit idly by while my people are being slaughtered,” co-host “German James Woods” declared on a July 13, 2019 episode. “Fuck your optics. I’m goin’ in.”

Woods was paraphrasing Robert Bowers, the man awaiting trial for murdering 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue on October 27, 2018. This was the last message Bowers posted to the social media site Gab before his alleged crimes took place.

The Gas Station is one of a growing handful of podcasts dedicated to accelerationism – the strategic embrace of terrorism and mass murder as a means to spur the collapse of Western civilization and build a white ethnostate – a nation reserved for white, non-Jewish citizens.

Podcasts that traffic in accelerationist thought, although once relegated to the Internet’s darkest recesses, have gained traction in recent months as the broader alt-right – the term coined by Richard Spencer for the movement of generally clean-cut, Internet-savvy white supremacists he had hoped to represent – suffered several public setbacks.

“OV,” another co-host, compared racial minorities to “roaches” on the same episode, and suggested cutting off welfare to prevent them from having children.

Another suggested this would not be enough to fix the problem. “If you’ve got cockroaches, you don’t just stop putting food out,” “Dick McMaster” said. “I mean, that helps, but you go get an exterminator and you go get rid of them fuckin’ permanently.”

“Why not both?” asked German James Woods, a self-proclaimed Los Angeles resident who uses an image of actor James Woods in a skull mask and Nazi regalia as his online avatar. “Nobody on this panel right now is speaking anything against calling the exterminator.”

In addition to quoting Bowers, Woods also praised John Earnest, the man police say fatally shot one worshiper at the Chabad of Poway on April 27, 2019, and wounded three others. Calling the shooting a “righteous act,” Woods said that Earnest “show[s] the change that we largely want in society.”

This is not the first time German James Woods has made disturbing, personal comments about committing acts of violence to further the white supremacist cause. During the January 19, 2019 episode, Woods said his “anger and rage” was “becoming truly uncontrollable,” and told listeners, “No longer will we stand idly by as we watch the wholesale destruction of our people.”

Although it might once have been possible to ignore voices like those of Woods and the rest of The Gas Station crew, this is no longer the case.

Several prominent alt-right thought leaders have lent their imprimatur to the accelerationist show. On December 31, 2018 and February 8, 2019, Taki’s Magazine writer Jim Goad made appearances on The Gas Station. And both Alex Linder of Vanguard News Network and Mike Enoch of The Right Stuff were guests in January 2019.

[The following clips are from a nearly three hour episode of The Gas Station.]