MAPLEWOOD — A shock jock popular among white supremacists, and who the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as a white nationalist, grew up in a town now struggling with its own racial tensions.

According to Philly.com, the man known as Mike Enoch was born Mike Peinovich and attended Maplewood's Columbia High School.

According to the story, Peinovich nearly lost his standing in the white supremacist community after it was revealed that he is married to a Jewish woman, who is in the process of divorcing him, and has an adopted brother who is black.

Enoch spoke during the violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, and is spreading his message on white supremacist podcasts.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Peinovich is the founder of a group called The Right Stuff, and the host of a podcast called the Daily Shoah, which it describes as "a seminal podcast of the Alt-Right." Shoah is the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.

It also calls him "one of the most recognizable white nationalist voices, regularly traveling around the United States and abroad to participate in public speaking events."

"We are not going to back down to this Jewish, cultural Marxist brainwashing that you have been indoctrinated with in order to be useful idiots for the systems of of international finance, capitalism and war, which you are representing whether you know it or not," the advocacy group quoted him as saying at a rally in Kentucky this year.

In an article in the Daily News, the New York resident defended his actions, saying:

"Many people are not happy and those people do not have a voice in the mainstream, and when they do raise their voice they are relentlessly mocked, attacked, ostracized and even violently threatened."

Earlier this month, the chief of police in Peinovich's former hometown was given a payout of more than $200,000 to retire after he was suspended following an investigation into police using excessive force following a Fourth of July event last year. Chief Robert Cimino had directed officers to move a large group of mostly black teenagers into neighboring Irvington.

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