Baked Alaska (activist)

Gionet was born in Anchorage, Alaska to a family of eight. His father is a pharmacist and his mother is a nurse. Both his parents are devout Christians who operate a non-profit organization aimed at spreading the gospel and providing medical supplies to orphanages in eastern Russia. During his formative years, Gionet was actively involved in his parents' charity and went to Russia with them numerous times. Five of his siblings were adopted from Russia.[9] As an adolescent, Gionet spent one year and a half in the Russian city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. He later said that part of his "chaotic nature" may have stemmed from this experience.[19]

In 2006, Gionet left Alaska for Los Angeles and attended Azusa Pacific University,[9] where he graduated with a B.S. in marketing.[20]

While working at Warner Bros. Records, Gionet was a social media and marketing intern for Warped Tour. Kevin Lyman gave him the nickname "Alaska", in reference to his background. In order to make it more "unique", Gionet changed the nickname to Baked Alaska, a reference to him being a marijuana user at the time, playing on the name of the dessert, baked Alaska. In 2011, Gionet worked for Capitol Records for a short time, before pursuing his own career in rap music with a "wild, redneck, kick-ass" persona. He kept his nickname Baked Alaska as a stage name.[9] His rap songs used a satirical tone[20] and traded on his Alaskan roots, with titles like "I Live on Glaciers"[1] or "I Climb Mountains".[9] In 2013, the Anchorage Daily News published a profile of Baked Alaska, describing him as a "comedy/music video artist".[20] Gionet, who called himself at the time a "cross between Weird Al, Lonely Island, Borat and Jackass",[20] also posted many humorous videos on Vine, where he achieved some degree of online popularity.[21]

Gionet attempted to promote his rap career by producing several professionally-made videos, which failed to become viral. While in Los Angeles, he was also involved in the party scene and had issues with drugs and alcohol, leading him to seek professional help to get sober. Unhappy with his life in Los Angeles and the lack of progress of his musical career, Gionet was considering returning to Alaska when his social media skills and popularity on Vine led him to be hired by BuzzFeed.[9]

From 2015 to 2016, Gionet worked for BuzzFeed as a social media strategist, and later commentator. He first managed its Vine account, then took over one of its Twitter accounts.[21] As he had done during his rap career, Gionet was protective of his real name while he worked as BuzzFeed : most of his colleagues knew him only as "Alaska" and some of his employers believed his family name was "Treadstone", after another of his aliases.[1] He then identified as a libertarian, supporting Rand Paul's White House bid and the legalisation of marijuana, and participating in Black Lives Matter street demonstrations.[9] For a time, he put a Bernie Sanders poster on his desk but later started wearing MAGA hats around the office.[21] Gionet claims to have left BuzzFeed and turned to the politics of Donald Trump and the alt-right in rejection of "political correctness".[9]

After leaving BuzzFeed in 2016, Gionet traveled as Milo Yiannopoulos' Dangerous Faggot Tour manager. He later stopped working for Yiannopoulos, who reportedly found his views too extreme.[9][22] In May 2016, Gionet was introduced to then-candidate Trump, and Trump signed Gionet's arm next to where he had Trump's face tattooed.[9] Later that month, Gionet released "MAGA Anthem", which featured pro-Trump lyrics and amassed more than 100,000 views on YouTube. Mike Cernovich then hired Gionet to work on a project dedicated to gather Trump supporters.[22] Following the 2016 presidential election, Gionet continued his pro-Trump activism delivering speeches and participating in multiple rallies.[23][24][25]

Gionet was also known for spearheading the #DumpKelloggs and #TrumpCup hashtag campaigns.[26] #TrumpCup was a Twitter trend in November 2016; following allegations that a Starbucks employee refused to write "Trump" on a cup, Gionet began a campaign instructing patrons to claim their name was "Trump", forcing baristas to write it. The hashtag trended with more than 27,000 tweets in the span of two days.[27][28][29][30] #DumpKelloggs was an attempted boycott in response to Kellogg's pulling ads from Breitbart.[26]

