White Supremacist Under Scrutiny for Robocalls Using Mollie Tibbetts’ Death to Spread Hate

Another racist call mocked Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum.

A poster for missing University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts hangs in the window of a local business on August 21 in Brooklyn, Iowa. Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

A neo-Nazi podcast host has come under scrutiny for a spate of racist robocalls in Iowa and Florida. The Iowa call uses the death of Mollie Tibbetts, the college student allegedly slain by a 24-year-old Mexican national last month, to propagate virulent anti-immigration rhetoric.

“The Aztec hybrids, known as mestizos, are low-IQ, bottom-feeding savages, and [that] is why the country they infest are crime-ridden failures,” the caller says, according to a recording obtained by Iowa Starting Line. “That’s now America’s fate too unless we re-found America as whites-only and get rid of them now. Every last one.”

The script also disputes comments by the Tibbetts family, who say their daughter wouldn’t have supported the calls for a more restrictive immigration policy that followed her death. Her alleged killer, Cristhian Bahena Rivera, is an undocumented immigrant, according to federal officials. 

The Florida calls, which came at the tail end of the Democratic primary for the gubernatorial race, mocked the black (and ultimately victorious) Democratic candidate, Andrew Gillum, using an exaggerated minstrel voice, with jungle noises in the background, the Tallahassee Democrat reports. (Gillum’s Republican rival, Ron DeSantis, who has himself been accused of using racist rhetoric, disavowed the calls.)

Both calls claim they were paid for by the Road to Power. The Road to Power is a video podcast hosted by Idaho white supremacist Scott Rhodes, according to the Spokesman-Review.

Rhodes was previously suspected of distributing racist propaganda in his Idaho hometown and in Alexandria, Virginia. According to the Des Moines Register, he has been linked to previous robocalls in California, Oregon, and Charlottesville, Virginia, the site of a violent white supremacist rally last year. The Iowa calls show a phone number associated with Brooklyn, Iowa, the town from which Tibbetts disappeared. The Hill reports that the Iowa attorney general’s office is investigating those calls and has alerted the state civil rights commission.  

Tibbetts’ body was discovered last week. Following news reports that the alleged perpetrator was undocumented, the Trump administration and several Republican politicians seized on the opportunity to blame Tibbetts’ death on lax immigration policy, even though most studies on the issue show that illegal immigration does not increase violent crime. 

Tibbetts’ father, Rob Tibbetts, commended the local Hispanic community last week for its help during the search for his daughter, saying, “The Hispanic community are Iowans. They have the same values as Iowans. As far as I’m concerned, they’re Iowans with better food.” Other family members, including one person who claims to be a distant cousin of Tibbetts, spoke out against what they called politicization of her death.

Despite what Tibbetts’ family has said publicly, the robocalls claim Tibbetts would not have supported “the invasion of America by a brown horde currently at a staggering 58 million…If after her life has now been brutally stolen from her she could be brought back to life for just one moment and asked, ‘What do you think now?’ Mollie Tibbetts would say, ‘Kill them all.’”

It goes on: “We don’t have to kill them all, but we do have to deport them all.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate