Thousands of Lies: Wylie Aronow Acknowledges Longtime Friendship with "Alt-Write" Publisher

My interview with Yuga Labs & Bored Ape Yacht Club founder "Gordon Goner" confirms a troubling alt-right connection

“Alt-Write” publisher Manuel Marrero with Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano several years ago; Yuga co-founder Wylie Aronow in 2022

Heads up: This article discusses sexual assault, racism, antisemitism, Nazism, fascism, misogyny, abuse, pedophilia, homophobia, and white supremacy.

After I published my previous article, Yuga Labs founder Wylie Aronow, known by pseudonym "Gordon Goner," quickly reached out to me to provide a response to the questions posed at the end of my piece. My article described Wylie and Yuga's potential connections to the publisher and editor of "alt-write" publisher ExPat Press. I am now able to confirm those connections.

Through our conversation, Wylie confirmed that Manuel Marrero is a “childhood friend” who maintains contact with Wylie through 2022. Along with his co-founder Greg Solano, the two men bonded over their shared interest in literature.

Wylie expressed sympathy towards Marrero and adamantly told me: "he's also not a Nazi, FYI." But that misses the point. 

Even if Wylie doesn't think his friend is a Nazi, Marrero is more than friendly with Nazis. Via ExPat, Marrero publishes another writer who is a self-proclaimed Nazi, fascist, and pedophile. Pedophilia appears in ExPat's publishings dating back to 2013, but over the course of ExPat's history, Marrero's published increasingly explicit sexual content involving babies and children.

ExPat and Marrero also heavily cross-publish with a white supremacist known to advocate for and perpetuate sexual and physical violence against women. This associate is identified by the ADL as a white nationalist and anti-Semite who dabbles in Holocaust denialism. He lavishes praise on ExPat and promotes ExPat writers by cross-publishing excerpts to his site. Marrero posted some of his Kali Yuga writings to this individual's white nationalist website.

Marrero cross-promotes and maintains business relationships entwined with white supremacists. Embedded in ExPat publishings are instructions to join secret chatrooms and hidden Telegram-style networks where ugly, bigoted anger festers. Marrero's platform is a gateway to hateful extremism. His personal writing is littered with racism, white supremacy, antisemitism, and pedophilia.

Wylie Aronow considers this man to be his friend.

Wylie's First Written Response

Below are Wylie’s responses to the initial questions I posed. For the sake of clarity, I've reinserted my questioning in between his responses (bolded), but his answers (italicized) are fully represented in sequential order: 

Hey dude, here’s the answers to your questions. I would appreciate it if you updated the article with my entire response.

Can you confirm or deny your involvement with ExPat Press? If you were involved with ExPat Press, to what extent have you retained a relationship with said organization? 

Greg and I have known the editor for years. He’s an old childhood friend from Miami. We’ve never been involved with ExPat beyond supporting our friend. 

The name Greg Solano appears published under ExPatlitj Issue #1. To what extent has Greg retained a relationship with ExPat Press since that publication?

When Greg was doing his MFA in creative writing, he would submit poems all over, and since our friend ran a literary journal, a couple were published there. Neither of us have read any of their books.

Are the other founders, Kerem and Zeshan, aware of your association with ExPat Press? Do they share any involvement with ExPat Press? 

Kerem and Zeshan didn’t grow up in Miami so don’t know the editor of that press. [sic]

What is the story and full context behind the name “Yuga Labs”?

Yuga Labs was both named for the Zelda character that turns people in 2D art and the term Sanskrit term Yuga, which means Era. We were building for a new of the internet [sic], Web3, so the name worked both ways.

As I’ve said, I practiced Hinduism (and then Buddhism) for years. Been a long time yogi, and have been practicing Transcendental Meditation for over a decade. The team decided not to publish my religious beliefs previously because frankly it's no one's business, and Greg was the one who came up with the idea to call the company  "Yuga" after the Zelda character, the era that we live in, and the fact that it just sounds cool and mysterious.  Note that I'm hardly the first Jewish liberal to get really into eastern philosophy. See: Ram Dass, Leonard Cohen, Allen Ginsberg, Sharon Salzberg, and MCA (Adam Yauch) of the Beastie Boys.

