Why is the Media Trust-Washing Delusional Internet Troll Charles Johnson? His Substack Shows He Hasn’t Changed
Johnson still behaves like a rampant narcissist, obsessed with Jews. His new scheme is a genetics company driven by racist ideas
By Gabriel Stevens
Charles Johnson wants to be trusted. He also wants to be taken seriously. Recently, in Rolling Stone, Seth Hettena referred to Johnson as a “conservative provocateur” who is “now a Biden supporter.” How respectable. Just weeks ago, the Washington Post described him as “entrepreneur and former right-wing provocateur Chuck Johnson,” (emphasis ours). The Post mentioned Johnson several times in a story about billionaire Peter Thiel’s journey from libertarianism to supporting MAGA.
Johnson is ready to comment, to tell the world that he has turned over a new leaf from his corrosive past as “Twitter’s most infamous right-wing troll,” the “most hated man on the internet,” “race-baiting troll,” “pathological cyberstalker,” and “Holocaust-denying white nationalist.” Johnson is styling a transformed individual and planted his dream bean as Johnson 2.0 with his own substack blog, from where he will prove to the world that he is fair-minded, open-handed, flat-footed and lily-livered (that is, value neutral). The Johnson 2.0 substack has less than a dozen subscribers and averages two “likes” per post and one comment every other post. And yet it serves as a place where Johnson explicates his “Thoughts and Adventures,” and contemplates virtue, duty, country, family, loyalty, and friendship.
Except it’s a facade and Johnson remains the person he’s shown himself to be during his decade of trolling for attention and his harm to innocent people while holding horrific views about the Nazi holocaust and a downright racist stance on genetics.
Johnson’s substack reveals the behavior of a Jew-hating bloated fabulist who belittles black people and believes genetics is the primary determinant of character. His substack also promotes Johnson as one of the most relevant historical figures of the past decade, with deep knowledge and a unique perspective about what happens at the pinnacle of power, such as his current belief that America’s 2020 election was fraudulent.
Beyond his substack, Johnson 2.0 revels in media attention wherever he can get it and indulges any exploit or provide leaks to reporters, and serve as an unattributable source to writers, if he’s relevant and can control how he’s described in the attributable parts of a story.
But Johnson isn’t someone any dependable outlet should take seriously.
It should trouble bona fide journalists that just because Johnson agrees to be a source (written as a “person with knowledge of the situation” in the Post, for instance) doesn’t make him a good source. Why does Johnson 2.0 want to both be a non-attributable source and featured by name? Well, being mentioned in WaPo not as a troll, white nationalist, and holocaust denier is one step closer to having his dastardly past behind him.
Did Johnson renege his views? Did he apologize to those he wronged? Has he accepted responsibility for holocaust denial and racism? Sadly not. Johnson justifies everything. He asserts he was taken out of context, then he builds himself a colossal cross and climbs on it as a crucified modern martyr suffering for the sake of the rest of us. He now has a new narrative. Johnson 2.0 says throughout his substack that his downfall was planned by foreign powers threatened by his revolutionary investments in technology.
Johnson is a determined self-promoter and having destroyed his reputation through his previous doxxing, online harassment, outing college student journalists, stalking, racism, and many defamatory activities, he now wants to redeem himself as a matured writer, telling us that he’s excited to serve as a mentor to the next generation if only he hadn’t been unfairly canceled. Johnson claims to be concerned about the direction of American foreign policy, about Jeffrey Epstein, about political polarization, and the lack of kindness in our society. It’s an artificial spectacle.
The proof that Charles “Chuck” Carlisle Johnson is the same person is there, in his substack writings. His writings will be reported here and discussed in this article for the first time (we read them so that you won’t have to!). What’s baffling is that writers like Seth Hettena, podcasters such as Zev Shalev and Eric Garland, and news outlets like WaPo are now all part of an effort to clean up and trustwash the unscrupulous Johnson who exemplifies social media’s disgrace, and a blatant lack of journalistic ethics. They retweet and quote him.
First, we’ll review Johnson’s past conduct as a nasty troll, and then we’ll turn to his failed attempt at reinvention on the substack platform as a whistleblower and credible witness to the excesses of the American right.
Johnson practices association fallacy when he cannot criticize a person, creating a bond between them and someone terrible. But when it comes to Johnson there’s no need to associate him through tenuous connections or bizarre conspiracy theories, he does a good job himself. There’s an old saying “One Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words.” In Johnson’s example there are hundreds of deeds and a photo album to go with them.
Johnson, photographed in 2016, smiles with Richard Spencer. Spencer is a neo-Nazi, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and white supremacist. He advocates reconstituting the European Union into a White racial empire and advocates ethnic cleansing of America’s racial minorities. Spencer is famous for leading Nazi chants of Seig Heil, “Hail Victory,” at the end of his white nationalism conference of the National Policy Institute, where many people gave the Third Reich salute. Johnson was present at Spencer’s scandalous conference. And in their corresponding twitter feeds both Johnson and Spencer retweeted and spoke about each other admiringly.
