Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know. This is a compiletion episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. It could happen here is
Speaker 1: a podcast, UM, and it is kind of happening here
Speaker 1: because they're just was just an attack on uh, several
Speaker 1: power substations in the city of North Or City in
Speaker 1: the state of North Carolina, UM that left something like
Speaker 1: forty people without power for several days. I believe that
Speaker 1: at the moment at least one person died as a
Speaker 1: result of this. There have been car crashes. It's pretty
Speaker 1: fucked up, and UH we are going to be talking
Speaker 1: about that obviously. As a result of this. Number one
Speaker 1: where a lot of immediate suspicions that came out that
Speaker 1: this was tied towards Drag Queen UH Story Hour type
Speaker 1: event that was going to be being held on the
Speaker 1: day that the attack was carried out. There's suspicions that
Speaker 1: this is the result of far right activity. Um, and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, we're gonna talk about that and everything around
Speaker 1: that right now. Um. We have on the episode for
Speaker 1: today myself, Garrison Davis, James Stout, and we are also
Speaker 1: bringing in friend of the pod, researcher and woman about town. Um,
Speaker 1: but not this town, a different town because we live
Speaker 1: on opposite sides of the country. Molly Conger, Molly, I've
Speaker 1: been saying your last name wrong for years, even though
Speaker 1: we've been friends for quite a while. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I never said anything. It's come up so many times. Yeah. Um, so, Garrison,
Speaker 1: you've kind of been taking point on putting together this one,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna let you kind of take the reins
Speaker 1: unless you want me to, uh to to to direct
Speaker 1: this more. But I do think kind of the place
Speaker 1: to start is all we're watching a gigantic right wing
Speaker 1: insurgency unfold or is this a more complex case? And
Speaker 1: obviously the answer is the latter, as it is anytime
Speaker 1: someone poses a question like that now, is we're gonna
Speaker 1: We're gonna, we're gonna pick this the simple, more scary,
Speaker 1: more inflammatary option and leave it at that. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: send tweet no so yes. Um, the aftermath of the
Speaker 1: North Carolina attack is kind of it's gotten a lot
Speaker 1: of people to learn about infrastructure attacks for the first
Speaker 1: time and get really scared about them and realize that
Speaker 1: this is a problem, and then start bringing up past
Speaker 1: incidents when this has happened and trying to draw this
Speaker 1: like overall pattern, which isn't entirely incorrect, but the way
Speaker 1: they're going about it is not very responsible nor really
Speaker 1: well informed. Yeah. So one of the things we've seen
Speaker 1: is like the there have been a lot of attack Like, uh,
Speaker 1: it does seem accure to say that over the course
Speaker 1: of the last year or two there have been more
Speaker 1: attacks on power infrastructure. Um, But that doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: have we have lots of data on this. It has
Speaker 1: the past five years there has been a pretty strong
Speaker 1: increase in the number of attacks on power stations. And
Speaker 1: it's also true that this is a thing the right
Speaker 1: has been The far right, like the Nazi right in particular,
Speaker 1: has been trying to get people to do for longer
Speaker 1: than anyone on this podcast has been alive. Um. This
Speaker 1: goes back to the Turner Diaries even pre that stuff.
Speaker 1: This is in siege, um, and this is you know,
Speaker 1: there has been very recently this summer a couple of
Speaker 1: pieces of fairly well put together Nazi propaganda that was
Speaker 1: advocating for people to carry out attacks like this. And
Speaker 1: the reason is that it's easy and it's high impact.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to funk up a power substation. All
Speaker 1: you need is a gun, um, and it's very easy
Speaker 1: to get away with it because most of them have
Speaker 1: effectively zero security. Yeah, and it explained how to do
Speaker 1: it as well, right, sorry, money like it. It was
Speaker 1: literally a guide to fucking up the substation. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: they're specific, We're not going to give you guys a
Speaker 1: guide to fucking up power substations on this podcast. But
Speaker 1: it's not hard. Yeah, that's next week. It's on the Patreon.
Speaker 1: You go on Patreon. That's that's the Patreon special episode,
Speaker 1: how to Destroy power Infrastructure for fun and Profit. No,
Speaker 1: but I thin think too. If you're trying to propagandize
Speaker 1: people to take action, you know, we've all seen plenty
Speaker 1: of manifestoes from people who carried out mass shootings trying
Speaker 1: to propagandize people to take action in that effect. Um,
Speaker 1: But we've also seen the chats when somebody fails, right,
Speaker 1: like if somebody doesn't get what they call it, you know,
Speaker 1: a high score. If somebody carries out a mass shooting
Speaker 1: that doesn't result in very many debts, it's embarrassing for them.
Speaker 1: But this is for the perpetrator, relatively low stakes. If
Speaker 1: you fail, no one will know. If you miss, no
Speaker 1: one will know. Um, if you hit the you know,
Speaker 1: if you hit it, it just looks like vandalism and
Speaker 1: the power doesn't go out. No one will know that
Speaker 1: you failed, and you can try again later. You don't die.
Speaker 1: And that's Let's the title of one of the one
Speaker 1: of the pieces of propaganda that I sent to you, right.
Speaker 1: The title of it is make It Count, which is
Speaker 1: an impredated form of a quote from Siege. I wish
Speaker 1: it's a Nazi and I'm not going to read from
Speaker 1: the general effect. The general gist of the quote is
Speaker 1: that you know, the price of failure is death, So
Speaker 1: whatever you choose to do, make it count. So this
Speaker 1: is a way to relatively low stakes for the perpetrator,
Speaker 1: way to have a very high impact with low risk
Speaker 1: of personal failure. And what I did find and we'll
Speaker 1: get off. We'll move to the broader topic in a second,
Speaker 1: because I think focusing too much on the Nazis right
Speaker 1: now is going to frame things the wrong way. But
Speaker 1: one of the things I did find interesting about that
Speaker 1: piece of propaganda was the acknowledgement of the introduction that like,
Speaker 1: carrying out these mass shootings is not going to accomplish
Speaker 1: our brother goals in part because people have gotten and
Speaker 1: neared to them. Whereas destroying power infrastructure, if you can
Speaker 1: funk up the grid, they believe that's going to like
Speaker 1: and I think, obviously this is a silly line of thought,
Speaker 1: but they think it's going to like lead to the
Speaker 1: I mean, this is always what I think it's going
Speaker 1: to lead to, like the race war that they want, right,
Speaker 1: That's that's the thinking there would be in that equation.
Speaker 1: Isn't like a two B two C like this question
Speaker 1: mark question mark race war. Yeah, they're Nazis, you know
Speaker 1: they're Nazis. They're not right about things. But the the
Speaker 1: fact that all this propaganda is out there, the fact
Speaker 1: they've been talking about this so long, is part of
Speaker 1: why everyone is convinced that like there's this massive new
Speaker 1: insurgency that's just broken out and that that's what all
Speaker 1: of these attacks are, which doesn't mean that none of
Speaker 1: them are. Um. It's also worth noting that the year
Speaker 1: before this happened in the same state in North Carolina,
Speaker 1: a group of Nazis were arrested by the FEDS for
Speaker 1: trying to attack power infrastructure, and they also had plans
Speaker 1: on the Pacific Northwest, where there have been in Washington
Speaker 1: Portland attacks on some power infrastructure. They also they're also
Speaker 1: just so happens to be a lot of Nazis here,
Speaker 1: both the Carolinas and the Pacific and the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 1: are home to a lot of people who self describe
Speaker 1: as like militant neo Nazi accelerationists. And what I think
Speaker 1: we should do now before we get too much off
Speaker 1: this and we can return to this topic, is talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that, and this is kind of the
Speaker 1: important context, a lot of people who aren't Nazis funk
Speaker 1: up electrical grids all the time. It's actually very easy,
Speaker 1: and people seem to just enjoy it. American I think
Speaker 1: there's there's there's been a lot of missteps people have
Speaker 1: taken in talking about this, and kind of you know,
Speaker 1: some people have gotten scared and kind of you know,
Speaker 1: uh not not looked at this uh fully analytically in
Speaker 1: a way that is actually really helpful, because there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of kind of retrospective misinformation going around on
Speaker 1: attacks that have happened in the past few months that
Speaker 1: I've only really gotten reported on or noticed in the
Speaker 1: wake of the North Carolina attack, which is kind of
Speaker 1: caused this narrative to come out that since the North
Speaker 1: Carolina attack, there's been like a bajillion of other other
Speaker 1: attacks happening in quick succession, which actually isn't true. So
Speaker 1: that's I first, I want to talk about the types
Speaker 1: of stuff that is that people are generally getting wrong
Speaker 1: about this because it's a good a good deal. People
Speaker 1: are are are misunderstanding some some of what's going on here. Um.
Speaker 1: So there was this you know, pretty pretty viral uh
Speaker 1: story made by a new station in Florida that came
Speaker 1: out a few days ago talking about how it's all
Speaker 1: caps substations targeted reports shows intrusions that Duke Energy power
Speaker 1: stations in Tampa Bay and elsewhere in Florida, so very
Speaker 1: scary obviously because Duke Energy is also the place in
Speaker 1: North Carolina that was attacked founded by the guy who
Speaker 1: invented the modern cigarette, by the way, Bay based. Yes,
Speaker 1: but if you if you look, if you look at
Speaker 1: the actual story, these intrusions that they're talking about happened
Speaker 1: last September. They did not. They did not happen a
Speaker 1: few days ago. And then also similarly, for the first time,
Speaker 1: there was reporting on a whole bunch of substation attacks
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest. That reporting was dropped after the
Speaker 1: North Carolina attacks, in part because a memo was was
Speaker 1: was posted by a few different news sites that they
Speaker 1: probably did open records requests in the wake of the
Speaker 1: North Carolina attack, they found this memo, reported on it,
Speaker 1: and now people have this, you know, have learned about
Speaker 1: this other thing that happened in November. So but people
Speaker 1: who don't, who are really only looking at headlines or
Speaker 1: only looking at tweets, um or posts wherever, right, uh,
Speaker 1: they look at these attacks and they look at, you know,
Speaker 1: the succession of them becoming public after the North Carolina thing,
Speaker 1: and they're kind of drawing this narrative that these things
Speaker 1: have happened one after another and it's part of this
Speaker 1: brand new wave of things, and it is part of
Speaker 1: a wave of things and like the broad sense, but
Speaker 1: it's not all happened within the past two weeks. So
Speaker 1: the first thing is like, when it's super easy for
Speaker 1: a disinformation and misinformation to spread very rampantly in the
Speaker 1: aftermath of these types of attacks UM, and these types
Speaker 1: of incidents, you know, some of these probably are not
Speaker 1: attacks UM, And it's really easy to kind of glom
Speaker 1: onto an arative that's compelling and scary, and if you
Speaker 1: just dig it a little a little bit deeper, deeper,
Speaker 1: you'll realize there's a whole bunch of context that you're missing.
