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By Sam Kestenbaum January 31, 2017

Earlier this month, it looked like the host of the anti-Semitic show “The Daily Shoah” would be booted from the white nationalist movement known as the “alt-right.” Mike Enoch, a leading “alt-right” figure, was revealed to be a web developer named Mike Peinovich — whose wife is Jewish. How could a self-respecting white nationalist be married to a Jew?

But Peinovich is still central to the movement — and wants everyone to know it.

“I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, Shlomo,” Peinovich said, speaking at a live-streamed anti-Trump art project. “You tried and you failed.”

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“Shlomo” is likely a reference to an anti-Semitic, hook-nosed Jewish icon used widely in the “alt-right.”

Peinovich delivered his message during an anti-Trump art show in Queens, New York. Actor Shia LaBeouf, whose father is Jewish, is behind the art project which is titled “He Will Not Divide Us.” LeBeouf invited members of the public to chant the words “He will not divide us” into the camera, which is streaming 24/7. The project has become an unlikely congregating hub for members of the “alt-right,” who disrupt the anti-Trump sloganeering to deliver their own messages.

Peinovich approached the camera on the night of January 28, with two other unidentified men, and called out a long list of other “alt-right” brothers-in-arms.

“I think everyone knows me,” Peinovich began, before delivering “shout-outs” to Richard Spencer and his website Altright.com, Nathan Damigo of Identity Europe, and Peinovich’s own podcast “The Daily Shoah.”

“The Daily Shoah” is a weekly podcast with about 100,000 regular listeners, and Peinovich is considered one of the three most influential figures in the “alt-right” movement along with Daily Stormer creator Andrew Anglin and Spencer who popularized the term “alt-right.”

The revelation that Peinovich married a Jewish woman caused much soul-searching among today’s young breed of white nationalists. Jews are such a point of contention within the movement that the “alt-right” has its own shorthand for the so-called “Jewish Question”: JQ.

Spencer, considered by most the leading figure of the “alt-right,” said he stood by Peinovich.

Peinovich is still co-hosting his podcast and has not publicly commented on his Jewish wife, though a co-host of his claimed that the two were separating.

Email Sam Kestenbaum at kestenbaum@forward.com

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