In the image with Spencer, the face of neo-Nazis in America, Johnson appears to be giving the international “OK” symbol. But it’s a wink ‘n nod in the circles of White Power. Dr. Paul Stocker, a historian specializing in far-right movements, says the “OK” sign is a way of people who are in the far-right to communicate with each other. Dr. Stocker is a Research Associate at the British Teesside University’s Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies. “It’s a coded message to people who are in the know and understand what the far-right are doing,” he says. Johnson, a graduate of one of Claremont’s colleges, knows what he’s doing. Why not just pose for a photo? Because Johnson’s sending a message to those he wants to appeal to. It’s also a f-you for those Johnson knows will be fuming with the symbol’s use. Johnson parades the same White Power symbol in photo after photo. Whether it’s with Steve Bannon as Johnson wears a “border wall” t-shirt or with congressman Dana Rohrabacher when clout-chasing Julian Assange. The “OK” sign appears to be a Johnson trademark.
In the photos, Johnson doesn’t waste a moment allying himself with some terrible people. He had a right-wing slack channel that had over 400 members. George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s killer, was a member of the Johnson community. And in June of 2016, when Zimmerman was auctioning off the pistol he used to kill Trayvon Martin, Johnson wrote and published a blog post to drive up the price of what Johnson calls “the mighty gun that slain the dindu.” “Dindu nuffin” is a racist trope coined on the Stormfront white power website and is used to mock black victims of brutality (“I dindu nuffin officer!”), Johnson labeled Zimmerman as a “great man and a good friend” and “among the finest men I have ever met.”
Zimmerman was quickly banned from Twitter for doxxing a former girlfriend when Zimmerman posted her telephone number with a tweet that pictured his ex: “This is Heather, she cheated on me with a dirty Muslim. She’ll sleep with anyone.” Johnson defended his friend in a tweet “George Zimmerman is a good and decent man. I am sure he has an explanation for what he posted.” What explanation is possible other than that Zimmerman was behaving terribly?
Johnson’s racial commentary is a recurring theme. On his website GotNews.com, which has since gone bankrupt, Johnson habitually referred to black protesters as “thugs” and “scum” and ended up slipping into overt racism. On Twitter, he didn’t hesitate to publicly and casually use the n-word asking: “You can’t spell triggering without Nigger. Coincidence?”
Johnson 2.0 doesn’t use the n-word in his substack writings. Instead, he makes a different kind of revealing statement like when he was on the Joe Rogan podcast. Johnson said that “black Americans, blacks, Africans, have, it’s like a proclivity to violence that they have.” Johnson says that blacks, unlike whites, Europeans, and Asians, are genetically predisposed to violence. The video is almost unbelievable. Rogan deleted the episode from his archives.
Johnson’s theories on genetics have been completely debunked and according to a psychology professor at the University of Texas-Austin, Johnson’s “wrong on basically every level that it's possible to be wrong.” Johnson’s racism explains his many targets of condemnation, typically victims of police brutality.
Johnson is unwavering in his racist behavior and says he believes in ethnic and racial differences as determinants of character and patriotic loyalty. Like many of his brethren such as Richard Spencer, Johnson believes Jews are a separate class, a foreign race, and believes they have dual loyalty. (There’s a lot more about Jews in Johnson 2.0’s substack)
Perhaps that’s why Johnson, who created the now defunct crowd-funding platform WeSearchr, raised more than $150,000 in 2017 for the legal defense of neo-Nazi propagandist Andrew Anglin (founder of the Daily Stormer, an outright neo-Nazi website). Johnson claims his defense of this neo-Nazi was because Johnson is a strong supporter of “free speech,” but exhibiting trademark grifter behavior, he pocketed $22,000 as a fee for his fundraiser on behalf of Anglin.
When asked in a reddit thread what Johnson believed about the Holocaust and the use of gas chambers in the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz, Johnson unabashedly wrote: “I do not and never have believed the six million figure which I think is still up for some historical debate.” Johnson said he believes only 250,000 Jews were killed, and they died of typhus fever. He added: “I agree with [notorious Holocaust denier] David Cole about Auschwitz and the gas chambers not being real.”
Johnson continually declares that he was never anti-Semitic, that he was taken out of context, that his comments were just a journalistic exercise, and points out that his lawyers are Jewish (Andrew Anglin also had Jewish lawyers, that doesn’t make him any less neo-Nazi). Yet how is Johnson taken out of context when he says that the gas chambers weren’t real, and the six million figure is only 250,000? Johnson’s reddit statements are probably one of the least empathetic and obviously most sociopathic things an individual can say. In the face of cruelty and horror on an industrial scale, he denies that it ever happened. That Charles Johnson is still behaving like the same person. And when challenged nowadays with what he’s said about Jews and the Holocaust, he brushes it off sounding like the Tinder Swindler: my enemies are out to get me.
True to the dual characteristics of self-promotion and terrible judgment, Johnson was a guest on Alex Jones’s Infowars show. Which makes sense because Jones and Johnson both prey on the vulnerable and attract attention by doing shocking things. Johnson went further and was a guest on the white nationalist podcast “Fash the Nation.” It’s disturbing that anyone would appear on a podcast that nods to Nazi ideology (another journalistic exercise?) but here we are.
In that Fash the Nation interview Johnson described black people: “you have to believe the more obvious thing which is that they’re dumber. And enough experience with them kind of persuades you that the dumber thing is probably true.” On the “Jewish Question,” the Fash the Nation fixation, Johnson had lots to say. Of all the times Johnson says he was cheated in business dealings, it was usually by Jews who, he insisted, believe non-Jews are “quite dumb.”
