History of Mike Cernovich in Timeline

November 17, 1977

Cernovich was born on November 17, 1977, in the farming town of Kewanee, Illinois. His family was poor, and his parents were both devout Christians.

November 17, 1977

Michael Cernovich (born November 17, 1977) is an American right-wing social media personality and political commentator. Though he initially called himself alt-right, he dissociated from the movement after Richard Spencer became its public face. Cernovich describes himself as part of the new right and some have described him as part of the alt-lite.

2001

Cernovich graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Springfield in 2001. He graduated with a Juris Doctor from Pepperdine University School of Law in 2004.

2003

Cernovich married his first wife when he was a law student in 2003. He later said the marriage was "ruined by feminist indoctrination". An attorney for a Silicon Valley firm, his first wife earned millions of dollars from an initial public offering (IPO). She filed for divorce in 2011, and Cernovich received what he has described as a "seven-figure sum" in the settlement. He later married his second wife, Shauna. The couple have four children together.

2003

Cernovich was arrested and charged with rape in 2003. The rape charges were dismissed, but he was ordered to perform community service for misdemeanor battery. His record was later expunged.

2004

In 2004, Cernovich started a legal blog entitled Crime & Federalism, where he wrote about law from a libertarian perspective.

2009

In December 2017, Cernovich published a Medium post and contacted several journalists and news outlets about a joke tweet that comedian and MSNBC contributor Sam Seder had written in 2009. Cernovich claimed that the tweet, which read "Don't care re Polanski, but I hope if my daughter is ever raped it is by an older truly talented man w/a great sense of mise en scene," proved Seder tacitly endorsed Roman Polanski's sexual abuse crime. MSNBC elected to sever ties with Seder by not renewing his contract (due to expire in February 2018) due to the controversial tweet. Seder defended the tweet by pointing out that, taken in context of the current events around the time he posted it, it was a satirical response to a petition urging Polanski's release from detention in Switzerland because of his stature as an artist, and that he had been mocking Polanski's apologists. After news of the termination broke, Cernovich released a video on Twitter video celebrating his triumph. By then, Seder noted that advertisers on The Majority Report with Sam Seder podcast were also being contacted and pressured by Cernovich and his followers to cut ties with the show over the tweet. In response, Seder launched a GoFundMe campaign to help maintain funding for the show in the face of potential loss of advertising revenue, and also to produce a three-minute video educating people on Cernovich's tactics. According to Seder, Cernovich's ploy had been retribution for Seder's frequent criticism of then-President Donald Trump as well as Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. Cernovich retorted to CNN that "the left isn't going to stop going through our tweets so we aren't going to stop going through theirs."

2011

Cernovich became a blogger in the 2000s, focusing on anti-feminist themes. He gained notice within the manosphere, and made a number of inflammatory comments about dating and sexual assault, including the claim that date rape is "liberal fiction". He created a website, Danger and Play, in 2011; it was first known for his postings about men's rights and mindset techniques. In 2014, Cernovich became a prominent figure in the Gamergate harassment campaign against several women in the video game industry, and through this built a following among the alt-right. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he adapted his website to a political blog. He was an early supporter of Republican candidate Donald Trump, and promoted conspiracy theories about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Since 2018, he has become increasingly critical of Trump, and in 2022 voiced support for Ron DeSantis instead for the 2024 election.

2011

Shortly after his divorce in 2011, he created the blog Danger & Play, where he wrote about men's rights, fitness, and self-help topics. The title of Danger & Play came from a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche: "The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything."

2014

In 2014, Cernovich became a prominent figure of Gamergate, which targeted feminists as part of a nascent culture war in the aftermath of the MeToo movement. He encouraged the doxing of opponents, and wrote about women attacking men with false rape allegations. Wired Magazine wrote that Cernovich "gained a kind of leadership over the unruly mob", and that the movement had more to do with identity than with gaming or women.

