When Saturday Night Live introduces host Shane Gillisâthe comedian who was hired and quickly fired from the cast in 2019 over his history of racist, homophobic, and transphobic commentsâon Feb. 24, some viewers will inevitably find their way back to his podcast. Those who keep listening will eventually meet Bill McCusker, the brother of Gillisâ co-host Matt McCusker, and Andrew Pacella, their longtime friend. The two have appeared nearly 20 times since 2019 on Matt and Shaneâs Secret Podcast, currently Patreonâs top-ranked podcast with more than 80,000 paid subscribers. They have hosted a podcast of their own, War Mode, since 2020. Thanks in part to the exposure they received on Gillisâs platform, Pacella and McCusker have grown their audience to more than 12,800 Patreon subscribers, generating more than $32,000 in monthly income. Also, theyâre Holocaust deniers.
McCusker and Pacella have dedicated their podcasting career to exploring conspiracy theories, of which they subscribe to quite a few. They are Sandy Hook truthers, arguing in two separate episodes of Matt and Shaneâs Secret Podcast that the slaughter never happened. They are 9/11 truthers who believe, per Pacella, that âthe Israelisâ knew about the attacks in advance and may have orchestrated them âto take over our media and destroy our country.â They believe in Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory that inspired a gunman to fire three shots at Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C., pizza shop. In 2021, Pacella and McCusker walked their listeners through a lengthy document that argues Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantisâwho they said may be âa bastard Rothschildââtrafficked and perhaps even murdered children. âDo I want Hillary Clinton to be eating fucking children with Huma Abedin, her lover, âcause sheâs a lesbian?â McCusker asks in one of these episodes. âNo. But this is where itâs brought us.â
Even more concerning than their embrace of Pizzagate is their Holocaust denial. In the very second episode of War Mode from March 2020, about 26 minutes into their conversation, Pacella tells McCusker that heâs been watching âsick YouTubesâ about Robert David Steele, a Holocaust denier, recurring Alex Jones guest, and 2020 election truther. âHeâs talking about the evil Zionists in the government,â Pacella says. âJews are good, Zionists bad. Jews are good.â
Then, with no transition, he starts talking about the Holocaust. âProve to me that it happened,â he says. âShow me, historians. Why are they lying, dude? Why are all these so-called survivors making up stories, then? It was a hallucination. OK, man. How about the actual footage of the showers, bro?â
This was just the beginning for McCusker and Pacella, who have also both expressed admiration for antisemitic conspiracy theorist David Icke. In a War Mode episode released the following May, they worry that the younger generation is getting screwed over by masking and ADHD medicine. âTheyâre trying to make sure that they grow up some kind of trans, afraid of germs,â Pacella says, launching into an argument that âmaybe we should have, like, a movementâ focusing on youth fitness, classic literature, uniform haircuts, and nice clothes. As he talks, McCusker repeatedly tells him to âchill,â eventually interjecting that this is one of their first episodes and they âneed to stay afloat for a bit.â (Holocaust denial falls under the âhate speechâ section of Patreonâs community guidelines.)
Pacella keeps going, questioning whether âwe were the bad guysâ in World War II. âWhy do they keep making movies where, like, oh, dude, we saved Private Ryan?â he asks. McCusker continues telling Pacella to calm down as he mocks historical narratives about World War II: âWe were totally so good that whole time. We were definitely the good guys. We werenât bad at all. The Soviets definitely didnât rape and pillage Poland.â
The exchange underlines Pacellaâs ongoing fascination with Nazis as well as the pairâs seeming shared belief that consensus narratives around WWII are wrong. In another episode released in May 2020, as McCusker explains why he started âlooking at all the post-WWII stuff,â he refers to the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews were expelled from 109 countries. âImagine if I got kicked out of 190 bars and then everyone justâIâm telling everyone theyâre assholes⌠Itâd be crazy,â he says. Pacella corrects him: âItâs 109.â (âOnce someone from Patreon Inc. comes and listens to this, theyâll probably shut it down,â McCusker reflects.)
