Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: A little after sunset on December eighth, nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: firefighters from the Island County, Washington Fire Department were standing
Speaker 2: by in their truck on the side of Smuggler's Cove
Speaker 2: Road on Whidbey Island, about an hour north of Seattle.
Speaker 2: They'd been called in by an FBI swat team, but
Speaker 2: there was no fire, not yet anyway. The agents were
Speaker 2: more than thirty hours into an armed standoff, and they
Speaker 2: were getting desperate to end things one way or another.
Speaker 2: A volley of tear gas canisters didn't drive their subject out.
Speaker 2: A helicopter buzzing just feet above the house didn't seem
Speaker 2: to rattle him at all. He just fired his machine
Speaker 2: gun through the roof, forcing the agents to call off
Speaker 2: the helicopter for the sake of the pilot's safety. They
Speaker 2: wanted to take their fugitive alive if they could, but
Speaker 2: negotiations weren't getting them anywhere. After months spent tracking this
Speaker 2: Nazi terror cell, they finally had its ring leader cornered.
Speaker 2: Two other safe houses had been successfully raided the day before,
Speaker 2: and several of the man's co conspirators his closest friends
Speaker 2: were brought to the scene to reason with him. Communication
Speaker 2: broke down pretty quickly after the other man inside the
Speaker 2: house emerged ready to surrender. He was carrying a duffel
Speaker 2: bag stuffed with forty thousand dollars in cash from one
Speaker 2: of the group's robberies. Tucked into the cash and the
Speaker 2: bag was a suicide note penned by the man firing
Speaker 2: at them from the upstairs window. By the evening of
Speaker 2: the first day of the standoff, Robert J. Matthews was
Speaker 2: alone inside the house and he was ready to die
Speaker 2: in it. When FBI agents finally got their hands on Matthews,
Speaker 2: he was charred beyond recognition. The house had burned to
Speaker 2: the foundation, Any evidence it may have contained was gone,
Speaker 2: and Matthew's body had to be identified using dental X rays.
Speaker 2: A series of daring armored car robberies had netted the
Speaker 2: gang over four million dollars. Some of that money surely
Speaker 2: burned alongside Matthews, but in the months before his death,
Speaker 2: Robert Matthews took a cross country road trip handing out
Speaker 2: bags of cash. Some of that money went to the
Speaker 2: kinds of things you'd expect, buying land and keeping the
Speaker 2: dream of the race war alive. By purchasing guns and
Speaker 2: crates of grenades, and the majority of that money was
Speaker 2: never fully accounted for, let alone recovered. But some of
Speaker 2: those bags of cash went on some unexpected journeys. I'm
Speaker 2: Molly Conger and this is weird, little guys. As the
Speaker 2: sun set on the second day of the standoff on
Speaker 2: Whidbey Island and the last day of Robert Matthews's life,
Speaker 2: the decision was made to fire several flares into the house.
Speaker 2: The flares would almost certainly set the house on fire.
Speaker 2: The tear gas hadn't bothered Matthews. He had a gas mask,
Speaker 2: but maybe his romantic visions of dyeing with his fingers
Speaker 2: still on the trigger would go up in smoke if
Speaker 2: the house burned. The fire truck was waiting at the
Speaker 2: end of the driveway, ready to extinguish the flames as
Speaker 2: soon as they had their men and handcuffs, so they'd
Speaker 2: be able to recover any of the remaining cash from
Speaker 2: the armored car robberies that may still be in the house.
Speaker 2: At six thirty pm on December eighth, nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: three flares were fired through a downstairs window. The glass
Speaker 2: was already gone shattered to bits by bursts of gunfire
Speaker 2: from boat sides, and as the agents had anticipated, a
Speaker 2: fire broke out. But they hadn't accounted for the contents
Speaker 2: of the room. The flares hadn't just ignited a sofa
Speaker 2: or the curtains or a throw rug. They ignited cases
Speaker 2: of ammunition. The controllable house fire they hoped with smoke
Speaker 2: out their fugitive, turned into a towering inferno as the
Speaker 2: flames reached a stockpile of explosives stored inside the home.
Speaker 2: The firefighters waiting out on the street couldn't even approach
Speaker 2: the house as crates of bullets fired themselves in the heat.
Speaker 2: They could only watch as the house burned laid into
Speaker 2: the night. Normally, this is the part of the episode
Speaker 2: where I tell you, but that's the end of Robert
Speaker 2: Matthew's story, and we have to start at the beginning.
Speaker 2: But not today. Today we're starting after the end of
Speaker 2: his story, partly because I'm still waiting on some archival
Speaker 2: materials from a special collections library on the other side
Speaker 2: of the country. My interlibrary loan is still pending. The
Speaker 2: story of Robert Matthews and his Nazi bank robbery gang.
Speaker 2: The order is forthcoming. Don't worry, that forty year old
Speaker 2: story is still very much alive within the white supremacist movement.
Speaker 2: Those fourteen words they're all so obsessed with were first
Speaker 2: penned by David Lane while he was in prison for
Speaker 2: the murder of Alan Berg. But as I started plotting
Speaker 2: out the framework of that story, I got a little
Speaker 2: lost down one hundred little rabbit holes. I had a
Speaker 2: lot of new questions about things I'd never wondered about before.
Speaker 2: If you're one of those listeners who wishes the show
Speaker 2: had a more linear narrative and fewer characters and fewer tangents,
Speaker 2: you're not going to like this one. But the story
Speaker 2: of the Order has had such an impact on the
Speaker 2: last forty years of white supremacist buy in America, there's
Speaker 2: no honest way to tell it neatly. Because if there's
Speaker 2: one thing I want this show to convey more than
Speaker 2: anything else, is that there are no lone wolves. And
Speaker 2: the myth of the lone wolf is so persistent, not
Speaker 2: just because it is maybe somehow less frightening to think
Speaker 2: of these acts of violence as some kind of completely
Speaker 2: random freak accident, but also because we crave these concise
Speaker 2: linear narratives. But if you tell any lone gunman's story
Speaker 2: that way, it tends to absolve the ecosystem that formed
Speaker 2: him and his network of accomplices. Think of this story
Speaker 2: as a sort of introduction to a cast of characters
Speaker 2: you'll be hearing about again. Just let me plant some
Speaker 2: narrative seeds that will take a little time to grow.