Speaker 1: So that's always an important first step when the when
Speaker 1: these things are happening. Yeah, and it's part of the
Speaker 1: part of the story here. I think part of why
Speaker 1: it's important to understand that, like the surgeon, attacks on
Speaker 1: power infrastructure is a thing, but it's not necessarily tied
Speaker 1: to the fact that Nazis are attacking the power infrastructure,
Speaker 1: is that like it's easy to do, it's easy to
Speaker 1: do casually, and this has been known for a while.
Speaker 1: About a decade ago, two dozen thirteen, there was an
Speaker 1: attack in the Bay Area on I think was it
Speaker 1: was it to power substations. Um, yeah, the Metcalf sniper.
Speaker 1: And we don't know how many people were involved, but suspected,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's suspected more than one. Yes, yes, sniper.
Speaker 1: And this was a very if if this was a
Speaker 1: practice attack, a training attack, then it was a very
Speaker 1: effectively carried out one. Because we still don't know who
Speaker 1: did it and regardless of the mode of this incidence
Speaker 1: of has been mythologized in a lot of extremist circles
Speaker 1: as like an example of here's a successful thing that
Speaker 1: is replicable and you can get away with it. This
Speaker 1: is this is one of the most highly referenced incidents
Speaker 1: of infrastructure attack on you know, across you know, whether
Speaker 1: you're like anti Siev bloodite or whether you're a neo
Speaker 1: Nazi accelerationist. This is, this specific attack is highly referenced.
Speaker 1: And we'll circle back to this towards the end. But
Speaker 1: because I'm going to quote from a recent report by
Speaker 1: the George Washington University on power substation attacks. Um, they are,
Speaker 1: they are extremely common. They are they are becoming increasingly
Speaker 1: common since white supremacists are not the only ones who
Speaker 1: do them. They were also from from nineteen, A whole
Speaker 1: bunch of ISIS inspired terrorism also hit UM substations across
Speaker 1: the United States. They are they are, They're not exclusively
Speaker 1: done by white supremacists, and there's also sometimes they're just
Speaker 1: shot at by random people with guns. And let's be honest.
Speaker 1: So the Metcalf attack, it's not impossible that it was
Speaker 1: just an un usually lucky group of ye who's who
Speaker 1: wanted to shoot some power infrastructure we have I think
Speaker 1: the number of rounds fired directly in yeah, no, unlikely.
Speaker 1: Almost every intelligence agency will disagree with you on that, Robert.
Speaker 1: You know what they didn't catch. They didn't catch ship.
Speaker 1: But to Robert's point, I think I think there is
Speaker 1: some value in remembering that a drunk guy in the
Speaker 1: woods might love to fire a gun at something that's
Speaker 1: gonna sparks. Shoot a gun, you might as well shoot
Speaker 1: it a lot. No, I I probably wouldn't shoot it
Speaker 1: two times that it was very It was it was
Speaker 1: very anyway, I there is we and we talked about
Speaker 1: this a bit in our planning. There was one attack
Speaker 1: and Molly, you probably could recall a year better than
Speaker 1: I was. But it was a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: where the guy attacked the power substation because he and
Speaker 1: he talked about this at length in his trial. He
Speaker 1: thought people were on their phones too much. So I said,
Speaker 1: I sent this one to you. I loved. I love
Speaker 1: to find a court record. I'd love to spend all
Speaker 1: my all my pocket change on pacer and they give
Speaker 1: me access to the law library. So I spent all
Speaker 1: day today, UM, looking for any case we're not not
Speaker 1: just charge? Where can PICCTI of any case where UM
Speaker 1: USC eighteen USC thirteen sixty six was brought up? So
Speaker 1: thirteen sixty six is the federal statute for damaging or
Speaker 1: conspiring to damage and energy facility. And so energy facility
Speaker 1: means power lines, power substations, coal mines, nuclear facilities, any
Speaker 1: place where power is made. Right, So it's a pretty
Speaker 1: broad statute. And so I looked up a few dozen
Speaker 1: cases where that was on the table to sort of
Speaker 1: bring the temperature down and say, like, okay, aside from
Speaker 1: Nazis trying to cause a race war, what are some
Speaker 1: other things that lead to somebody getting charged with this?
Speaker 1: Other motivations, other scenarios. UM. In that case was Jason
Speaker 1: wood Ring, UM. Jason wood Ring in August he tried
Speaker 1: to use a This is a quote from some news
Speaker 1: coverage the time tried to last. So a train with
Speaker 1: a cable attached to a high voltage tower. Critical support.
Speaker 1: He is still in prison, right, distracted by their screens,
Speaker 1: by their phones, by their gaming, and he just wanted
Speaker 1: people to remember what's important. So he tried to locker
Speaker 1: train with high voltage wire. Now I probably, yeah, we
Speaker 1: probably don't need to add this. He was a big
Speaker 1: enthusiast of methamphetamy, has ordered substance abuse treatment, and we
Speaker 1: wish him nothing but the best, right, I think he's
Speaker 1: going to be just fine. But so I found some
Speaker 1: other cases where there was an intentional attack with the
Speaker 1: you know, with the stated intention of bringing down the grid,
Speaker 1: but for like non Nazi reasons. In the early two thousand's, UM,
Speaker 1: a bunch of E l F activists were charged with
Speaker 1: thirteen sixty six for arsons to energy facilities. UM, this
Speaker 1: is an odd. In twenty nineteen, a guy named Stephen
Speaker 1: McCrae was sentenced for attacking one substation by shooting out
Speaker 1: the cooling fins, and as part of his plea agreement,
Speaker 1: he admitted to three other attacks. UM. He got caught
Speaker 1: because he told a friend of his that he'd been
Speaker 1: shooting ship up. I was concerned and went to the FBI,
Speaker 1: and they had his friend record some of their cosends
Speaker 1: and so he said things like he stated motive was
Speaker 1: attacking corporate America so some couldn't be done about global warming.
Speaker 1: He wasn't noted as an environmental activist, but he was
Speaker 1: concerned about the corporations, which I don't know that Alex
Speaker 1: Jones code in language globalists from a couple of different places. Yeah, listen, people, maybe,
Speaker 1: but he right before his arrest, he told his friend
Speaker 1: that he was planning a grand daddy event that would
Speaker 1: make national news and shut down the whole West coast. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: that's maybe. That's sometimes you can't don't tell that to
Speaker 1: your friend, yeah, or anyone. Your friend is still snitching
Speaker 1: and that sucks, but like, don't don't tell that to
Speaker 1: your Although, according to the euro of Prisons innate locator,
Speaker 1: which is another tool I really enjoy, he was released
Speaker 1: in September. That's yeah. This I think it helps to
Speaker 1: make the point that like this is not all are
Speaker 1: mostly Nazis doing this kind of thing. A lot of
Speaker 1: people wanted to think to make about the you know
Speaker 1: these sort of I found a third case that sort
Speaker 1: of fits the same pattern, a guy who shot out
Speaker 1: a transformer for reasons I can't quite discern based on
Speaker 1: the court rhylings. But again, in all three of these cases,
Speaker 1: the Miles Maynard case in Alabama in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: Jason woodreyeen, Stephen McCrae in twenty nine, they all had
Speaker 1: court order psyche valves, and in mccraye's case there were
Speaker 1: questions about his compensy to stand trial. Miles Miles Maynard
Speaker 1: died shortly after being released from prison. These are people
Speaker 1: who were not well. Yeah, not that not that being
Speaker 1: unwell or having a sub problem make you shoot a substation.
Speaker 1: But these aren't explicitly ideological. These are people who just
Speaker 1: got an idea in their head and didn't control it. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think part of when you're kind of looking
Speaker 1: at just any of these attacks, you're trying to discern
Speaker 1: as stuff pops into the news, is this likely part
Speaker 1: of an insurgent trend? Or is this like some dudes
Speaker 1: fucking around? One of them would be like, what was
Speaker 1: the how much like how much effort and planning? Does
Speaker 1: it look like when into the Metcalf attack, looks like
Speaker 1: quite a lot. I would say the most recent Portland's
Speaker 1: and Washington attacks, given the extent to which there were breakings,
Speaker 1: looked like it was very a lot of steps had
Speaker 1: to had to go in. So let's have an ad
Speaker 1: break and then we'll go into some more actual details
Speaker 1: of the North Carolina attack and some of the Pacific
Speaker 1: Northwest ones, and then kind of circle back to why
Speaker 1: people are talking about accelerationism so much. You know who
Speaker 1: loves planning a series of infrastructure attacks. The sponsors of
Speaker 1: this show, attacks on the infrastructure of your wallet. We're bulk,
Speaker 1: and nothing that we said before the break can legally
Speaker 1: be called incitement. Um, it's a joke. It's fine. So
Speaker 1: now we're gonna we're gonna talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the details of the North Carolina attack and some
Speaker 1: of the attacks in the Pacific Northwest, and yeah, just
Speaker 1: getting get into some more of the actual details that
Speaker 1: have been going on with these most recent attacks that
Speaker 1: have kind of caused people to speculate on various things.
Speaker 1: So the agencies involved in investigating the North Carolina More
Speaker 1: County attack have disclosed very little information about what's happened. UH,
Speaker 1: They've they've said that the equipment was hit by gunfire
Speaker 1: and that the shooters appeared to know what they were doing. UH.
Speaker 1: Investigators have found nearly two dozen shell casings from high
Speaker 1: powered rifles in the area around and people lost power
Speaker 1: and UH that power outage lasted for like at least
Speaker 1: five days, as as the company tried to replace these
Speaker 1: very large pieces of equipment, many of which were damaged
Speaker 1: beyond repair. So investigators are zoning in on two threads
Speaker 1: of possible motives centered around extremist behavior for the for
Speaker 1: the for the attack that happened last last Sunday. One
Speaker 1: of these one of these is writings by extremists on
Speaker 1: online forms encouraging attacks on critical infrastructure, as well as
Speaker 1: a series of recent disruptions of LGBTQ plus events across
Speaker 1: the nation by domestic extremists, according to law enforcement sources
Speaker 1: disclosed to CNN. So these these are the two things
Speaker 1: that people are looking into. Initial UH speculation, like of
Speaker 1: the night of the shooting, centered on right wing backlash
Speaker 1: towards a drag show that was set to be held
Speaker 1: that same day at a nearby theater. The drag show
Speaker 1: was shut down as it was going on because the
Speaker 1: power went out. Um, and there was a local a
Speaker 1: local activist made some cryptic comments on their Facebook and
Speaker 1: they then received a police visit the police about it.
