A prominent neo-Nazi recruiter and podcast host has been unmasked as a 29-year-old South Dakota man whose podcasts, until today, were widely available on popular platforms like Audible, Deezer, and Spotify. These slickly produced podcasts have helped promote dozens of neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups, including a Nazi homeschool network based in Ohio.
And, like all good neo-Nazi grifters, he also runs a merch site and sells t-shirts, hoodies, and bags emblazoned with his site’s logo.
Riggin Lynn Scheer, from Brookings, South Dakota, has been operating in the midwest under the name “Gordon Kahl,” in homage to the original Kahl who was a neo Nazi and anti-government protester from North Dakota who ultimately was shot and killed by law enforcement during a shootout in northern Arkansas in 1983.
Scheer’s identity was first revealed by the anti-fascist researcher at the Anonymous Comrades Collective, after he helped promote the Nazi homeschooler couple from Upper Sandusky in Ohio reach a national audience by hosting them on his podcast, Achtung Amerikaner!, multiple times. Scheer was also an administrator on the couple’s Dissident Homeschool Telegram channel despite having no children.
Scheer has been active in the midwest’s neo-Nazi space for years. National white supremacist groups have used Scheer as their go-to person in the Midwest when they needed new members vetted, according to the researchers who have been tracking Scheer’s career for years.
There are now 17 podcasts listed on the Amerikaner website with a total of almost 500 episodes in the archives dating back to 2018, and the number of episodes published every month has increased dramatically since July 2022. The podcasts are created by a variety of well-known and not-so-well-known neo-Nazis, and all of the podcasts are aimed at the white supremacist communities.
Despite the openly racist and antisemitic content in Scheer’s podcasts, they were freely available on a variety of platforms this week.
However, after VICE News brought Scheer’s podcast to its attention, a Spotify spokesperson said in an email that “the content in question has been removed due to multiple violations of our Platform Rules.” VICE News has confirmed that the podcast is no longer available on Spotify. Deezer said it was reviewing the content and would make a decision on whether it is deemed “ harmful, hateful or illegal content.”
Audible, which also listed the podcast on its platform, did not respond to VICE News’ request to comment but appeared to have quietly removed the content from its site on Tuesday morning.
The podcasts are hosted by LibSyn, a large U.S. podcast hosting company that, among other prominent shows, hosts WTF with Marc Maron, a hugely popular comedy podcast. LibSyn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On his own podcast, Scheer appears to see himself as a unifier of the white supremacist movement, hosting racists of all stripes, including long-time neo-Nazi Billy Roper, violent Iowa-based neo-Nazi group Crew 319, and Patrick Little, who was recently identified as the person behind a series of antisemitic robocalls targeting Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
In one recent episode, Scheer interviewed the Texas grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, and told his listeners that he hoped “some attempt can be made to broaden cooperation between the different ideological tribes of our people.”
In real life, Scheer has been just as involved in the Midwest’s white supremacy scene. He has acted as a “lifeguard” at secretive, real-world, meet-ups, known as “pool parties,” that are organized by racist groups like The Right Stuff, the National Justice League, and Patriot Front.
However, in recent months, Scheer had a falling out with these groups and is now seeking to build an a neo-Nazi podcasting empire on his Amerikaner website as a challenge to the largest network of white nationalist podcasts, The Right Stuff, led by white supremacist Michael “Enoch” Peinovich.
Scheer also runs a Telegram channel with over 900 members that is filled with racist, homophobic, and antisemitic content.
When VICE News asked Scheer to comment on the revelations made by the researchers, he replied: “I think you should go catch AIDS instead.”
The Anonymous Comrade Collective researchers were able to identify Scheer in a number of ways. They first looked at the @GordonKahl Twitter account and found that a previous iteration of the account used the name @BigRigScheer. From that, combined with the fact that Scheer had stated he came from South Dakota on Twitter, the researchers were able to identify a single person living in the state with the name Riggin Scheer, who lives in Brookings.
The identity of Kahl was further solidified when the researchers found a document uploaded to document-sharing site Scribd that described a racist, tabletop role playing game (RPG) like Dungeons and Dragons, which Scheer was a big fan of.
The document’s author was listed as “Gordon Kahl,” but the metadata linked to the PDF showed that the author was actually Riggin Scheer. VICE News reviewed the document, which is still hosted on the site, and was able to verify the researcher’s findings.
Scheer’s RPG is called “RahoWa: The Meme Wars.” RaHoWa is a commonly used term by white supremacists meaning “racial holy war.”
This is how Scheer describes the game in the document posted on Scribd: “The year is 2045. Whites are a Minority, living in a hellscape of diversity and gay shit. We’ve passed Piss Earth, we shot past Septic Earth, we’re in Radioactive AIDs Earth. Jews run the world in the open, their hordes of colored slaves hunt the few remaining Aryans like Morlocks hunted Eloi, and many whites serve willingly as slaves to their semitic overlords.”
In the game, players take on enemies called “Negroids, “Beaners,” “Thai Ladyboys,” “Shitlibs,” and “ZOG-Bots.” One enemy known as the “Giga-N****” has a special ability to “Chimp-out” and deal extra damage points to the players in gameplay combat.
Little is known about Scheer’s personal life. He has a limited social media presence outside of neo-Nazi Telegram groups and a Facebook page he operated was set to private on Monday.
In one post on Telegram speaking about his personal life, Scheer states that he has “fairly low standards when it comes to women and has no success with them.” On Twitter, he previously wrote that his ideal woman would be Kentucky neo-Nazi Audrey Skeens.
Scheer was also concerned about his real name potentially getting him in trouble within the community. He told his followers on Telegram that due to his “questionable last name,” he had conducted a DNA test to make sure he wasn’t actually Jewish. He wanted “some kind of proof if I ever needed it.”
This has been a big turnaround for Scheer, who tweeted in 2020 that he had once thought of himself as a “Bernie Bro,” and has recounted a story from over a decade ago when he was on his way home from vetting a potential recruit when he was in a car accident and nearly died, but was saved by a native American who came upon the accident. “Racism is officially cancelled,” Scheer wrote at the time on Telegram.
Next month, Scheer will host an in-person meetup he described on Telegram as a “potluck” event called “Amerikaner Feast” somewhere in eastern South Dakota for “our people.”
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