Joshua Neil Dietz was identified by anarchist blog It’s Going Down on Tuesday as an alt-right activist who notably acted as a frequent podcast co-host with infamous white nationalist Richard Spencer and was a guest on other racist programs. In addition to mingling with hate movement leaders, Dietz is also a hypnotherapist and a former adjunct professor in the City University of New York system. The moniker he used to appear on podcasts was barely different from his real name, and he shared video of himself while doing so.
As recently as Oct. 31, Dietz co-hosted a podcast with Spencer called “The McSpencer Group,” presenting himself as “Josh Neal” and showing his face on camera. Just days later, right-wing reject Milo Yiannopoulos released audio he said contained Spencer shouting a myriad of racist slurs against Jews and African Americans after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where an alt-right supporter drove his car into a crowd of counterdemonstrators and murdered Heather Heyer. “My ancestors fucking enslaved those little pieces of fucking shit,” the voice attributed to Spencer is heard saying in the published audio. Spencer has not denied that the audio in question contains his voice.
In the most recent episode of The McSpencer Group, Dietz questioned Spencer over whether the “chad-ly” guys who appeared and asked about anti-Semitic conspiracy theories at a recent string of Turning Point USA events were being effective in their stunts. While Dietz and Spencer disagreed on the demonstrators’ effectiveness, Dietz insisted that, regardless, “there has to be something like the alt-right” in existence. Previously, Dietz appeared on a program on a white nationalist channel called No White Guilt and on a now-defunct white supremacist podcast called “Heel Turn.”
In August, Dietz appeared on video alongside white nationalist Augustus Sol Invictus. The video of the conversation on Dietz’s YouTube channel has been set to private on YouTube, as has most of the other content once open to the public before It’s Going Down published its article. It’s Going Down wrote of the conversation: “Josh discussed the need for the Alt-Right to rebuild itself after Charlottesville and create counter-institutions and cement streams of income to support its projects.”
The “About” page of his website, TheDietzMethod, states that Dietz received a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology and reads that Dietz currently teaches “undergraduate psychology at colleges throughout New York,” although it is not known when the website was last updated. The article published by It’s Going Down described Dietz as an “off and on again college professor” and links to a page attributed to Dietz on Rate My Professors that lists him as having taught at Kingsborough Community College, which is part of CUNY system.
“Joshua Neil Dietz does not currently work at Kingsborough Community College,” a spokesperson for KCC told Right Wing Watch via email. They did not, however, respond to whether Dietz had previously worked with the community college or if the college had been aware of his ideology.
Additionally, a page on the class-scheduling app Coursicle lists a PSYC 3370 class that Dietz taught at CUNY-Brooklyn in “Hypnosis and Related Phenomena” during the fall 2017 and spring 2018 semesters. An emailed inquiry sent to CUNY-Brooklyn went unanswered at the time of publication.
Dietz also plays music in a band that was scheduled to perform at the music venue Arlene’s Grocery in New York City. An emailed inquiry to the venue went unanswered at the time of publication, but the venue has removed the show listing from its website and from Facebook.
Dietz did not return an email inquiry from Right Wing Watch. Since It’s Going Down published its article, a Twitter account believed to be used by Dietz was temporarily deactivated. It was later reactivated, along with an announcement that “the planned live stream series will no longer take place,” presumably referring to the live videos he had been uploading to YouTube with other white nationalist activists.