Speaker 2: So before I can tell you a story about how
Speaker 2: a fifty cents lottery ticket purchased with a counterfeit ten
Speaker 2: dollar bill at a liquor store in Philadelphia ended up
Speaker 2: unraveling a network of Nazi terrorists, I want to talk
Speaker 2: about where some of that stolen money ended up. Specifically,
Speaker 2: I want to talk about public access television, four hundred
Speaker 2: acres of undeveloped land and Appalachia, a racist chiropractor from Tampa,
Speaker 2: and the nineteen eighty eight AT and T shareholders meeting.
Speaker 2: Bear with me. What would you do if you suddenly
Speaker 2: had four million dollars in dirty money? I think for
Speaker 2: most of us, the first answer is something like I
Speaker 2: would help my friends and my family. I'd fund worthwhile
Speaker 2: projects and advance causes I believe in. And that's kind
Speaker 2: of what our Nazi gang did here, but their friends
Speaker 2: and family were also Nazis, and the causes they believed
Speaker 2: in where things like arming an Aryan paramilitary force to
Speaker 2: overthrow the government, etc. Robert Matthews was generous with this
Speaker 2: ill gotten cash. He paid members of the group handsomely.
Speaker 2: But the Order wasn't your average gang of thieves who
Speaker 2: were out for themselves. They weren't trying to get rich.
Speaker 2: They were trying to fund a movement, and Robert Matthews
Speaker 2: wanted to be a sort of racist Robin Hood, stealing
Speaker 2: from the Jewish controlled system to give to the downtrodden
Speaker 2: Aryan Man. Accounts vary as to who received a share
Speaker 2: of this stolen money, and most of those accounts are
Speaker 2: from embittered rivals who turned state's witness, and those accounts
Speaker 2: don't always match up across sources. For the most part,
Speaker 2: the figures I'm using here are found within the nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety book The Silent Brotherhood by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt.
Speaker 2: The authors were able to secure cooperative interviews with some
Speaker 2: former members of the Order, some of the recipients of
Speaker 2: the money, and Robert Matthews's mistress, Zilla Craig. When there's
Speaker 2: a discrepancy between the sources I'm using, I am defaulting
Speaker 2: to those in Kathleen Blues bring the war home, which
Speaker 2: is exhaustively researched and well footnoted. The whole story of
Speaker 2: the string of robberies is one for another day, But
Speaker 2: most of the money we're talking about here came from
Speaker 2: a single score. On July nineteenth, nineteen eighty four, six
Speaker 2: members of the Nazi group the Order loaded three point
Speaker 2: eight million dollars in cash out of the back of
Speaker 2: a Brinx armored car on Highway twenty near Yucaya, California.
Speaker 2: Two weeks later, Robert Matthews left his wife and son
Speaker 2: behind in Washington and loaded his pregnant mistress into a
Speaker 2: used Pontiac Bonneville and drove east. Their first stop was
Speaker 2: at a farm near Kaha to Michigan to visit Robert Myles.
Speaker 2: Myles had once been an influential clan leader, rising to
Speaker 2: the rank of Grand Dragon of the Realm of Michigan.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy one, he bombed ten empty school buses
Speaker 2: the week before a court ordered desegregation program was set
Speaker 2: to begin in Pontiac, Michigan. Earlier that year, he and
Speaker 2: four other clansmen forced a high school principle in Ipsilani
Speaker 2: out of his car at gunpoint and literally tarred and
Speaker 2: feathered the man. They doused a high school principle with
Speaker 2: hot tar and coated him in chicken feathers. He'd been
Speaker 2: driving home from a school board meeting where he was
Speaker 2: advocating for the district to honor Martin Luther King Junior Day.
Speaker 2: The years Myles spent in federal prison for those acts
Speaker 2: did little to change his attitudes about race. By the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, Myles's clan days were more or less behind
Speaker 2: him his true calling as the pastor of a Christian
Speaker 2: identity church that he called the Mountain Church of Jesus
Speaker 2: Christ's Savior. He was also the Midwest coordinator for Richard
Speaker 2: Butler's Aryan Nations and hosted Aryan Nations gatherings at his
Speaker 2: farm in Michigan, and in August of nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: Robert Matthews and his mistress spent the night on that farm.
Speaker 2: Matthews gave Miles three hundred thousand dollars in stolen cash
Speaker 2: for use in his church, which included a prison ministry
Speaker 2: aimed at radicalizing incarcerated white men through letter writing campaigns
Speaker 2: and mailing them white power newsletters. In return, Myles gave
Speaker 2: Matthews a letter of introduction to Fraser Glenn Miller. A
Speaker 2: few days later, in Annengeer in North Carolina, Matthews knocked
Speaker 2: on the front door of Fraser Glenn Miller, the leader
Speaker 2: of the White Patriot Party. Robert Miles's letter of introduction
Speaker 2: was enough to gain his trust, and he invited Matthews
Speaker 2: and his mistress in for dinner. Later that night, Miller
Speaker 2: met Matthews again, this time at a hotel. Miller was
Speaker 2: suspicious of this generous offer of two hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: in cash, concerned that Matthews may be an FBI informant
Speaker 2: trying to entrap him in some kind of scheme. But
Speaker 2: he did take the money, and ironically, it would be
Speaker 2: Fraser Glenn Miller who would later turn state's witness, returning
Speaker 2: most of the money to the government. He testified against
Speaker 2: many of Matthew's associates and entered the witness protection program
Speaker 2: as Fraser Glen Cross. But it's hard to stay in
Speaker 2: the program if you can't leave the movement. Miller's story
Speaker 2: is one better saved for his very own episode because
Speaker 2: it ends with him dying of old age on death row.
Speaker 2: This cross country road trip also included a night at
Speaker 2: a hotel in Arlington, Virginia. It's no surprise that Robert
Speaker 2: Matthews would pay a visit to William Luther Pearce. Honestly,
Speaker 2: you'll be shocking if he hadn't. Matthews had been a
Speaker 2: member of Pierce's National Alliance since nineteen seventy nine. It
Speaker 2: was at the nineteen eighty three National Alliance General Convention
Speaker 2: that he gave the fiery speech that kicked off the
Speaker 2: formation of the Order just a year earlier, and the
Speaker 2: Order took its name directly from the plot of Pierce's
Speaker 2: novel The Turner Diaries. And on August sixth, nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: Matthews handed his mentor a paperbag. The amount of cash
Speaker 2: inside is usually put at fifty thousand dollars, although that
Speaker 2: seems to trace back to a single statement made by
Speaker 2: another member of the Order, man named Bruce Pearce, who
Speaker 2: is not related Zillah Craig. Matthews's mistress witnessed this handoff,
Speaker 2: but she was only able to say that it was
Speaker 2: a quote large amount of money, and considering she had
Speaker 2: seen Matthew's hand Robert Miles three hundred thousand dollars and
Speaker 2: Fraser Glenn Miller two hundred thousand dollar that very same week,
Speaker 2: I wonder what she means by a large amount. Tom Martinez,
Speaker 2: a member of the Order who would turn informant, says
Speaker 2: Matthews never disclosed how much money had given William Luther Pierce.