Speaker 1: I also like that the this person who who made
Speaker 1: these cryptic posts, um, was also an Army psychological operations officer,
Speaker 1: so they literally worked in pop. Yeah, like her job
Speaker 1: was psyops. And this was the person that that that
Speaker 1: posted about this big tied to the drag Show. So
Speaker 1: take that as as you will. Um. This person's group
Speaker 1: earlier that day had had a protest uh involving armed
Speaker 1: individuals in military gear to to you know, push back
Speaker 1: against the uh the Drag Show. So but but yeah,
Speaker 1: So those are the two threads investigators are looking into.
Speaker 1: Is one accelerationist rhetoric and writings that have gotten more
Speaker 1: popular the past few years. And then two maybe connected
Speaker 1: to this wave of of of like anti queer stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's see, um. One what what One interesting kind of
Speaker 1: thing of note is that three weeks before this attack,
Speaker 1: another substation was deliberately disabled in eastern and North Carolina.
Speaker 1: This this this attack happened on Friday, November eleventh. It
Speaker 1: shut down electricity for about twelve thousand homes and businesses.
Speaker 1: Power was restored in a few hours, though this one,
Speaker 1: this one was easier to fix. UM In a statement
Speaker 1: posted on the company's website for a few days after
Speaker 1: the incident, UH they described it as vandalism, and the
Speaker 1: company said that vandal's quote damaged transformers, causing them to
Speaker 1: leak cool into oil. But the statement does not explicitly
Speaker 1: say what the method was. Yeah, and this is again
Speaker 1: not uncommon, because you're trying to like find people who
Speaker 1: might have Like that's part of how you can like
Speaker 1: make a case against people is if you can prove
Speaker 1: they know details of the case that aren't publicly possible,
Speaker 1: Like there's a reason why they're not going to say
Speaker 1: what caliber the weapon is or whatever. Yeah, they did
Speaker 1: say it wasn't the same as the one used in
Speaker 1: the Metcalf attack, which was seven six too short. So yes,
Speaker 1: but the gun that was used on the December North
Speaker 1: Carolina attack was different than the case. Things found at
Speaker 1: at the doesn't mean much. That does not mean much
Speaker 1: at all. I know there was a lot of initial
Speaker 1: sort of anger and frustration over the use of the
Speaker 1: word vandalism and the initial reporting um I think it's
Speaker 1: fine to use that word because when you don't know
Speaker 1: what happened, all you can see that happened is that
Speaker 1: someone damaged property. We don't know the motivations behind it.
Speaker 1: We don't know that they intended to knock outpower because,
Speaker 1: like we said, sometimes people in the woods just shoot
Speaker 1: it ship because it's it's funny. So I think it's
Speaker 1: fair to not want to use that word. But I
Speaker 1: think in initial reporting, especially from authorities, especially from people
Speaker 1: who could give suit reliable later down the line, the
Speaker 1: word vandalism is not incorrect. No, and it's this is
Speaker 1: like I think, if you're at if you want to
Speaker 1: know like what would immediately set some someone off, that
Speaker 1: like something is likely not vandalism or the Metcalf attack
Speaker 1: is good because so much was fired at the transformer.
Speaker 1: I would say if like a thing that would make
Speaker 1: me think maybe this is just some you who sucking
Speaker 1: around is if it's thirty rounds are less fired and
Speaker 1: there's no attempt to actually break onto the facility kind
Speaker 1: of a standard capacity magazine. Which the reason why because
Speaker 1: because the North Carolina attack in December did not have
Speaker 1: any rounds. But the reason why it isn't we do
Speaker 1: know it's intentional. Is two substations were hit. Um like
Speaker 1: like one person hit one, then travel and went to another.
Speaker 1: It was like, I just seem like a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of people sort of expressing this outrage. But
Speaker 1: you know is we're trying these other instance to it,
Speaker 1: you know, the ones in Florida, the ones in Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 1: When we have very little information, it's okay to call
Speaker 1: it vandalism because that's the baseline, right that you don't
Speaker 1: have to if you start using terrorism for every minor incident,
Speaker 1: it it dilutes it. It's not helpful. It creates the
Speaker 1: steria I just wanted to on the table. I mean,
Speaker 1: like so even in like November, the FBI was issuing
Speaker 1: warnings of of of reported threats to electricity infrastructure by
Speaker 1: people espousing racially or ethnically motivated extreme ideologies to quote
Speaker 1: create civil disorder and inspire further violence. So FBI was
Speaker 1: sending bulletins to to private industry um multiple times in
Speaker 1: the past two months. There's been a lot of bulletins
Speaker 1: being sent out, which is I think part of why
Speaker 1: this in the aftermath of the attacks, with all these
Speaker 1: public record requests and more reporting on it where people
Speaker 1: are realizing how much of a thing this actually is.
Speaker 1: Um I think and and and a tax with these
Speaker 1: on on substations or other power grain infrastructure are definitely
Speaker 1: more common than what you might think, and do seem
Speaker 1: to be increasing in frequency on in the in the
Speaker 1: broad sense, and some of some of them are certainly
Speaker 1: have as we know from arrest that have taken place,
Speaker 1: are part of decentralized right wing attempts at an insurrection.
Speaker 1: That's not wrong to say, it's just the problem is
Speaker 1: larger and more complicated than that, and to some extent
Speaker 1: it's a problem of like like I I would, I
Speaker 1: would be shocked if part of the explanation for why
Speaker 1: this is happening so much more is not that Americans
Speaker 1: have a shipload of guns and during the pandemic people
Speaker 1: were bored and kind of going crazy, like you know,
Speaker 1: people have no chill. Yeah, they have no chill. They're
Speaker 1: stuck at home and you're out in the middle of
Speaker 1: nowhere and it's easy to do and you want to
Speaker 1: see something spark. That's part of the problem, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and they have an increasing since there's uh,
Speaker 1: there were seventy reports of emergency every electric incidents and
Speaker 1: disturbances caused by suspected physical attacks, sabotage or vandalism from
Speaker 1: January to August two UM. That figure represents increase around
Speaker 1: reports in which is the first year that there's comparable
Speaker 1: data for, and it's it's also worth really noting that
Speaker 1: there is and was. As soon as this happened in Metcalf,
Speaker 1: suggestions were made as to a really easy way to
Speaker 1: make it harder to do this, which would not be
Speaker 1: wildly expensive, which is to put sandbags in front of
Speaker 1: the coolant systems, which will block most conventional rounds. And
Speaker 1: at that point, yeah, not not hard to accomplish, and
Speaker 1: it would also let you know anyone who is going
Speaker 1: to get around those sandbags ideologically committed, right whatever. You
Speaker 1: And the reason why there is so many of these
Speaker 1: attacks is because a lot of these very important pieces
Speaker 1: of infrastructure are highly visible and really only protected by
Speaker 1: a chanie link fence. So in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: an attack can be carried out without even entering any
Speaker 1: kind of restricted grounds. You can point a gun through
Speaker 1: a channe link fence and and do the thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can be yeah, hundreds of yards away, right, It's
Speaker 1: very like a three oh eight. You could be easily
Speaker 1: several hundred yards away, out of the range of any camera,
Speaker 1: and you could take enough pot shots to destroy it.
Speaker 1: It has that kind of penetrative power A thirty at
Speaker 1: six you know, yeah, not hunting, right, whether your granddad
Speaker 1: has you know, yeah, anyone who shoots elk regularly could
Speaker 1: do this, you know, without any without without any realistic
Speaker 1: way of catching them if you're out in a rural area.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of shocked that these people actually didn't, like
Speaker 1: in terms of like, I don't know, like there's there's
Speaker 1: this we can talk about this later. But obviously the
Speaker 1: area they're in has a very high concentration of very
Speaker 1: heavily trained people in unconventional warfare. But oh yes we
Speaker 1: should that isn't that is a factor in North Carolina
Speaker 1: that all of this is occurring on the outskirts of
Speaker 1: Fort Bragg, and a year ago people who were active
Speaker 1: duty Marines attempted to carry out a similar attack, and
Speaker 1: we're not Do we want to talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit about that, specifically about Robin Sage. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's relevant, certainly, Like the first thing I thought
Speaker 1: when I thought about this area was like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: that's right by Southern Pines. I think maybe the show
Speaker 1: was supposed to happen in Seven Pines, which is kind
Speaker 1: of central to the United States Army Special Forces community,
Speaker 1: and a few times a year there, people newly qualifying
Speaker 1: to be SF soldiers will do an exercise called Robin Sage.
Speaker 1: It's it's military LARPing. Yeah, well like the terms. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it's the military doing laughing, but also not the military, right,
Speaker 1: So like people I'm sure will be familiar, and people
Speaker 1: who enjoy Twitter dot com will be familiar in the
Speaker 1: fact that the United States have sometimes helped rebel movements
Speaker 1: across the world to overthrow a government. So it's the
Speaker 1: thing that it likes to do. It's yeah, it's shocking
Speaker 1: that the yeah, they every revolution, in fact has been
Speaker 1: fermented by the United States and the CIA specifically because
Speaker 1: people can't think for themselves, and so they what they
Speaker 1: do in Robin stage is they practice training a rebel
Speaker 1: movement that's comprised of civilians, right or untrained fighters. So
Speaker 1: these people will go out in small teams in phil
Speaker 1: and then they'll meet a bunch of people who are
Speaker 1: not soldiers. They might be former soldiers, they might be
Speaker 1: local volunteers, there might be people from the area, um
Speaker 1: and they will train them for a few days, right,
Speaker 1: just like they would if they were actually training up
Speaker 1: like a gorilla army, and then they'll do a simulated
Speaker 1: attack which you might recognize us potentially a bad idea,
Speaker 1: which which we now might be seeing as an issue
Speaker 1: because someone someone didn't attack. So like you have in
Speaker 1: that area a ton of SF troops, right, and who
Speaker 1: span the political spectrum, and a ton of randos who
Speaker 1: have been trained by SF troops in guerrilla warfare, right.