Johnson’s doxxing and harassment earned him numerous suspensions from Twitter, his lifeline for attention, and he was finally banned from Twitter in May of 2015 when Twitter’s censors had had enough. Why? Because he was asking for donations to “take out” black lives matter activist DeRay Mckesson.
Johnson clarified that “take out” simply means writing an article, which he’s very fond of doing. But engaging in journalism is not Johnson’s forte. He’s sloppy, cruel and caused enormous damage to innocent people in his quest for attention. Mother Jones summarized some of his deeds:
“[Johnson] is impatient with journalistic ethics and possessed with an insatiable appetite for personal destruction. He is a subject of mockery on the left and the right due to his blustery self-promotion, baseless speculation (he thinks Barack Obama may be secretly gay), and regular face plants. […]
His other recent antics have included suing for access to Mike Brown’s juvenile records, making the unproven claim that the Ferguson police shooting victim had once been charged in a second-degree murder. Citing police sources, he accused “street thug” Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who died after being put in a chokehold by a New York City police officer, of domestic abuse. He incorrectly reported that New Jersey had an Ebola case; he then reported that a nurse quarantined in the state was a “left-wing Democrat.” He hijacked the Mississippi Republican primary by offering $1,000 for photos of Sen. Thad Cochran’s wife, who was in a nursing home. And he’s trained his sights on other journalists, such as Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post, whom Johnson said […] had shown “overt friendliness in his reporting about Michael Brown.” Johnson revealed that Lowery had once received a speeding ticket. “We are going to use auctions to set the price on the head of each journalist we take down,” he tweeted.
Johnson told Mother Jones that he’s a sociopath:
“You may decide, for instance, what many people on the left and the right think—that I’m a sociopath and blah blah blah. Or, on the other hand, that I’m ‘working on some new entity that’s going to be controversial.’ There’s a degree to which, however you turn the lens, both things will be true.”
That sounds about right. Sociopathy isn’t something you can just put away. Individuals without empathy don’t suddenly discover a conscience. They realize the outward social cost of having no empathy and quickly learn to pretend to have it.
Two distinctive features of Johnson’s writings beyond narcissistic protagonism are that he’s mostly wrong and that he’s obsessed with targeting minorities and women.
Other major journalistic disgraces in Johnson’s past were listed by Politico:
- Johnson reported that New York Times correspondent David Kirkpatrick posed in Playgirl. Turns out that it was a spoof mention in a Princeton University humor magazine.
- Johnson accused two New York Times reporters of revealing the address of the police officer in the Ferguson shooting. They hadn’t.
-Johnson reported that New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez paid underage women to sleep with him in the Dominican Republic. The FBI investigated and found nothing. The women involved later recanted.
-Johnson wrongly identified the man who drove his car into protestors in Charlottesville as a Trump critic (and not the actual driver, white nationalist James Alex Fields Jr.) Johnson’s reckless reporting led to multiple death threats and a police investigation. Johnson was sued and had to pay Joel Vangheluwe and his family who went into hiding because of Johnson’s false accusation.
-Johnson wrongly claimed that Senator Cory Booker did not live in Newark when he served as that city’s mayor. Reprehensibly, Johnson had taken money from a PAC that opposed Booker.
Johnson once tweeted: “I am hated because I’m right.” Except no, Johnson’s detested by so many because he behaves so terribly, gets it wrong, loves the attention, and doesn’t care about the results of his actions.
Johnson’s most publicized moment came when he correctly questioned the Rolling Stone article about the University of Virginia rape accusations. Then Johnson threatened to expose the UVA student who made the allegations, attacked her on social media, and published a photo of a woman he thought was her -- but wasn't her. He targeted the wrong person.
Johnson was a mid-level player in conservative circles for a while early in his career. He wrote a book on Calvin Coolidge and gave a few lectures at places like the Heritage Foundation. This, after winning several journalism awards as a writer at Claremont McKenna College's conservative newspaper. And then things didn't go so well for him. He managed to burn through his journalistic relationships: Daily Caller, Wall Street Journal, Daily Beast, National Review, New York Sun, even Breitbart and The Blaze. Johnson's terrible reporting left a trail of disputed stories and exasperated editors. Johnson lost all credibility with conservatives through corrupt work products and bad faith.
Commentary editor John Podhoretz describes Johnson as a “sick fuck,” “a monster,” and “unimaginable filth.” Legendary Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot calls Johnson a liar. Opinion pollster Frank Luntz describes him as an “attention whore,” anti-Trump Republican operative Tim Miller calls him a “shart of humanity,” and writer Darren D’Addario refers to him as a “venomous, irresponsible, loathsome pisshole.” Dozens of former colleagues declined to comment on the record about Johnson, believing he will retaliate. The truth is that every person who publishes criticism of him ends up becoming the target of Johnson’s rage and this is a hallmark of Johnson 2.0. His substack is a tribute to a narcissist’s thirst for revenge. For example, he wrote a story in his substack about Luntz’s late father and included a photo Johnson took of the dead man’s headstone. Quelle surprise. The vengeful characters of an Alexandre Dumas novel can’t compete with the bitterness of Johnson 2.0.
