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Body found in Canada identified as neo-nazi spam king
- swallace_king 6y agoI thought this was going to be Adam Guerbuez, another neo-nazi candadian "spam king" that Facebook bankrupted in Canada a few years ago. That's not all, he also murdered someone outside of a bar in 2000, and is responsible for those old "bum fight" videos from back in the day. Now he's a BTC scammer, of all things.
- invalidOrTaken 6y ago>The father of the deceased, Hy Greenbaum, has offered a $10,000 reward to any tipster who can help solve his son’s homicide. My heart goes out to parents who may disagree with their children, but can't help but love them.
- centimeter 6y agoHy Greenbaum is almost certainly a Jewish name - morbidly fascinating that his son would have become a Nazi.
- thewakalix 6y ago> Hawke was a Jewish-born American
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- core-questions 6y agoIt says in the article: > A key subject of the book Spam Kings by Brian McWilliams, Hawke was a Jewish-born American who’d legally changed his name from Andrew Britt Greenbaum. so yeah, that's got to be a very messed up psyche, to take on the identity of your enemy.
- fastball 6y agoSounds like he was maybe just being an opportunistic capitalist. > Under the pseudonym of "Bo Decker," he began selling Nazi merchandise and offering membership to his internet neo-Nazi group "Knights of Freedom" and later the American Nationalist Party.
- ficklepickle 6y agoHe was a troll. I also don't imagine he actually held these beliefs, but it doesn't really matter. People that feel rejected by society lash out at society. The overt spam and Nazism is pretty clearly lashing out. I guess he lashed out at the wrong folks, because murders are very rare in Squamish. It looks like he was hiding from someone and they found him. Personally, I would have hidden further from a metro area. Vancouver is very close.
- Fellshard 6y agoI think we see sufficient evidence in our current time that self-loathing is a very useful fuel for self-righteous piety and zeal. If you can be persuaded your very identity is evil, you will do horrifying things to fight it.
- minkeymaniac 6y agoIt says it right in the article... "A key subject of the book Spam Kings by Brian McWilliams, Hawke was a Jewish-born American who’d legally changed his name from Andrew Britt Greenbaum. For many years, Hawke was a big time purveyor of spam emails hawking pornography and male enhancement supplements, such as herbal Viagra."
- alex_anglin 6y agoTFA/blog post does state that. Strange story indeed!
- chrisweekly 6y agoI hesitate to post this (I'm no authority, and lack a handy citation), but IIRC it's widely believed that Hitler was aware that he had a Jewish maternal grandparent. It doesn't surprise me too much that these hateful people have plenty of self-directed hate at the core of their sociopathy.
- ckarmann 6y agoNo known ancestor of Hitler is Jewish. His paternal grandfather is unknown, and that led some people to speculate that he was Jewish. Hitler had his minions try to clear that up to dispel the rumours, but nobody could find the real father. They concluded of course that he was a pure Aryan. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hitler#Biological_father https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hitler#Biological_father
- chokeartist 6y agoSame thing was said about Reinhard Heydrich. I don't really understand the appeal of these rumors. Regardless of the origin of their motivations these guys were really messed up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Heydrich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Heydrich
- fortran77 6y agoThe mother determines the religion in Judaism. We don't know if the son was Jewish or if the father's mother was Jewish.
- gus_massa 6y agoI'm not sure why this is downvoted. More info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrilineality_in_Judaism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrilineality_in_Judaism
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- komali2 6y agoTo be fair, it was kinda vaguely implying a universal truth of all religions. I was surprised to find such a short comment suggesting something so far-reaching in potentiality with absolutely no evidence. I was like "is this some wild thing about child development I never knew?" I had no idea this was something specific to Judaism.
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- ladberg 6y agoUsually, Nazis (and neo-Nazis) don't really follow Halakha and only care if you are ethnically Jewish.
- fortran77 6y agoThat's certainly true, but it's not right to speculate that the subject of this story is "Jewish" when he lacks a Jewish mother (according to Wikipedia at least) and he hasn't affirmed his Judaism.
- voisin 6y agoDidn’t Hitler have some Jewish ancestry?
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoOh dear I seem to have fallen into a rabbit hole here. Adolf's father, Alois Hitler [0] was born illegitimately and his parentage was never established, meaning that Adolph couldn't establish his own "aryan" descent. Alois Hitler was born as Alois Schicklgruber, but he requested to be legitimized in the name of his stepfather Hiedler, which for some reason was registered as Hitler. In the 1930's, Hitler had his cronies dive into his genealogy and Declare that there was no Jewish ancestry in his family. The rumour went though that Alois' mother (Adolph's grandmother) was working as a servant / cook for a Jewish family, and that the father may have been one of the family members. That's a lot of speculation though. Adolf's mother, Klara Hitler [1] (nèe Pölzl), was Alois' first cousin once removed (yikes); not sure about any Jewish heritage there. TL;DR we can't be sure because his paternal grandfather is unknown, but there's rumours abound. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hitler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hitler [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klara_Hitler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klara_Hitler
- rebuilder 6y agoThe man also posed as a "progressive vegan rockclimber", so I wouldn't be willing to conclude much about his true political beliefs based on what this article tells us. For all we know, he just picked alternate personas as varied as possible in order to not be discovered.
