His panic was almost palpable as he tried to walk back the fearsome reputation he’d cultivated. “I am not actually a ‘Neo-Nazi White Supremacist,’ nor do I know what that is,” he wrote in mid-September. He claimed that his violent rhetoric was never sincere but simply a way to mock those who slap a Nazi label on anyone who “stands up for white people’s rights” or “refuses to believe the stupid lies about Hitler” or rejects the “alleged Holocaust” narrative. Anglin now shared what he said had been his true editorial approach all along: “Ironic Nazism disguised as real Nazism disguised as ironic Nazism.”

Five days later, he posted about “the world being ruled either by reptiles from another dimension or some other type of reptilian or insectoid race of aliens.” Where the irony started and stopped was hard to know. I emailed Anglin one more time asking for an interview. He didn’t answer. The next day, he wrote a post calling for the mass execution of journalists. “I want to see pieces of journalist brains splattered across walls,” he wrote.