Johnson started his news site, GotNews.com in early 2014 as a grifter operation that offered services as an attack dog against liberals, progressives, and moderate Republicans. Johnson was to leverage social media’s outrage machine for his own advancement. It was supposed to be an empire. But it became a racist publication full of misrepresentations and yellow journalism that was mostly wrong. All raw material, even a person’s home address, was used as evidence of double-dealing or corruption. For Johnson it was just a matter of presenting and rejecting all arguments to the contrary. He showed up at the home of one of his targets in Los Angeles and tweeted a picture of himself outside. “He’s been so incredibly vicious towards me on Twitter that it’s hard to feel that this is just a harmless prank,” the target said, describing Johnson as an “egomaniacal bully and a malignant narcissist whose behavior borders on and sometimes crosses into outright stalking.”
THE JOHNSON SUBSTACK
Johnson is a case study of a man obsessed with his role -- protagonist and co-star-- as well as his associations with the rich and powerful and he is constantly saying that he is intimately close to them and with them he believes he changed the course of history. “I met ‘em all — Rupert Murdoch, David Carr, Roger Ailes, Tucker Carlson, Andrew Breitbart, Conrad Black, to name drop a few. I became friendly with billionaires and congressmen, ambassadors and foreign diplomats”
Astonishing the reader, Johnson 2.0 blows the proverbial mind when says he started his substack because of his overpowering empathy:
“I suffer profound Weltschmerz, or “world pain.” That’s the sadness that I feel when I compare the state of the world to what it might be. So part of the reason I created this substack was equal parts therapy — I am not well — and duty”
“A lot has happened to the country and to me since I helped elect Trump president against all odds”
“I fight now because the lies have set from muck to concrete and because I am no longer fighting just for myself. I am fighting for America, for a responsible press, for the First Amendment. I am fighting for my friends and family”
What lies does Johnson speak of that he now must fight? The truths about him? His substack tells us that “in my case I became a target for serving my country against what I perceived as the twin enemies of our day — lawlessness and foreign malefactors.” Aha, so it was an international conspiracy that ended Johnson’s career. And it is his sadness for humanity that moves him to write for us and to cleanse his reputational purity from the concrete blocks of lies that brought down the great Johnson, elector of Trump. Half the time while reading this nonsense you’re thinking it’s satire. The other half you just think Major Case Study in Narcissism.
ON PETER THIEL
Johnson met multibillionaire Peter Thiel and became his lackey. By this point, Gawker, the gossip site Peter Thiel decided to take down after outing him as a gay man, had written a column about how Johnson was known in college as the “floorshitter” after an incident in which Johnson allegedly couldn’t control himself and pooped on the seventh floor of a college dorm. Thiel encouraged Johnson to sue Nick Denton, editor of Gawker, at the same time as Thiel was financing Hulk Hogan as a proxy plaintiff to destroy Gawker. Johnson then became a researcher for Thiel. Thiel initially declined comment on their association except Johnson wouldn’t stop talking about his connection to Thiel. Thiel had Johnson as his personal guest at the Republican National Conference in 2016 and Johnson tweeted a personal thanks to Thiel.
When Trump was elected, Thiel participated with transition teams and asked Johnson to do background research on who the Trump administration was considering for top positions. The list, called the Plum List, had Johnson doing much of the vetting. Johnson spent hours in front of a computer doing internet and open records searches for any dirt on who Thiel wanted to include or exclude from the Trump administration. In the end, Trump sidelined Thiel and Johnson’s work didn’t amount to much because his work product had gotten background checks wrong. But Johnson and Thiel’s closeness made for a toxic combination. A marriage made in hell. Here was a vindictive billionaire with a tool he could use to defame or attack anyone who displeased him.
In Johnson’s reality he and Thiel are responsible for much of what has happened in American history since 2016.
“Had Peter Thiel and I not helped Trump be elected we’d no doubt be suffering through a [Sheryl] Sandberg stint as Treasury Secretary”
“Once upon a time I told Peter”
“When Peter and I”
“Peter and I knew the truth”
“I remember having a conversation with Peter”
“If Thiel and I were to have a relationship setting on Facebook the company he backed and I seek to destroy, it would be ‘It’s complicated’”
And Johnson admits his servility and adulation of Thiel in his substack:
“If I come across as a Peter Thiel apologist it may well be because I am one. Or, if you prefer, I am a Thiel student. I think Peter is one of the great thinkers of our time but he has his flaws but I believe he will ultimately choose the right”
Johnson 2.0 mentions Peter Thiel 152 times in his substack. A third of all columns mention the venture capitalist. Johnson much reveals when he writes an advice column for toadies serving billionaires: “Advice for The Consigliere: How To Serve The Realm And Your Billionaire Master.”
More recently, in one of his flattering tributes, Johnson posted an eerie photo of Thiel as a child. Why? Sometimes it feels like Johnson is writing not for substack but directly to Thiel himself: “You know what you have to do,” he writes midway into a Sheryl Sandberg attack piece where he tells Thiel he needs to “clean house” at the Founders Fund and fire Keith Rabois and David Sacks.
In another post, Johnson admonishes Thiel for his ideology: “Goodness. Don’t make it so obvious, Peter.” In another he writes a bizarre commentary on homosexuals and promiscuity calling homosexuality a “condition” and alleging that Nixon was gay as are so many others Johnson writes about. For Johnson Joe Rogan, Tom Cotton, Madison Cawthorn, Barack Obama, David Dreier, Lyndsey Graham, all are gay. Thiel is known for surrounding himself with muscular boys half his age at pool parties at his Miami and Los Angeles mansions. Was Johnson expressing concerns for Thiel? Whatever it is, it’s creepy. Johnson doesn’t like gay people. He writes that one of the reasons he left the GOP is that it has become “terribly gay.”
