MARYVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — He’s a Hitler-loving podcaster on a mission to convince young Christian men to hate – all in the name of God.
Corey Mahler, 39, of Maryville, Tennessee, is unapologetically a racist, an antisemite, a fascist and a Christian nationalist who thinks Hitler is in Paradise and the Jews he killed are in Hell. He wants a right-wing Christian government that will deport Jews, immigrants and people of color. He does not rule out the possible need for genocide.
And, in an exclusive interview with NewsChannel 5 Investigates, Mahler was equally forthright about his ongoing efforts to recruit young Christian men to join him in his hate.
“If you want to influence society, you want to influence young men,” Mahler admitted.
“And that is your goal?” we asked.
“That is, absolutely,” he agreed.
“To push young men further and further to the right?”
Mahler answered, “Our goal is to push young men to become actual Christians,” — which, in his mind, includes being racist and antisemitic.
And his influence extends even further as those young men go back to their own churches with ideas they pick up from his podcast.
“The issues that we raise then get talked about on Sunday or during the week. There are men in their Bible studies discussing those issues. There are pastors having to respond to those issues,” Mahler said.
And conservative church pastors around the United States agree that Mahler is causing trouble within their congregations.
“This isn’t just some online fight. This is about what’s coming into the church itself,” said James White, a member of the ministry team at Apologia Church in Mesa, Arizona.
White recently engaged in an online debate with Mahler where the East Tennessee podcaster argued that the Holy Spirit could not sanctify a Black Christian as much as a White Christian.
In a debrief with White following that debate, Apologia pastor Luke Pierson called Mahler “an evil man.”
“This is a vile doctrine that needs to be completely obliterated out of the church – and it’s there and it’s a problem,” Pierson said.
Similarly, Chris Rosebrough, pastor of Kongsvinger Lutheran Church in Oslo, Minn., called Mahler “one of the most dangerous people on the planet.”
“He somehow has this amazing ability to make white supremacy, fascism and the racial ideology of the Nazis look like it is virtuous,” Rosebrough said during an episode of his Fighting for the Faith podcast.
“That’s the real threat that he poses.”
'I don't have a problem with genocide'
Mahler wages his battle for the heart and soul of the American Protestant church from his home here in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, in historic Blount County, where he and his parents moved from southern California.
His vehicle for pushing his message is his “Stone Choir” podcast, which he began producing in 2022 with his pseudonymous co-host “Treblewoe.”
“We’re somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 listeners right now,” Mahler said.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked, “Per episode?”
“Per episode.”
Part of Mahler’s idea of being an actual Christian can be found in his tweet that “Jesus Christ is Lord, and Adolf Hitler is His faithful servant.”
And unlike most Americans who honor the sacrifices of the brave men who died on European battlefields, instead of memorializing the dead, Mahler argues that “the overwhelming majority of those who died on the Allied side in WWII are in Hell.”
As for the well-documented historical horror of the Holocaust, Mahler calls it an “anti-German blood libel.”
NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Mahler, “If you believed that Hitler did kill millions of Jews, would you have a problem with that?”
“I don't believe that he did,” he shot back.
“If he did, would you have a problem with it?”
“I don't have a problem with genocide per se, and I can't as a Christian because God commanded it in the Old Testament of the Canaanites.”
Mahler’s message is not unlike the neo-Nazis we’ve confronted on Nashville streets – or even members of the Ku Klux Klan who once operated in the backwoods of the Old South.
“What’s the difference between you and an uneducated guy in a white robe and hood?” we asked.
“Well, I would object to say that those men were necessarily uneducated,” Mahler replied. “There were many members of the KKK who were certainly quite educated.”
He later explained that he would not be comfortable in a white robe and hood because "at this point, it's become sort of a weird little club of men."
Among Mahler’s other critics is James Lindsay, a fellow East Tennessean and a conservative commentator who has drawn criticism for his critique of the so-called “Woke Left.”
More recently, Lindsay has set his sights on what he dubbed the “Woke Right.”
"The fringe guy like Corey, what he ends up doing is creating space for the slightly less radical people to push their radicalism and have it look normal by comparison, thus normalizing their arguments,” Lindsay told NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
Still, Lindsay argued that it would be a mistake to simply dismiss Mahler as fringe.
"The fringe doesn't always stay the fringe,” he continued. “The fringe can, in fact, very radically and very quickly become a major force in society."