- ficklepickle 6y agoSquamish is full of vegan rock climbers, so I assume he was trying to blend in there, at least. Squamish has a lot of mentally and physically healthy people... It makes me uncomfortable because I am not those things.
- vmception 6y agoPart of privilege or equality is free association. A lot of people want to freely associate just like anybody else without it being seen as ironic.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago"You say you vote for Bernie, but your grandfather was a nazi. How curious. I am very intelligent." Anyway, rebelling against parents in the broadest sense of the term is not uncommon at all. Making a hard turn right though, oof.
- aaron695 6y ago> My heart goes out to parents who may disagree with their children, but can't help but love them I don't see anything about a disagreement between father and son. But I'm disturbed you think it necessary to say a disagreement might affect love. This is not normal. It might happen, but it should not be thought of as ok. Even if he was violent multiple times against his father and family, which I'm not reading and I don't know why we might think that? I would still think love would be there, depending on the severity. Hurting other family members might destroy that love. But I don't know why we think this might have happened.
- colinmhayes 6y agoCan't stop laughing at AOL digging up his property as if they'd actually find precious metals there.
- i_love_music 6y agoThe whole story is bizarre, but that tidbit was just bonkers. How the hell did they convince a judge that it was ok to go wreck this poor woman's house/yard in hope is digging up some hidden precious metals that her son evidently buried there? I'm speechless.
- edm0nd 6y agoAOL used to go hard against spammers back in the day and during their peak years. 2005 fits into that for sure. This was during the time Time Warner was merged with them so they basically had huge team of lawyers and unlimited money bank roll to mess with people.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoBeing "that judge who wouldn't let them go after some nazi's ill gotten gains" is a great way to dead end your career if you're a Massachusetts judge. The Massachusetts judiciary is very politically minded. Other states are different.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoJust the mental image with AOL people digging for gold earned from spam just cracks me up.
- lallysingh 6y agoOnly if they kept finding caches of buried floppies and CDs.
- capableweb 6y ago> led a failed anti-government march on Washington, D.C. in 1999 Correction: He failed at attempting the anti-government march, not that the anti-government march failed. Maybe it was related to Seattle WTO, but the march he tried to create never actually happened. According to CBC https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/father-greenbaum-mass-reward-10k-davis-wolfgang-hawke-missing-dead-1.5784697 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/father-green...
- Johnyma22 6y agoOh man the caliber of the comments on KOS is way lower than I expected. How does such a great author get such poor comment quality? It's kinda sad :(
- rebuilder 6y agoBy having a comments section and not having strict moderation, presumably.
- DFHippie 6y agoOdds are he was neither the Nazi of his Hawke persona nor the progressive vegan of his Jesse James persona but a psychopath who enjoyed messing with people and found claiming these identities useful to that end.
- SideburnsOfDoom 6y agoYou're not wrong, it's just that I don't think that any of this is incompatible with actually "being a Nazi", in either the classic Germany 1940s edition, or the modern "alt-right neo" 2020s USA edition. The grift is baked in, and always was.
- jstarfish 6y agoYeah...this just sounds like recurrent antisocial behavior to me. No commitment to anyone or anything, not even his own family or sense of identity. I doubt he "enjoyed" messing with others; more like he could not fathom what impact his actions had on them. Narcissists and cult leaders are the ones who "enjoy" messing with others-- and tend to stay in place until the bitter end. This guy was probably just mentally ill but high-functioning. Despite his egregious behavior, I'd bet he never saw this coming.
- theobeers 6y agoHmm, I was getting a 403 error trying to access this page, apparently because I was using Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1/WARP service on iOS. When I switched to 1.1.1.1 DNS only, the problem went away. Does Krebs block visitors who appear to be using VPNs?
- AntiImperialist 6y agoHow was he a Neo-Nazi? What does one have to do to become one? I'm asking because I've seen all kinds of people labelled as that, even though they're neither nationalists nor socialists.
- simias 6y agoI'm sometimes guilty of commenting without thoroughly reading the linked articles but in this case a simple glance at the photo in the article would've answered your question.
- AntiImperialist 6y agoWell, my question still remains unanswered. Is it the stache and the swastika? Do they have to be anti-Jews and pro-Muslims, like Hitler was? Do they have to oppose British and American imperialism and Russian communism, like Hitler did? Do they have to support Japan over China? Do they have to be in favor of some form of unified Europe and consider Norway as utopia? Do they have to favor socialist policies? Or it is just a self-identification thing? Like, one is a Neo-Nazi if they identify as one, regardless of their beliefs about anything?
- tehwebguy 6y agoWhy are you doing this bit? It's the anti-jewish people part.
- AntiImperialist 6y agoHe was Jewish himself. So, I don't understand what it means to be anti-Jewish as a Jewish person.