Clearview AI, a facial recognition company that has Thiel and famous AngelList founder Naval Ravikant as investors, may be the reason Thiel kept Johnson around. Johnson claims in several substack entries that he co-founded and “built” the company. Meanwhile, actual founder Hoan Ton-That says Johnson isn’t a founder. Johnson’s not part of the company's management and is not listed as a founder anywhere in its documents, website, or media package. Johnson's explanation?
“The Israelis and their allies began a pressure campaign against my cofounders at Clearview to remove me from the company.”
There go the Jews again, plotting against our heroic savior. Documents leaked to the New York Times claim Johnson had a stake in the company. We have a hunch as to who leaked the documents disclosing Johnson’s involvement with Clearview.
Johnson 2.0 is simply desperate to be recognized as something, anything, other than a horrible troll. And being a tech company “founder” would be a dream, putting him in the same league as his idol and obsession, Thiel. However, in a recent substack post, Johnson claims he will soon be suing for his stake in Clearview and has started attacking Thiel.
It must be said that it would be ironic that a white nationalist troll like Johnson could end up taking somewhere up to 5 million dollars from a surveillance company financed by Thiel. It’s hard to think of a person less deserving of wealth and more deserving of being exposed and isolated for the damage he has done, than Johnson.
Since his made-up conversion, and what Zev Shalev admiringly says is Johnson's “reinvention,” he has been hard at work revising history. He sees who is unpopular and his writings go in the direction the wind is blowing. And everyone is open to criticism, especially if they’re right-wing like Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society or Johnson’s former Breitbart boss Steve Bannon. And the accusations of espionage and corruption fly.
JEFFREY EPSTEIN AND CHARLES JOHNSON
Jeffrey Epstein is a regular feature of Johnson’s substack, mainly because it allows Johnson to associate his targets with the dead pedophile and smear them. As Eric Weinstein of Thiel Capital found out. Johnson uploaded videos to YouTube and wrote about how he despises Weinstein and calls Weinstein an Israeli spy (more Jews!) Johnson doesn’t let his readers know that Eric is working behind the scenes to remove Johnson from Thiel's court as a dangerous liability for the billionaire. Eric apparently met Epstein years ago, and so Johnson will wrap the two together until they are indistinguishable and until Eric feels pain. Johnson’s pain. If Johnson loses his billionaire, Johnson’s network will quickly shrink, and he will end up with Congressman Matt Gaetz as his primary power broker. When Gaetz was discovered to have Johnson as a State of the Union guest, the congressman washed his hands of Johnson in public.
However, in several articles on the substack, Johnson claims that Gaetz is a valued friend of his. So are Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance and Arizona Senate hopeful Blake Masters (both former employees of Thiel). Johnson writes he feels en famille with them. Are they really friends? Someone should ask these political hopefuls if Johnson’s someone they endorse.
Oddly, since Epstein's death, Johnson has stated that he has never met Epstein. He told Rolling Stone he “turned down the offer” but in his substack Johnson can’t resist presenting his insider credentials and writes that he’s met Epstein several times. Which is it? Engaging in falsehoods based on its use to him is a trademark of the things Johnson.
In Rolling Stone, last October, Johnson had never met Epstein. Two months later, in his own substack, he had now met Epstein on several occasions. So why does he guilt-by-associate others like Eric Weinstein for meeting Epstein? How many times did Johnson meet the pedophile? What did Johnson know? Why didn't Johnson say anything about the abuse? The measuring stick can apply to him just as well as he applies it to others. You've entered an ethical abyss when you pretend to know Jeffrey Epstein or dishonestly claim to have never met him, depending on how that will make you seem to readers. And that’s what Johnson’s so concerned about, how he appears in the mirror. If his mask of superiority cracks, then Johnson must struggle to live with who and what he is. And that punishment is what drives him to do what he can to get approval.
Johnson's sense of smugness is hard to miss on his substack. When not literally comparing himself to Cassandra or Semmelweis he’s announcing his importance, his supposed wealth, his “nobility” and how the world has done him wrong:
“I will reveal a lot of what I know but I worry about my personal safety and the timing isn’t there yet”
“If I were a normal man I would likely be a happier one but happy men do not go on adventures. Driven men do”
“I became one of the best investors of my generation. (More on that at another time)”
“I, by dint of my investing, have great power”
“I’ve been enjoying my exile and the few wayward students who come out to see their guru out on the mountainside, far from the chattering ninnies who think they know best when they know the least”
“If ever I should find myself in the enemy’s captivity I should hope I have the dignity to ask for the bullet rather than the Vietnamese prostitutes but I suppose you never really know until you’re there”
“I saw the future in 2015”
“Long before I was materially rich I was rich in information and books”
“I helped elect Trump president”
“I’m rich now”
“Given the nature of the work I do and its importance to the national interest I simply won’t meet with someone who has no online presence”
“I know all political lives end in failure and that leadership requires sacrifice — of time, of body, and spirit — and I am prepared to pay that price, come what may”
“I take seriously the obligations that come with being American nobility”
“I was that wunderkind but now I am neither a wunder nor a kind. And whiz kid both lives—and sound—a lot better than whiz man”
“I got attacked, lied about, and threatened by lesser talents”
The substack has dozens of self-congratulatory moments (and misspellings suggestive of Johnson's carelessness) and sometimes veers into territory where Johnson is praised by others and it’s mostly when Johnson was the only witness because the interlocutor is already dead. Many politicians, now deceased, apparently told Johnson he was a great man. It makes sense that if your college graduating class just knows you as the “floorshitter,” you'll spend your life angrily making yourself relevant in every way. Except that once your post-graduation reputation is also wrecked, by you, what do you do? Apparently write a substack so you can rewrite history, settle old scores, and puff out your ego claiming to be dear friends with Nassim Taleb, Glenn Loury, Matt Gaetz, and Alan Dershowitz.