2015

In 2015 and 2016, Cernovich repeatedly made false claims that white South Africans were being eliminated in a genocide, which were debunked by Genocide Watch. He later deleted the tweets.

2015

In 2015, Cernovich self-published Gorilla Mindset: How to Control Your Thoughts and Emotions, Improve Your Health and Fitness, Make More Money and Live Life on Your Terms, which became a bestseller in the motivational self-help category on Amazon.

2015

In 2015, Virginia Giuffre sued Ghislaine Maxwell, alleging that Maxwell sexually trafficked her for Jeffrey Epstein while she was a minor. Maxwell settled the suit.

2016

Cernovich has also supported the unevidenced theory that there were multiple shooters at the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, which he claims the government is covering up. In 2016, Cernovich worked with Chuck Johnson and Wikileaks to offer a bounty for information supporting the conspiracy theory that murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich had been behind a leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee. In April 2017, Cernovich promoted a conspiracy theory that the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack in Syria was a hoax funded by an American financier.

2016

In 2016, Cernovich published Danger & Play: Essays on Embracing Masculinity. In October 2016, he published MAGA Mindset: Making YOU and America Great Again through Castalia House, a Finnish publishing house founded by Vox Day which primarily publishes science fiction and fantasy.

2016

In 2016, Cernovich was an associate producer for Cassie Jaye's documentary The Red Pill, which discusses the men's rights movement, and issues like male suicide, child custody, and educational inequality.

2016

Politico described him in 2016 as wanting an IQ test requirement for immigrants and to end federal funding for universities. Interviewed on 60 Minutes in March 2017, Cernovich advocated single-payer healthcare. Cernovich has supported "some sort of universal basic income", and suggested in 2018 that the "new right" was "more of a populist movement than a conservative or liberal movement", and that "conservatism is on the way out".

March 2016

During the 2016 campaign, Cernovich was "among the first" to spread rumors about Hillary Clinton's health. Clinton had previously experienced a brain concussion and blood clots, but testing found "complete resolution", and her doctors attested to her good health. In March 2016, he claimed that a photo of Hillary Clinton winking showed she had experienced a "mild stroke". In August, he promoted the hashtags: #CoughingHillary and #SickHillary on Twitter, and spread rumors that Clinton had epilepsy and Parkinson's disease. These rumors were amplified by the Drudge Report website, Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump. In September 2016, Clinton was filmed collapsing from pneumonia after a memorial service, and Cernovich started the #HillarysHealth hashtag, which trended nationwide; that month, Cernovich's tweets were seen more than 100 million times.

October 2016

In an October 2016 blog post, Cernovich wrote that date rape is "liberal fiction" that is "harmful ... for men and women" and leads to false rape accusations, claiming that: "Lying about being in love to sleep with someone isn't rape [...] Getting played isn't rape. Regret isn't rape. Thinking, 'I might have been date raped,' means you weren't raped." His comments received sustained criticism.

November 2016

Cernovich's writings turned political after Trump announced his candidacy for the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He became notable for his trolling; his maxims were "conflict is attention", and "attention is influence". He identified himself as alt-right, and joined forces with provocateurs like Milo Yiannopoulos. Early on, the alt-right was a "big-tent" that included "any conservative or reactionary who was [...] too belligerently antiestablishment to feel at home in the Republican Party". In November 2016, white nationalist Richard B. Spencer, who also self-identified as alt-right, became its "indelible face" after a video of him giving a Nazi salute provoked universal outrage. This led to a rift in the alt-right movement between white nationalists and civic nationalists, with the former branding the latter "cuckservatives" and "alt-lite". Following the schism, Cernovich disassociated himself from alt-right, saying: "The first order of business is getting that Nazi shit way the fuck away from me". He adopted the label "new right", and has also described himself as an economic nationalist.

