Last summer, the owner of a large white nationalist Telegram channel addressed his followers in a video uploaded to his YouTube channel. “Alt Skull,” a pseudonymous racist who praised mass murderers and trafficked in pro-Nazi content, stunned people in the white power movement by acknowledging his Jewish heritage and marriage to a Japanese woman.

Some white supremacists who once promoted his channel, which boasts roughly five thousand members, were quick to abandon him. In February, Neo-Nazi Paul Nehlen said he severed ties with Alt Skull because his “kike blood” would eventually “express itself” in a negative way.

Late last month those very same white supremacists publicized Alt Skull’s identity on Telegram channels dedicated to promoting genocide and white supremacist terrorism. Alt Skull, the white supremacist who mocked the Holocaust and remarked that the footage of last year’s Christchurch massacre is “one of my favorite videos on Earth,” is actually Shawn Deats.

While attempting to live-stream a video on YouTube, Alt Skull inadvertently shared his own computer screen with his audience. On his screen was a shortcut to his personal Facebook page that was labeled with his real name. It didn’t take long for Alt Skull’s former allies to spot this error and dig into his identity.

On July 30, 2020, a small Telegram channel published screenshots of the live-stream. It was followed by screenshots of Deats’ LinkedIn page which listed him as the owner of Deats English. According to its Facebook page, Deats English — located in Hōfu, a city in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan — is an “English education, cultural center, and overseas homestay organization for kids pre-school to high school.”

From there, the information was boosted by Nehlen and other figures in the accelerationist wing of the white power movement. “I remember this kike AltSkull [sic] threatening people,” Nehlen wrote. “Wait till they see this shit.” The Noticer, an antisemitic account that singles out Jews for harassment online, posted a photo collage of Deats and accused him of “LARPING.”

Not long his name was publicized, Deats — under his Alt Skull pseudonym — posted a lengthy message to his followers explaining that he would relinquish control of his Telegram channel due to harassment against his family. Deats wrote that on Telegram he was forced to “fiercely guard every aspect” of his identity from “people in this very community” who have no compunction about targeting his own children.

“It’s not Antifa targeting my family,” he continued, adding that this same group of “amoral nihilists” would one day subject them to the same torment.

Louis Jeffery Giovingo, a Louisiana-based white supremacist who goes by the pseudonym “Southern Dingo,” was disheartened by his friend’s departure. “Big F to my good friend Alt Skull’s channel,” he wrote on Telegram. “He is a good man, an honest man, and he will forever be a guy I call one of my best friends. Fuck anyone who doesn’t like it.”

Deats did not respond to questions sent to his business email.