There’s nothing even remotely hateful about the term Kali Yuga. Anyone can google it. It’s the age we live in, according to me and a billion other people. Ryder just loves twisting everything into making us seem like Nazis. Just because some fringe internet racists try and co-opt something doesn’t make the term something hate related. It’s like saying all Hawaiian shirts need to be cancelled cause some far right assholes wear them.

This is all a part of Ryder's troll. Just look at his background.

At the end of his response, Wylie included five links disparaging Ryder Ripps, which mostly contain hearsay. Wylie's perception of Ryder's character has no meaningful bearing upon my questions or Wylie's personal relationship with ExPat, so I've omitted those links due to their irrelevance.

"Epiphanies": Wylie's Involvement with Thousands of Lies

Conspicuously absent from Wylie's answers was any acknowledgement of his name drop in Marrero's Thousands of Lies. I wondered why he ignored a major conjecture from my article. I pressed him on this missing fact. A summary of my follow-up messages with Wylie:

Wave Ninja: you’re thanked in a book you’ve never read? or does the reference to “wylie” refer to a different person named wylie?

Wylie: We grew up with the guy. We all used to talk about writing a lot. But no, I’ve never actually read his book.

Wave Ninja: So the dedication is indeed to you, and not to another person. I'll include that response as well. Please let me know if there's anything else you would like included.

Wylie: Yeah I’m one of the people he thanked in the book, from what I recall.

Wave Ninja: ... we both know the full truth wasn’t told here because you’re still trying to create distance to a person that literally thanked you in their most popular work. 

He said you’re one of the six people “instrumental to epiphanies that shaped it fundamentally.” That’s not the kind of thing I would say about a casual acquaintance. Are you being truthful about the nature of your relationship with ExPat and Manuel? You just grew up with him and talked about writing a lot — but never read his books or helped him create/publish work?

Wylie: I get it.

At this point, Wylie requested that I call him via phone. Wylie eventually conceded that he is indeed thanked by Marrero in Thousands of Lies for his supporting contributions.

Thousands of Lies: A Troubling Text

The contents of Marrero's personal fiction runs rampant with racism, antisemitism, pedophilia, white supremacy, misogyny and rape fantasies.

I've curated a selection of some of the harmful ideas within Thousands of Lies — the book which Wylie previewed in draft form, provided feedback, and was thanked by Marrero for being "instrumental to epiphanies that shaped [the book] fundamentally":

• Over 50 uses of the N-word and its variants, at least six uses of homophobic slurs

• Dozens of references or descriptions of rape including incest and pedophilia  (p.160, 261) and racially charged rape-fantasies (p.265):

  • "I want to have Ceajae’s beautiful half-Jamaican babies... I don’t especially want Asian babies, but as a white woman I have to think what’s practical and what kind of currency I’m carrying if I opt for a donor. ... I wanna snag me a brute ... it brings out the worst in me, I turn into an Amazonian vixen with special powers, I pounce on him like it’s rape, and I plunge his throbbing member into my dripping, wide-open **** ." (censorship my own)

• Misinterpretation of AAVE via derisive nonstandard orthography (stylizing language to intentionally degrade Black people)

  • "No black person, whatever the nappy ‘fro on they head or the tone of they skin be, pack a package this... cold and light ...That bitch be crazy like only bitches be." (p.123)

  • "This wunn’t worth the attention. But soldier boy had some problems. He be mental. Came busting through honky’s ole’ lady’s house while she be at work" (p.224)

• African-American characters annexed as degrading and offensive stereotypes who submit sexually and socially to white characters:

  • "The girls are scum, they say, not people. They will rob you, take advantage of you, try and fuck you, ask you to play a song, and sometimes you have to put them in their place. One of them I wish I’d have fucked. A blue-black African with a boyfriend no doubt triple my size, knuckles that’d notch flawlessly to my mandible, shredding my adam’s apple, make a mess of my smile. She was of model size, thin with rounded curves, and when she confidently sat on my lap during an intermission and asked me if I’d ever been with a black girl she seemed genuinely offended when I snarked it off. She could’ve been one for a night." (p.49)

• In-depth, graphically explicit pedophiliac descriptions and references. I will not reprint these but they are intense, abhorrent, and frequent. 

