On the October 23, 2019 episode of The War Room — a program on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars network — white supremacist radio hosts Henrik Palmgren and Lana Lokteff were given a platform to complain about their recent ban from YouTube, and to downplay their racist ideology.
Both their main account and backup account for their channel, Red Ice, had been terminated for violating the website’s prohibition on hate speech.
Infowars host J. Owen Shroyer invited the pair on to discuss their ban, and whitewashed their history of racist and antisemitic rhetoric. Instead, Shroyer framed Red Ice’s ban as a battle in a much larger war between “nationalists” and “globalists.” “Globalist” has been used by right-wing figures as a dog whistle for Jews.
Shroyer asked Lokteff what she thought of “this whole trend of nationalism versus globalism.” He added that “people in Sweden are sick of this illegal immigration invasion,” and that people can no longer “report on the bombings that happen, the rapings that happen, the pillaging that’s going on on a nightly basis.”
Lokteff said that “when you’re on the truth-seeking journey” you “come to the biggest conspiracy of all” which is “destroying sovereign nations” — especially European nations — through immigration. She remarked that she was concerned about “demographic replacement” and “anti-white programming and propaganda.”
“If you have white children, you don’t want them growing up as a hated minority,” she said. “And that is where we are heading.”
Palmgren chimed in to complain that it was “controversial” to say “it’s okay to be white” — a nod to a racist 4chan campaign. Shroyer then said that it’s not only controversial to say, but that students will “get banned from a college campus” for saying it. Lokteff said that even reciting those words can get a person labeled a “Nazi” or “white supremacist.”
Shroyer referenced right-wing “political uprisings” across the globe, and said that instead of covering them, people were focusing on deplatforming outlets like Red Ice. “They just say, ‘Look at these crackers over here on YouTube, talkin’ about white people and sayin’ they’re the victims now! Get ’em off of there!'”
Palmgren and Lokteff have a long history of racist and antisemitic rhetoric dating back several years.
Their channel has been used to boost the propaganda of prominent Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists, and white supremacists. In 2016 the duo defended an antisemitic Google Chrome extension that placed triple parentheses around Jewish names. At a white supremacist gathering in 2017, Lokteff bragged that women “got Hitler elected.”
That said, this is not the first time Infowars has worked to sanitize white supremacists. In 2018, Infowars host Jake Lloyd interviewed several white supremacists and antisemites, including Vincent James of The Red Elephants, America First host Nick Fuentes, and ex-Rebel Media correspondent Faith Goldy.
That same year, Infowars host David Knight spoke with South African white nationalist Simon Roche — spokesman for the Suidlanders organization. Knight warned his audience that students on college campuses would soon begin calling for the murder of white people.
Earlier this year, Patrick Casey, the leader of the white nationalist American Identity Movement (AmIM) — formerly Identity Evropa — made a guest appearance on Shroyer’s show. As reported by Right Wing Watch, Shroyer gave a sympathetic interview to Casey after AmIM members protested a drag queen story hour dressed as clowns.
As with his interview with Lokteff and Palmgren, Shroyer made no mention of Casey’s white nationalist beliefs, instead choosing to sanitize AmIM’s image.