In late 2016, conflict arose between Cernovich and Gionet when Gionet made antisemitic remarks on Twitter, claiming the media was "run in majority by Jewish people". Gionet was disinvited from DeploraBall, an unofficial inaugural ball for the alt-right. Gionet later mended his relationship with Cernovich, said that he had been "heated", and that he had misspoken.[9][31][32][33][34][35]

In February 2017, Gionet called for a boycott of Netflix in response to the announcement of Dear White People. He claimed that the show was "anti-white" and promoted "white genocide".[36][37] In July 2017, Gionet wrote and self-published a book, Meme Magic Secrets Revealed, through Amazon.[9] The book was removed as a copyright violation due to its use of Pepe the Frog on the cover.[38][39] Also that year, Gionet participated in an alt-right rally outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, and later addressed participants at the white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11, 2017.[22] At the Unite the Right rally, he marched and chanted, "You will not replace us," "White Lives Matter" and "I'm proud to be white".[40] Gionet was maced by unknown assailants during the rally : a video which showed him as he tried to recover after the incident went viral in September 2017.[14][41]

On social media, Gionet has frequently promoted the Fourteen Words, a white supremacist slogan for preserving the white race.[42][41][43] He has also hosted an online talk show in which he interviewed far right personalities such as neo-Nazi activist Richard B. Spencer.[8] He was permanently banned from Twitter after posting a photoshopped image of Laura Loomer, a Jewish far-right political commentator, inside a gas chamber.[9]

Since 2016, Gionet has frequently changed his political ideology, and has on various occasions oscillated between far-right ideology and anti-racist progressivism. After years of promoting white nationalist and alt-right politics, in March 2019, Gionet attempted to rebrand himself as a reformed ex-racist, who had come to recognize that the alt-right and meme culture were hateful and led to terrorism and violence. He released an emotional video apologizing for his past participation in meme culture, and stated: “I was brainwashed, I felt like I was part of a cult.” Gionet also alleged a link between meme culture and the Christchurch mosque shootings, and warned of conservatives being radicalized to the far-right.[44][45] In the course of his attempted rebranding, Gionet claimed in an interview with The Daily Beast that he was never serious about far-right politics, and thought that the alt-right "was just fun memes and jokes and edgy 4chan posting," until he "got to the end of this rabbit hole and realized these guys are serious."[44] Gionet purportedly abandoned his support for President Trump, and began promoting 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, such as in his rap music video "Yang Gang Anthem".[44]

Without finding success in this rebranding,[46] Gionet relocated to Phoenix, Arizona by July 2019, and began livestreaming at a left-wing protest; alternately pretending to be a reporter and protestor, antagonizing journalists, and inciting protestors on camera.[46]

In November 2019, Gionet officially reverted his politics, deleting his apology videos and collaborating with the white nationalist Groyper movement in its 'trolling' of Turning Point USA rallies.[10]

From 2019, Gionet became known for his livestreams in which he often filmed himself variously annoying, harassing, insulting and sometimes pepper spraying bystanders at the whims of his audience.[11][12][13][21]

In the midst of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Gionet would film himself trespassing on privately owned establishments that require the wearing of face coverings, while refusing to wear one. He would mock and insult employees of these establishments for wearing masks, and refuse to leave when told to do so.[13] He eventually posted on social media that he had contracted COVID-19.[47]

As he livestreamed, Gionet received donations from his audience. He was reportedly paid tens of thousands of dollars by Internet viewers who found his conduct amusing, or agreed with the political messages; he was eventually banned from YouTube for his repeated illegal conduct.[48]

Gionet was arrested in multiple livestreamed instances of trespassing and assault, including pepper spraying a bouncer in Scottsdale, Arizona, in December 2020.[13]

• 2013, I Climb Mountains
• 2013, Alaska vacation
• 2013, I Live on Glaciers
• 2014, Bull Moose Trappin (feat. D Hagood & Rico G the Mayor)
• 2014, Bad bitch (with Ghetty)
• 2015, Where Did My Socks Go?
• 2016, We Love Our Cops
• 2016, MAGA Anthem
• 2016, Trump Is My President
• 2019, Yang Gang Anthem

• Meme Magic Secrets Revealed ( Infinite Manifest Press, 2017 ; rereleased in 2018 as Meme Magic Secrets Redacted after a copyright dispute)

• Baked Alaska at IMDb