In Johnson's substack, most others are spies, are corrupt, or have ties to something vile. No journalism is needed when you engage in guilt by association. You can simply weave a broad tapestry of negativity. And Johnson's true colors appear in the substack.
JOHNSON’S CURRENT ANTI-SEMITISM
Johnson 2.0 mentions “Jews” in his substack columns no less than 250 times in 115 articles. And most of those mentions convey that Jews are untrustworthy, are spies for Israel, or have dual loyalty. Everything can be explained by using race and espionage. Here is how Johnson’s substack sums up Thiel’s first major investment, PayPal:
“PayPal was Israeli and Eastern European Jewry with Thiel as its Teutonic face while Musk, enamored of the Russians, was decidedly more Eastern and Russian. Musk was quickly couped by Peter’s Jewish friends and the neocons surrounding Thiel have since acquired a bit of experience at that sort of thing. Then as now governing post-coup proved to be another thing entirely and the company was forced to sell to eBay, itself a front for the CIA”
Johnson 2.0 says he’s not an anti-Semite, but he never misses an opportunity to single out Jews:
“A clash then between the woke New York Times Jews who push the 1619 Project and the Claremont Jews who hold to the Declaration of Independence abstractionism may draw in auxiliaries”
“You also have the (largely) Jewish Silicon Valley types who decamped for Miami, one of America’s money laundering capitals. They’ve made their money and now have absconded in California’s hour of need”
“Youngkin lent himself $20 million. That money will now be repaid. We should be asking by whom. When we see that Youngkin says that one of the larger problems facing Virginia is antisemitism, well, I think we have our answer”
“Frenkel appears to have been one of those Refusenik Jews who escaped the Soviet Union. Weinstein pays homage and has declared himself an intellectual refusenik. We have elsewhere explored the ties of the Refusenik Jewry to our current maladies”
“[Jared] Kushner, [Mark] Zuckerberg, and [Ben] Shapiro were all closely aligned during the Trump years. All three have sought power above all else. All three have sought Chinese support, financial or political. All three have connections to Harvard’s Jewish community”
“If [Natan] Sharansky is a fake dissident it raises the tantalizing question of whether or not the efforts to settle hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel and America were part of a large project and just what that project really was”
Johnson’s obsession is not just Jews but also Israel, mentioning Israel 435 times in his blog. Sixty of his columns mark Israeli spies or Israeli influence as his subject. Concerns about how the entire world’s elite, philanthropists, or journalists are agents of a foreign power.
“Remember 2008. [The Republic of] Georgia had become an Israeli satellite. The Israeli’s trained and equipped the Georgian army. There were reports that the Israeli’s were building air strips as refueling points for attacks on Iran… In August of that year, Putin invaded the country, destroyed the Israeli trained army and put an end to the air strips… The question becomes: will Putin tolerate another Jewish run, troublemaking state on his border?”
“Ukraine is the only country after Israel which has a Jewish head of state. In some of the cities the population of Ukrainian Jews is closer to 50%”
This hatred and obsession may explain Johnson’s views on Vladimir Putin. Johnson writes that he admires Vladimir Putin, fears him, and thinks that Russian oil and gas shouldn’t be sanctioned. The sociopathy mask completely fell off with this entry. Without someone close to him to edit or provide feedback, only a hobgoblin without empathy would say Putin is worthy of admiration. Johnson is so fond of Putin he imitated Putin’s famous bare-chested horseback shot on his personal Instagram and even tagged the Russian leader’s insta account. It’s an even less complimentary photo than Putin’s version. Imitation, we’re told, is the sincerest form of flattery.
EVERY JOHNSON CRITIC IS A SPY
“Many of the companies doing health tech are Chinese, Israeli/UAE, Russian ops designed to destroy our insane health care system”
Spies are everywhere and are Johnson’s rhetorical device supplanting real research or journalism. Tie any individual with a foreign power and, voila, you have an explanation for anything you want to project:
“I know of foreign spies who serve in venture funds, direct films, found and fund tech companies, and work for nearly all of our major media companies. You know them too. I know more than a few who write for Substack and who even work for Substack”
“I myself have detected them in media, government, and of course technology”
The January 6 capitol riot, for Johnson, was “epiphany to me — about the country, its penetration by foreign intelligence services and the fragility and resiliency of her institutions, and the role I unwittingly played both in causing the breakdown and now must play in setting it right.” Johnson 2.0 says he will save us.
“Many of the companies you know and love are in fact intelligence operations masquerading as firms. The founders (or their investors or both) are crewed up, as it were. They didn't just wake up one day and decide to execute. They are part of a network, a deep state plan”
Yep, Ben Shapiro is a spy bought “by Chinese intelligence through cultist fracking billionaires.”
