On Mike Enoch’s Weak Knees

How the Shock Jock Backed Out of a Debate on Holocaust Denial with Me

This short post will expose “National Justice Party” chairman and The Right Stuff host Mike Enoch for running away from his public commitment to debate me on Holocaust denial. I will also debunk Mike’s attempt to turn the tables by falsely alleging that I am the one preventing the debate by imposing unfair conditions, namely through my alleged insistence on using untranslated German documents or a biased moderator.

Mike’s Method of Debate-Dodging: On-And-Off Ghosting

The basic tactic Mike has used over the last 1.5 years (!) to try to get out of his commitment to debate is periodic ghosting. The same pattern recurs: I email him and ask when we will do our debate. After months of non-responses to repeated emails, he finally replies, apologizes for not being in touch, and says, ‘yeah, we need to do this debate, let’s pin down a time.’ I promptly follow up, suggesting we pin down a specific time to debate. He proceeds to ghost me for months, despite my repeated emails. Then, the cycle restarts.

The most recent correspondence between us conforms to this pattern, and can be seen below.

Notice that in his reply to me, Mike (Peinovich) reiterates his commitment to debating, saying “we do need to get this done” (see the second highlighted portion) and asks for a week or two of preparation. However, since sending me this message on 2 March 2023 — over two months ago — Mike has completely ghosted me. He failed to respond to my repeated emails attempting to schedule the debate:

As noted, this is only the latest in a string of ‘ghosting’ cycles Mike has subjected me to, after which he placates me by sending an apologetic email and promising to do the debate. (Subsequent to the ‘apology email’, the ghosting restarts.)

While Mike ghosts me, he is apparently feeding his fans two excuses for not debating me.

Excuse One: Untranslated Documents?

Over one and a half years ago, I sent Mike a digital bundle of original documents that I planned to use to make my case in the debate. Naturally, most of the documents are in German, a language Mike cannot read.

Notwithstanding the hubris of Mike’s claim that he is competent to ‘debunk the Holocaust’ without knowing German — this means he cannot do any original research, and can only recite the arguments made by other deniers — I have, after initial reluctance, repeatedly offered to translate the documents for him into English. See, for example:

This excuse is a sham, invoked only to justify Mike’s decision to slither out of his commitment to debate.

Excuse Two: ‘Jewish-Antifa Moderator’?

To understand the source of the false claim that I ‘insist on having a pro-antifa Jewish moderator,’ one has to go way back to 2020, when Mike and I first agreed to debate Holocaust denial.

Our original debate was actually supposed to be a 2v2: Mike Enoch and Eric Striker (the deniers) on the one hand, and Avi Bitterman and I on the other hand. The debate was to be moderated by a ‘debate bro’ style YouTuber called AskYourself. As a premise of the debate, Avi and I were to produce documentary evidence for the Holocaust and send it to Mike and Striker. We were not able to send our documents until September 2021, because the COVID epidemic led to the closure of archives and borders.

After our data dump, Mike and Striker had learned about Ask Yourself’s Jewish ethnicity and allegedly Leftist politics. On this basis, they childishly dropped out of the debate.

However, following the collapse of the original debate structure, Mike and I subsequently agreed to do a 1v1 with a new moderator. Since fall 2021, we have agreed to debate, he has had access to all my documents, and I have consistently indicated that I am happy to have no moderator, or to work with Mike to pick a neutral one. In point of fact, two years ago I suggested Modern Day Debate, Andrew Wilson of The Crucible, and Ethan Ralph of the Killstream as potential moderators, while also leaving open the possibility of having no moderator:

Thus, the “Jewish antifa moderator” excuse is another sham.

A Pattern of Deceit

Mike has a documented history of dishonesty in his public persona. His most brazen deception involved secretly maintaining a marriage to a Jewish woman while acting as a spokesperson for neo-Nazism. Mike and his former wife Ames Friedman are pictured below, during their Jewish-themed wedding:

In Christmas 2015, long after Mike’s podcast “The Daily Shoah” (TDS) became explicitly and unironically neo-Nazi, Mike brought Friedman onto TDS as a guest. In the course of her guest appearance, Friedman concealed her Jewish identity and gigglingly promoted antisemitic and racist memes.

In early 2017, Mike was doxed and his relationship to Friedman publicly revealed. Fellow neo-Nazis accused him of “race mixing” because of his sexual relationship with the blonde Jewish woman Ames Friedman, and Mike was forced to grovel before these critics in a “Fashy Struggle Session.” Eventually, the couple divorced.

Still: from the fact that Ms. Friedman was brought in as an (enthusiastic) participator in Mike’s neo-Nazi grift, one must conclude that Mike neither respects his audience, nor takes their (and his) professed beliefs seriously.

A Pattern among Deniers

Mike’s failure to defend his views is exceedingly common among Holocaust deniers. With three exceptions — Jim Rizoli, Thomas Dalton, and Marshall Lore — none of the many dozens of deniers whom I have challenged to debate are willing to do so, and at least three have backed out of debates to which they previously agreed.

Despite their bluster about how easily the “Holohoax” is discredited, I am entitled at this point to speculate that the deniers are conscious frauds who know or expect they have a shoddy case. Hence their desperate efforts to avoid the “open debate” they claim to covet.