Speaker 2: Like I said, the only figure ever offered is fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars. I just really struggled to understand why he
Speaker 2: would give his personal hero so little. Three weeks after
Speaker 2: William Luther Pierce received that paper bag full of cash,
Speaker 2: he announced at the nineteen eighty four National Alliance Annual
Speaker 2: Convention that the group now had enough money to proceed
Speaker 2: with his plan, which was to purchase three hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty four acres in Hillsboro, West Virginia, and begin building
Speaker 2: his compound. Headline. Speakers at that meeting included Kevin alfred Strom,
Speaker 2: who you may remember as the pedophile from the first
Speaker 2: episode of this show, and a chiropractor from Florida named
Speaker 2: Herbert Poinsett. Penn and Herb were coming back to him,
Speaker 2: Pierce paid ninety five thousand dollars, all in cash for
Speaker 2: the land in West Virginia just a few weeks later.
Speaker 2: Other recipients of generous gifts from the Order's coffers were
Speaker 2: men like Michael Stanley Norris, who played a part in
Speaker 2: the future Stormfront webmaster Don Black's hair brained scheme to
Speaker 2: overthrow the government of a small Caribbean nation. That's a
Speaker 2: story I'm really looking forward to telling. Louis Beam, the
Speaker 2: man who popularized the concept of leaderless resistance, is said
Speaker 2: to have gotten one hundred thousand dollars. Forty thousand went
Speaker 2: to Richard Butler and his Aryan Nations, one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: went to the Covenant the Sword in the Arm of
Speaker 2: the Lord in Arkansas. An unnamed history professor in Columbus,
Speaker 2: Ohio received an unknown amount of cash to fund a
Speaker 2: White Power band. Dan Gamon, the pastor of a Christian
Speaker 2: identity church in Missouri, got fifteen thousand. And there were
Speaker 2: rumors that Matthews had left one or maybe two million
Speaker 2: dollars with a lawyer in Denver for safekeeping. But nobody
Speaker 2: knows who that might have been or how much it was.
Speaker 2: But the money I've been working my way around to
Speaker 2: is this three hundred thousand dollars gifted to California clansman
Speaker 2: Tom Metzker. Tom Metzker is such a central figure in
Speaker 2: so many stories of white power in America in the
Speaker 2: eighties that I'm troubled by the need to condense his
Speaker 2: biography for our purposes here. But he was a rising
Speaker 2: star in the Klan in the seventies and organized his
Speaker 2: own clan border patrols at the Mexican border in California,
Speaker 2: a stunt that was later copied by Louis Beem and
Speaker 2: David Duke in Texas. He ran for Congress in California's
Speaker 2: forty third congressional district in nineteen eighty, winning the Democratic
Speaker 2: primary but losing badly to the incumbent Republican. He was,
Speaker 2: of course, disavowed by the entire Democratic establishment in California.
Speaker 2: Even Governor Jerry Brown publicly endorsed the Republican in that race.
Speaker 2: But guys like Metzger don't run to win. They run
Speaker 2: for free access, to unlimited attention. And he got it.
Speaker 2: And he ran again in nineteen eighty two, this time
Speaker 2: for Senate, and he earned just two percent of the
Speaker 2: vote in the primary. Gore Vidal, who I'd honestly forgotten
Speaker 2: ever had political aspirations, came in at fifteen percent in
Speaker 2: the same primary. Everybody knew Tom Metzker's name. A story
Speaker 2: in the North County Times in Oceanside, California around that
Speaker 2: same time period about a woman's passion for knitting includes
Speaker 2: the line Metzger forty seven, who emphasizes she is not
Speaker 2: related to Ku Klux Klan leader Tom Metzger says she
Speaker 2: was taught by her mother to knit forty three years ago.
Speaker 2: Riding high on this attention, Metzger's movement aspirations evolved. He
Speaker 2: left the clan behind and formed his own organization that
Speaker 2: he originally called the White American Political Association. He quickly
Speaker 2: renamed it White American Resistance and then finally White Aryan Resistance,
Speaker 2: often just called war. But the attention was fading. He
Speaker 2: was in the news all the time when he was
Speaker 2: running for office, but in early nineteen eighty four, the
Speaker 2: local paper was clowning on him for his poorly attended crossburnings,
Speaker 2: running headlines like KKK gave crossburning. Nobody came about the
Speaker 2: December nineteen eighty three cross burning ceremony in la where
Speaker 2: Metzger had been arrested alongside Arian Nation's leader Richard Butler
Speaker 2: and several members of the Order. The article notes that
Speaker 2: while the first issues of his new White Arian Resistance
Speaker 2: newspaper had been quote a slick tabloid on quality paper,
Speaker 2: recent issues were down to just a single mimeographed sheet.
Speaker 2: But his fortunes seemed to have changed just a few
Speaker 2: months later. Just weeks after Tom Metzger would have received
Speaker 2: that three hundred thousand dollars from the Order, the Daily
Speaker 2: Times Advocate in Escondido, California ran a front page story
Speaker 2: about Metzger's newest venture. He was going to be on TV.
Speaker 2: Of course, Metzger had been on TV before. He loved
Speaker 2: being on TV. He had debated IRV Rubin from the
Speaker 2: Jewish Defense League on a local program in May. But
Speaker 2: on September twenty eighth, nineteen eighty four, Tom Metzger wasn't
Speaker 2: just on TV. He was hosting his own show.
Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Tom Metzger, host of ra Race and Raisin
Speaker 1: is a show dedicated to free speech, a small island
Speaker 1: of free speech and a sea of controlled and managed news.
