On September 28, 2017, alt-right personality Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet sat down for his first interview since the catastrophe in Charlottesville. Gionet, for those who don’t recall, maced himself was maced by an unknown assailant during a livestream and was recorded howling for milk. Appearing with sunglasses on to protect his vision, Gionet spoke with Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson in an attempt to rehabilitate the alt-right brand.

Gionet said that the media was wrong to discuss the “hateful rally” in Charlottesville because there was no Unite the Right rally. “Not a single person spoke. So how can you say there was a hateful rally when zero people spoke, people didn’t even make it to the venue?” he asked.

Though it would be fair to point out that the night before the Unite the Right rally was scheduled to take place, a mob of white nationalists (including Gionet) marched on UVA with tiki torches and chants of “Blood and soil!” and “Jews will not replace us!” So it would be completely appropriate for media outlets to decry the “hateful” Charlottesville rally.

Peterson asked whether or not there were Ku Klux Klan members or “skinheads” who showed up to Unite the Right, and pointed out that he remembered “seeing the [Klan] hoods.” Gionet admitted there were, although he never saw them personally, but claimed he would have “strongly condemn[ed]” them.

In claiming that, however, Gionet is expecting viewers to forget about his own equally repugnant white nationalist beliefs. He marched with the torch-wielding mob at UVA while shouting Nazi slogans, has repeatedly tweeted the 14 words, and has circulated pictures of his enemies in gas chambers. Gionet’s beliefs are indistinguishable from those of the Klu Klux Klan, rendering any condemnation of them meaningless.

Peterson also validated Gionet’s sense of white victimization, stating that “for the last 27 years I’ve been sayin’ that white, straight, conservative, Christian men are under attack,” and that “that the race war is already happenin'” with the “white man is under attack.” Gionet agreed with Peterson and complained that he “grew up in a society where the media told us if you’re a white male, if you’re a white person, you should feel guilty for just how you were born.”

Gionet: This is the other interesting thing about Charlottesville and about Unite the Right, is there was no rally. I was being led by the police to the park where the event was going to be. I never made it to the park. I got attacked within five minutes.

Peterson: Yeah.

Gionet: So they say, “Oh, there was this hateful rally,” like —

Peterson: No, I saw that.

Gionet: Not a single person spoke. So how can you say there was a hateful rally when zero people spoke, people didn’t even make it to the venue? So it was so — it was such a PSYOP by the media just to completely discredit Trump people, conservatives, people on the right-wing. Now they’re basically saying anyone who’s right-wing is a Nazi, or is far-right, and KKK and all this stuff. I don’t think anybody supports that type of shit.

Peterson: Were there KKK members and skinheads at the rally in Charlottesville?

Gionet: I believe there were. I didn’t see them personally, but the media shows that they were there. And that is something —

Peterson: I thought I remember seeing the hoods.

Gionet: Yeah. On the —

Peterson: I think I did see it.

Gionet: On the media they showed some of that.

Peterson: Right, why did they show up? Do you know?

Gionet: I don’t know. I mean, we cannot control who shows up at these rallies.

Peterson: Right.

Gionet: That’s the unfortunate truth. But, if I were to see someone in a KKK hood, I would strongly condemn that. I would say, “Dude, get outta here. This is not the place for you to be.”

Peterson: You know for the last 27 years I’ve been sayin’ that white, straight, conservative, Christian men are under attack.

Gionet: Yeah.

Peterson: But they were not speakin’ up. They were afraid for fear of being called racist. And I’ve been sayin’ that the race war is already happenin’, ‘cept that it’s one-sided. The white man is under attack, but they won’t say anything or do anything so it went out of control, and now white men are starting to speak up. Why did it take so long?

Gionet: We grew up in a society where the media told us if you’re a white male, if you’re a white person, you should feel guilty for just how you were born. We sort of just pushed it aside and said oh it’s not a big deal, it’s not a lot of people who think like this. And then, in this last year or so, I noticed the anti-white attacks coming from the mainstream media were just constant.

Peterson: Right.

Gionet: They put out on MTV “17 Reasons Why White People Suck.” And they would never say that about any other race.

Peterson: No blacks or Hispanics or anyone.

Gionet: If you were to say that about black people —

Peterson: Yeah.

Gionet: — you would never hear the end of it.