The New Power of Far-Right Influencers
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 572 Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
History professor Mark Bray is no stranger to death threats. As the author of the book Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, published in 2017, he has received backlash and harassment from far-right circles for almost a decade. But things recently escalated after the Trump administration designated antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization,” and far-right influencers with a newfound power targeted Bray.
Mike sits down with WIRED’s David Gilbert and Leah Feiger to discuss what went down, how the role of far-right influencers has expanded exponentially during the past year, and what responsibility tech companies carry.
Articles mentioned in this episode:
- He Wrote a Book About Antifa. Death Threats Are Driving Him Out of the US | WIRED
- Trump Wants to Take Over Cities. Influencers Are Giving Him the Fuel to Do It | WIRED
- The Who's Who of MAGA Influencers You Should Know About by Now | WIRED
Join WIRED’s best and brightest on Uncanny Valley as they dissect the collision of tech, politics, finance, and business, from Alexis Ohanian's newest tech venture to the effects of inaccurate information from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots on social protests.
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Leah, how are you doing? |
| 0:02.1 | Hey, Mike, how's it going? |
| 0:03.8 | It's going all right. Thanks for filling in for Lauren this week. And you're on London time, no less. |
| 0:09.7 | I am thrilled to be here, though, in Kingsland territory. |
| 0:15.2 | In fact, both you and our colleague, the one and only David Gilbert, are joining us from |
| 0:20.4 | across the pond today. |
| 0:21.4 | David, how are you doing? |
| 0:23.0 | I'm good, Mike. Thanks for having me today. |
| 0:25.9 | I'm not in London, though. Just to be clear, I'm still here in Ireland. |
| 0:31.3 | And proud of it. |
| 0:32.8 | Indeed. |
| 0:34.1 | Well, David, we had to have you on the show today because last week you reported a story that was pretty unorthodox and to say the least, scary. |
| 0:41.8 | Can you tell us about it? |
| 0:43.3 | Sure. The story was about Professor Mark Bray, who's a professor of history at Rutgers University, and he's probably best known because he wrote a book eight years ago now about Antifa. |
| 0:56.3 | And while they had been out of the news for a while over the course of the last month or so, they've been back in the news |
| 1:01.1 | and he has become the target of threats from far right influencers. Ultimately, boiling down to |
| 1:08.6 | the fact that he got debt threats against him. |
| 1:11.6 | His family's home address was posted online. |
| 1:13.6 | He got email address saying he's being watched and other threats saying he's going to be killed in front of his students. |
| 1:20.6 | So he ultimately had to leave the country because of these threats. |
| 1:25.6 | And I think what this really shows is just how powerful |
| 1:29.3 | far-right influencers online have become, especially in the second Trump administration, |
... |
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