Speaker 2: The first episode of Race and Reason debuted that day
Speaker 2: at four thirty five pm. It aired on Public Access
Speaker 2: Channel twenty four in Poway, California, but Metzger promised that
Speaker 2: he would soon be broadcast on public access channels throughout
Speaker 2: the San Diego area. He claimed he already had deals
Speaker 2: in the works to get the show on public access
Speaker 2: channels in Orange County, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, and Austin.
Speaker 2: People weren't happy that The Klansman was going to be
Speaker 2: on TV, but Metzger told the paper quote, I tell
Speaker 2: you I would be a much better fellow to interview
Speaker 2: people on television than I wouldn't be on the streets.
Speaker 2: It's much easier on the public if you remember Ocean Side.
Speaker 2: Ocean Side in this context is a reference to a
Speaker 2: March nineteen eighty Clan rally that he led through largely
Speaker 2: his Spanic neighborhood of Oceanside, California, just months after the
Speaker 2: Greensboro massacre, where members of the American Nazi Party murdered
Speaker 2: five communists in North Carolina. The Klansmen chanted, if the
Speaker 2: Nazis don't get you, a Klansman will, and just as
Speaker 2: they had in Greensboro, the police and Ocean side failed
Speaker 2: to intervene as white supremacists violently attacked protesters. No one
Speaker 2: was killed at the Ocean Side rally, thankfully, but at
Speaker 2: least seven people were injured, including a news cameraman who
Speaker 2: was bludgeoned with a large rock and a socialist organizer
Speaker 2: named Bruce Kala who was beaten by a group of
Speaker 2: klansmen with clubs. Kala had to be hospitalized for a
Speaker 2: severe head injury and received two hundred stshes. The line
Speaker 2: of riot cops seemed not to move at all until
Speaker 2: a Klansman's Doberman lunged at one of them. The officers
Speaker 2: shot and killed the dog. The article about the show's
Speaker 2: debut quotes the public access manager for the cable company
Speaker 2: saying we don't establish the guidelines. The city does. A
Speaker 2: representative from another cable company said they hadn't been approached
Speaker 2: yet by Metzger, but if asked, they probably would air
Speaker 2: the program, saying if we say no to the clan,
Speaker 2: then pretty soon we're saying no to another group. And
Speaker 2: maybe they did have to air it. In nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: the Cable Communications Act, written by Barry Goldwater, was passed.
Speaker 2: Among other things, the bill barred cable operators from exercising
Speaker 2: editorial control over the content aired on public access channels,
Speaker 2: and it absolved the cable company of any liability for
Speaker 2: the content aired on those non commercial, public, educational, and
Speaker 2: government access chains as long as the show wasn't criminal
Speaker 2: and it didn't violate basic standards of what's allowed on television.
Speaker 2: The cable company was prohibited by law from refusing to
Speaker 2: air the show just because it was racist. I feel
Speaker 2: like there were episodes that a determined lawyer could have
Speaker 2: fought to keep off the air as defamatory or incitement
Speaker 2: to violence or something. But what incentive was there for
Speaker 2: them to try. If they lost a fight like that,
Speaker 2: they'd have to pay the racist for his trouble. But
Speaker 2: if they aired it, no matter how bad it was,
Speaker 2: they were completely shielded from liability. In articles about the
Speaker 2: resulting public outcry, cable executives said, our hands are tied.
Speaker 2: The director of Community Programming said when people called her
Speaker 2: office to complain about Metzger's show, all she could do
Speaker 2: was tell them that they would have to complain to
Speaker 2: Metzker personally, and within months he made good on his promise.
Speaker 2: Race and Reason was on public access channels and a
Speaker 2: growing number of cities. In many communities, the public access
Speaker 2: television program requires that local public access programming actually be local,
Speaker 2: so he couldn't just mail these tapes to studios across
Speaker 2: the country and expect them to air. To get around
Speaker 2: this requirement, Metzger sold tapes of Race and Reason on
Speaker 2: the back cover of every issue of his White aryan
Speaker 2: resistance newsletter. Subscribers around the country could mail Metzger a
Speaker 2: check for thirty five dollars and receive a VHS copy
Speaker 2: of the show in the mail. By nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: he'd sweetened the deal. Any four episodes of Race and
Speaker 2: Reason could be bundled together for just thirty nine ninety
Speaker 2: five And that's in nineteen eighty nine dollars. Like that's
Speaker 2: that's a wild amount of money to pay for a
Speaker 2: thirty minute tape of some guy saying slurs. But once
Speaker 2: you you had the tape, you could sponsor the show
Speaker 2: on your own local public access channel. With this piecemeal
Speaker 2: distribution system, it's hard to nail down how many episodes
Speaker 2: ever existed and what order they aired in The episodes
Speaker 2: that aired in any given city depended on which PHS
Speaker 2: tapes your local racist bought out of a Nazi catalog
Speaker 2: and even in his own home market. A TV guide
Speaker 2: printed in November nineteen eighty five notes Metzker's program under
Speaker 2: the public access offerings, but it's listed as quote airs infrequently.