Yep, Jeff Bezos is Deep State. And how did Obama get a deal at Netflix? Spies
“We’ve already noted that Jeff Bezos’s adoptive father and grandfather all had deep state connections. Now what about Netflix? Take a gander at the family histories of Netflix’s two cofounders — Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph. […] Do you think it just sort of happened that Barack Obama one day got a gig working for Netflix?”
Sean Parker? Deep State. Uber? Part of a Deep State plan against the mob.
“Sean Parker, who cofounded Napster, went on to serve on the board of Spotify. Do you really think it’s a coincidence that Parker grew up in Herndon, VA and that his father Bruce worked for the very deep state, NOAA? Or how about Chris Sacca’s early stage investment in Uber? Wasn’t Uber useful for taking down the taxicab mob? Billionaires, far from being a policy failure, are a policy design. They are the product of the state taking out the mobbed up industry”
Yep, Chris Sacca and Travis Kalanick got together in 2010 to set up Uber as a deep state plan to handle the taxicab mob (which in Johnson’s fantasy famously extends from the hills of Sicily to the hills of Mountainview)
Legendary investor Esther Dyson? “She has longstanding ties to Russia, going back decades.” Her father, you see, was a dupe or a spy, according to Johnson 2.0
Eric Weinstein? Spy
“I believe that Eric Weinstein (and perhaps his brother Bret) is one of many spies around us, shaping both our discourse and the information terrain online and in our wider culture. I understand how implausible that sounds. But think about it: does it really?”
Facebook Founder Eduardo Saverin? Associated with the CCP and with organized crime
“The most interesting aspect is Eduardo Saverin, who provided the initial capital. The company was incorporated in Miami and we aren’t supposed to talk about Saverin’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (through marriage) or to transnational organized crime”
Yep, the cofounder of Facebook as a teenager could see into the future and got into things with Zuck because of a nefarious plan of transnational crime.
Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu? Chinese Spy
“Time will reveal her CCP bona fides. And no, that isn’t just because she’s Asian. Mark my words. She was instrumental in banning facial recognition in Boston, a key tool for catching the sorts of spies who have become all too common”
But wait, there’s more:
“Wu is but the Harvard-aligned Chinese mob replacing the Irish mob as a loci of power. She advised human trafficking syndicates masquerading as refugee organizations”
There’s a lot:
Andrew Sullivan: British spy
The Mercer family: Russian Spies
IAC founder Billionaire Barry Diller: Israeli and Chinese Spy
Longtime Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg: Israeli Spy
eBay’s Pierre Omidyar: CIA
Elizabeth Holmes: Spy
Chess player Garry Kasparov: KGB
Investor Vivi Nevo: Israeli spy
Twitter’s Stephanie Koff: Israeli spy
Senator Kevin McCarthy: Chinese spy
Xeni Jardin: Israeli spy
Gay author James Kirchick: Spy
Arianna Huffington: Spy
Journalist Ben Smith: Spy
In some posts, Johnson 2.0 tells us that, no, he wasn’t canceled for behaving like an awful person, journalistic hack, and a troll, his career ended because he was a whistleblower, saving America.
“Many of the figures on the conservative movement have moneyed connections to foreign nationals and dual citizens who double as spies. If you call them out on this, they’ll call you a conspiracy theorist or work to end your career as they tried to do with me.”
Johnson’s obsession with espionage and his ability to only engage in guilt by association has led him to coin a term: Chisrael. Chisrael is when agents against America First simultaneously serve Israel and China. Such as Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson and Democrat mega-donor Barry Diller. They work for Chisrael.
Why does Johnson have such animosity towards these people? Because they washed their hands of this racist who denies the Holocaust. They have rejected him, and he is seeking revenge. Hell hath no fury like a narcissist inflamed with rage. Ben Shapiro banned Johnson from being published or mentioned in his Daily Wire publishing empire. Barry Diller owns the Daily Beast which has written several unflattering stories about Johnson. Johnson tells us in his substack that the Mercer family refused any association with him when Johnson wanted to work for Parler. Andrew Sullivan expressed his approval of one of Johnson’s main critics. What about Councilwoman Michelle Wu from Boston? That’s a peculiar one, right? Blackballed by Johnson after she voted against a contract Clearview tried to sell to the city of Boston to use facial recognition. Johnson fails to disclose that he was to personally receive a commission payment on that sale. Our hero is the same grifter he was prior to Johnson 2.0. Esther Dyson? Johnson hates her for being a friend of Eric Weinstein. Sheryl Sandberg and Eduardo Saverin are perceived enemies of Thiel, and Johnson will do anything to please his master. Stephani Koff? Criticized Johnson on Twitter. Xeni Jardin? Criticized Johnson on Twitter. Both Arianna Huffington and Ben Smith have published damaging takedowns on Johnson. Accusing them all of espionage is an exercise in payback.
There are dozens of others mentioned as spies and these are likely to be people Johnson has personal hostility toward.
Johnson 2.0 says he isn’t just a whistleblower, our hero is also a focus of various intelligence agencies from across the world
“Indeed, unlike so many of the armchair foreign policy establishment I have actually been spied on by Russians, as I have been by other nations, notably China, Israel, and even France. And those are just the countries I’m comfortable talking about!”
“I take it all in stride and not without some pride. So long as it isn’t too dangerous it is somewhat flattering to be a target of espionage. ‘Why, little old me?’”