November 2016

In November 2016, Cernovich and other conspiracists promoted the baseless Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which misinterpreted the leaked Podesta emails to imply that high-ranking Democrats were involved in a child sex-trafficking ring. He also claimed that a 1997 video of Marina Abramovic's "spirit cooking" performance art constituted "occult symbolism" to "openly taunt the public", and that it proved that Clinton's inner circle was part of a sex cult. He helped #Pizzagate become one of the biggest trending hashtags on Twitter; the hashtag drew conspiracy theorists from across the political spectrum, whose common link was their "profound distrust of the mainstream media". The rumors later inspired a gun-wielding man to visit Comet Ping Pong. Cernovich, who had used the hashtag 60 times, later deleted the tweets, and downplayed his involvement in propagating the theory.

2017

In 2017, Cernovich launched a sustained campaign to influence Trump to fire his national security advisor, H. R. McMaster, claiming that McMaster was undermining the president's America First agenda. He started the McMasterLeaks.com website to document his and others' criticisms of McMaster.

January 2017

Cernovich was one of the organizers of the January 2017 DeploraBall inaugural ball to celebrate Trump's victory; the name was a reference to Hillary Clinton's earlier "basket of deplorables" comment. He banned fellow organizer Baked Alaska after the latter made an antisemitic tweet, and banned Spencer after he discovered the latter had bought a ticket. Notable attendees of the DeploraBall include Martin Shkreli, James O'Keefe, and Cassandra Fairbanks; Peter Thiel also briefly appeared. Outside the ball, there were clashes between Trump supporters and protesters.

January 2017

In January 2017, Cernovich filed a motion to unseal evidence and depositions from Giuffre's lawsuit. He told Politico he was "astonished" by the amount of redactions the judge allowed, with some documents "largely or entirely redacted". Alan Dershowitz later filed a similar motion, and the Miami Herald filed a third in April 2018. The motions were denied by the trial court, and Cernovich and the Herald appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (which includes the Associated Press) filed an amicus brief to support the appeal. In July 2019, the Court of Appeals ordered the documents unsealed.

April 02, 2017

On April 2, 2017, Cernovich broke the news that Susan Rice, Obama's national security advisor, had requested the unmasking of several Trump transition officials who appeared in intelligence reports. When electronic eavesdropping of foreign officials incidentally capture American citizens' names, those names are redacted in intelligence reports, but can be "unmasked" through a legal process. Cernovich publicized his claims in a Medium.com article, in tweets, and on Periscope live streams. The hashtag #SusanRice became a trending topic on Twitter; he later posted a screenshot showing the tweets received 400,000 impressions. Cernovich claimed that his sources were sympathetic employees of mainstream media outlets, whose outlets were "sitting on this story".

May 2017

Cernovich began hosting the fourth hour once a week on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' InfoWars show in May 2017.

May 08, 2017

On May 8, 2017, Cernovich reported that McMaster had called White House director of strategic communications Hope Hicks a "high schooler". New York Magazine's Olivia Nuzzi later corroborated the quote.

October 12, 2017

On October 12, 2017, Buzzfeed revealed the existence of the "Shitty Media Men" spreadsheet, which had been created a day earlier in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and was used by female journalists to crowdsource allegations ranging from "weird lunch dates" to rape and stalking committed by their male coworkers. The list included reporters from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and Buzzfeed.

November 2017

In November 2017, Cernovich uncovered sworn affidavits in which former staffers accused Democratic congressman John Conyers of sexual harassment. The documents also revealed that the accusers were paid a settlement by Congress's Office of Compliance in exchange for a confidentiality agreement. Cernovich then gave the documents to BuzzFeed, saying he did not publish them on his own because he thought Democrats would attempt to discredit him. BuzzFeed verified that the documents were real, and published their article on November 20, 2017. The House Ethics Committee launched an investigation; other allegations followed, and Conyers resigned in December 2017.