• Antisemitic remarks including a reference to "super Jews" (p. 39) and pangs of Holocaust denialism (p.129):

  • "The holocaust never ended ... there are Jews who like to believe it only happened once, that the word is uniquely theirs"

  • Marrero's more recent text published in 2019 also described Hitler as "inspiring" and "the first rock star" who "deployed the Third Reich to capture the big-nosed people and put them in camps"

• White supremacist language:  "If I was anything other than white, roots notwithstanding, the repercussions would’ve been out of your control. Remember when we had control? Me either" (271)

Wylie maintains that he's never read Thousands of Lies — to this very day. Yet, he knew that he was thanked for his support in a text littered with red flags. If you read and offer feedback to a writer who goes on to include your name in their acknowledgements for the "epiphanies" you provided, then you should review the published product — especially if you're aware that writer may hold "controversial" beliefs.

There's clear danger around associating with or supporting someone who launders extremist ideologies through a "dissident" publishing house. As one writer associated with ExPat puts it, ExPat publishes "things you would never say out loud, attached to your name." Because that's the point. These men won't even publish their extremist work under their IRL identities — many hide their hate behind anonymity and pseudonyms.

A small handful of contributing writers appear clueless as to the more extreme fiction published by ExPat. Their milder fiction provides ExPat and the wider "alt-write" community with the professional cover to launder extremist and bigoted writing under the guise of "upholding" freedom of speech. 

Marrero and his companions together lament the "difficulty" of publishing as a white man who must concede an "apologetic" tone to get published. But contriving shock literature as an excuse to use the n-word or rant excitedly about abusing women isn't a courageous defense of speech, it's a cowardly act of hatred.

The true goal of an "alt-write" publisher like ExPat is to provide a safe platform for extreme, hateful beliefs. In the end, Marrero is effectively establishing a network infested with bigotry — covertly creating and disseminating a cultural platform for neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

Wylie Aronow considers this man to be his friend.

The Kali Yuga Connection

In Hinduism, the Kali Yuga refers to the final and present age of the world cycle, generally regarded as an era of spiritual decline and darkness. Across 2021, speculation about the origin of the name "Yuga Labs" agitated over concerns that the name was selected in the nihilistic vein of modern alt-right misappropriation of the Kali Yuga. Yuga was silent.

Yuga finally provided an explanation in January of 2022. In a thread addressing some of the allegations, they explained that the inspiration behind the name "Yuga Labs" came from a Zelda villain in the 2013 3DS game A Link Between Worlds. This explanation later turned out to omit key details.

Wylie says co-founder Greg Solano ideated the name from this 2013 Zelda title.

In their June 2022 letter from the founders, for the first time Yuga acknowledged their awareness of the Kali Yuga concept, writing: "Gordon spent a decade practicing Hinduism, and the 'Kali Yuga' is the current era we are in according to Hinduism." This new admission showed that Wylie's decade-long spiritual practice held significance over a character from a video game he may not even have played. 

In his response to me, Wylie explained that this critical fact was omitted "because frankly it's no one's business." If the connection to this word was so intimate and personal to the degree that he does not even feel comfortable publicly acknowledging his awareness of the concept, he should have chosen another name for his tech company. 

Wylie's request for religious privacy around his Hindu beliefs is in direct contradiction with his public persona in August 2020, where he plastered his Twitter profile with what appears to be a Buddhist spirituality reference. Per the screenshot from A T Wilkinson's blog, Wylie also set his Twitter location in 2020 as the Kali Yuga.

If the concept was meaningful enough to Wylie that he set it as his Twitter location, clearly it was vastly more intellectually significant to him than the Zelda character. The reference to Zelda was a circumstantial coincidence which added texture to their name choice. They hid behind this layer in their initial explanation. Why?