It doesn’t take a clinical psychologist to describe what’s going on here. Johnson’s ego demands that he be able to explain his downfall in his 20s and his exile into insignificance by age 30. If he is solely responsible, then the healthy thing is to be accountable. But if Johnson convinces himself that it was done to him, that he was the target of a vast international conspiracy of intelligence agencies, then he saves face and continues to be ‘right’, the mark of the narcissist. Just like those who have a persecution complex and have failed at something. It’s someone else's fault, always. This also explains Johnson’s various unsuccessful lawsuits, such as when Johnson sued Twitter for banning him. And lost. In his substack he always asks “should I sue” and “to sue or not to sue.”
Although media folks have been quoting and retweeting Johnson’s articles, no one has gone out of their way to defend Johnson publicly except for one person on Twitter, Keri Kukral. Kukral is the founder of the upcoming Raw Science Film Festival and reportedly Johnson’s girlfriend. This may explain why Kukral has tweeted no less than 100 times defending or praising Johnson. Kukral lashes out at Johnson’s critics and is increasingly sounding like Johnson’s substack in her tweets about spies, intelligence ops, Chisrael, Thiel, Cawthorn, and even Jews. Perhaps Johnson is using her Twitter account.After all, Johnson doesn't play by the rules, which is why he had half a dozen attempts to get back on the Twitter platform through proxy accounts.
Most recently, Johnson was using @charles25670916. This account, whose handle has not been publicly identified until now, predictably follows Matt Gaetz, Blake Masters, white nationalist publication VDARE, Seth Hettena, Zev Shalem, Eric Garland, and a genetics company constantly tweeting the Johnson talking points on genetics: Traitwell, Inc.
JOHNSON 2.0 IS STILL A RACIST
Johnson 2.0 writes approvingly in his substack about Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton is a discredited 19th Century English scientist, proponent of social Darwinism, father of eugenics and scientific racism. Johnson’s substack mentions Galton in six different articles. Johnson says Galton is “a genius” and recommends everyone read up on him.
Galton cheered for “pride of race” and a nation where immigrants were accepted on racial grounds to get the “better sort.” Galton also believed that the “more suitable races” should be given a better chance to prevail over the “less suitable.” Galton’s theories bordered on justifying genocide. Galton wrote “there exists a sentiment, for the most part quite unreasonable, against the gradual extinction of an inferior race.” Nowadays, Galton’s name is being removed from several British university buildings.
And how does Johnson think everyone should think about race? With determined commitment. For Johnson racial genetics is everything. In a substack focused on the differences between Anglo-Americans like Johnson, and Jews, Johnson 2.0 writes: “You have more in common with those who share your racial and ethnic background for the same reason you love your family: They are an extension of you. Genetic nepotism for the win and way of life, in other words. Survival not of the fittest but of the family” (emphasis ours).
Johnson’s way of thinking is literally a justification for racial supremacy. Character, honesty, compassion mean nothing. You must love your white companions because they are an extension of you. And other races and ethnicities are competitors in this struggle for survival. Johnson admits his racism fully in his substack and goes full Galton in pride of race. Is it a surprise Johnson flashes the white pride symbol over and over again? And is it a shocker that Johnson’s friend, the neo-Nazi Richard Spencer is also a fan of Galton? Race uber alles.
Johnson 2.0 tells us that he founded Traitwell, a genetics company in suburban Houston. It has a crappy website, and it seems to be something Johnson does with his time beyond the substack. Traitwell’s website solicits donations and promises a bright future grounded in genomics. Johnson’s participation is logical as he has been obsessed with genetics and race for years. In a recent substack Johnson published an article about the MAOA gene that he has previously said makes black people prone to violence. His Chief Technology Officer at Traitwell, Gavan Tredoux, is the author. Not surprisingly Tredoux the Traitwell employee has for twenty years run a fanboy website about Galton the eugenics pioneer. Traitwell also has a substack that mentions Galton with approval.
Johnson is listed as a director of Traitwell, which was incorporated two years ago in Delaware. Traitwell also had a Texas subsidiary, Our Perfect Score, Inc. which forfeited existence last month due to non-payment of the Texas franchise tax. Just who are Traitwell’s investors? Peter Thiel? Richard Spencer?
So now we know where Johnson probably sits in the Houston suburbs every day wondering how a holocaust-denier, transparently racist, Richard Spencer-adjacent, Jeffrey Epstein-associated, twitter-banned-for-life, writer-without-a-publication, proven-fabricator, terrible-researcher, most-hated-troll, freshly-divorced narcissist (who wasn’t granted joint custody—imagine what that divorce petition must contain) do upon waking up in the morning?
He'll try to
1) find ways to stay relevant because his narcissism needs attention
2) plot a path to reputational salvation by drolly pretending to be a Biden-supporting former white nationalist prepared to help and
3) express his narcissistic rage against those he believes have wronged him. Yes, the wounds in this person are self-inflicted but that isn’t ever in his calculation, others must be punished.
Charles Carlisle Johnson is not to be taken seriously. Stop trust washing him.
Just. Stop.
Let him continue his grandiloquent self-involvement, like someone screaming into the void of outer space. Limit the power Johnson can have. Don’t trust Charles Johnson. If anyone mentions Johnson with curiosity or approval, please forward them this text. If necessary. Nothing further need ever be written about this person. Remember who and what Johnson is. Narcissists don’t change. They only learn to weaponize people and information and leave a trail of damage in their wake. “Chuck” is an irrelevant, repulsive, has-been. Bless his heart. And cut off his narcissistic supply.