- bigtones 6y agoDude had a Hitler mustache, wearing a white pride t-shirt, and is standing next to a Nazi Swastika flag in the pic. That's pretty telling.
- DoreenMichele 6y agoThis is a dupe (Or maybe people would be happier if I said "Previously on HN..."): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24955454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24955454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25031614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25031614
- grawprog 6y agoI could understand why a lot of people would want to do something like that to him, he seemed like a real shitbag, but it does make you wonder just who he pissed off bad enough for them to track him down and brutally murder him like that. I remember back when they first found the body, there was some worry there was a random killer in the area. The squamish highway has a pretty bad reputation for murders as it is. But, this seems like something premeditated.
- cgh 6y agoHwy 99 has a reputation for murder? Are you sure you're not thinking of Hwy 16 between Prince Rupert and Prince George, the so-called Highway of Tears?
- grawprog 6y agoOops, my bad, you're right. Even at the time i figured it was further out not so close to Vancouver. And yeah, the squamish highway in that area is relatively murder free. It was pretty deadly for accidents prior to being redone though. I guess disregard my nonsense about the murder highway. Sorry.
- boonez123 6y agoThey don't call it the "sea to skid" highway for nothing.
- ticmasta 6y agoMaybe he meant "reputation for ridiculously bad drivers going crazy fast"?
- grawprog 6y agoTo be fair, there's only a few highways in BC and if you're going in one general direction, It's all one big road that kind of connects. We've got few very long roads that stretch out north and east from the coast, that work their way around the communities of BC. BC's highways and roads remind me of tree roots all leading from Vancouver or the border.
- cgh 6y agoI've actually met this guy in the past, after he moved to BC and reinvented himself. His provided name of "Jesse James" was obviously fake and he was clearly sketchy (he claimed to have a PhD in physics, was the CEO of some AI-related startup, and various other outlandish things, and all that within the first ten minutes of speaking with him) but he seemed friendly enough. The news of his murder was a pretty big shock locally. Everyone is talking about his youthful neo-Nazi fling but to me the most amazing part of this story is his past as a spammer. I read the book Spam Kings way back when and I clearly remember everyone hating these guys. Then fifteen years later or something, I'm chatting with one of those same guys at some local crag without knowing it. I know it's a cliche, but life is strange.
- a1pulley 6y agoIn hindsight, do you think he was just wearing the identity of a rock climber or do you think he just happened to enjoy climbing? Was he competent? Psyched? I vaguely remember his name, but 2017 was a heads-down work year for me when I didn't climb much—and didn't visit Squamish at all, unfortunately.
- cgh 6y agoHe was genuinely psyched on climbing for sure. As for "competent", I mean, he got up stuff but I'd say he was basically a 5.10 climber. He bragged about climbing everything in floppy Mythos and got really worked up about "unnecessary" bolts, so that might tell you what kind of climber he was. What I mainly remember is that he sort of spewed info about how great he was with ten minutes of meeting him. He clearly had a personality disorder of some sort but I can't really say what it was.
- syllogism 6y agoIs there evidence he actually cared about the neo-nazi bit, and it wasn't just another sham identity? The guy sounds absolutely amoral, and neo-nazis seem like they'd be easy marks.
- sp332 6y agoI don't see how you can be a "sham" neo-nazi. If you're recruiting, encouraging, and otherwise aiding neo-nazis, you're a neo-nazi.
- willis936 6y agoIt’s an earworm started by alt-right trying to hide behind ambiguous intent because saying some things out loud will push them further to the fringe.
- mckirk 6y agoAt the danger of going even more off-topic, 'nazism' is a fairly clearly defined far-right ideology. If you are a scam artist preferring to hang out with nazis because they are easy to manipulate, you are pretty scummy, but not automatically a neo-nazi.
- watwut 6y agoWhen you are leading anti-government march, like actually leading, can we finally admit that you might have something to do with group? But, if you sport nazi t-shirt while you are hanging out with nazis, if you are confirming their convictions to them and if you talk to undecided/doubting people, you are nazi regardless of what you believe deep down.
- capableweb 6y ago> When you are leading anti-government march, like actually leading Sure, if he did actually lead anti-government marches, we could admit that he did lead anti-government marches. But since he didn't, we shouldn't admit to something that never happened.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoReminds me of the movie The Believer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Believer_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Believer_(film) but in that case the Jewish neo-nazi wasn't a spam king, and really he killed himself in a very round about way.
- nihilarian 6y agoI find it bizarre that he was "american born jewish" but was a "prolific neo-nazi".
- nihilarian 6y agoIt's odd that he was a prolific neo-nazi but also jewish.
- cannedslime 6y agoWhat is up with jews who become nazis? I remember some years ago there was this jewish kid that played both European nationalists and Australian Islamists. I think his name was Joshua Ryne Goldberg or something like that. He wrote for the dailystormer too... Tried to make both sides commit acts of terrorism. He basically ran every controversial subreddit at the time under his nick "European88".