Speaker 2: A nineteen eighty six article in the Korvalis Gazette Times
Speaker 2: says a local resident had been hand delivering a new
Speaker 2: cassette to the station three times per week. The station
Speaker 2: declined to publicly name the program sponsor, but it came
Speaker 2: out anyway. Richard Masker had recently settled a lawsuit against
Speaker 2: the city of Corvalis regarding his termination from the water
Speaker 2: treatment plant nineteen eighty three. He felt that he'd been
Speaker 2: discriminated against. They felt it was not appropriate for him
Speaker 2: to have mailed Jewish residents of Cravallis cards on Hitler's
Speaker 2: birthday that read, may his memory refresh your soul and
Speaker 2: give you inspiration. Hyle Hitler. Articles about his firing make
Speaker 2: a passing mention of the fact that the police closed
Speaker 2: down the entire water treatment plant for several days after
Speaker 2: he was let go, but they don't offer any explanation
Speaker 2: for that. Masker pops up in some strange places later
Speaker 2: on in his life, But this isn't a story about
Speaker 2: guys who keep getting fired from water treatment plants. So
Speaker 2: suffice it to say he did what many Nazis do
Speaker 2: and move to Idaho. The first few episodes of Race
Speaker 2: and Reason were filmed in Metzger's home, but as the
Speaker 2: show evolved, the production quality began to improve. In nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty six, he was using the public Access TV studio
Speaker 2: at California State University. A student who worked in the
Speaker 2: studio said he was so offended by the content that
Speaker 2: he walked off the job. Students protest at Metzger's presence
Speaker 2: on campus, but university president Jewel Plummer Cobb said, quote,
Speaker 2: we should not stop it, regardless of how I may
Speaker 2: feel about the content. The strength of America as the
Speaker 2: first Amendment. The protests eventually forced Metzger off campus and
Speaker 2: into a private studio. On the heels of the student
Speaker 2: protests in California, officials in Spokane, Washington initially declined to
Speaker 2: run an episode of Race and Reason featuring Ben Clausen,
Speaker 2: the founder of the Nazi religion the Church of the Creator,
Speaker 2: and the man who invented the term rahoa, a popular
Speaker 2: shortened form of the phrase racial holy War. In July
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty seven, there were protests outside the Viacom
Speaker 2: offices in Dublin, California, after a station agreed to run
Speaker 2: tapes of Race and Reason that had been hand delivered
Speaker 2: by a clansman named Clinton SIPs. A week later, Sipes
Speaker 2: was arrested for handing out clan literature while wearing his
Speaker 2: clan robes because the conditions of his parole for a
Speaker 2: clan related armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon
Speaker 2: prevented him from associating with the clan. Sipes later renounced
Speaker 2: his views, founded a nonprofit to help young people leave
Speaker 2: hate groups, and converted to Islam. By the end of
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven, Metzger had been producing Race and Reason
Speaker 2: for three years. It was airing intermittently around the country
Speaker 2: in as many as fifty different cities. One particularly controversial
Speaker 2: episode that year featured J. B. Stoner. Stoner was no
Speaker 2: stranger to controversy. The FCC had to intervene to force
Speaker 2: television stations to air his campaign ads when he ran
Speaker 2: for Senate in nineteen seventy two. He's one of the
Speaker 2: most unapologetically vicious racists you'll find in twentieth century politics,
Speaker 2: and he ran for office repeatedly making public pronouncements like
Speaker 2: being Jewish should be punishable by death, and black people
Speaker 2: are more closely related to apes than humans. He was
Speaker 2: so publicly vitriolic that even his fellow Nazis thought he
Speaker 2: might be a government plant to make them all look bad.
Speaker 2: But he was just like that, and he's stayed like
Speaker 2: that until he died. In one of his last public
Speaker 2: statements before the stroke that killed him, he said, a
Speaker 2: person isn't supposed to apologize for being right. He was
Speaker 2: convicted in nineteen eighty for a nineteen fifty eight bombing
Speaker 2: of the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. He was
Speaker 2: never prosecuted for at least a dozen other bombings of
Speaker 2: synagogues and black churches he'd carried out in the fifties,
Speaker 2: and he ended up serving just three years in prison.
Speaker 2: His appearance on Metzger's show was filmed not long after
Speaker 2: his release and was apparently just thirty minutes of the
Speaker 2: most unhinged ranting about AIDS that you can imagine, because
Speaker 2: by nineteen eighty seven, Stoner was leading a group that
Speaker 2: he called the crusade against corruption. He said that white
Speaker 2: people should celebrate AIDS because it had been sent to
Speaker 2: rescue the white race from black people, Jews, and homosexuals,
Speaker 2: although he typically used words, I won't say that nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty seven episode with JB. Stoner on Metzger's show is gone.
Speaker 2: As far as I can tell, I did find maybe
Speaker 2: twenty or thirty episodes floating around in the ether, but
Speaker 2: this isn't one of them, and that's probably for the best,
Speaker 2: based on reporting about the battle over airing it in Idaho,
Speaker 2: though I can match portions of what was said in
Speaker 2: the episode to his speech that Stoner gave at the
Speaker 2: Arian Nation's compound around the same time. Now, I love
Speaker 2: a primary source. I go to great lengths to locate
Speaker 2: archival footage, and I think it really adds some texture
Speaker 2: to the show for you to hear some of these
Speaker 2: men in their own words sometimes. But this, this is
Speaker 2: not something I can play. I couldn't find a single
Speaker 2: ten second stretch without a word that I'm not going
Speaker 2: to be responsible for broadcasting. That old man was using
Speaker 2: slurs at a truly unprecedented rate. One of the only
Speaker 2: full phrases without a slur in It sums up what
Speaker 2: you need to know.
Speaker 3: I think that Age is the greatest miracle that we've.
Speaker 1: Had him about.
Speaker 3: Nineteen hundred years.
Speaker 2: And this episode proved a bridge too far for the
Speaker 2: cable provider in pocatelle Hoe. They'd been airing Race and
Speaker 2: Reason on local public access for a year, already sponsored
Speaker 2: by Aryan Nations member Stan Sorenson. It was a sensitive
Speaker 2: time in a place that has long been a hotbed
Speaker 2: of white supremacist activity. Richard Butler's Arian Nations compound was
Speaker 2: in nearby Hayden Lake. In nineteen eighty six, the home
Speaker 2: of Bill Wasmuth, a Catholic priest and the chairman of
Speaker 2: the Kote and Eye County Task Force on Human Rights,
Speaker 2: had been firebombed in response to his outspoken opposition to
Speaker 2: racism and antisemitism. The TV station didn't want to rock
Speaker 2: the boat. Honestly, they probably didn't want to die. But
Speaker 2: this thirty minute frenzied rant from an elderly lunatic who
Speaker 2: believed that Aids had been sent by God to kill
Speaker 2: black people and to remind Aryan men that race mixing
Speaker 2: is punishable by death. It was just too much. It
Speaker 2: was too much. They didn't want to put this on TV,
Speaker 2: so the television's conferred with their lawyers, and after a
Speaker 2: lot of consideration, the lawyers said it's a close call,
Speaker 2: but nothing in the episode breaks the law. At the
Speaker 2: next meeting of the Pocatello City Council, some residents felt
Speaker 2: the city should just cut all funding to Public Access
Speaker 2: TV if that was the only way they could keep
Speaker 2: Race and Reason off the air. They couldn't say no
Speaker 2: to just one show, but they could end the Public
Speaker 2: Access TV program entirely for everyone. Members of Pocatello's Human
Speaker 2: Rights Advisory Council said they should call the racist bluff,
Speaker 2: don't err it, let them sue, and the debate raged
Speaker 2: in Pocatello. The show's producer, an enigmatic figure named Alexander Fox,
Speaker 2: spent days meeting with the Pocatello City Attorney, and ultimately
Speaker 2: he agreed to back down. He wasn't willing to fight
Speaker 2: for it. He withdrew the tape. Paper articles around this
Speaker 2: time refer to Alexander Fox as an attorney and the
Speaker 2: show's producer, but I'm not one hundred percent sure he exists.
