The Strange Case of "Pikachu": Romanian Neo-Nazi Podcaster Diana Brancoveanu, aka Simona Thrussell

The prevalence of neo-Nazi podcasts is something no one could have predicted. On the other hand, perhaps it should be no surprise that racists and white nationalists would embrace new forms of media to spread their hate. One of these such podcasts is "Red, White and Black Pill," hosted and produced by a neo-Nazi Romanian woman who goes by the pseudonym "Pikachu." Despite her innocent-sounding stage name, which is based on a character in a children's animated television show, "Pikachu" is a self-proclaimed Nazi, racist and antisemite and promotes the idea of violent conflict against non-white people.

We find it ironic, however, that this neo-Nazi podcaster chose to name herself after a children's show based on the idea of catching cartoon creatures and whose catchphrase is "Gotta catch 'em all!" Allow us to introduce Diana Brancoveanu, aka Simona Thrussell, aka "Pikachu."

A Peek at "Pikachu"

"Pikachu" first came to our attention during the personal meltdown of racist podcaster David Aaron Mitchell, aka "Roscoe" of Exodus Americanus infamy, as he was going through a divorce from his wife, the equally racist and repugnant Jennifer Gilbert Mitchell, aka "Tabby Boom Boom." Various allies of "Roscoe" Mitchell set up a fundraiser to support him and their favorite podcast in this time of need. One of these supporters was fellow racist podcaster, William Rehovsky, a registered Nebraska pedophile sex offender who goes by "@bigoldbladesmith" on Twitter and hosts the Exodus Americanus affilated podcast "Skinwalker Tapes." Rehovsky recently posted on the behalf of a "PK" who was making a hiring call for an undisclosed project and posted an email address: "identichu@protonmail.com." It was not a great effort to put together "PK" and "identichu" to realize he was posting for "Pikachu," another neo-Nazi podcaster who is well-known in those circles.

"Roscoe" Mitchell had several guest appearances on another neo-Nazi podcast called "Illusion Radio" hosted by "Doc Illusion." It was also on this show that "Pikachu" made her debut appearance, first as a guest, and then subsequently acting as substitute host at times before eventually moving on to establish her own podcast, "Red, White and Black Pill." "Pikachu" was well acquainted with "Roscoe" Mitchell and had him as a guest on her show numerous times.

So who is this "Pikachu?" While she uses various other pseudonyms, "Pikachu" is the alias most commonly associated with her and her show. She is a Romanian in her forties currently living in the Netherlands and works in the tech industry. On her show she ruminates on the state of white nationalism and promotes the idea of a race war between whites and non-whites. She often lectures skewed and inaccurate history lessons that support her vision of white supremacy.

As mentioned earlier, she appropriated her name "Pikachu" from the children's animated TV series of the same name and even uses an altered version of the cartoon character as her online avatar. However in her case the character is green and sports a particular symbol on its chest. Being Romanian, this "Pikachu" is alluding to Corneliu Codreanu and his notorious Iron Guard (also known as the "Green Shirts"), an ideologically fascist organization in Romania's early twentieth-century history.

In 1927 Romanian politician Corneliu Codreanu formed the Legion of the Archangel Michael (Legiunea Arhanghelului Mihail), of which the Iron Guard was the paramilitary branch. This ultra-nationalistic organization was also intensely antisemitic and was notorious for several massacres. In one such massacre sixty Jewish victims were hung on meathooks and skinned alive. Their bodies were labeled "kosher," mocking the Jewish tradition of shehita. This is just one example of the brutality of the Iron Guard in Romania's history.

In her podcast debut on "Illusion Radio" episode 76 ("The Wrath of Pikachu") "Pikachu" claims that she was "J pilled" (i.e. converted to antisemitism) at the age of eighteen by her maternal grandfather whom she claimed was a "war hero" and a member of Codreanu's legion. Elsewhere in this episode she described herself as an "autistic sociopath." After this episode, "Pikachu" appeared on the podcast as a substitute host for a long period as "Doc Illusion" went on hiatus, before eventually hosting her own separate, but affiliated, podcast "Red, White and Black Pill."

