Top Christian nationalist podcasters spread claims that Jews 'drain blood' from children

A pair of right-wing podcasters trying to establish a Christian nationalist community in Tennessee have been promoting virulent anti-Semitism.

Pastor Andrew Isker and his sidekick C.Jay Engel, the hosts of what they describe as "the No. 1 Christian nationalist podcast in the world," have spread anti-Semitic claims and hosted Holocaust deniers and Nazi sympathizers on their Contra Mundum podcast, reported WTVF-TV.

“Jews in the biblical sense, right, they do not exist today anymore, right?" Isker said in a recent interview with far-right pastor Joel Webbon. "It's only Christians and non-Christians."

The pair have invited technology entrepreneur Ron Unz, who runs a website that links to white supremacist and anti-Semitic content, to discuss Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindberg, who Engel declared as "one of the great American heroes of the 20th Century."

"Ron Unz is an idea man and, unfortunately, the vast majority of his ideas are anti-Semitic and the vast majority of the people who he platforms share many of those anti-Semitic ideas," said Aryeh Tuchman, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

Isker – who holds unconventional views about airport scanners – promoted essays written by Unz in which he claims that "per capita Jews were the greatest mass murderers of the 20th Century” and “religious Jews apparently pray to Satan almost as readily as they pray to God," and he endorses the vile blood libel myth alleging that Jews once "kidnapped small Christian children in order to drain their blood for use in various magic rituals."

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"Essentially, they are promoting [Unz] as a source of truth, as a trusted source of opinion about historical issues — and this is the person who has denied the Holocaust and has cast the history of the world as one in which Jewish people are the villains," Tuchman said.

Isker has said that he believes Jews should be treated as second-class citizens because, in his view, “this country belongs to Jesus,' but the pair issued a statement denying that were anti-Semitic.

“We deny accusations of anti-Semitism and see them as evidence that there is no actual story here, but merely the obsession of an activist journalist in the midst of Legacy Media’s decline,” Isker and Engel told the TV station in a written statement.

"From time to time we have guests on our podcast that we think will be interesting to our audience," they added. "We don't share all their views on every topic."

Tuchman isn't buying their explanation, however.

"I believe it says quite a bit about the willingness of these people to essentially raise up an anti-Semite and essentially create an on-ramp for their viewers to engage further with Mr. Unz and his ideas," Tuchman said.

Isker and Engel argued that Unz cannot be anti-Semitic because he claims to be Jewish himself, and Tuchman said that explanation is absurd.

“It's a pathetic and laughable defense that anti-Semites use when they are called out," Tuchman said.

Isker and Engel moved to Tennessee with aims of creating a community so-called "Heritage Americans," who are depicted in their social media posts with images of Norman Rockwell's idyllic depictions of midcentury life, and they have explicitly stated their longing for the American way of life before women joined the workforce and civil rights "ruined everything."

The real estate component of their Jackson County project is led by two related companies, New Founding and RidgeRunner, which started with an initial project in nearby Burkesville, Kentucky, before launching the Tennessee phase last year.