Speaker 2: Most of the episodes of the show I was able
Speaker 2: to find show a message at the end that Alexander
Speaker 2: Fox with an E on the end holds the copyright
Speaker 2: for the show. That doesn't always mean much. People love
Speaker 2: to just put that symbol on things, but I figured
Speaker 2: I'll check. And the only entry in the US Copyright
Speaker 2: Office records for an Alexander Fox with an E on
Speaker 2: the end is a nineteen eighty one application to copyright
Speaker 2: a cassette tape called sex Files, and that's phyl Ees
Speaker 2: sex Files. Alexander Fox is listed as a pseudonym for
Speaker 2: David C. Wiley, which coincidentally happens to be the name
Speaker 2: of the California man who often co hosted the show
Speaker 2: with Metzger. Wiley was the applicant on the paperwork when
Speaker 2: War applied for a permit to hold meetings in the
Speaker 2: public park in Placentia, California, in nineteen eighty six, and
Speaker 2: his name turns up in the documents that were recovered
Speaker 2: by San Francisco police in nineteen ninety three when they
Speaker 2: investigated the ADL for spying on thousands of people. Mixed
Speaker 2: in with dossier's on Arab Americans and anti apartheid activists,
Speaker 2: the ADL had also been keeping tabs on the Klan.
Speaker 2: The police inventory of documents were covered in the search
Speaker 2: lists Wiley's name on a page that includes items related
Speaker 2: to the ADL's monitoring of California skinhead groups. So I
Speaker 2: wonder if Alexander Fox, attorney for Tom Metzger, didn't have
Speaker 2: the stomach for a legal fight over a segregationist's love
Speaker 2: letter to AIDS because he wasn't a lawyer at all.
Speaker 2: But I guess we'll never know. David Wiley dyed in
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven. Pocatello called Metzger's bluff and they won.
Speaker 2: But one of the options they considered was one that
Speaker 2: some cities chose. You can't say no to a Nazi,
Speaker 2: so you cancel it for everybody, And in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 2: Kansas City, Missouri, did just that. They ended their entire
Speaker 2: public access television program rather than air Metzger's show. A
Speaker 2: group of klansmen had showed up at this studio with
Speaker 2: a tape of Race and Reason in hand, and they
Speaker 2: were told that, oh, sorry, the rules are that you
Speaker 2: have to actually produce your own show here. You can't
Speaker 2: show the tape. But apparently there was no such rule
Speaker 2: on the books, and the city wasn't allowed to invent
Speaker 2: new rules to enact a content based restriction on the show. So,
Speaker 2: faced with the possibility of becoming known as Klansas City,
Speaker 2: something that appeared in almost all of the articles about this,
Speaker 2: UNSEL voted to eliminate public Access TV altogether. But this
Speaker 2: time the bluff cock called it wasn't the possibly fictional
Speaker 2: Alexander Fox who stepped in to represent the Missouri Knights
Speaker 2: of the Ku Klux Klan. Although local clansman Dennis Mayhon
Speaker 2: did tell the newspaper that he was getting legal advice
Speaker 2: from Fox. No, Mayhon's legal representation in this case came
Speaker 2: from the ACLU, and after a federal judge denied the
Speaker 2: city's motion to dismiss the suit, they ended up settling
Speaker 2: out of court and voted to restore the public access channel.
Speaker 2: So in the end, after a year of push and pull,
Speaker 2: the Klan was on TV and the city had to
Speaker 2: pay one hundred thousand dollars. I'm not sure if Dennis
Speaker 2: Mayhon ever did try his hand at making his own
Speaker 2: public access show, but he is currently serving a forty
Speaker 2: year sentence in federal prison for mailing a bomb to
Speaker 2: the Scottsville office of Diversity and Dialogue in two thousand
Speaker 2: and four. It's not at all relevant here to tell
Speaker 2: you that he ended up in prison because the FBI
Speaker 2: sent an informant to seduce him into confessing, or that
Speaker 2: among the feminine wiles she employed to woo him into
Speaker 2: her confidence was a risque photo of herself in a
Speaker 2: white bikini top with a hand grenade nestled between her breasts.
Speaker 2: You didn't need to know that, but I know it,
Speaker 2: and now you do too. People protested in Cincinnati, Chicago,
Speaker 2: Corpus Christi, Pocatello, Fullerton, and in cities across the country,
Speaker 2: But for an entire decade, Tom Metzger's Race and Reason
Speaker 2: aired on public access television. Not even the lawsuit that
Speaker 2: all but destroyed White Area and Resistance could stop production
Speaker 2: of Race and Reason. In nineteen ninety, a Portland jury
Speaker 2: agreed that Metzger was liable for inciting war members to
Speaker 2: commit acts of violence against minorities, specifically in the death
Speaker 2: of Mulagettas Arrah, an Ethiopian college student murdered by war
Speaker 2: members in nineteen eighty eight. Metzger lost his house, but
Speaker 2: he kept making the show, if only intermittently. In nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three, Metzger interviewed James Mason about the recent release
Speaker 2: of his book Siege, the book that remains to this
Speaker 2: day the white terrorist's handbook.
Speaker 1: And at this point you've moved away from the mass strategy,
Speaker 1: totally concentrating on the revolutionary struggle.
Speaker 3: What few potential revolutionaries we had left out of the
Speaker 3: old movement were my targets for this propaganda that I
Speaker 3: included in the original Sea Monthly publication.
Speaker 2: But Tom Metzger wasn't the only racist who understood the
Speaker 2: power of this tool he'd figured out how to use.
Speaker 2: Dozens of his followers dutifully ordered copies of VHS tapes
Speaker 2: to broadcast Metzger's Race and Reason on their own local channels,
Speaker 2: But some supporters took it a step further. They didn't
Speaker 2: just copy the tapes, they copied the model and made
Speaker 2: their own shows. Looking back for a moment to Pocatello.
Speaker 2: The first episode of Race and Reason that aired in Pocatella, Idaho,
Speaker 2: a year before the controversy with JB. Stoner and his
Speaker 2: enthusiasm for racial cleansing through HIV took me by surprise.