December 2017

Cernovich became influential on social media, initially as part of the manosphere movement. Cernovich calls his adversaries "beta males", losers, or "cucks", saying: "to beat a person, you lower his or her social status". Cernovich uses trolling tactics, which he says he uses to build his brand rather than for his own amusement. In December 2017, Cernovich hosted an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit; this was judged a failure by several media outlets.

December 07, 2017

The news of Seder's dismissal prompted an almost immediate backlash. Over 12,000 people signed a petition protesting Seder's termination, arguing that Cernovich had acted in malice and was deliberately mischaracterizing the tweet. AV Club wrote that "MSNBC has now fully bought into that smear campaign ... whose openly stated goal is the destruction of news outlets just like it through the use of blatantly manipulative trolling techniques." Mother Jones rebuked MSNBC for capitulating "to the demands of a lunatic conservative." HuffPost chided that Cernovich was now MSNBC's new "De Facto Ombudsman". MSNBC primetime anchor Chris Hayes tweeted, "The entire culture and our politics are now dominated by people who have weaponized bad faith and shamelessness." There was considerable dissent within MSNBC over Seder's termination. Some employees expressed concerns that his firing would encourage other far-right personalities to launch similar campaigns. A senior MSNBC employee characterized the capitulation as "really weak" and "pathetic". MSNBC's management itself was unsettled by the celebratory reaction from the far-right. On December 7, 2017, MSNBC decided to reverse their decision to terminate Seder's employment.

2018

In 2018, Cernovich became "increasingly critical" of Trump, and less politically active. In September 2018, he tweeted his disappointment, "There's no Wall. She's not locked up. But Flynn got fired and sent to wolves. And Saudi Arabia sold weapons of murder. I give zero f-cks about Republicans losing the House." Also in 2018, Cernovich criticized the Trump administration's missile strikes against Syria, which divided the president's political base.

2018

In 2018, Cernovich produced a documentary called Hoaxed: Everything They Told You Is a Lie, with associate producers Scooter Downey and Jon Du Toit. The Hollywood Reporter described it as "a right-wing take on corporate malfeasance and media bias". The movie interviewed a wide range of conservative figures, including Anthony Scaramucci, Jordan Peterson, Scott Adams, James O'Keefe, and Alex Jones. Hoaxed was also made into a book of the same name. The documentary was listed on the Amazon platform before being removed without comment in 2020.

July 18, 2018

On July 18, 2018, filmmaker Mark Duplass faced swift backlash on Twitter for recommending his "fellow liberals [cross] the aisle" and follow conservative commentator Ben Shapiro on Twitter; filmmaker James Gunn came to Duplass's defense, and Duplass publicly retracted his endorsement, calling it "a disaster on many levels". A day later, Cernovich and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec unearthed tweets by Gunn in which he joked about pedophilia and rape; Gunn had been a vocal critic of Donald Trump, and the tweets were widely shared among conservatives, and trended nationwide on Twitter. The next day, Gunn issued an apology for the tweets. Disney called the tweets "indefensible", and fired Gunn from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. After Gunn's firing, Cernovich also unearthed similar tweets by comedians Michael Ian Black and Patton Oswalt.

2019

Cernovich commissioned artist Ben Garrison to draw an antisemitic cartoon portraying Generals H.R. McMaster and David Petraeus being controlled by Jewish puppetmasters- specifically George Soros and the Rothschild Family. Garrison was disinvited from an event at the White House in 2019 following complaints about the cartoon from the Anti-Defamation League.

March 2019

In March 2019, Gunn was reinstated by Disney as director of the third film. Prior to his rehiring, he had also signed on with Warner Bros. to write and later direct what would eventually become the DC Extended Universe film The Suicide Squad. In 2022, Gunn was chosen to lead DC Studios, the retooled film division of DC Comics.

February 2020

In February 2020, Cernovich filed a third-party motion in Roger Stone's criminal case, calling for the release of the jury foreperson's questionnaire answers. This motion too was supported by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. It was later backed by Roger Stone, who filed a motion for a new trial, which was denied.