Speaker 1: Unconventional warfare is what they call it. And if you
Speaker 1: were doing unconventional warfare, this would be a very effective
Speaker 1: thing to do, right. That's why there's been this massive
Speaker 1: panic about cyber attacks on the grid, especially since the
Speaker 1: start of the war in Ukraine. Very funny we panicked
Speaker 1: about cyber attacks from the fact you could just go
Speaker 1: shoot it. You don't need to be that complex. But
Speaker 1: that's right, it's a weak point and and you would
Speaker 1: know that if you've been practicing unconventional warfare, and so
Speaker 1: like this happening in this very specific area kind of
Speaker 1: racing flags from me. It's not super weird that this
Speaker 1: is the second time in the course of a year
Speaker 1: that there's been an attempt or successful attack on North
Speaker 1: Carolina power infrastructure. Right, Like, it's not supplied, it's this
Speaker 1: is this is at the very least the DHS is
Speaker 1: not surprised about this. Earlier this year, they've they have
Speaker 1: issued many alerts warning that domestic rylan extremists are gonna
Speaker 1: are are planning to target the power grid. UM in
Speaker 1: February three people like to plead guilty, which we already
Speaker 1: talked about. UM, there was those people arrested in Idaho.
Speaker 1: They were planning attacks on on power stations and highlighting,
Speaker 1: highlighting locations of transformers and other substations and other power
Speaker 1: infrastructure and planning to take them out and then using
Speaker 1: the black oats to go do other crimes, including assassinating
Speaker 1: ideological opponents. So like, there's there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of extra focus on people's plans
Speaker 1: to do infrastructure attacks and uh, you know plans on like, hey,
Speaker 1: this seems like a problem, and people have been talking
Speaker 1: about it more because it does seem to there isn't
Speaker 1: at least increasingly high, high high profile cases UM and
Speaker 1: at least in the case of this past one in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. The d the DHS is currently saying that
Speaker 1: it does appear to be deliberate UM and they're they're
Speaker 1: investigating to see if it's if it is tied to
Speaker 1: ideological motives UM. But again it's it is worth emphasizing
Speaker 1: that not all of these things are are these types
Speaker 1: of incidents. Think an example of something that I think
Speaker 1: has been misreported on is this recent attack or it's
Speaker 1: not an attack, but it's been reported as an attack
Speaker 1: in South Carolina UM on December seventh, there was an
Speaker 1: individual in a truck that opened fire near a a
Speaker 1: Dooke Energy facility. UM employees witnessed this truck pull up.
Speaker 1: It was around five thirty pm UH. This guy opened
Speaker 1: fire and what appeared to be a long gun and
Speaker 1: then sped away. No one was hurt, there was no outages,
Speaker 1: there was no reported property damage. UM and currently sheriffs
Speaker 1: are saying that this was that this was a completely
Speaker 1: random act that was that wasn't even targeted at the
Speaker 1: power station. They said that the only connection between this
Speaker 1: shooting and the power station was their proximity. This wasn't
Speaker 1: an actual attack on a power station. Is this just
Speaker 1: a coincidence? But because this was a few days after
Speaker 1: this attack in North Carolina, people can read headlines about
Speaker 1: someone shooting outside of power station in South Carolina and
Speaker 1: get turned into this big thing and you're like, that's
Speaker 1: actually not what's going on. You need to look a
Speaker 1: little bit closer. Similarly with this stuff in Florida. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's been a lot of retroactively, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to apply this this this accelerationist idea onto those
Speaker 1: onto those instances as well, when there's simply not the evidence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um. One of the things you have to, like,
Speaker 1: as talking about the fat the folks who are like
Speaker 1: insurrection ary, one of the force multipliers they have is
Speaker 1: that the United States has a tremendous amount of people
Speaker 1: who are just assholes and have guns, um, and that
Speaker 1: that's just their own guns, guns they stole from the military.
Speaker 1: That that is also a factor specific. A lot of
Speaker 1: James point about the proximity to Fort Bragg though you
Speaker 1: know Fort Bragg and Campbell June obviously different branch of
Speaker 1: the military, different parts of the state of North Carolina.
Speaker 1: But you know, there was that attack last month. It
Speaker 1: was near Camp ll June. We have the Camp La
Speaker 1: June cell that was wrapped up. They're actually still awaiting
Speaker 1: trial on the third superseding indictment. And they were stealing guns, right,
Speaker 1: or at least that's how they got cans from the military.
Speaker 1: The initial indictment was for illegal for trafficking any illegal guns. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the marine caught lost a ton of plastic explosive at
Speaker 1: twenty nine palms last year as well, like a very
Speaker 1: large amount, which is is concerning, Yeah, a startling quantity
Speaker 1: of high explosives. Right, And so I was combing cantors
Speaker 1: for anything mentioning Fort Bragg looking for other cases related
Speaker 1: to this specific Geogho area because the More County is
Speaker 1: literally right outside Fort Brag, which is where the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army Special Horses um are are hanging out. And so
Speaker 1: this would not be the first time we had radicalized
Speaker 1: soldiers out to four Brag. I mean, you go back
Speaker 1: to the eighties, Michael Tubbs, a founding member of the
Speaker 1: League of the South, did his first terrorism when he
Speaker 1: and some other Special Forces buddies committed armed robbery of
Speaker 1: machine guns from the Army for the Clan with the
Speaker 1: intention of using them to start a race war. But
Speaker 1: then in August of this year, a Special Forces soldier
Speaker 1: named Killian Ryan was indicted for lying on his security
Speaker 1: clearance application. He had already been granted a security clearance.
Speaker 1: Mind you, he had been granted this clearance. Um, but
Speaker 1: it turns out he was a Nazi. I don't know
Speaker 1: how the security clearance process didn't catch the fact that
Speaker 1: his email address was Nazi ace fourteen eight at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. That he catch that, and sometimes sometimes it's
Speaker 1: sometimes it's it's hard to check. You know, there's lots
Speaker 1: of civil mistakes that anyone could make. Anybody can make
Speaker 1: this kind of this thing. So you know, you see,
Speaker 1: this wasn't a surprise to DHS, and it shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: These are their mistakes. UM. I also did want to note,
Speaker 1: as we're talking about these Special Forces guys and the
Speaker 1: potential of them being radicalized, there's also Timothy McVeigh or well,
Speaker 1: Timothy McVeigh was regular army, Um, but he washed out
Speaker 1: a Special Forces. Yeah he didn't quite make it, um.
Speaker 1: But what's his name? Yeah? Um, yeah, there's this is
Speaker 1: this is like not a this is not an uncommon thing.
Speaker 1: I currently writing a story that includes a large section
Speaker 1: about a marine that tried to steal equipment, uh from
Speaker 1: military bases to then go do a mass shooting at
Speaker 1: a synagogue. Um. And this guy has what was a
Speaker 1: Nazi before he joined the Marines. He shot on the
Speaker 1: Marines until we figured out what's going on. We have
Speaker 1: got to shut this down until we figured out what's
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, and you've got Eric Rudolph, the guy
Speaker 1: he's carried out the Olympic Park bombings in nineties six.
Speaker 1: Was was with the first Airborne Division. He was an
Speaker 1: air assault specialist. UM and he carried out the bombing
Speaker 1: of the Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, and then went
Speaker 1: on the run for months. I think, Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: was a Nazi by the way, Oh it was. He
Speaker 1: was on the run for a long time. He all
Speaker 1: the squirrel and nuting he did in the woods, yes, uh.
Speaker 1: And by the way, he carried out a number of
Speaker 1: other bombings, including a bomb he carried out a bombing
Speaker 1: of an abortion clinic. He carried out the bombing of
Speaker 1: a lesbian bar. We talked about this earlier this year
Speaker 1: on Yeah. We did part of one of our mini
Speaker 1: series we talked about this guy. We had we had
Speaker 1: we had a whole episode dedicated to him. I do
Speaker 1: want to briefly talk about some of the stuff happening
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest as well, and how this ties
Speaker 1: in and how there is as opposed to some of
Speaker 1: the incidents that were like the incident in South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Stuff in the Pacific Northwest, while happening previous to the
Speaker 1: North Carolina attack, does seem to be deliberate um and
Speaker 1: has There has been some interesting pieces of information that
Speaker 1: have come out in the past few days. So the
Speaker 1: electrical grid has been physically attacked at least six times
Speaker 1: in Oregon and western Washington since mid November. Attackers used
Speaker 1: firearms and at least some of the incidents in both states,
Speaker 1: and some power customers in Oregon and Washington experienced at
Speaker 1: least brief service disruptions as a result of the attacks.
Speaker 1: Just two days before the North Carolina attacks, the FBI
Speaker 1: and Organs Tighten Fusion Center issued a memo that warned
Speaker 1: utilities about this about both these recent attacks and how
Speaker 1: there could be more of them, uh, saying quote. Power
Speaker 1: companies in Oregon Washington have reported physical attacks on substations
Speaker 1: using hand tools, arson, firearms, and metal chains, possibly in
Speaker 1: response to an online call for attacks on critical infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Uh continuing to say that in recent attacks, criminal actors
Speaker 1: by passed security fences by cutting the fence links, lighting
Speaker 1: nearby fires, shooting equipment from a distance, or throwing objects
Speaker 1: over the fence and on too. The equipment and the aim,
Speaker 1: according to memo is quote violent anti government criminal attack,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a catch all term that these
Speaker 1: people use for a whole bunch of kind of white
Speaker 1: supremacists affiliated accelerationist violence. It's kind of a silly term
Speaker 1: because these people really aren't anti government. They just they
Speaker 1: just want they're anti this government because they think this
Speaker 1: government is too liberal. Um. But but yeah, so there
Speaker 1: was there was an attack on a substation in Clackumus
Speaker 1: County on Thanksgiving morning. The power company calls this a
Speaker 1: deliberate physical attack. Um. This is the one where two
Speaker 1: people cut through fences and use firearms to shoot up
Speaker 1: and disabled numerous pieces of of equipment. A security specialist
Speaker 1: for the company wrote this kind of brief on it
Speaker 1: and and and has mentioned how that there are local
Speaker 1: people who are affiliated with you know, larger networks of
Speaker 1: extremist groups that have called for such attacks and have
Speaker 1: provided instructions on how to do these types of things
Speaker 1: UM and saying, quote, there's been a significant uptick in
Speaker 1: incidence of break ins related to copper and tool or
Speaker 1: materials theft, but now we are dealing with quickly escalating
Speaker 1: incidents of sabotage. UM. So that's the kind of that
Speaker 1: that's that's the brief from the security security specialist who
Speaker 1: works at this power company. UM. Four days after that
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving morning attack, there was another incident at a Portland
Speaker 1: General Electric substation, also in the clack of this area.
Speaker 1: So these things happened pretty close to one another in
Speaker 1: the same county. Some of the same people were affected.
