If you hadn’t heard of far-right, anti-immigration priest Calvin Robinson before, he likely ended up on your radar this week when he performed a conspicuously Nazi-looking salute – which conservatives are attempting to rebrand as “the Elon Musk salute” – on stage at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington DC. Robinson has spent years making a name for himself on the right-wing media circuit, appearing on Britain’s GB News, popping up next to figures like Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump, and responding to accusations that he’s a conspiracy theorist by calling the label a “badge of honor.” Before all that, though, Robinson was a games journalist, and he still owns a website he founded and wrote for, God Is A Geek. Today, the editorial staff of that site announced that they’re quitting.
God Is A Geek is a long-running site that focuses on gaming news, reviews, videos, and podcasts and prides itself on “a diverse, passionate team with all manner of tastes.” Though GIAG’s following is relatively small, it regularly receives review, preview, and interview access from the video game industry, with its reviews appearing on Metacritic, as well as those fawning review score promo posters publishers love to trot out after games’ releases even though nobody’s heard of half the websites on them. GIAG’s coverage is standard stuff; the writing is not particularly hard hitting, but neither does it seem to have slipped down the DEI-obsessed rabbit hole that its affiliation with Robinson might suggest.
According to GIAG’s privacy policy, the site is owned by LDN.CM, a publishing company whose team page lists just two members: Ruk Cooray and Calvin Robinson. Robinson contributed articles and videos to GIAG beginning all the way back in 2009, but has not done so since 2019, which is also when LDN dissolved, according to records viewed by VGC. While Robinson maintained ownership of the site after that, "Calvin Robinson has no involvement with the site on a day-to-day basis whatsoever," according to an unnamed representative of God Is A Geek who replied to Aftermath’s inquiries via the site’s PR email. I also asked if the site’s team would issue any sort of statement in response to Robinson’s salute or general conduct; the representative said that "The editorial team will make no further comment."
Aftermath reached out to Cooray and Robinson for more information about LDN’s ownership of the site and Robinson’s involvement in its operations, but did not receive a response as of this publishing.
In a statement posted to God Is A Geek, the site’s staff reiterated that Robinson did not actively participate in its operations, but that they nonetheless felt compelled by his recent actions to cease publication entirely.
“We have run the site independently of Calvin for several years now in the hopes that we would not have to lose the hard work we have poured into it, the access we have worked hard for, and the relationships we have developed,” God Is A Geek’s editorial team wrote. “However, it has become increasingly clear that we can no longer separate the site from the owner. As a result, the entire editorial team will be stepping down with immediate effect. We will create a new site and our future content will be published there, bereft of any connection to Calvin Robinson. It will be hard to start again, hard to walk away from the work we’ve done here off our own backs, but this is the right thing to do.”
At the National Pro-Life Summit, Robinson delivered his gesture to the audience with a knowing nod, saying “My heart goes out to you” before touching his hand to his chest and extending his arm. It was the culmination of a speech about “the last stand for the West” and “the last stand for Christendom” in which he positioned America as “the only country fighting for life.” The audience ate it up, laughing and cheering as if to demonstrate a clear understanding of what Robinson was going for.
Hours later, the Anglican Catholic Church revoked Robinson’s license.
"While we cannot say what was in Mr. Robinson’s heart when he did this, his action appears to have been an attempt to curry favor with certain elements of the American political right by provoking its opposition,” the ACC said in a statement on its website. “Mr. Robinson had been warned that online trolling and other such actions (whether in service of the left or right) are incompatible with a priestly vocation and was told to desist. Clearly, he has not, and as such, his license in this Church has been revoked. He is no longer serving as a priest in the ACC."
Online, Robinson received the same reaction as Musk before him, the same one pretty much all far-right figures are going for when they deploy a Nazi salute: outrage, which they can then farm for more engagement by hopping on their high horse and feigning ironic distance from ideals in which they very much believe.
"Today I received hundreds of nasty calls, texts, voicemails and emails today from very bitter, angry, vile leftists," Robinson said on Twitter, where he later went on to call the salute a "joke." "They are often the very thing they accuse you of. I am not a Nazi. But I forgive you of your ignorance."
