John Altevogt, the conservative activist and digital message board contributor who has been one of the sharpest critics of Kansas University professor Paul Mirecki for the teacher’s jabs at Catholics and religious fundamentalists, also has a penchant for barbed commentary.

As is common on many Internet message boards, Altevogt frequently resorts to invective and derision to describe those with whom he disagrees. He has called a message board sparring partner “nazi.” He once referred to then First Lady Hillary Clinton as “Hitlary.”

Andrew Stangl, president of KU’s Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agnostics, a group targeted by Altevogt in some of his comments, said he doesn’t know what the conservative activist is trying to accomplish. Altevogt has called the student society a hate group.

“He just seems like a very hateful individual who can’t really make convincing arguments,” Stangl said.

But Altevogt said he stood by his statements – some made when he was a student and perhaps teaching assistant at KU.

“You will not find where I started denouncing people for race or religion or group affiliation,” he said.

Some of his inflammatory message board postings were made while he attended KU in the early 1990s as a graduate student in the sociology department. He worked for the university as a teaching assistant some of that time.

Altevogt, in a 1994 posting to a discussion board, talked about an article he’d read and took a poke at Hillary Clinton.

“This is an excellent article for those of you who can access it, since the network propaganda pigs tend to avoid saying anything negative about Hitlary.”

In another posting in 1996, Altevogt talked to another discussion board member who was defending comments by writer Andrei Codrescu:

“The subtle distinction you’re missing Nazi-boy is that there’s a difference between being taken to heaven by god, and wishing that people would die because you disagree with them, and moreover stating that the world would be a better place as a result of their deaths. The fact that you don’t understand that distinction is why I correctly have identified both you and Codrescu as crypto-nazis. The last group that failed to make that subtle distinction slaughtered six million jews.”

Altevogt said Clinton was a political figure and open to criticism.

As for his talk of Nazis, he said: “I have indeed referred to those who behave in a hateful manner to people based on their racial composition or their religious affiliation as “crypto-Nazi” and will continue to do so … If opposing bigotry, intolerance and Nazism is a crime, I’m indeed guilty.”