The more I learn about the Chapo hosts and the timeline of the podcast, the more it seems to me like Amber and Virgil were brought on to do the work of appealling/signalling to an alt-right-adjacent troll audience so the original hosts could pretend their hands were clean.

I don't have access to the podcast archive and I'm sure not paying for it, so I can't really say that for sure about Virgil, but his history of making ambiguously ironic jokes about ZOG and pogroms pre-Chapo sure seems to signal a comfort and relationship with that crowd.

In that context, his disappearance (and the other co-hosts' silence about it) as folks finally start to listen to antifascists about the reality of the Chapo-to-fash pipeline sure makes sense.

If he was brought on to bring in thr fash-adjacent trolls so the white dude co-hosts could pretend to be oblivious to their increasing presence in their fanbase, it makes sense those white dudes would also stay quiet and be willing to expend rather than defend Amber & Virgil.

Bringing on POC tokens to do both the footwork of fash/fash-adjacent recruitment/dogwhistling-- and letting them take the brunt of the punishment when that recruitment/dogwhistling gets called out-- is one of the oldest racist tricks in the book.

That's exactly the relationship between Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens, for example.

It doesn't make the behavior of Virgil and Amber any less vile, but the silence of their white co-hosts as Virgil disappears and they both get exposed for the fash-enablers that they are speaks volumes.

The white co-hosts weren't just complicit.

This was their plan.