"Pikachu"'s podcast content is a steady stream of racist, antisemitic commentary rambled in a heavily laden Romanian accent. She frequently comments on "Zionist globalism" and antisemitic conspiracy theories while urging "pro-whites" to get ready for a race war. Racial slurs like "n*gger" and "sh*tskin" frequently occur in her vocabulary. On once occasion when commenting on the tragic death of Vietnamese refugees in a container ship she remarked "good motherf*cking riddance."

Occasionally "Pikachu" goes off on an autobiographical tangent. In one episode she claimed to be an "old army mule" and a "veteran of three wars" and claimed to have killed people numerous times in war. In another episode she claimed to have served in Afghanistan. These are claims we will explore later in this article.

"Pikachu" also has a presence on the Telegram messaging platform where she announces new podcast episodes and makes some vile, racist commentary.

"Pikachu" also has some strange ideas on Asian identity. While being an admirer of Imperial Japan, whose atrocities are equal to those of the Nazis and other fascist groups of the early twentieth-century, "Pikachu" calls Asians of other ethnic and national groups "scum."

A Complicated History

In many ways, "Pikachu" made it easy to uncover her true identity. Show notes provided on the "Illusion Radio" website often provided links and contact information for "Pikachu." For example, in one case "Pikachu" posted a link in the show notes to one of her websites Mouseworks where she explained another nickname/alias "Soopermouse":

Some 20 years ago, someone called me Soopermouse. I kept it. I’m a cheese eating superhero

Now that we knew she had been using the alias "Soopermouse" for twenty years it was a simple matter to examine other instances of this username, which were plentiful, and line up all our facts. We discovered that "Pikachu" was in reality a Romanian woman currently living in the Netherlands named Diana Brancoveanu, professionally using the name Simona Thrussell, the surname adopted from a now-dissolved brief marriage with a British man. Looking deeper into her history on the internet, we developed a profile of her life and found some aspects that surprised us.

Brancoveanu claims on her Facebook profile to be born on June 28, 1975, which is likely true as far as the year is concerned since she has stated this as fact across various media. According to her LinkedIn page she worked toward a Master's degree at the Academia de Studii Economice in Bucharest from 1993-2000. She wrote in one old blog post that she was part of Romania's KFOR (Kosovo Security Force) contingent for a year, likely following her college graduation. While that is likely true, it appears to be the sum of her military experience as far as we have found, despite what she has claimed. In the podcast mentioned above where "Pikachu" speaks about being a "veteran of three wars" she describes the smell of "burning carcasses" of civilian Serbs "burnt alive in their church Easter night 1999." As far as we are aware, though, Romania did not send KFOR a contingent until the summer of that year.  Also, we do not see any period in her timeline in which she could have possibly done military service in Afghanistan as she has claimed elsewhere. This is not the only strangeness coming from Brancovenu regarding the military, as we will later see.

We next find in her circa 2004 on an amateurish heavy metal website of her own creation that featured interviews with metal musicians as well as other features. She called herself "Simona Thrussell," so it is likely this was post-marriage/divorce. During this time she appeared to be living in the United Kingdom, probably in Leicester.

On that page she wrote that her location was "under the wings of the STEEL EAGLE." This was a motif that would follow her online life. Her Myspace username as well as her Gab username later in life were both "steelandfire."

Around 2007 she ran a web hosting service called "Darken Hosting," but it was of such poor quality that it earned her a negative reputation across the web host business. One customer wrote of her on a forum:

Simona Thrussel, [sic] the owner of Darkenhosting, is entirely without communication skills when it comes to solving problems. Very ill mannered, not very knowledgable [sic] and really doesn't give a hoot once she's got your money.

Brancoveanu's professional LinkedIn profile (as "Simona Thrussell") begins in 2009 with a series of IT and web development jobs that continue to the current day.

Knowing that Brancoveanu/Thrussell used the online identity "Soopermouse" opened many avenues of approach for us. Using this as a search key allowed us to examine her long history on the internet, including social media accounts and forgotten blogs.