Speaker 1: A few details on this one have been released UM,
Speaker 1: but the PG and E team said that, quote, our
Speaker 1: teams have assessed the damage and have begun to repair
Speaker 1: the impacted facilities. Knocking out the lights is it can
Speaker 1: be an end goal, right that everyone it's it's darkness.
Speaker 1: Everyone's inconvenience, and there's an idea that you know, making
Speaker 1: things worse will help fence sitters radicalized towards towards the
Speaker 1: right and become acceleration as themselves. But the darkness, it's
Speaker 1: not its own end goal for some of these people,
Speaker 1: you know, in the the Campbella June cell in the
Speaker 1: Collins case, they specifically spelled out in some of their
Speaker 1: planning discussions that the darkness was stepped one. Once the
Speaker 1: lights were out, once infrastructure was damaged, the police were distracted,
Speaker 1: communications were down, people couldn't use their cell phones. They
Speaker 1: would use that period of chaos to carry out a
Speaker 1: series of targeted assassinations. And that's not a new idea either. UM.
Speaker 1: I found a case from the nineties even UM this
Speaker 1: case from the late nineties, the North American Militia, It
Speaker 1: was a splinter group from the Michigan Militia Wolverines Randy
Speaker 1: Graham and Ken Carter went down. In this case, UM,
Speaker 1: they were reconning targets including power stations, TV stations, and
Speaker 1: military based federal buildings, and their plan was to knock
Speaker 1: out communications and power and use that period of chaos
Speaker 1: to kill several federal judges and politicians. So this is
Speaker 1: a recurring theme. You know that this case was in
Speaker 1: the nineties, and then we have that recent case, the
Speaker 1: Collins case. Those guys haven't even been tried yet, UM,
Speaker 1: and the stated intention is to use that period of
Speaker 1: chaos to do additional crimes of terrorism. And I mean
Speaker 1: there has been more incidents that definitely do seem to
Speaker 1: be intentional, Like beyond the ones in Oregon, there was
Speaker 1: also ones in western Washington, UM that that included setting
Speaker 1: the control houses on fire force entry and sabotage of
Speaker 1: intricate electrical control systems, causing short circuits by tossing chains
Speaker 1: over the overhead bus work, and a ballistic attack with
Speaker 1: small caliber firearms. And so that's that's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff going into uh of like like in terms of
Speaker 1: planning and preparation going into something that's happening. That's a
Speaker 1: perfect example. Yeah, And if you're, as a general rule,
Speaker 1: if you are encountering one of these stories and you're
Speaker 1: trying to determine should I put this in my head
Speaker 1: as something that is maybe part of something bigger or
Speaker 1: something that might be people fucking around? That's the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff to look for is like how much effort
Speaker 1: went into it, how elaborate was it? Does it seem
Speaker 1: like planning was involved? I would say Another thing is
Speaker 1: like does it seem is it timed for something like Thanksgiving? Right?
Speaker 1: Like it's not an accident that they picked Thanksgiving to
Speaker 1: attack a substation, because if you're trying to do something
Speaker 1: that's going to have an impact, doing it on a
Speaker 1: day like that where everybody's at home, people are and
Speaker 1: there's also a higher power draw in general, Like, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons why someone would want to do that,
Speaker 1: but it all points towards this is something that's part
Speaker 1: of an organized set of actions, as opposed to the
Speaker 1: normal thing of Americans attacking their own power infrastructure for
Speaker 1: no good reason. Yeah, which we love to do. Do
Speaker 1: you do you know? Do you know what else we
Speaker 1: we love to do? Robert consume goods and services Gars,
Speaker 1: that's right, we love we love hogs and our hero
Speaker 1: based Lasso King would say that's part of the problem. Hey,
Speaker 1: we're back, all right, Garrison, take us, Take us home,
Speaker 1: which hopefully is not Fort Bragg. No, yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: podcast is run by the USA. Talk Yeah hopefully hopefully
Speaker 1: not so so. Yeah. The past year, we've seen federal
Speaker 1: authorities multiple times worn about these types of threats to
Speaker 1: critical infrastructure. There was a local bulletin posted in late
Speaker 1: November after the attacks in Oregon and Washington, UH saying
Speaker 1: that the targets of potential violence includes public gatherings, faith
Speaker 1: based institutions, l g B, t Q plus communities, UM schools,
Speaker 1: racial and religious minorities, government facilities and personnel, and US
Speaker 1: critical infrastructure. So it's it's definitely, it's definitely something that
Speaker 1: are the people are talking about more as incidents have
Speaker 1: have do do seem to be getting more common. Um,
Speaker 1: now I'm gonna I'm gonna gonna use some of the
Speaker 1: research from a not an article, but I guess not
Speaker 1: quite a study like this. Uh, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to describe it in an analysis piece. I guess from
Speaker 1: George Washington University's Program on Extremism entitled Mayhem a Murder
Speaker 1: and Misdirection Violent extremist attack plots against critical infrastructure in
Speaker 1: the United States. So since twenty nineteen, w spremacist attacks
Speaker 1: and plots against critical infrastructure. Uh, you do seem to
Speaker 1: have distinctly increased Between two White spermacis plots targeting energy
Speaker 1: systems dramatically increased in their frequency. Thirteen individuals associated with
Speaker 1: the overall White spermacist movement were arrested and charged in
Speaker 1: federal court with planning attacks on the energy sector. Eleven
Speaker 1: of these attack planners were charged after the rise of
Speaker 1: eccelorationist ideology and doctrine during the past decade did likely
Speaker 1: fuel these increased attacks UM within the white from assist
Speaker 1: mill use that are targeting critical infrastructure and and the
Speaker 1: energy sector in particular. So if if you look at
Speaker 1: the data from two if you look at ninety four
Speaker 1: cases of individuals who are alleged to have planned quote
Speaker 1: violent extremist attacks UH, fifty of those people identified as
Speaker 1: white supremacists, and thirty seven percent of those incidents involved
Speaker 1: some level of planning UH, specifically planning attacks on critical infrastructure. Now,
Speaker 1: six of those sixteen white supremacist plotters had discernible tangible
Speaker 1: connections to named groups and organizations like the base Attamwafen
Speaker 1: Division and the National Socialist Movement. And but and fourteen
Speaker 1: out of the sixteen people were known participants in a
Speaker 1: greater kind of online network that connects various like cells
Speaker 1: or even just aesthetic styles common among the neo Nazis
Speaker 1: accelerationist movement. So and one of the more kind of
Speaker 1: interesting data points is the number of white sermacist plots
Speaker 1: that are specifically focused on the energy sector relating to
Speaker 1: nuclear reactors, materials, UM with the waste sector and of
Speaker 1: course power substations. UH. There's thirteen thirteen cases of individuals
Speaker 1: who reportedly planned to conduct attacks on a variety of
Speaker 1: energy infrastructure, from small assaults on local on local power
Speaker 1: lines to potentially devastating attacks on power grids or even
Speaker 1: nuclear facilities and UH and those represent eight seven percent
Speaker 1: of the white sermacist related cases in which critical infstructure
Speaker 1: was targeted. So most of that is specifically on power
Speaker 1: grids like that's that is that is what these focus on.
Speaker 1: And the first case within this data point range of
Speaker 1: two UH dates back to seventeen when a former Florida
Speaker 1: National Guardsman and the founder of Adam Often Division was
Speaker 1: arrested in Florida and charged with UM, you know, a
Speaker 1: lawful possession of FLOS advices and floser materials. UH. They
Speaker 1: one of one of one of this guy's roommates, who
Speaker 1: was also a member of Adam Often told told jurors
Speaker 1: that this guy intended to target a number of different
Speaker 1: locations for explosive attacks using this material, including a Jewish synagogue,
Speaker 1: power lines, and a new and a nearby nuclear reactor site. UM.
Speaker 1: And this guy in his apartment had had a propaganda
Speaker 1: and and book materials on the functioning nuclear reactors and
Speaker 1: other power supply stuff. So like, you know, that's these
Speaker 1: types of things that people study on and then plan
Speaker 1: out to do. And what we're seeing more commonly now
Speaker 1: is of very intensive propaganda team putting together kind of
Speaker 1: manuals on how to do these types of things, both
Speaker 1: both like both for like to inspire you to do it,
Speaker 1: but also like instruction manuals and like here's here's where
Speaker 1: you should shoot. Here's like here's how to actually do it,
Speaker 1: and it's it's there unfortunately designed quite well. And that's
Speaker 1: something that is newer that is a direct product of
Speaker 1: the types of aesthetically driven uh propaganda that has flourished
Speaker 1: on sites like Telegram, and they're they're getting quite good
Speaker 1: at making propaganda. It's not just it's not just you know,
Speaker 1: random random books strewn upon your apartment anymore. It's very
Speaker 1: well made documents on how online. So they're the three
Speaker 1: men who just pleaded guilty in February for their their
Speaker 1: conspiracy to attack power facilities. Um one of those men,
Speaker 1: Jackson Saywall. In the the original complaint, it says, you know,
Speaker 1: um Cook had recruited his friends, say Well to join
Speaker 1: the cause. From the outset, Cook believed say walls graphic
Speaker 1: design skills could be an asset to the group's propaganda effort,
Speaker 1: so he was recruited to the cell because he was
Speaker 1: good at graphic design. Now I've read these manifestos, I
Speaker 1: would not say the graphic design is good, but it's
Speaker 1: certainly better than sort of a cut and paste scene. Right.
Speaker 1: There's a clear digital design element here, um, and that's
Speaker 1: on this and they know that that's how they're going
Speaker 1: to get eyes on this stuff. I mean, Robert, we
Speaker 1: both read all those manifestos in the last couple of days.
Speaker 1: They are certainly a step up. They are what they
Speaker 1: what they make me think of is when I first
Speaker 1: when I first got into reporting on extremism, it was
Speaker 1: because I went through every issue of like Isis magazine
Speaker 1: debat right after the BOTA Clon attacks and it's number one.
Speaker 1: Like there was when that Adam Waffan guy killed his
Speaker 1: roommates and he had converted to Islam and was like
Speaker 1: very much um into Isis. There was this like surprise
Speaker 1: from people who don't think a lot about this stuff.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these guys had a lot of
Speaker 1: admiration for the way that ICE has put together their
Speaker 1: propaganda campaign, which included a lot of very detailed guides
Speaker 1: for how to do things like carry out rent vehicles
Speaker 1: and carry out vehicular attacks. Right like this is um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're this is the way terrorism works, and
Speaker 1: these guys are taking a little bit of a different tack.
