Australia’s foremost right-wing political conference has removed from its speaker list an American conservative podcaster who interviewed an Australian neo-Nazi on his show last week.
Overnight the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Australia removed Elijah Schaffer from its website’s speaker list ahead of this weekend’s event.
Schaffer hosts his own podcast and works for Gateway Pundit, a far-right American fake news website. Described as having an “enormous social online presence” in his CPAC bio, with 500,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter) and nearly 400,000 on Instagram, Schaffer was fired by conservative media company The Blaze late last year reportedly for groping another host’s breasts.
The conference bio also said Schaffer had spent “years imbedded [sic] undercover with extreme groups”, referencing his presence at the January 6 2021 insurrection, which prompted an investigation after the conservative journalist tweeted a picture of the email inbox of a staff member of US Democrat Nancy Pelosi.
Schaffer recently moved to Australia with his family. The podcaster’s move coincided with him espousing increasingly far-right views. Recently he posted a picture of the torch-carrying participants in the 2017 Charlottesville white supremacist Unite the Right rally with the text “Villains or heroes?”
Last week he hosted Australian neo-Nazi Joel Davis on his podcast where the extremist shared anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and spoke out against interracial marriage.
Schaffer responded that he doesn’t “hold so strongly to the notion that we should discourage people … from getting married to someone just because they’re not white”, but also said he only wanted to “marry a white girl”.
Despite Schaffer’s removal, other controversial speakers remain on the list. Republican political activist Matt Schlapp is still a headliner despite a cloud of controversies including claims he groped another staff member. As are the founders of GiveSendGo, a Christian crowdfunding platform that has been used to raise funds for far-right groups such as Australia’s National Socialist Network.
CPAC and Schaffer have been contacted for comment.