Brancoveanu/Thrussell also had a frequent presence on the question & answer website Quora. Although her account has been banned, some of her answers and questions are still visible and they provide a glimpse into her rather singularly minded world view.

Brancoveanu/Thrussell also had scores of Twitter accounts, a sample of which are:

• @goodluckmouse
• @badluckmouse
• @ludditecoder
• @swordfarmer
• @statestatus
• @pkbusy

There are many more. As each of her accounts got suspended for violating hate speech policies she would simply create more, as she gleefully noted on a Telegram messenger post.

One of these early Twitter accounts stuck to her modus operandi of using the name "@soopermouse," a capture of which is available on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Examination of the source code of the archived tweet revealed the numerical user ID to be 47901612.

Strangely enough, much later, a Twitter profile calling itself "@FallenSolitaire" appeared. Describing itself as an "old army mule" (much like how "Pikachu" did as well in her podcast) in the bio section, and writing as a grizzled military veteran calling itseld "Sarge,"  "@FallenSolitaire" used this account to platform hateful, right-wing sentiment.

What is strange is that when we checked the numerical Twitter ID for "@FallenSolitaire" it turned out to be 47901612, the same ID as for the "@soopermouse" account. They were the same account; the screen name just changed. "@soopermouse" took a break from tweeting in 2011 and came back in 2017 as "@FallenSolitaire."

Conveniently, the imaginary "Sarge" kicked the bucket. So that was the end of that.

An imaginary military fantasy life is not the strangest thing we found from the internet history of Diana Brancoveanu/Simona Thrussell/"Pikachu," though. She was also a prolific blogger with numerous personal blogs across the internet, some deleted and some abandoned. In early blog posts, Brancoveanu appeared to portray a very different persona. She showed sympathy for left-leaning politics, was a feminist and appreciated multiculturalism. Most surprisingly, she is Jewish. She wrote on one now-deleted blog, archived in 2010:

This was not the only instance where she indicated that she was Jewish. Brancoveanu frequently commented on other blogs in support of Israel and decrying antisemitism.

We also found tweets such as this one while examining the history of the "@FallenSolitaire" Twitter account in a tweet she made before the change of her screen name:

To say the least, we were shocked that the same person who said "Jews are the STD of civilization" and who claimed to be "J pilled at eighteen" by her Codreanu-following grandfather was, in fact, Jewish herself. We can only speculate on what kind of perverse twist caused her to hate her own heritage. Perhaps it satisfies some craving for notoriety. Perhaps she had such low self-esteem that she decided to join the people that hate her own heritage. We can only guess. One thing we know for sure is that her racist, antisemitic rhetoric and real-world right-wing activism are a threat to our communities everywhere.

Current Activities

Brancoveanu/Thrussell as "Pikachu" stated in one podcast that she had been "doxed by Antifa" and fired from her job, only to get a "better" one and severance pay. While we could not verify that she had in fact been doxed, she did change jobs around this time. Whatever the case, if that dox didn't stick, let's make sure this one gives her the notoriety she seems to desire.

Diana Brancoveanu/Simona Thrussell is currently residing in the Netherlands, possibly Tilburg. She claims to be the CEO of NXDTech. She may also be associated with the website New Experience Design.

She is currently using the handle "@PKSteadfast" on Twitter.

She is also still very involved in the neo-Nazi podcast scene, collaborating with the likes of "Roscoe" Mitchell, the pedophile William Rehovsky and even Norman Asa Garrison III, aka "Spectre." When not podcasting she spends her time financially supporting her podcast associates like "Roscoe" and Romanian fascist causes.

 

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Diana Brancoveanu, aka Simona Thrussell, aka "Pikachu"

Believed to be residing in Tilburg, Netherlands. Previously resided in Leicester, UK.

Employment: Possibly contract IT work. Claims to be CEO of "NXDTech."

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All information presented in this article has been sourced from publicly available material.

This article has been edited due to a complaint from Diana Brancoveanu/Simona Thrussell to our hosts.