Speaker 2: It's the only episode of Metzger's original run of the
Speaker 2: show that didn't feature Metzger at all. The guest host
Speaker 2: in the episode that aired in Pocatello, Idaho in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty six was Roy Frankhauser. Roy Frankause, the Klansman from Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: the same Roy Frankhauser that formed a clan splinter group
Speaker 2: in western Pennsylvania in the early nineties and found himself
Speaker 2: at odds with Keystone Knights Grand Dragon Barry Black. That
Speaker 2: Roy Frankauser. If you missed the episodes I did in
Speaker 2: October about Barry Black, this means nothing to you, but
Speaker 2: I was surprised to see Roy again. What a small world.
Speaker 2: On Race and Reason. Frankhauser was interviewing Richard Barrett, a
Speaker 2: Mississippi attorney who led a white supremacist group called the
Speaker 2: Nationalist Movement. Frankauser would go on to host his own
Speaker 2: shows on Public Access TV in Pennsylvania, one called White
Speaker 2: Forum and one called Roy Frankhauser Presents Race and Reason,
Speaker 2: though it's unclear from the newspaper articles if that was
Speaker 2: actually an original show hosted by frank Hauser or if
Speaker 2: he just sort of popped his name onto the Metzger
Speaker 2: reruns that he was sponsoring. I couldn't find any episodes.
Speaker 2: I guess if you have episodes of racist public access
Speaker 2: TV from reading Pennsylvania in the early nineties, I do
Speaker 2: want to see them, Please email them to me. And
Speaker 2: that Mississippi attorney that he was interviewing on that episode
Speaker 2: also went on to host his own show called Airlink,
Speaker 2: which was broadcast in as many as sixty cities at
Speaker 2: its height in the nineties. Richard Barrett unsuccessfully sued the
Speaker 2: city of Houston in nineteen ninety nine over their policy
Speaker 2: of charging one hundred dollars per hour for public access
Speaker 2: broadcasts that were produced outside the Houston area. Barrett was
Speaker 2: murdered in twenty ten by his neighbor, a young black man,
Speaker 2: who claimed Barrett dropped his pants and demanded a sex
Speaker 2: act from him. I'm not a huge fan of what
Speaker 2: sounds a little bit like a gay panic defense. I'll
Speaker 2: love that. Not weighing in on the killer's motivations here,
Speaker 2: but it may have happened. Barrett had long been rumored
Speaker 2: to be gay, and after his death, fellow Nazi Don
Speaker 2: Black said Barrett was quote an obvious old queen. Ask
Speaker 2: anyone who ever met him and former National Alliance member
Speaker 2: and longtime David Duke Lackey Ron Doggett had a similar
Speaker 2: public access program in Richmond, Virginia, all through the nineties.
Speaker 2: His was called Race and Reality, but it was indistinguishable
Speaker 2: from Metzger's Race and Reason. In the mid eighties, doctor
Speaker 2: Herbert Poinsett was one of many of Metzger's fans around
Speaker 2: the country who was dutifully taking VHS tapes of Metzger's
Speaker 2: show to his local TV station each week. But by
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight he'd made several guest appearances on the show,
Speaker 2: and within a year he'd produced more than forty episodes
Speaker 2: of his own weekly show, also called Race and Reason,
Speaker 2: broadcast on public Access TV in Tampa. When his name
Speaker 2: first appeared in the paper as the local crank broadcasting
Speaker 2: Metzker's show in Atlanta, he told the Atlanta Constitution that
Speaker 2: he had quote no clan ties whatsoever, And I guess
Speaker 2: that's probably true. It's probably technically true. I can't find
Speaker 2: any evidence that Herbert Pointsett was ever in the Ku
Speaker 2: Klux Klan, but he was absolutely a Nazi. There's really
Speaker 2: no doubt about that. His name appears in passing In
Speaker 2: some of the personal writings of Ben Klassen, the founder
Speaker 2: of the Church of the Creator, he seems to have
Speaker 2: been a personal friend of Classen's in the early eighties
Speaker 2: before he moved his Nazi church from Florida up to
Speaker 2: North Carolina. And remember, maybe half an hour ago or so,
Speaker 2: when I told you to put a pin in herb.
Speaker 2: He was the headline speaker at the nineteen eighty four
Speaker 2: annual convention for William Luther Pierce's National Alliance. There's a
Speaker 2: lovely photo in an issue of the National Alliance bulletin
Speaker 2: that shows Pointset next to an ecstatic looking Kevin Alfred Strom.
Speaker 2: I mean, Strome is just beaming. He's holding up a
Speaker 2: copy of The Best of Attack. It was a compilation
Speaker 2: of the National Alliance newspaper from the seventies that Strome
Speaker 2: had just finished editing. But even if I didn't have
Speaker 2: this photo of Herbert Poinsett looking a little uncomfortable sitting
Speaker 2: next to Kevin Strome, I'd still know beyond a shadow
Speaker 2: of doubt that he was a National Alliance member of
Speaker 2: some importance, someone that William Luther Pierce placed a great
Speaker 2: deal of trust in that photo of Poinset. In Strome
Speaker 2: was taken some time over Labor Day weekend in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four. William Luther Pierce had received that paper bag
Speaker 2: full of cash from Robert Matthews just a few weeks earlier,
Speaker 2: and it was at this meeting in Arlington that Pierce
Speaker 2: announced to his followers that he finally had enough money
Speaker 2: to purchase that three hundred and sixty four acre plot
Speaker 2: in Hillsboro, West Virginia. In October. He paid ninety five
Speaker 2: one thousand dollars, all in cash for the property. Pierce
Speaker 2: maintained until his death that he had not received any
Speaker 2: of the proceeds from the Order's robberies, but his own
Speaker 2: son notes in his memoir that there isn't really any
Speaker 2: other explanation for his sudden ability to afford the land.
Speaker 2: But William Luther Pierce made another big purchase in the
Speaker 2: mid eighties. For a man who kept his guns buried
Speaker 2: underground so the government wouldn't know he had them, a
Speaker 2: stock portfolio wasn't really his style, even if he had
Speaker 2: money to invest, which by all accounts, he did not.
