WASHINGTON — Long before he ran for Congress, Marty O’Donnell was an award-winning music composer for the popular “Halo” video game series.
His work attracted legions of fans to an online forum; The Nevada Republican has sought to turn that into a mobilizing force as he seeks to unseat a Democrat who could help decide House control of a Las Vegas-area district. O’Donnell served as the group’s de facto leader, calling himself the group’s “benevolent dictator” while tapping into its members for campaign money and exploiting their enthusiasm for his own bid. The campaign held a two-day event for forum members this month, including a video game tournament at a casino, panel discussions and speeches.
But there is another side to what is known as the “Army of Martyrs”.
An Associated Press review of thousands of posts made on the forum between 2022 and 2026 found that there were racist slurs, belittlement of Nazi Germany and advocacy of white nationalist conspiracy theories.
“It wasn’t some crazy shit. The popular sentiment was: ‘Yes, slavery should be legal,'” said Deacon Dameron, a former member of the group who said O’Donnell banned him because he called another user an “idiot.”
Many of the views espoused in the forum, which is controlled by O’Donnell and her hand-picked moderators, contradict some of the values expressed by the candidate and his campaign. O’Donnell, for example, staunchly defended Israel and condemned bigotry.
Campaign spokesman Keith Schipper said in a statement that O’Donnell “has zero tolerance for hate” on her forum. Schipper said that since becoming aware of the problem in the spring, the campaign has “assigned a staff member to monitor” and “removed people who made harsh racist and anti-Semitic remarks.” “Unfortunately, some posts have been omitted over the years.”
Schipper said that “nearly 200 users were banned for hateful speech, including many of the people flagged by the Associated Press.” Marty’s support for Israel is clear and will not tolerate the rise of antisemitism in our country, as seen in various interviews and online posts. “Marty will continue to fight bigotry, misinformation, and hatred of Israel because it is the right and moral thing to do.”
O’Donnell, who is backed by President Donald Trump, is running against four-term Rep. Susie Lee in the Nov. 3 election as Republicans try to maintain their razor-thin majority. In a sign of how Republicans are weighing their chances in a challenging environment, they withheld spending on several congressional races this week, including O’Donnell’s.
Most of the chat group’s comments are about video games and gaming strategies. A section is reserved for questions regarding O’Donnell’s work on the “Halo” games. After O’Donnell announced her first run for Congress in 2024, finishing fourth in the party primary, some of the discussion centered around news and politics.
Many of the offensive and controversial remarks came from freewheeling responses to otherwise lethargic comments about current events, politics, or games.
For example, in May 2022, one member wrote: “WE STAND WITH THE MARTYRS.” Others reacted to the post, using letter emoji to incorrectly convey a racial slur against black people. Soon after, he jumped in, using the letters emoji to invoke another anti-Black slur. Users were likely restricted from typing such words correctly because, by design, the platform prevents emojis from being used more than once in response to a post.
During a discussion about free speech in January 2025, a forum member expressed a desire to use a racial slur but refrained from doing so because “that’s not the attention Marty wants.” Dameron, a former member of the group, and another former user said the posters relied on coded language because more overtly racist comments would be reviewed by moderators. The other user spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.
“Army of Martyrs” started as an inside joke.
“Halo” developers created the chat room on a website dedicated to the game in 2001. The name they chose evoked a club for die-hard fans of the glam rock band Kiss. O’Donnell joined the chat group and assumed control of the forum.
He ported it to Discord, a popular online platform. The candidate website includes a link to the Discord chat group, which he also publicizes from his account on social media platform X.
“Hello y’all! If you want to be a part of my run for Congress, you can be a part of Marty’s Army,” O’Donnell said in an X post after launching her 2024 campaign.
O’Donnell has repeatedly stated that users who espouse racist or anti-Semitic views will be banned. He also occasionally threatened to delete her posts.
The AP found that some users who espoused Nazi sympathies were kicked off the forum, but many of their posts remained.
In March 2024, one user suggested that the Nazis “did some good things” but were “completely overshadowed by the terrible things they did.”
That month, someone else asked: “Was Hitler really a bad man?”
The user asked, “Other than genocide, did he really do anything wrong?” he added.
In February, a third member posted “Heil Hitler.”
Current and historical fascist figures also received approval.
O’Donnell wrote in the forum that he rejected fascism. But he also shared a photo of what he said was a mask worn by Italian dictator and key Hitler ally Benito Mussolini at a Halloween party.
O’Donnell’s campaign denied she was dressing as Mussolini.
“This mask was part of a spooky Halloween costume almost two decades ago. It didn’t have the Mussolini mask tag on it when he purchased it, and he wasn’t dressed as Mussolini for the holiday,” Schipper said. “He bought it because it was the ugliest, creepiest mask on the shelf. Years later he jokingly called it the ‘Mussolini mask’ because he noticed it vaguely resembled Mussolini.”
O’Donnell said he was unaware of a resurgence of antisemitism this year. He told a conservative news outlet in September that he thought “anti-Semitism is something we don’t have to worry about anymore.”
“I think it’s gotten under the surface and it’s percolating there,” he added in an interview with the Washington Reporter, founded by Republican political strategists.
O’Donnell made the comment after the Jewish Insider news site reported that he hosted Nazi-sympathizing far-right extremist Charles Cornish-Dale on his podcast “The Marty O’Donnell Show.”
In the spring, O’Donnell warned users on the forum that if there was “the slightest hint of anti-Semitism” the offending member would be “immediately banned.”
Users responded to his post with an exaggerated nose emoji and “GOY,” a sometimes derogatory Yiddish term for non-Jews.
While some anti-hate groups view the use of the nose emoji as antisemitic, goy is a term adopted by those who espouse antisemitic views.
Wendy Melillo, an associate professor of journalism at American University who researches extremist chat rooms, said such comments are clearly “coded anti-Semitic hate speech.”
Melillo said other posts he reviewed were more explicit.
“There’s nothing coded about ‘Heil Hitler,'” he said.
Some members of the “Army of Martyrs” realize that the forum could pose a liability.
In 2024, one user wrote that O’Donnell’s political career could be in trouble “if someone does vulnerability research and finds this server.”