A high-profile Reddit Ask Me Anything session quickly backfired on prominent far-right internet troll Mike Cernovich on Friday, as users with names like âFartHog69â demanded to know how he got a âa rape charge talked down to batteryâ in 2003.
Cernovich took to Twitter to claim the Q&A session was a âhuge success,â despite the top post consisting almost entirely of accusations of impropriety against the conspiracy theorist.
âItâs a matter of public record that you were charged with rape, and pled it down to a battery charge. Did you hire a private investigator to harass witnesses like you claim you did on your old legal blog or is that untrue?â Reddit user sejuani_air_ult asked.
Cernovich, one of the earliest peddlers of the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory that claimed Hillary Clintonâs campaign was running a pedophile ring out of the basement of a pizza shop that had no basement, did not respond to that question.
In the past year, Cernovichâwho also claimed that the shooting in a Sutherland Springs, Texas, church was carried out by the left-wing group antifaâreceived frequent guest hosting spots on InfoWars and retweets from the presidentâs son, Donald Trump Jr.
Reddit users were not impressed.
Several top-rated users asked Cernovich why he named his book Gorilla Mindset when a gorilla is âthe only great ape that canât recognise its reflection as itself.â
âAs such, do you attack the man staring back at you when you look in the mirror?â PeteIRL asked.
At one point, a moderator for the community even had to step in after Cernovich was called a âmonkey brained moron.â Cernovich had just called a previous blog post about himself masturbating in a womanâs car unimportant because it was a âweb forum post.â
âPlease avoid personal attacks, even if theyâre accurate,â wrote moderator Cahaseler.
âI mean on monkeys,â Cahaseler clarified in an update.
Cernovich received repeated questioning about a 2003 rape charge that later became a battery charge.
âThe false accusation against me was dismissed, and my initial arrest was expunged. Thatâs why you losers canât find any court records, none exist, expungement!â he wrote.
âWhy are you thinking about rape all of the time?â he then asked a user who had not talked about rape on Reddit in over a year, according to his post history.
Cernovich had recently gained mainstream recognition for forwarding verifiable documents to BuzzFeed News confirming Congressman John Conyers quietly settled a sexual harassment suit. Weeks later, Cernovich promised his readers he was âcurrently reading the sexual harassment settlement documents of a major Democratic US Senator,â which wound up being false, forged documents about Sen. Chuck Schumer. Cernovich later claimed he was duped.
This week, Cernovich falsely insinuated the Amtrak train crash in Washington state was caused by an antifa member pouring concrete on tracks.
Cernovich was asked about the many times he has been dangerously wrong in the aftermath of news events and tragedies.
âHey Mike, Do you think that an important part of being a good critical thinker is showing intellectual humility?â asked user Stuchapin.
âIf so, can you tell us about a few times you have been wrong?â
Cernovich, who once wrote heâd âbet on my life [Barack Obama] is gayâ in a tweet he later deleted, responded to Stuchapin by saying he regrets having once believed that right-wing agitator âDinesh DâSouzaâs methods of calling Democrats racists and Nazis [were] corny and ineffective.â
He then plugged a blog post on his website.