In a similar exchange released the next month, the duo agrees that theyâve been âprogrammedâ by mainstream media. âI watch it, but I know that itâs lies,â Pacella says. âItâs all fiction category, dude. You want to read a book? I got some books coming in the mail: Elie Wieselâs Nightâfiction. We have The Destruction of the European Jewsâfiction. We have a book from Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industryânonfiction.â (âPatreon probably wonât last that much longer,â McCusker quips again. âBut you know, weâre gonna get some things off our chest, whether you guys like it or not.â)
A few weeks later, the two discuss the mythical Hollow Earth kingdom of Agartha, which Pacella claims was of particular interest to Adolf Hitler. âThe Nazis had a lot of cool fucking ideas,â he says.
âSome good, some bad,â McCusker replies. âCutting-edge science.â
âCutting-edge science and stuff,â Pacella agrees. âAnd, like, handing out, giving people houses and stuff like that. Itâs pretty cool.â (Itâs unclear if he knows where the Third Reich obtained the property it so generously gave away.)
As War Mode has expanded its listenership, the hosts have not become any more enlightened. In an episode released in June 2023, after Unabomber Ted Kaczynski died, McCusker says he doesnât understand why there werenât any Unabomber-like reactions to COVID health restrictions, when âpeople were taking away all your rights.â Pacella claims that unspecified parties are pushing for a world government, to which McCusker responds:
âI mean, personally, it seems like if we reallyâif the Nazis were really fucking horrible, we wouldnât have taken âem all in. From my perspective. I think it was the old world that they just tried to completely [demolish]âlike that shit in Germany. All the architecture, all the old churches. GOAT shit. Firebomb the whole fucking thing. Like, âYou are the worst people in the fucking world. We took all of your scientists and fake went to space.ââ
McCusker and Pacella have even brought their Holocaust denial to Matt and Shaneâs Secret Podcast. In one of their earliest appearances, in March 2020, Gillis tells his friends that heâs concerned about associating with them. Bill McCusker assures him that they know to keep a lid on certain attitudes. âLike: â[We] love Jewish people,ââ he says. ââTheyâre the shit. Theyâre strong. We love them. Hate has no home here.ââ
âOK, see, this is what Iâm worried about,â Gillis replies. âThe genuine antisemitism.â He tells the duo that they have a problem, and that he believes Pacella is behind it. âIâm not behind it,â Pacella says, again appearing to bring up the Holocaust. âWe just, we collectively one day were like, âLetâs figure out if this actually happened.ââ
âStop, stop, stop,â Gillis responds. âIâm doing the audio on this. Thereâs no pauses, thereâs no take-backs.â
âWe just look into shit, dude,â Bill McCusker insists. âItâs not the end of the world. Why canât we just say, âOh, well, thatâs kind of weird. Why is everyone shushing this? Thatâs weird.â âCause a lot of stuff is starting to be fake.â (Later, he complains about people âshittingâ on Q, of QAnon, because âall of his shit is coming true.â)
The duoâs Holocaust denial did not dissuade Gillis from welcoming them back to his podcast many more times after that, as recently as November 2023. While his warning may have convinced McCusker and Pacella to keep their most extreme beliefs under wraps, it certainly didnât stop them from ranting about âfucking Black tââââââ (Pacella, July 2020), claiming that antifa is âmaking people get the fucking vaccineâ (McCusker, October 2021), or arguing that âgirls that have had abortions are fucked in the head because theyâre constantly dealing with what they didâ (Pacella, September 2021).
Gillis, of course, has his own history of antisemitism. In recent years, heâs used what Joe Rogan described as âthe best Jewish voice ever;â contemplated supposed Jewish influence over the media; used the term âJaysâ as a shorthand for Jewish people; described someone as âk----facedâ on a right-wing podcast network; and laughed about âretarded Jewsâ at baseball games. Perhaps this is why he has only loosely moderated his friendsâ antisemitism, leading to predictable outcomes.