Speaker 2: Investing in the system that he spent his life railing
Speaker 2: against really doesn't seem like him. But in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: he purchased one hundred shares of stock in AT and T,
Speaker 2: and that would have cost him over ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: In April of nineteen eighty eight, William Luther Pierce sent
Speaker 2: Herbert Poinset to represent his Neo Nazi organization at the
Speaker 2: annual AT and T shareholders meeting. As a shareholder, National
Speaker 2: Alliance could submit a proposal to be considered by all
Speaker 2: the other shareholders at the meeting. It used to be
Speaker 2: that anyone owning even a single share of a company
Speaker 2: stock could submit a proposal like this, but the rules
Speaker 2: changed in the eighties, and that probably explains the size
Speaker 2: of Pearce's purchase and the fact that he sat on
Speaker 2: it for two years. You have to own a certain
Speaker 2: amount of stock and for a certain amount of time
Speaker 2: before you're allowed to submit proposals. So they made the
Speaker 2: buy and they sat on their investment until the time came.
Speaker 2: The nineteen eighty eight shareholders meeting was on April twentieth,
Speaker 2: Hitler's birthday. That had to be a good omen because
Speaker 2: they were going to make AT and T end its
Speaker 2: affirmative Action program. When National Alliance submitted their proposal, ahead
Speaker 2: of the April twentieth, nineteen eighty eight shareholders meeting, AT
Speaker 2: and T sought to have it excluded, but two weeks
Speaker 2: ahead of the meeting, the Securities and Exchange Commission denied
Speaker 2: the request. The Nazi proposal was going in the proxy statement.
Speaker 2: I can only find AT and T annual proxy statements
Speaker 2: going back thirty years in the SEC's online database, so
Speaker 2: unfortunately I don't have the original document that was presented
Speaker 2: to the shareholders what. According to reporting at the time,
Speaker 2: every AT and T shareholder was presented with a statement
Speaker 2: that argued that black workers were intellectually inferior and that
Speaker 2: hiring minorities had a negative impact on white workers. Chairman
Speaker 2: of the board Robert Allen denounced the proposal during the meeting, saying,
Speaker 2: as a shareholder of a sufficient number of AT and
Speaker 2: T shares, this organization has a right to offer a
Speaker 2: share owner proposal, but we find the intent and wording
Speaker 2: of this proposal highly objectionable. Especially objectionable is the argument
Speaker 2: that some of our employees, because of their race, are
Speaker 2: less qualified than other. This proposal is completely contrary to
Speaker 2: the policies, the culture, and the character of AT and T.
Speaker 2: It is in the proxy only because we could not
Speaker 2: convince the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow us to
Speaker 2: drop it. Okay, nice words, Robert Allen, but he followed
Speaker 2: that up by also encouraging shareholders to vote against a
Speaker 2: competing proposal brought by a black AT and T executive
Speaker 2: named Alex Tillman, who was asking AT and T to
Speaker 2: expand the company's commitment to promoting more women in minorities.
Speaker 2: Both proposals failed. AT and T shareholders were ninety one
Speaker 2: percent against ending affirmative action and ninety four percent against
Speaker 2: expanding it. After the meeting, Pointsett told reporters, we lost
Speaker 2: one battle, but the war has just started. We want
Speaker 2: to get the vast majority of white people in this
Speaker 2: country to wake up to see that they are being
Speaker 2: displaced by people who shouldn't be taken over their jobs.
Speaker 2: Both Tillman and National Alliance submitted their proposals again at
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty nine shareholders meeting. This time, the Nazis
Speaker 2: got just eight point one percent support, down from eight
Speaker 2: point six the year before, and Tilman's proposal for more
Speaker 2: diversity garnered support from just four percent of shareholders, down
Speaker 2: from six the year before. With so little support. Tilman
Speaker 2: was not allowed to submit the proposal again in nineteen ninety,
Speaker 2: but National Alliance did. National Alliance submitted the proposal for
Speaker 2: a third time in nineteen ninety, this time getting eight
Speaker 2: point eight percent of shareholders to agree that the company
Speaker 2: should end its affirmative action program. So the third time
Speaker 2: they tried it, they got the most votes in favor.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's still not a high number, but the
Speaker 2: number was going up if they tried it a fourth time.
Speaker 2: Though I couldn't find it. Herbert Pointsett kept broadcasting Race
Speaker 2: and Reason from Tampa through the mid nineties. I can
Speaker 2: only find a handful of episodes. I think he ended
Speaker 2: up producing more episodes of the show than Metzger ever did,
Speaker 2: but he wasn't as famous, so very few of them
Speaker 2: have survived. Most of the ones that can still be
Speaker 2: found show point Set wearing a suit, talking straight into
Speaker 2: the camera, and sitting in front of a wall covered
Speaker 2: by two flags side by side, Confederate flag and a
Speaker 2: Nazi flag. Daniel Ruth, a journalist who appears to still
Speaker 2: be writing for the Tampa Bay Times, routinely tore into
Speaker 2: point Set and his column in the nineties. One column
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety three bears the headline third Rate Third
Speaker 2: Reich Cable Show. Another column waxes poetic about the quote
Speaker 2: delusional ramblings of local Nazi chiropractor and cable access carbuncle
Speaker 2: Herb point Set. Herbert Pointset disappears from the record by
Speaker 2: the late nineties, and he died in two thousand and three.
Speaker 2: He spent the last two decades of his life trying
Speaker 2: to get famous for being racist. But I'd never heard
Speaker 2: of him at all until I started poking around William
Speaker 2: Muther Pierce's finances, which is where I started. All of
Speaker 2: this was just an accident because I got distracted wondering
Speaker 2: about where all that money went. I really did start
Speaker 2: off trying to write about the bank robberies and the murders.
Speaker 2: But looking back now, I think the money spent on
Speaker 2: years of loud public propaganda had a far greater and
Speaker 2: longer lasting impact than ten times the amount of money
Speaker 2: spent on guns, because the government would end up taking
Speaker 2: most of the guns purchased with the stolen money. But
Speaker 2: propagandists like Tom Metzger kept Robert Matthews's dream alive, telling
Speaker 2: a generation of racists that it was time for War.
Speaker 2: Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media
Speaker 2: and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded by me, Molly Conger.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 2: show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The
Speaker 2: theme music was composed by Brad Dickard. You can email
Speaker 2: me at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: I will definitely read it, but I almost certainly will
Speaker 2: not answer it. It's nothing personal. I don't answer any
Speaker 2: of my emails. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
Speaker 2: show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guy's subreddit.
Speaker 2: Just don't post anything that's going to make you one
Speaker 2: of my Weird Little Guys.