Speaker 1: But again not that like as as Molly pointed out,
Speaker 1: there were a number of this inspired attacks on power
Speaker 1: infrastructure just didn't get a ton of of of play.
Speaker 1: But like, none of this is like, all of this
Speaker 1: is is in line with the trends that we have
Speaker 1: seen globally in the way in which insurgent movements function.
Speaker 1: And I think you know this well produced easily spread
Speaker 1: propaganda and these online networks that they created to spread
Speaker 1: this propaganda. I mean that we're not just you know,
Speaker 1: we have these cases of these organized cells that got caught,
Speaker 1: but it's not just organized cells that have the capacity
Speaker 1: to carry out these attacks, because any idiot in the
Speaker 1: Telegram group can open that manifesto with the detailed instructions
Speaker 1: for carrying out an identical attacked disseminates and becomes contagious
Speaker 1: there's this, there's this people who talk about a lot
Speaker 1: online now about stochastic terrorism, and some of us here
Speaker 1: might be a little bit to blame to that, but
Speaker 1: a lot of times they're they're getting it wrong. Um,
Speaker 1: because what's what what these Nazis are doing. This is
Speaker 1: inspirational terrorism, which has been a thing for as long
Speaker 1: as terrorism has existed. When people under I mean, that's
Speaker 1: why they have their calendar of Saints, you know, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of debate about, like whendy U
Speaker 1: stochastic terrorism, but kind of in my mind, when I
Speaker 1: tend to think it's appropriate is when the attempt is
Speaker 1: to kind of use the way algorithms on various sights
Speaker 1: on the Internet work to spread propaganda that's meant to
Speaker 1: cause that's meant to inspire attacks, because that is it's
Speaker 1: a type of inspirational terrorism. But it's it's it's clearly
Speaker 1: a new evolution of it because of its reliance on
Speaker 1: those networks. But this is again we're getting into the weeds.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else you wanted to kind of get
Speaker 1: into here, Garrison? I mean no, I kind of I
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to wrap up by talking about some
Speaker 1: of the terrogram stuff. So I think we we kind
Speaker 1: of we kind of hit on a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that I that I wanted to mention. I mean, in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, two years after that first uh that that
Speaker 1: that that first attack of twenty seventeen, two years later
Speaker 1: uh bew Maryman was was arrested for planning to blow
Speaker 1: up power grid substations. He was member of Adam Offen Um.
Speaker 1: And we already are we already talked about we already
Speaker 1: talked about the two other kind of main instance that
Speaker 1: are well known of from and then stuff that is
Speaker 1: that that just got um uh there was there was
Speaker 1: court cases as recently February two. We also mentioned in
Speaker 1: terms of the their their plans to take out power
Speaker 1: stations to then carry out assassinations. So those are the
Speaker 1: two other instants that I wanted to mention um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's I think the the other kind of
Speaker 1: aesthetic similarity I think is that I think we actually
Speaker 1: are seeing some of the some of the recent telegram
Speaker 1: stuff also take cues from not only like isis and
Speaker 1: is not terrorism, but also some of the types of
Speaker 1: anarchist writing that have that have has gotten more popular
Speaker 1: since you know, uh, the left type stuff like where
Speaker 1: I think we're seeing some of some of the aesthetic
Speaker 1: stylings feels very reminiscent of like early crime think, um,
Speaker 1: some of it, some of it is is similar to
Speaker 1: things around um the types of like eco sabotage manuals
Speaker 1: that that were that were very popular in the nineties
Speaker 1: and two thousands. Um. You know, some of the techniques
Speaker 1: are very similar because both eco terrorists and uh excelration
Speaker 1: accelerationist nazis both find value and attacking things like powers
Speaker 1: and powers, power substations, UM, or you know, burning down
Speaker 1: five G towers. That's a big emphasis of this recent
Speaker 1: like almost three hundred page manifesto, and in instruction manuals
Speaker 1: they focus a lot on how, you know, in early
Speaker 1: regular people felt inspired to burn down five G towers,
Speaker 1: people who are not otherwise extremists, and how how do
Speaker 1: we get people who are regular people to get to
Speaker 1: that point where they're willing to damage public infrastructure. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of a lot what a lot of what
Speaker 1: that three hundred page kind of manifesto slash manual tries
Speaker 1: to talk about. Mum. It's uh, it's if we want
Speaker 1: to end on on a hopeful. Note. I have at
Speaker 1: least sort of a small bright spot for us UM.
Speaker 1: It's in the original UM affidavit for the search warrant
Speaker 1: into Liam Collins, the head of the Camp Lejune cell Um,
Speaker 1: so that a regional affidavit for the search warrant um
Speaker 1: in his case. The FBI agent writing the affidavit says
Speaker 1: that they first started looking into Collins because he was
Speaker 1: docked in the Iron March leagues. So they were we
Speaker 1: were reading those dockses and they said, oh wow, a
Speaker 1: marine who's a Nazi. We should talk to him. So,
Speaker 1: you know, when doing this work in identifying these people
Speaker 1: from these leagues and sort of the slog of picking
Speaker 1: through like maybe this guy's a fucking nobody, but we
Speaker 1: will identify them so their communities can keep an eye
Speaker 1: on them. That work matters. That work made it into Newsweek,
Speaker 1: and it made it to the FBI. It's a weird
Speaker 1: filter system, but eventually this guy got caught before he
Speaker 1: committed a massive nationwide active terror. So keep doxy Nazis
Speaker 1: and it works. In a similar incident, there was an
Speaker 1: officer of the Lafayette Police Department that joined I believe
Speaker 1: this this exact same terrorist cell that was then Doc
Speaker 1: he was he was he was docked by anti fascists
Speaker 1: and then he turned and snitched on his fellow Nazis. UM.
Speaker 1: So the investigation opened because of the docks and they've
Speaker 1: got a powerful cooperating witness because of another docks. It
Speaker 1: makes them nervous if eyes are on them, they can't
Speaker 1: conduct covert operations. So keep docs in your local Nazis
Speaker 1: like it can it can literally be like in terms
Speaker 1: of these cells planning to do assassinations of people, it
Speaker 1: can actually save people's lives if these people are actually
Speaker 1: serious and are willing to carry out their plans that
Speaker 1: they are you know, actively training for actively preparing materials
Speaker 1: for UM. This type of work is is some of
Speaker 1: the most solid anti fascist research that people of that
Speaker 1: people have done. It absolutely saved lives. Yeah, I've no
Speaker 1: doubt about that. Will continue to save lives. So Docs Nazis.
Speaker 1: And you know, if if you're drunk out in the
Speaker 1: woods and one of your buddies says, hey, why don't
Speaker 1: we shoot a power substation, don't do it. Just can
Speaker 1: stop signs. It's the America. Stop signs. Expired fire extinguishers,
Speaker 1: those are fun to shoot. Let me all of the
Speaker 1: ant people turn off this podcast in a and the
Speaker 1: and then have a moral crisis. So yeah, uh to
Speaker 1: the anti cit people who have built a radio out
Speaker 1: of sticks, I realized that podcasts don't come out through
Speaker 1: the radio. Tragic anyway the episode, so you think, hi everyone,
Speaker 1: it's James. I just wanted to explain why you're only
Speaker 1: going to hear my voice in the first episode, but
Speaker 1: you're going to hear Garrison any other episodes as well.
Speaker 1: And that's because I would to Tonatius Unicorn Ranch twice,
Speaker 1: once during the period that we're going to call the siege,
Speaker 1: and once again in the summer. And so the part
Speaker 1: that only I experienced only I'm going to talk about.
Speaker 1: We felt that was the most honest way to do it.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy it. I have worked on this
Speaker 1: for a very long time. Hard scrabbled pass in southern
Speaker 1: Colorado in the winter. It's not where you'd expect to
Speaker 1: start a story that's fundamentally about the Internet, but it's
Speaker 1: where a four wheels lit a rental car in the
Speaker 1: spring of If you remember, back then, Biden had just
Speaker 1: been inaugurated, some chads had stormed the Capitol, and vaccines
Speaker 1: were gradually being administered across the country less Remarkably frontier
Speaker 1: air lines are taken forever to find my damn bag,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to get there before dark, about
Speaker 1: a week before. It's in a tweet, I foughtow this
Speaker 1: Anatis Unicorn ranch because I grew up as a farm
Speaker 1: kid who didn't really slide quite as easily as others
Speaker 1: did into the super matcho stuff, and I certainly didn't
Speaker 1: slide anywhere near conservative politics. What the ranches were doing
Speaker 1: building a queer haven and anarchistyle pack of farming co
Speaker 1: op inspired me. I've been missing country life a lot
Speaker 1: during the pandemic, and they wanted to get out onto
Speaker 1: the ranch. But that wasn't really why I was driving
Speaker 1: an appropriate rittle car through a white out. I was
Speaker 1: doing that because I've seen this tweet, and that tweet
Speaker 1: said the ranches under attack and they needed help. That
Speaker 1: Tenacious Unicorn ranches under attack by local biggots and militia.
Speaker 1: They have threatened violence publicly to us and those that
Speaker 1: help or associate with us. They have encroached on our
Speaker 1: property armed at night, with the intent to harm those
Speaker 1: of us that live here. We need help. That's where
Speaker 1: this story starts for me. It's where the story starts
Speaker 1: for a few characters you're going to hear this week,
Speaker 1: but it's not where the story really starts. It starts
Speaker 1: with Penelope log we'll call Penny, working at a big
Speaker 1: box store and dealing with increasing transphobia both online and
Speaker 1: in person in the early Trump era. Penny's a veteran
Speaker 1: and a country girl, and she was looking to get
Speaker 1: out of the city along with her partner's Canton Gin.
Speaker 1: She decided to rent some land, set up founding rescued
Speaker 1: out Pakis. So we started in Livermore, Colorado, which is
Speaker 1: on the whole entire other side of the state. UM.
Speaker 1: And it really was a reaction to what was happening
Speaker 1: to the queer community UM, not only locally, but kind
Speaker 1: of what we were seeing nationally. Went about two years
Speaker 1: into the Trump presidency, where things were just getting really
Speaker 1: bleak and dire for the majority of people that we
Speaker 1: hung out with. UM. We we were originally going to
Speaker 1: try to like just make a make a bus that
Speaker 1: was roadworthy and we could live in and just kind
Speaker 1: of be nomadic, but we couldn't really on board and
Speaker 1: help other people that way, Like that was really just
Speaker 1: like it would have been hard to have the cats
Speaker 1: we have. We also had like even at that point
Speaker 1: we had like four cats, so it was or two
Speaker 1: three cats whatever at the time, but still too many um, yeah,
Speaker 1: dog and whatever. So so we uh so I had
Speaker 1: always wanted to do a homestead, and I grew up
Speaker 1: farming and ranching, so it was very natural for me.