Consider a March 2021 episode of Matt and Shaneâs Secret Podcast, in which Bill McCusker argues that New Yorkâs Orthodox Jewish community orchestrated the sexual harassment allegations that led to former Governor Andrew Cuomoâs resignation. âThe only reason this is happening is âcause he fucked with the Jays,â he says. âHe fucked with the Orthodox boys, with their funerals and their fucking weddings.â
Matt McCusker pushes back, arguing that Cuomo had ânine million other political rivals.â Gillis interjects with a jokeââsix million,â a reference to the number of Jews killed in the Holocaustâto which Bill McCusker canât help but respond with Holocaust denial: âAlready revised to five, but that doesnât matter. Public, thatâs public knowledge. Public knowledge. Public knowledge. Look it up. You can look it up. Donât get mad at me.â
âChill, dude,â Gillis says. âWeâre not talking about it. Weâre talking aboutâlisten, listen to this. You come in here, you fight your brother about who's more jacked, you talk about COVID being fake right away, now weâre on to step three, where this always ends.â
Neither Gillis, the McCuskers, nor Pacella responded to requests for comment.
Longtime fans of Gillis are certainly aware of his association with antisemites. In 2020, Matt and Shaneâs Secret Podcast released a Patreon-exclusive episode with Sam Hyde, whose Adult Swim series Million Dollar Extreme: World Peace was canceled in 2016 amidst controversy over his links to the alt-right. In 2017, Hyde pledged $5,000 to a legal fund for neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin. âWeâre both huge fans,â Gillis says to Hyde early in the episode. âMe and Matt have been watching your stuff since day one.â
Last year, Gillis also appeared on Perfect Guy Life, the podcast Hyde hosts with fellow Million Dollar Extreme creator Nick Rochefort. At one point in the episode, Rochefort angrily asks why SNL producer Lorne Michaels has Israeli citizenshipâan unsourced claimâto which Hyde responds with a comment thatâs censored from the recording. Later, Gillis reacts with amused disbelief as Rochefort recalls the time KKK leader David Duke emailed Hyde to praise his work. If the information fazes him, he keeps it to himself.
In the comedy world, thereâs a popular argument that it does not matter what comedians say or do, because they are just comedians: Itâs all a joke, and no one takes them seriously. But Shane Gillisâwho has stood by the racist comments that led to his firing in 2019âillustrates that comedians actually have all the same powers as anyone else with a public platform. When a popular, mainstream stand-up comedian like Gillis sits down with Holocaust deniers and alt-right provocateurs on his podcastâwhich currently has nearly 50,000 more paying subscribers than the highly influential, long-running "dirtbag leftist" show Chapo Trap Houseâthe Holocaust deniers and alt-right provocateurs walk away with a bigger audience, and their beliefs take deeper root in our society.
It may be that Bill McCusker and Andrew Pacella are fringe figures, but anyone whoâs ever had a large audience had a small one first. Take Gillis: Five years ago he was telling bigoted jokes on the internet; now heâs telling bigoted jokes on the internet and hosting SNL. Alex Jones launched InfoWars in 1999, operating under the radar for years before he levied untold psychic damage on humanity. Joe Rogan used to be a minor TV actor, now heâs one of the foremost purveyors of transphobia, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, and white nationalism, who incidentally played a major role in Gillisâs rise from disgraced podcaster to respected stand-up comedian.
Unfortunately, the appropriate time to start caring about extremists is while theyâre on the fringe. Gillis can still use his power to steer people away from his friendsâ beliefs, or even better, to steer his friends away from those beliefs entirelyâthat is, if their âgenuine antisemitismâ indeed concerns him. If it doesnât, then sooner or later weâll all reap the consequences.