A far Right extremist YouTuber who has said he wants to see “another Hitler” has raised more than $19,000 for a Cornell University student who told a potential employer that he was “not interested in working for a jew.”
The message was written by 19-year-old Austin Franco, a member of Cornell’s class of 2028, during his application process for an internship at a software company owned by two Jewish brothers, Gabe and Aiden Einhorn. The message, which Franco sent via the job application platform Handshake, went viral last week after Gabe Einhorn posted it on X/Twitter.
“This kid applied to our job on handshake, we accepted him, and then he responded this,” Einhorn tweeted. “He probably knows nothing about Jews accept [sic] for what they tell him in college and on social media. Sad world.”
Einhorn’s tweet initially included a screenshot showing Franco’s name, but a minute after posting, he edited his tweet to obscure the name. (X allows users to view prior versions of edited posts.)
Franco drew more attention to himself the next day when he responded to Einhorn to explain his comment.
“I was stating why I was not interested after you had asked to interview 3 times,” Franco replied. “I found out you were Jewish after the fact. My experiences with Jews have not been pleasant, both in person and online. This is not to say I havent had positive experiences, but on the aggregate that is not the case.”
Alluding to the criticism that he had received, he continued, “The reactions by your community only serves to further prove my point.” Efforts by JTA to reach Franco were unsuccessful.
Supporting antisemitism, $20k in donations
Franco’s comments have triggered a bias investigation by Cornell. They have also been widely condemned by antisemitism watchdogs, the university and government officials, some of whom suggested that his comments should prevent him from being hired anywhere.
Leo Terrell, chair of the Department of Justice’s task force to combat antisemitism, posted dozens of times about the incident from his personal account, including one post urging the public to make Franco “permanently unemployable.”
But in antisemitic corners of the internet, Franco is emerging as a heroic figure, someone seen as willing to speak truth to power and say publicly what many believe about Jews.
“They’re treating him like a hero,” Gabe Einhorn told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview. “There’s these main players with millions of followers across their accounts that their job, literally all they do, is post about antisemitic stuff,” he added. “They’re kind of leading the charge there, so they’re just picking him up and dragging him along with him.”
The support Franco has elicited includes the crowdfunding page created by Miles Routledge, the far Right English YouTuber known as “Lord Miles” who last year said he hoped to see “another Hitler” by 2039. Routledge has also encouraged his followers to leave negative reviews on the Einhorns’ parents’ business page.
“Jews are doxxing this man and trying to ruin his career,” Routledge wrote in the post sharing the fundraiser. (Doxxing is the intentional publication of personal or identifying information about a person on the internet.) He added, “I cannot let that happen.”
Comments on the donation page, which had raised more than $19,000 against a goal of $100,000 as of Wednesday morning range from “keep up the good work” to “We must separate ourselves from the Jew and his deceitfulness and every other disgusting trait they are born with, and forge a destiny decided by US without THEM.”
In another tweet about the fundraiser, Routledge wrote, “I just raised $10k for antisemitism.”
GiveSendGo is a Christian crowdfunding website that the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism says has collected funds “operated by or for extremists and their causes.”
The company said in a statement to JTA that it opposes antisemitism but had determined the Franco campaign was permissible under its rules.
“At GiveSendGo, we do not condone antisemitism, racism, discrimination, hate speech, or violence of any kind,” a spokesperson for the platform said in a written comment to JTA. “While we understand the concerns that have been raised regarding the fundraiser you referenced, the fundraiser itself does not violate our Terms of Service, which focus on activity and behavior within our platform.”
The spokesperson added, “GiveSendGo is not a place of judgment but a place of generosity, where people can choose how they wish to respond.”
Others came out to criticize Franco
The frenzy around the situation embroiled a different Austin Franco, a Dallas attorney who tweeted that he had received criticism aimed at the Cornell student. “To make matters worse, the undergraduate looks just enough like me to be confusing,” he said in a statement on X, which was accompanied by a video.
“My social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) and law firm email address are being blown up by people understandably angry at this other Austin Franco. None of the posts cross any legal lines, but unfortunately there have been comments and emails talking about me, my firm, my parents, etc,” the attorney tweeted. In the video, he said, “We do not condone or support any of the views this Austin Franco holds.”
Meanwhile, at Cornell, where classes have ended for the summer, a formal investigation into the Handshake incident is in the works, the university told its student newspaper on Saturday. The incident was referred to the university’s Office of Civil Rights, where it will be investigated according to university policy, a spokesperson for Cornell University told JTA in a statement on Monday.
“Cornell condemns antisemitism and all forms of hatred and discrimination in the strongest possible terms,” the spokesperson said. “The university is steadfastly committed to fostering a safe, inclusive, and respectful environment for every member of our community.”
Franco told the Cornell Daily Sun he learned that the Einhorn brothers were Jewish based on their “first and last name, LinkedIn, and physiognomy.” Physiognomy is the pseudoscience of determining certain behaviors or traits about a person due to their facial characteristics and is largely considered to be a form of scientific racism.
“Unfortunately it’s his First Amendment right to be bigoted,” said Menachem Rosensaft, an attorney and adjunct law professor at Cornell who has advocated against antisemitism there, about Franco. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find him on Tucker Carlson or a similar program, and being made a hero of the antisemitic far right.”
Franco claims to be a victim of an attack by Jews, garnering support
Indeed, Franco has also drawn support beyond Routledge, including from figures who argued that he was facing outsized approbation because he targeted Jews.
The Holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist Ian Carroll shared his story and repeated his sentiments about Jews.
And the journalist and Israel critic Glenn Greenwald suggested that he believed Franco’s comments were relatively tame. “As I said, people with powerful platforms say things, right here on X, infinitely worse than what this 19-year-old said in that email,” he wrote. “Yet they face no consequences, let alone DOJ threats of retributions, because their target was different.”
Gabe Einhorn said he also believed Franco’s case was being handled differently from how it would have been had Franco made a bigoted comment to someone from another group, but to a different effect.
“Somehow when it comes to Jewish people, it’s become a trend that if you hate Jews, you get rewarded, you get paid,” he told JTA. “People support you and got your back for you hating Jews.”
In an interview with Fox News Monday, Aiden Einhorn said it was his first instance of antisemitism in the workplace.
“But as a college student, I’ve seen it on campus, in the classroom,” he said. “So it wasn’t such a surprise to me. But in our work experience, yeah, it was the first time.”