Speaker 1: UM and so we found a ranch that we could
Speaker 1: rent and livermore. UM and knee cat and gen Um
Speaker 1: just kind of set out to start somewhere. So I
Speaker 1: was a haven for career people, UM, but also a
Speaker 1: home for us. You know. It turned out the United
Speaker 1: States didn't something given alt pack of crisis. The animals
Speaker 1: were once extremely fashionable, and hurts popped up over the
Speaker 1: West in the nineties. Now that generation about pacer ranches
Speaker 1: are aging out of the hard physical labor that makes
Speaker 1: about every day on a ranch, and there are packers
Speaker 1: are often left to their own devices. The unicorns, as
Speaker 1: the people in the valley called them, adopt these al packers,
Speaker 1: which are often neglected, and care for them. They re
Speaker 1: feed them slowly so they won't die from the blow
Speaker 1: that comes from refeeding too fast and they sell their
Speaker 1: fiber as yah. Gradually, with a ton of hard work
Speaker 1: and a growing community, they built their ranch into a
Speaker 1: sustainable operation. But as the herd grew and their unfortunate
Speaker 1: rental agreement became clearer, they decided they needed a different ranch,
Speaker 1: and so they moved across the state to Westcliffe. And
Speaker 1: it was a rented ranch that we were trying to
Speaker 1: rent to own. We thought we were renting their own
Speaker 1: actually um, and then that road got pulled out from
Speaker 1: underneath us, like they just they just when we went
Speaker 1: to purchase it, they were just like, no, you haven't
Speaker 1: been renting, going, you've just been renting. And we were
Speaker 1: in an additional hundred thousand dollars. So it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we had to move right as COVID was getting bad
Speaker 1: in America, so like March of that was fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was the worst and best move all
Speaker 1: at the same time. Because the roads were fucking empty,
Speaker 1: like if quarantine was in full effects, so the roads
Speaker 1: were empty. So we were traveling with trailers full of
Speaker 1: animals on empty roads. And then after like the restrictions
Speaker 1: lightened and we got used to what like the normal
Speaker 1: traffic flow was we were like, fuck this like but
Speaker 1: it was cool, like having everything shut down, we couldn't
Speaker 1: like the big problem was we couldn't rent anything because
Speaker 1: every rental place had shut down. And so the really
Speaker 1: it was like the beginnings of like the community for
Speaker 1: for us, right, it was like we t have friends
Speaker 1: and you know, comrades to how social media. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: everybody really stepped up and helped with that move. So
Speaker 1: it was it was cool. West Coasts where I met them.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful town in the sound grade to Christo's.
Speaker 1: In the summer, it's full of tourists taking weekend trip
Speaker 1: to the mountains and eating ice cream. And in the
Speaker 1: winter it's quiet, snow covered, beautiful and absolutely freezing. In March,
Speaker 1: I drive through the town in the afternoon, and what
Speaker 1: I figured was an inconspicuous man everyone else who visited
Speaker 1: the ranch that month and picked up a tail. Aside
Speaker 1: from a few strange looks, I think I got through, okay.
Speaker 1: I took a long, lonely winding road through the valley
Speaker 1: and then turned down a dirt road towards the ranch.
Speaker 1: Penny met me at the gate in a plate carrier
Speaker 1: with it rifle we briefly hugged, and then I quickly
Speaker 1: parked my car outside. They don't that the grown queer
Speaker 1: community at the ranch called home. It was a profoundly
Speaker 1: strange experience. Inside the house was full of warmth, conversation,
Speaker 1: and laughter, people enjoying each other's company and enjoying being
Speaker 1: out of the biting wind and snow. Outside was cold.
Speaker 1: We wore plate carriers, and the ranches carried a long guns.
Speaker 1: I carried a camera, a go pro and a kniffac
Speaker 1: and then dressed in battle rattle. We broke the eyes
Speaker 1: on the art pack of drinking tanks and tried to
Speaker 1: stop the recently adopted animals from re feeding too quickly.
Speaker 1: I walked and talked with Penny and j another of
Speaker 1: the unicorns whose story will get to you later, about
Speaker 1: the stress that the increasing threats to them had had
Speaker 1: on them. But first we met the animals. We have sheeps,
Speaker 1: we have goats, We have of course alpaca. We have
Speaker 1: ducks and chickens um day to days, five pyrenees which
Speaker 1: are life start guardian dogs, and a couple of blue
Speaker 1: heelers rescues Um and my dog Starbuck, and oh yeah,
Speaker 1: eight cats. Um, But the vast, vast majority are the alpacas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it might sound a dilic, and in many ways it
Speaker 1: is a dilic, but the work on the ranch never stops,
Speaker 1: and sick al packa need tending to almost constantly, even
Speaker 1: during the siege, which we will get too soon, I promise.
Speaker 1: There was a lot that volunteers could help with, but
Speaker 1: animal husbandry wasn't on the list. So even after long
Speaker 1: night's patrolling their ranch, cold and afraid, Penny j often
Speaker 1: had to take it. In terms of looking after old
Speaker 1: animals with blow let's, they labored to breathe. Here's one
Speaker 1: that I recorded, Um, can you set that down and
Speaker 1: help me stand her up, because we're just gonna see
Speaker 1: if we can get her to walk? All right, if
Speaker 1: you'll run it? Okay, I don't know, I don't know. Yeh,
Speaker 1: there you go, there you go, there you go. You
Speaker 1: all right. My felts are perfect good. Next up, they
Speaker 1: can set it in there. You gotta walk, baby, that's
Speaker 1: part of this. I know. That's part of this though. Okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: oh baby, I can't do that. It's all right, love,
Speaker 1: it's sorry. M hmm. Well, if you're not gonna walk,
Speaker 1: my life. I gotta do this. I know it hurts. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's get crush. Yeah it's okay, it's there. That's a
Speaker 1: good burb. Sounded like there was a little bit more movement. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm getting the feeling that they probably didn't even start
Speaker 1: asking for help until we guns thought they heard was
Speaker 1: actually dying in the old field. The story about how
Speaker 1: we got from a thriving and happy ranch community built
Speaker 1: on the anarchist principle of mutual aid and solidarity, to
Speaker 1: what the Unicorns called the siege. If this story it's
Speaker 1: about lies, bigotry, and the Internet, but it's hard to
Speaker 1: think about those things too much of the ranch because
Speaker 1: in the two trips I've taken and I felt nothing
Speaker 1: but incredible sense of love, solidarity, and supportive community. If
Speaker 1: you've engage with the story of the ranch at all
Speaker 1: preppt following Tenaci's Unicorn Ranch online, it's probably because of
Speaker 1: the siege. But I don't want this to be storied.
Speaker 1: It's just about guns, bigger tree, and community defense. I
Speaker 1: also wanted to be a story about how long before
Speaker 1: the siege began, the community at the Anais Unicorn Ranch
Speaker 1: realized that nobody was coming to save them, and so
Speaker 1: they decided to save themselves. They were they want to
Speaker 1: kill us, and yeah, but when we like call it out,
Speaker 1: you know, I, hey, stop killing us, not even like
Speaker 1: fuck you, just hey, like, did you just like lay
Speaker 1: off the whole killing us thing? You fucking fucking fund happy,
Speaker 1: like fucking unsympathetic victim screaming training for all? Right, So
Speaker 1: now no you can't stop killing that good? Maybe time
Speaker 1: to get guns now. The day I slip slid my
Speaker 1: way across hard scrabbled past in my not so trusty
Speaker 1: nous and our mirror with the same day that the
Speaker 1: gunman walked into a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado and killed
Speaker 1: ten people with an a R pistol, my social media
Speaker 1: feed was filled with the sadly all two common reactions
Speaker 1: to these, all two common mass murders that happened in
Speaker 1: this country. But the next day I saw people flooding
Speaker 1: gun shops in the fear that the state would begin
Speaker 1: enforcing tot to gun control laws. It didn't. As I
Speaker 1: edit this draft, another young man with another gun has
Speaker 1: walked into a gay bar in Colorado Springs, about an
Speaker 1: hour from the ranch. It's an intensely conservative city. The
Speaker 1: host focus on the family. You'll know by now that
Speaker 1: the club queue shooting result in the death of five people,
Speaker 1: including two trans people, and injured twenty one more. I'll
Speaker 1: be honest with you, it felt a bit weird driving
Speaker 1: through Colorado to write a story about guns was broadly positive,
Speaker 1: and in a sense it still does today. But the
Speaker 1: reason this story about guns is positive really has very
Speaker 1: little to do with guns and everything to do with people.
Speaker 1: It's really a surly about solidarity what it is about
Speaker 1: a R fifteen, But some people will never get part
Speaker 1: of the A R fifteen enough to see that. In
Speaker 1: case you missed it or you caught one of the
Speaker 1: reports at the time that seemed to skim over the
Speaker 1: fact that the rant is around. We should give an
Speaker 1: account of the siege up top here so you understand
Speaker 1: what happened. Understanding why it happened, that's another episode. So
Speaker 1: for now, just to understand. That's some boomer's log into
Speaker 1: their social media and the queer elimination rhetoric we've reported
Speaker 1: so much about overlapped with their small community in a
Speaker 1: valley in the sun readA Cristo Mountains, and this was
Speaker 1: a result. Things started as they often do these days
Speaker 1: online with a throwaway comment about a parade in town.
Speaker 1: The girls didn't really know that they've moved into the
Speaker 1: reddest County, Colorado. At a time, Lauren Bobot was that
Speaker 1: congress person. But soon they started to get an idea
Speaker 1: of what some people, pretty small minority of people, if
Speaker 1: it turned down, I thought about them. So it started
Speaker 1: on Facebook, like honestly, like we started seeing more comments
Speaker 1: and people getting weird about it, and then there was
Speaker 1: literally to this day, I will still say it was
Speaker 1: a fascist fucking parade you're talking about July they had
Speaker 1: they did a fascism, like the local fascist did a fascism.
