Connor Estelle was reportedly fired from his job after video in which he identified as a fascist went viral. He went on to raise tens of thousands of dollars through crowdfunding from his conservative supporters within a day. The fundraising platform GiveSendGo was popular for January 6th rioters to raise money for their defense.
Estelle, known online as “Pinesap,” appeared on an episode called “1 Progressive vs. 20 Far-Right Conservatives (ft. Mehdi Hasan)” on a popular YouTube channel called Jubilee. Critics call the channel problematic, saying that they platform extremists and may contribute to normalizing extreme beliefs without significant pushback.
The episode featured Mehdi Hasan, a British-American progressive news broadcaster and founder of the media company Zeteo. Hasan was the lone liberal surrounded by 20 far-right conservatives who volunteered to debate him on different topics. Although several had extremist views, Estelle stood out.
He said that he does not support democracy, he prefers autocracy, and believes that President Trump should be allowed to go against and change the Constitution of the United States—but that if a Democrat were in office, they should not be allowed to change the Constitution.
Estelle referenced Carl Schmitt, a Nazi theoretician, in praise of his political views. Hasan directly asked Estelle if he is a fan of Nazis and his reply was, “I frankly don’t care [about] being called a Nazi at all.”
When asked what he thought about Nazi persecution he said, “There was a little bit of persecution and stuff like that, which is bad,” referring to the Nazi persecution of Jewish people.
Hasan said, “You’re a little bit more than a far-right Republican.”
He asked if Estelle would describe himself as a fascist, to which Estelle replied, “Yeah, I am,” and laughed as the other conservatives in the debate applauded him.
Upon losing his job, Estelle claimed that it was because he voiced his “heterosexual, Christian, sort of moral belief” in an appearance on the podcast Rift Report. Framing the loss of his job as a crackdown on Christian values, rather than on his open beliefs in fascism.
“Unfortunately, voicing fully legal traditional right-wing political views results in real consequences. This is cancel culture and political discrimination on full display,” he stated.
His fundraising campaign quickly exceeded the goal of $15,000, raising over $36,000 in a few days. Some of the donations were accompanied with messages from extremists.
One contributor by the name of Nate Higgers left the message, “We are being invaded. Europeans and Americans need to cast out the brown plague by any means necessary,” and dozens of people liked the comment.
Another wrote, “America First is inevitable, Christ is King,” referring to the outright racist fascist movement which Trump supports.
One donated $88 dollars along with the message, “We need a white nation!” The number 88 is a well-known Neo-Nazi code referencing the 8th letter of the alphabet, H, which stands for “Heil Hitler” here.
In America, there is a dangerous rise in Neo-Nazi and fascist rhetoric. It is getting air-time, going unchallenged, and endorsed by content creators and politicians.
