# Andrew Torba Founder and CEO of [[Gab]], the social-media platform that has functioned since 2016 as the most-trafficked alternative-tech home for white-nationalist, antisemitic, and explicitly Christian-Nationalist political organizing. Torba is the most explicitly *ethnonationalist* and *antisemitic* of the major Christian Nationalist public voices — he has stated repeatedly that the movement is for white Christians, openly rejects Jewish and non-Christian participation in the political community he envisions, and has hosted on Gab a stream of users whose content has included Holocaust denial, replacement-theory rhetoric, and the manifesto of the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue mass-shooter (the shooter's last public post before the attack was on Gab). Torba's 2022 book *Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide*, co-authored with [[Andrew Isker]], operates as the populist companion volume to [[Stephen Wolfe]]'s academic *[[The Case for Christian Nationalism]]* — both published the same year, both endorsed within the Wilson-orbit Reformed cluster, but Torba's book operates without the academic guardrails Wolfe attempts to maintain on questions of ethnicity and antisemitism. The Torba/Isker hinge into the broader CN coalition (via Isker's Wilson-orbit Reformed credentials) is the single most important coalition test case in current CN politics: if the broader CN movement absorbs the Torba program rather than expelling it, the program's center of gravity moves toward explicit ethnonationalism. For the Right Wing KB, Torba is the **boundary-pushing wing** of the [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]] — see the cross-strain hinge analysis there for how the Wilson↔Torba connection (mediated by [[Andrew Isker]]) functions as the absorption pathway from Groyper-curious online ethnonationalism into the Reformed-CN mainstream. Gab has hosted [[Doug Mastriano]]'s 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaign payments (Mastriano paid Gab for "consulting"), provided a platform for [[Nick Fuentes]] and the [[Groyper Movement]], and operates as the primary social-media infrastructure for the most explicitly racist segments of the CN coalition. ## Biography **Andrew Torba** was born in **1990** and raised in **northeastern Pennsylvania**. He describes a **born-again Christian conversion** narrative that he has made central to his public identity — framing his tech-platform work as an explicitly Christian mission rather than a secular free-speech enterprise. Before founding Gab, Torba worked in the tech industry as a startup founder. ## Founding of Gab (2016) Torba founded **[[Gab]]** in **August 2016** — positioning it as a "free speech" alternative to Twitter during the post-2016 wave of alt-tech platform development. Gab launched in beta in 2016 and became publicly available in 2017. The platform attracted users who had been deplatformed from mainstream social media — including white-nationalist, antisemitic, and neo-Nazi accounts — making Gab the most-trafficked alternative-tech home for explicitly extremist political organizing by the late 2010s. ## Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting (2018) On **October 27, 2018**, a gunman killed **11 people** at the **Tree of Life – Or L'Simcha Congregation** synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history. The shooter's **last public post** before the attack was on Gab, and he had used the platform extensively to post antisemitic and white-supremacist content. Gab was subsequently dropped by its domain registrar, hosting providers, and payment processors, forcing Torba to rebuild the platform's infrastructure. Torba defended Gab's free-speech policies while condemning the shooting. ## *Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide* (2022) Torba co-authored ***Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide for Taking Dominion and Discipling Nations*** with **[[Andrew Isker]]** — published in **2022**, the same year as [[Stephen Wolfe]]'s academic *Case for Christian Nationalism*. The Torba/Isker book operates as the **populist companion volume** — explicitly ethnonationalist where Wolfe attempts academic guardrails, openly exclusionary of Jewish participation in the political community, and framing the project in explicitly dominionist language. Isker's credentials as a pastor in the [[Douglas Wilson]]-orbit Reformed cluster provide the Wilson↔Torba hinge that connects Gab's extremist user base to the Reformed-CN intellectual project. ## Doug Mastriano and Electoral Integration In the **2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaign**, Republican nominee **Doug Mastriano** was revealed to have paid Gab ~$5,000 for "consulting" — a transaction that drew national attention because it represented the most direct financial link between a major-party statewide candidate and the Gab platform. Mastriano, a state senator with his own Christian Nationalist commitments, lost the general election to [[Josh Shapiro]] by ~15 points, but the Mastriano-Gab connection illustrated the potential for Gab's infrastructure to interface with Republican electoral campaigns. ## "Christ Is King" and Antisemitism Torba has used the phrase **"Christ is King"** as a rhetorical weapon — deploying it in contexts where it functions as an antisemitic exclusion mechanism rather than as a theological affirmation. He has stated explicitly that America is a "Christian nation" and that Jewish people, along with non-Christians, should not hold positions of cultural or political authority. These statements place Torba at the boundary between Christian Nationalism and explicit antisemitism — further than any other major CN public figure has gone on the exclusion of Jews from the political community. ## Gab AI Torba has developed **Gab AI** — positioning it as a **"Christian-aligned" large-language-model** platform, framing mainstream AI systems (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) as ideologically captured by progressive values. The Gab AI project connects Torba's platform-infrastructure ambitions to the broader right-wing "parallel economy" project — an attempt to build a complete alternative technology stack for movement-conservative users. ## Establishment-Evangelical Reception Torba has been **explicitly rejected** by establishment-evangelical institutions. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) maintain profiles on Torba. [[Albert Mohler]] and [[The Gospel Coalition]]-aligned figures have criticized the ethnonationalist and antisemitic dimensions of Torba's program. The critical test is the Wilson-orbit response: [[Douglas Wilson]] has **neither endorsed nor decisively rejected** the Torba program, maintaining the ambiguous relationship that characterizes the Wilson↔Torba hinge. ## KB Significance Torba is the **boundary-pushing ethnonationalist wing** of the [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]] — the figure who tests how far the broader CN coalition will absorb explicitly antisemitic and white-nationalist positions under Christian-theological cover. The Isker-mediated Wilson↔Torba connection is the single most important coalition-boundary test case in current CN politics. Gab's platform infrastructure, combined with Torba's publishing and AI projects, represents the most complete attempt to build an alternative-tech ecosystem explicitly organized around ethnonationalist Christian Nationalism. ## See Also - [[Christian Nationalism]] - [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]] - [[Gab]] - [[Andrew Isker]] - [[Stephen Wolfe]] - [[Groyper Movement]] - [[Christian Identity]]