RealTime

Aaron Smith-Levin Embeds a Hater

Ann “Goldie” McKernan was Smith-Levin’s BFF—until she was outed as anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ and racist.

McKernan was rapidly scrubbed from existence by Smith-Levin to cover up their close relationship.
McKernan was rapidly scrubbed from existence by Smith-Levin to cover up their close relationship.

Aaron Smith-Levin was quick to get rid of any evidence associating him with his longtime sidekick Ann McKernan, a.k.a. Goldie, when her marginalizing, racist, violent, and anti-Semitic social media rants became the talk of the town.

True to form, Smith-Levin neither denounced nor (openly) voiced support after news broke about Goldie. He acted as if nothing unusual had occurred, while rapidly and quietly covering up the relationship.

Bonding with the depraved is not out of the ordinary for Smith-Levin. His circle of friends has included Rick Wiles (anti-Semite, racist and homophobe), Mike Rinder (assailant, pathological liar), and Alex Stein (Islamophobe, objectifier and racist) as part of his short list of friends.

Now add “Goldie” to the list.

His latest back-pedaling came when someone outed Goldie as a member of the social media network called “Gab” and revealed postings from her that were filled with anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ and racial slurs.

McKernan had even posted as “good news” that a former director with Planned Parenthood in Southern New England died by suicide.

McKernan’s rants were spread to other social media and YouTube, which lead to Smith-Levin, along with Marc Headley and Mike Rinder, all being attacked online for using her as a commentator and moderator.

It was no surprise.

Since being expelled from the Church of Scientology a decade ago, Smith-Levin has found kindred spirits on the fringes of the internet, other misfits and outcasts he could relate to. Expelled from the Church for his refusal to change his entrenched behavior as a bully and liar, Smith-Levin has spent much of the past decade dodging one self-induced scrape after another, sometimes skirting the law and sometimes not—incidents of drunk and disorderly conduct, physically assaulting a woman, and openly engaging in affairs with women outside his marriage.

Smith-Levin’s primary activity has been attacking his former religion, most recently through regular rants on a talking-head video channel, spewing lies and antireligious invective.

Smith-Levin will also appear on any podcast where they’ll take him, seemingly desperate to keep his face in view, and trying to monetize his appearances. His guest shot on the Rick Wiles podcast brought ire down on Smith-Levin.

Wiles is well-known as an antisemitic, racist, homophobic, Islamophobic extremist. When asked about his appearance there, Smith-Levin claimed he knew nothing about the man’s reputation and fanaticism. This would have been laughable if not so serious, since Wiles’ extremist views are his stock in trade.

With unwanted attention following that appearance, Smith-Levin has gone to great lengths to scrub his connection with Wiles.

Now, he’s attempting to do another scrub, this time of Goldie. But try as he might to disassociate his connection, the internet has a long memory.

Goldie McKernan started a for-profit fundraising company in 2016, ostensibly to support The Truth About Israel, a nonprofit according to their website at the time. Her company was dissolved in 2019 for failing to file required corporate reports. In 2020, McKernan filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy. How she has made a living since then is open to conjecture.

In 2022, Goldie began commenting favorably on Smith-Levin’s videos, and in December 2022 became a moderator on the YouTube channel of Marc Headley, who claimed credit for “discovering” her. Headley praised Goldie to other anti-Scientologists, and for much of 2023 she was also the moderator for Smith-Levin’s streaming podcast channel, working from her home in South Florida.

She carved out a niche setting up new channels and creating content, specializing in anti-Scientologists’ channels.

That’s when Goldie was outed with her anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ and racial slurs. When her rants were spread around on social media, the scrubbing began.

YouTube viewers asked probing questions about her during live YouTube videos of Smith-Levin and Rinder, some of which Goldie, as moderator, apparently deleted, according to an observer. When asked if she was a QAnon fan, she didn’t answer.

On October 16, 2023, Goldie resigned from all her moderator jobs. This brought on a spate of new videos by the individual who first outed her, and a round of damage control explaining how they never really knew her personally, and on and on.

That spurred somewhat of a “Goldie” rush, as numerous videos began to appear online, documenting the close relationship she’d had with those now saying “Goldie who?”

Soon after, evidence of the connections between McKernan and Smith-Levin were virtually nonexistent.