Government will 'necessarily be either Lutheran or Presbyterian'
Like the efforts exposed by NewsChannel 5 Investigates to create a Christian nationalist community in Jackson County, Tennessee, Mahler also wants an authoritarian figure – a so-called “Christian prince" – to get elected and seize power.
The leader, he argues, “will necessarily be either Lutheran or Presbyterian.”
Baptists, he admitted, need not apply.
“I think that a lot of Baptists do not read the scripture and believe what they've read,” Mahler told NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
“And they would have no place in a Christian nationalist government, is what you've said,” we noted.
“In the government, yes.”
Mahler would also drive every person of color out of the country even if they are American citizens, arguing that we should "Make America White Again."
We pushed Mahler.
Q: “ The United States is a constitutional republic."
A: "Currently."
Q: "Where in the Constitution does it say that it's for Whites only?"
A: "If you go back to the interest of the Founding Fathers, and their intent is for us and for our posterity, posterity is blood."
Q: "Where does it say that in the Constitution?"
A: "It doesn't currently say that, but that's a fundamental problem of the Constitution."
Part of Mahler’s technique, we discovered, is to condescendingly spout supposed facts that support his views – about black crime, for example – while dismissing others that don’t.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates noted, “Overwhelmingly, those responsible for sexually assaulting children are White men. Why don't you talk about White male crime?”
“Those data are actually inaccurate,” Mahler insisted.
“So you believe nothing that doesn't confirm your views?”
“No. If you look at the per capita rate, the difference is that I actually look at the statistics. I run the statistical analysis myself.”
We noted, “There are a lot of studies that disagree with your viewpoint.”
Corey Mahler views on Jews
Mahler, in fact, never seems to doubt his own intellectual superiority, especially when it comes to his claims about Jews that are sometimes built on the flimsiest of foundations.
“Jews who are practicing Jews pray multiple times a day to curse Christians,” Mahler claimed.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates replied, “I have lots of Jewish friends. They do not curse Christians.”
“Well, they don't tell you they curse Christians,” Mahler shot back. “Part of the Jewish religion is also to lie about the Jewish religion.”
Mahler later said that he was referring to an ancient Jewish prayer, the Birkat haMinim.
In truth, that is now just a prayer against wickedness and the arrogant – there is no mention of Christians.
Likewise, with no evidence, Mahler claims that “Jews own the pornography ‘industry’ and wield it as a weapon against Whites, particularly White Christians.”
Asked about that claim, Mahler insisted, “Yes, they admit that.”
We noted that Playboy founder Hugh Hefner was raised Methodist, while vile pornographer Larry Flynt was raised Pentecostal.
“So why are you not willing to look at the role of other groups in pornography?”
Mahler said, “Look at what the Jews themselves say in their own papers. They proudly say that they are behind pornography and that they push it because they hate God.”
“That is just not true.”
“I can get you the article. Obviously, I don't have it on me. I didn't print it, but that is literally a quote from a Jew.”
“A Jew?”
“Yes, of course. If you're talking about a quote, it's obviously from one man. They don't all speak with the same head. They're not a hydra – in that sense.”
He later said the quote came from a single Jewish pornographer, Al Goldstein – a self-proclaimed atheist.
At the same time, Mahler ignores, for example, the extraordinary number of Jewish Nobel Prize winners who have been honored for their contributions to humanity.
Mahler advocates 'exterminating' enemies
Perhaps most disturbing is Mahler’s view that a future American Hitler would be justified in rounding up and exterminating Jews or any other peoples deemed to be the enemy.
“Our enemies are ontologically evil; no means are morally impermissible in pursuit of exterminating them,” he tweeted.
Mahler explained, “My preferable means of exterminating any given enemy is converting him to Christ because in doing that, I have destroyed him as an enemy.”
We followed up, “And if they don't, you're OK with killing them?”
He answered, “That would be war – and killing in war has always been something that Christians find permissible as long as the war itself is morally justified.”
While conservative churches wrestle with Mahler’s influence, the East Tennessee man continues to hearken back to a dark past, trying to convince young men that this should also be America’s future.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked, “If viewers hear some of your viewpoints, why should they not conclude that your viewpoints are evil?”
"If men can formulate an argument that is based in God's word, that is sound, and that is against what I have said,” Mahler said, “then by all means they should listen to God and not me.”
IN 2023, Mahler was excommunicated from his Lutheran church in Knoxville, accused of causing "harm and division to the body of Christ."
Watch my full interview with Corey Mahler below:
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Do you have information that would help me with my investigation? Send me your tips: phil.williams@newschannel5.com
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