Town angered as Michigan Republican pleads ignorance to husband’s ultra-right career

A Michigan Republican who was elected treasurer of Maple Valley Township in Montcalm County last year says she didn't realize her husband was a neo-Nazi until she was contacted by a reporter for the British newspaper The Guardian over the summer about a racist, antisemitic YouTube channel he founded, according to Michigan Live.

That channel, called Shameless Sperg, featured videos with titles like “Why I Hate Jews” and “Black Crime Matters.”

“There were signs,” said Meg Booth. “I’m not going to say there weren’t, but had he declared himself a National Socialist to me? No. It’s not something that we discuss at the dinner table.”

Booth said she never watched the videos he posted — in which he said America “was built by and for white people” and talked about Nazis in the 1930s breaking “the chains of Jewish tyranny in Germany” — until they "became an issue."

It wasn't until The Guardian published its story in August, in which it said "Chris Booth’s channel – rife with neo-Nazi ideology, antisemitism and racism – garnered 2.3m views and likely thousands of dollars from YouTube in about two months," when the community that elected his wife called her job into question.

"The question that is still splitting the community is whether Booth has provided adequate assurances that she will do her job without prejudice and it’s time to move on or whether the township needs a more potent reckoning with what it means to have a neo-Nazi in their midst," writes Michigan Live.

“I saw this happening, and I did not want Nazis to become normal, where we just go, ‘Oh, yeah, they just have a difference of opinion,’” said Tricia Wells, who chairs the township’s planning commission and is part of a group that is now planning a recall effort against Booth.

Two days after The Guardian story hit, the Maple Valley Township Board of Trustees put out a statement from their attorney that said that free speech "a fundamental, constitutional right that must be protected. It also said they “strongly condemn any statements or behaviors intended to marginalize or discriminate against any group of people.”

Meg Booth voted for it, Michigan Live says. Her husband put out his own statement that said, “I’m still going to speak the truth. I’m not sorry for anything I said. I’m not sorry for anything I’ve done. I meant every word.”

He also, according to the report, "lobbed anti-gay slurs" at family friends for spreading The Guardian article, and said "he wouldn’t forget how they’d treated him."

“I know you think I’m the only one that’s going to pay,” he said. “It’s not true. Because, sooner or later, when we win, these scores are all going to get settled.”

You Tube removed Booth's channel after The Guardian story came out but Michigan Live says he is still releasing them on other websites.

At another Maple Valley Township meeting a month later, one member said Booth was aiming "threatening rhetoric at us."

Following the death of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, Meg Booth posted on her Facebook page, saying, "People are dying over hurt feelings,” she wrote. “We’ve forgotten how to have constructive conversations across divides. That breakdown in dialogue is part of why we are in this situation today, right here in Maple Valley Township.”

"Booth has said at other times that she doesn’t support racism or antisemitism. She didn’t in that particular message," Michigan Live notes.

“To suggest that I must divorce my husband over political or social views is not only unreasonable, it’s insulting to the many couples who hold different perspectives yet remain committed to each other,” she wrote.

Booth, who describes herself as a conservative libertarian says her husband is a Messianic Jew who believes Jesus is the messiah, but she didn't realize how extreme his beliefs have become.

"I guess it didn’t surprise me that he had come to have some stronger or more extreme beliefs because he has been a little odd,” she said.

Her Michigan community remains concerned. Booth “never denounced any of his views. She just said, ‘I don’t condone it,'" Michigan Live reports.

“We don’t want this to be a community that is known to be harboring hate,” said Wendy Baty. “Unless we are actively fighting against this kind of thing in our community, our children aren’t going to want to come back and live here. We need to be able to show them what we value.”