There's nothing hateful or insidious about the Kali Yuga within the concept's religious contexts.

However, as Wylie acknowledges above, there are "some fringe internet racists" who have attempted to co-opt the term. Kali Yuga is referenced obsessively throughout Marrero’s writing circa 2018-20. His interpretation has nothing to do with any authentic religious context. Instead, it appears as a nihilistic vision of apocalypse:

• "Their temporal excavations opened a ripple, fucked everything up for everybody. Now they’re lost to us, in a reality where Hillary Clinton is president, if you can believe it. But this is much worse. This is Kali Yuga, death drive on overdrive ... Something that’s supposed to happen isn’t happening, and God isn’t happy. These earthquakes, these superstorms, mass killings, they’re only going to get worse unless we rectify it. Ridiculous, I know, but that’s what God is like"

• "Everyone a husk, no place more indifferent to Kali Yuga shifting the earth, death drive on overdrive, noumena buckling under the pressure of utter statistical will, telluric eschars unpeeling the firmament. ... The junkie mindset: reprogrammed for permanent abuse of oneself and others ... promotion of nihilism so stifling as to reduce all to a meaningless tandem hustle"

• "Lucifer howled I shall be redeemed. ... return the wretches to their primordial sea, return dominion to the sacked Mother of Chaos, Tiamat. The Vedic scriptures pertaining to Kali Yuga approximated the climax. ... I will lash the earth. I will rain indignities. I will bring the Fall."

Death drives, Lucifer, Hilary Clinton, mass killings, Mother of Chaos, lashing the earth — does this sound like spiritual or cultural Buddhism/Hinduism? Or a nihilistic misappropriation of sacred concepts?

Is it fair to wonder if conversations with Wylie influenced Marrero's conception of the Kali Yuga? Or if Wylie knew that Marrero and other members of his community were running wild with the concept towards nihilistic and bigoted ends? When Wylie mentioned "fringe internet racists" who co-opt the Kali Yuga — did he realize he was referring to his own friend? 

And if the two did cross-pollinate their ideas around the Kali Yuga, then what does that say about the choice behind the name "Yuga Labs"?

"Dubious": Wylie Revises His Written Answers

Days after his first message, Wylie messaged me again, unprompted. He re-submitted the same answers to the same questions to "update" my post — this time with one significant change.

He explained the rationale for his revision: "I mostly added a few sentences, since you felt it was dubious I could be thanked in a book I haven’t read."

"Dubious" is a great way to describe how I walked away from these interactions. I'm dubious of Wylie's evasiveness and his ever-changing story. I'm dubious of his frequent omissions, revisions, deflections, falsehoods, and contradictions.  

His amended response is included below (emphasis my own to highlight the addition from the previous written answers):

Greg and I have known the editor for years. He’s an old childhood friend from Miami. We’ve never been involved with ExPat beyond supporting our friend. When Greg was doing his MFA in creative writing, he would submit poems all over, and since our old friend ran a literary journal, a couple were published there. Neither of us have read any of their books. I read a few pages of the editor’s first self-published novel when it was still being written and then I had a long phone call with him about the plot, structure, voice, and how I thought stories should be told. For that talk and my thoughts on the creative process, he thanked me in the book. To be honest, I still have not read it.

What could easily be a straightforward answer became a series of trickle-truths: "I’ve never actually read his book" changed over the course of conversation to "I got through like a couple pages [but] I didn't get into the content of his work" and evolved days later to "I read a few pages of the editor’s first self-published novel when it was still being written and then I had a long phone call with him."

Wylie also states he's "never been involved with ExPat beyond supporting our friend [Marrero].” However, I can confirm that he also interacted with other contributing writers at ExPat and its extended community.

I'm dubious of what Yuga is telling us about why there are so many fucked up cultural references that keep worming their way into Yuga's collections. Where is all the context for these highly specific allusions? Why hasn't anyone at Yuga Labs addressed the racist traits and references? Why haven't they changed anything or publicly engaged with anyone who finds their creative choices offensive? 

I'm definitely “dubious.”