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‘Wipe Jews Off the Face of the Earth’ Racism & Antisemitic Slurs of Viral YouTuber Exposed
A recording exclusively obtained by Byline Times exposes YouTuber and Infowars alumnus Paul Joseph Watson using racist, homophobic and antisemitic slurs
Far-right YouTuber and former Infowars editor Paul Joseph Watson said he would like Jewish people to be wiped off the face of the Earth, in an exclusive recording obtained by Byline Times.
In the recording, made during a party and shared with this newspaper by an anonymous source, 39-year-old Watson can be heard saying: “I really think you should press the button to wipe Jews off the face of the Earth.”
The recording was confirmed by three secondary sources. Byline Times contacted Watson, and his lawyers, with numerous requests for comment but received no response.
Watson uses a string of racist and homophobic epithets and claims that he is sick of “media f****t activists” sticking signs “up in my face trying to get me to join the gay f****t Palestinian cause. I don’t give a shit about Israel and Palestine. I care about white people. Not sand n****r Jew P**i f****t c**ns”.
One secondary source said that they had heard Watson make similar comments on other occasions.
The recording was also shared on social media as Byline Times was compiling this report.
Despite being part of the ‘alt-right’, a movement that has often repeated antisemitic conspiracies, Watson has a quote from the Jewish Voice NY on his Twitter profile and has been defended by right-wing Jewish bloggers as not being antisemitic.
Jewish Voice NY told Byline Times that it “never endorsed Paul Joseph Watson”.
The alt-right is a term used to describe a new generation of far-right and white nationalist actors who emerged online in the early 2010s. The category is loosely-defined and covers a range of right-wing political positions – from Republican Party candidates and Donald Trump followers, to online trolls and those who hold more extremist beliefs such as Holocaust denial and ‘scientific racism’.
In a recent video about the French Presidential Election, Watson used the murder of a Jewish man in Paris as a rhetorical tool to attack President Emmanuel Macron, and, more broadly, France’s African migrant communities.
However, the recording suggests he holds violently antisemitic and racist views.
Joe Mulhall, director of research at Hope Not Hate – the UK’s leading anti-fascism and antiracism campaign group, told Byline Times that Watson “has long been a high-profile figure in the global far-right and has a long history of spreading racist and Islamophobic conspiracy theories” but that “he has always been careful to try and stay within platform moderation policies to avoid being de-platformed and to protect his income”.
“That he would engage in such vile racism in private comes as no surprise but does serve as a reminder that many of those who push anti-migrant and anti-immigration politics are sometimes motivated by more extreme racism,” he added.
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Prison Planet and the Alt-Right
Otherwise known as ‘Prison Planet’, Paul Joseph Watson has a large social media following – including 1.9 million subscribers on YouTube, 1.2 million followers on Twitter, and more than 56,000 subscribers on Telegram. He was removed from Facebook in 2019 – an act that led to President Donald Trump tweeting in his defence.
He came to prominence attacking the “woke mob” and SJWs – social justice warriors – as well as feminism and anti-racist movements.
One of his videos, called ‘Didn’t End Racism’, mocks how re-evaluating racism in popular culture and footballers taking the knee has not ended racism. Another claims that the media is institutionally racist against white people.
In the latter, Watson said that it is “racist to stigmatise and demonise an entire group of people for the actions of a few individuals” before accusing the media of doing exactly this to white people. “I refuse to be demonised for the colour of my skin,” he added.
Watson endeavours to keep high-profile company. He has appeared on the YouTube show of Candace Owens, formerly of the US youth conservative movement Turning Point USA and wife of Conservative Party and Reform UK Party donor George Farmer. Owens faced controversy when she said that Adolf Hitler “was a national socialist. But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, okay, fine”.
Watson has interacted with tech billionaire Elon Musk on Twitter.
Watson is also known to be a close associate of people linked to Nigel Farage: Michael Heaver, Farage’s former press aide and a former Brexit Party MEP, and Farage’s press aide Dan Jukes. Heaver shared an Instagram post of himself, Watson, Jukes and George Farmer having drinks. Byline Times is not suggesting that Owens, Farmer, Musk, Heaver, Jukes or Farage would condone Watson’s rant.
There has been some suggestion that the UK movement known as the ‘alt-lite’ has become emboldened since the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
The ‘alt-lite’ – also known as the ‘new right’ – is a loosely-defined group of mostly online right-wing actors and commentators who share right-wing views. The Anti-Defamation League has described it as operating “in the orbit of the alt-right”, and that it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between the groupings as there is significant cross-over.
That cross-over can be seen in the way that, not long after Trump’s election, Watson discussed racial IQ differences, saying that “it’s a fact” that there’s a “measurable difference in IQ” in people between the Global North and South, and that low IQ is “linked to aggression”. These are far-right talking points with a long and ignoble history.
It would also appear that Watson has become more comfortable using overtly anti-immigrant language in his content.
In a YouTube film about the 2022 French Presidential Election, he repeated conspiracy content that Paris has “no-go zones” and “lawless ghettos inhabited by untold numbers of illegal immigrants”. He supported the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen’s stance on “prioritising French people in France” and shared dog whistle homophobic stills of Macron embracing a black man to a soundtrack of Je T’Aime – the song by Serge Gainsbourg.
On Telegram, he shared a post praising the success of the film The Northman, saying that “people enjoy seeing races in their correct historical and mythological settings, rather than being drip-fed banal social engineering projects cooked up by a board of diversity quotas”.
Watson has also followed the far-right trend of siding with Vladimir Putin since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and repeated Russian claims that alleged war crimes in Bucha were a “false flag”.
In a video made the day of Russia’s invasion, he quoted a tweet that ‘joked’ how Putin’s “manly recruitment ads stand no chance against Ukraine’s they/them army” – referring to gender neutral pronouns and trans rights. “Turns out NATO’s commitment to inclusion and diversity didn’t deter Putin”, he continues, before quoting a second tweet that said the West was “low on patriotism and manhood”. Again, these are common far-right talking points.
Like his former colleague Alex Jones, US-led conspiracist movements, and UK far-right figures such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (known as ‘Tommy Robinson’), Watson has expressed scepticism about the COVID-19 vaccine, repeatedly posting examples of people getting Coronavirus despite being full vaccinated.
A further example in which Watson appears to be shifting towards more US-centric talking points is over abortion – an issue that has traditionally been less of a focus for the UK ‘alt-lite’.
He posted content from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in which the Republican politician said that abortion “has no place in a civilised society”. Further, Watson has repeated US-style far-right conspiracy about so-called “at-birth” or “after-birth” abortions – such medical interventions do not exist.
“Paul Joseph Watson led rebranding to call hard-right authoritarian politics in the West ‘the New Right’,” said the Southern Poverty Law Centre’s Michael Hayden. The centre is collaborating with Byline Times on making the recording public.
“From the recording and everything else we’ve seen since Brexit and Trump’s election — these people are just cynical racists trying to make money and gain power over other people’s lives,” he said. “The fact that Watson has been able to survive so long online is an embarrassment for YouTube and Twitter, two companies that have played such a big role in radicalising extremists.”
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