Speaker 1: And we observed this by accident because we were like, oh, parade,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound interesting, But we did go into town
Speaker 1: to get some coffee and ran smack into a fascist
Speaker 1: parade and and fascist and what what sort of like
Speaker 1: fascist in the most like like direct way that there
Speaker 1: was Christian nationalist flags three percent of flags, Confederate flags
Speaker 1: carried by armed white people screaming about the government and
Speaker 1: the libs and the queers. Like it was a they
Speaker 1: did a fashion. In the photos, there's that one guy
Speaker 1: with a shirt that says I know things and own
Speaker 1: guns or something like that and shooting and shoot things,
Speaker 1: um and so like it was a overtly hard right
Speaker 1: sponsored parade that was supposed to be like hard like that,
Speaker 1: Like it was like set up as a protest because
Speaker 1: of the COVID restrictions, they weren't letting people have a parade,
Speaker 1: and this was their answer to that. Um and so
Speaker 1: really all we did was call that out on Twitter.
Speaker 1: We're like, wow, Like, there's a fashionst parade in West Clifton.
Speaker 1: We'll come back to this parade next episode. It's organized
Speaker 1: by a local newspaper, which is, to be perfectly frank,
Speaker 1: the most batchit, crazy, boom and brain worm thing I've
Speaker 1: ever seen in print. It was an open carry event
Speaker 1: when the issues from across the US come to open
Speaker 1: carry unloaded guns for reasons that we can really pinned down. Soon.
Speaker 1: The unicorns calling out the parade on Twitter set keyboard
Speaker 1: fingers clicking. I've said fingers here, but these people give
Speaker 1: up a distinct single finger typing vibe if I'm honest.
Speaker 1: We started. The first thing that we noticed was the tails.
Speaker 1: We started getting tailed from points that everybody that we
Speaker 1: were very public about frequenting like Paragrine Coffee and Chappie's.
Speaker 1: We started getting picking up tails uh from those points routinely.
Speaker 1: Um and that. So like people like following you yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: not very covertly in the same three vehicles. And they
Speaker 1: wouldn't just follow us anyone that they figured out knew us. Yes,
Speaker 1: anybody that announced on any social media platform that they
Speaker 1: were coming to see us, they would then follow. And
Speaker 1: then it really got it became super into the physical
Speaker 1: world when nine News, well nine News did a piece
Speaker 1: on us in which the Sheriff's department came up because
Speaker 1: they were mass reporting us for animal abuse. A lot
Speaker 1: of the harassment came from a website you're probably familiar
Speaker 1: with now, but maybe you wouldn't have been back then.
Speaker 1: It might have been farms and locals. You don't have
Speaker 1: to say their names. Yeah, if we could blank out.
Speaker 1: But it's one of those things where like sis, people
Speaker 1: don't even know that Kwie Farms exists and more people
Speaker 1: need to fucking now because it's it's it's ridiculous. We've
Speaker 1: done a couple of episodes. I don't want to give
Speaker 1: them attention, but like I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: whatever you think is best. Yeah, it's an entire forum
Speaker 1: dedicated to harassing trans people that get any sort of popularity,
Speaker 1: ruining their lives as best they can, with the stated
Speaker 1: goal of making trans people kill themselves. And it's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of members like like like like notable turfs
Speaker 1: are part of it, like like like everyone has found
Speaker 1: this website now and people need to know it at
Speaker 1: least existed. That it's a truly awful cesspool of They've
Speaker 1: been all of our time obsessing over that. It seems
Speaker 1: like it's worth naming them, but please save yourself the
Speaker 1: time and don't click over there. It's nothing good. Soon
Speaker 1: things got more real local news your porter who covered
Speaker 1: the ranch, you've got apostle with a white powder in it.
Speaker 1: That powder wasn't deadly, but it was a real threat.
Speaker 1: Soon that threat came to the ranch, the nine news
Speaker 1: reporter thing happened, and then we started getting like warnings
Speaker 1: from people that were monitoring chat rooms, like they were like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: like the chatter about y'all has skyrocketed, and like it
Speaker 1: is blatant, like people making plans to burn your home
Speaker 1: down and kill you, like, and locals started warning us
Speaker 1: that like Hey, this has happened before. You gotta get ready.
Speaker 1: This is real. Don't have people yeah, like, don't be
Speaker 1: PREDENSI about this, Like we're being serious, And so me
Speaker 1: and Jay started. For about two weeks, we were walking
Speaker 1: patrols around the perimeter. The unicorns were afraid, so they
Speaker 1: took steps to defend themselves. Lots of the people that
Speaker 1: the ranch, like Jen and Cat you can hear in
Speaker 1: this interview, didn't want to carry guns. Penny and j
Speaker 1: had some military experience and they knew how to use
Speaker 1: and carry guns. So every night they set out walking
Speaker 1: the perimeter to watch for intruders on their property line patrols.
Speaker 1: They realized that there were people out there at the
Speaker 1: night looking back at them. That night is when me
Speaker 1: and J came back from that and put out a
Speaker 1: very whole heartfelt cry on Twitter like we don't know
Speaker 1: what the funk to do. We're terrified and any help
Speaker 1: would be amazing. They were armed at this point, but
Speaker 1: they weren't ready for a gunfight. That's a very different thing. Sadly, though,
Speaker 1: the gunfight they weren't ready for wasn't going to wait
Speaker 1: until they were yeah armed, um rudimentally armed by the way,
Speaker 1: like Jay had a hunting rifle, no, a shotgun at
Speaker 1: that point, Um and I had my springfield are uh
Speaker 1: and so we scared them off, but like that made
Speaker 1: it like clear and present for us. And so we
Speaker 1: put a heartfelt call out onto Twitter. Um and although
Speaker 1: was up here like the next day and caught people
Speaker 1: on the property that night, like it was armed people
Speaker 1: on the property, multiple people. Altho arrived the next day,
Speaker 1: spread on by that same tweet. I'd see this isn't
Speaker 1: his voice, but they are his words. We wouldn't say
Speaker 1: too much about him other than that he has significant
Speaker 1: experience with this kind of thing, and he spent his
Speaker 1: own time and money to drive across the west to
Speaker 1: help some queer folks he'd never met. He just wanted
Speaker 1: to raise our package, and he left the funk alone.
Speaker 1: I saw a post on Twitter from someone else boasting
Speaker 1: the original Tenacious Unicorn ranch plea for help. I reached
Speaker 1: out to them, and after some back and forth and
Speaker 1: letting them vet me, we agreed I would drive down
Speaker 1: to help them out. I took a little time to
Speaker 1: do some map studies of the area and confirm some
Speaker 1: suspicions about local law enforcement. The sheriff at the time
Speaker 1: had really spoken at and supported oathkeepers rallies as a
Speaker 1: keynote speaker, alongside Stewart Roads, as well as other prominent
Speaker 1: oath keepers and three per centers. The cops haven't ever
Speaker 1: been much of an option in keeping marginals people safe,
Speaker 1: but this was on a whole other level. I called
Speaker 1: some people to tell them I was heading to its
Speaker 1: nacious Unicorn ranch for accountability's sake. At the time, I
Speaker 1: was binging an unhealthy amount of letter Kenny, and when
Speaker 1: one of them asked me why I was driving six
Speaker 1: to seven hours to help total strangers, the first thing
Speaker 1: I thought was when a friend asked for help, you
Speaker 1: help them all. They gave us his account of what
Speaker 1: happens again for everyone's safety, were not going to use
Speaker 1: his voice. But that night he patrolled the perimeter, often
Speaker 1: nearly being run off the road on the way to
Speaker 1: the ranch. He said, at first, when he saw the tweets,
Speaker 1: he thought Penny and j were of reacting, But after
Speaker 1: that tale, and after what happened that night, he knew
Speaker 1: something very strange was going on. So on arrival at
Speaker 1: the hard Pack road off the highway, there were two
Speaker 1: cars on the other side of the highway from the intersection,
Speaker 1: backed in with their headlights off. There's an old Durango
Speaker 1: and a truck that I couldn't make the model of
Speaker 1: on the other side of that Durrango. Once I turned
Speaker 1: down the road, probably two yards after turning, I looked
Speaker 1: back and saw one of them turn on their headlights
Speaker 1: and started gaining on me until they were tailgating. I
Speaker 1: started to slow and pull over to see if they
Speaker 1: would pass, and they slowed and stuck with me. I
Speaker 1: had a suspicion about the two cars initially, and this
Speaker 1: was confirmation. I can't really say how fast we started going,
Speaker 1: but I know it was significant enough that I was
Speaker 1: starting to oversteer and lose traction on the back end
Speaker 1: of my car. On turns, I knew Penny and the
Speaker 1: rest were waiting at the property gate, so I signaled
Speaker 1: Penny to say, Hey, I got a tail keep the
Speaker 1: gate locked. You'll see me driving by. Tell me what
Speaker 1: vehicle is following me. The vehicle slowed down as we
Speaker 1: approached the gate, so it appeared they may have been
Speaker 1: anticipating me to do the same. Once I passed the gate,
Speaker 1: they continued to follow it. Turns out it was the Drangle,
Speaker 1: which I later found out had been doing drive byes
Speaker 1: of the property of the past couple of days. The
Speaker 1: Durranga quickly realized what all those doing and pursued him
Speaker 1: postive ro further down that snowy dot. Right after I
Speaker 1: passed the ranch, I accelerated a little more to create
Speaker 1: some distance and drove to a spot that I had
Speaker 1: seen the map on the way down that looked like
Speaker 1: I could effectively turn around without extra maneuvering. As I
Speaker 1: turned around, they had closed the gap and started to slow.
Speaker 1: Once they were pulling up next to me, I turned
Speaker 1: my high loom and carry light on them to at
Speaker 1: least distorient or over stimulate them with bright white light
Speaker 1: and try to catch faces. The windows had a dark tent,
Speaker 1: so it was not feasible. My other goal was trying
Speaker 1: to convey I see you and I have the advantage
Speaker 1: without actually visually threatening them. The driver had been rolling
Speaker 1: their window down until I put that light in the window,
Speaker 1: then immediately stopped and rolled it back up. At that point,
Speaker 1: it was apparently enough to make them decide it wasn't
Speaker 1: worth it and take off. I legally carry a side
Speaker 1: arm with me the majority of the time and had
Speaker 1: it on me. I had my hand on it, but
Speaker 1: didn't feel the need to draw during that encounter. In
Speaker 1: the two minutes since he turned off the hard top,
Speaker 1: does ideas about what he was in for had pivoted
Speaker 1: almost as fast as his card did not put out
Speaker 1: earlier on. While driving to the ranch from my house,
Speaker 1: I had the thought, you know, this is probably bullshit
Speaker 1: and a bit of an overreaction on their part, So
Speaker 1: maybe at least I can deescalate some of their anxiety
Speaker 1: and give them some rest. This will probably just be
Speaker 1: a lot of nothing. Clearly I was mistaken, and after
Speaker 1: that encounter my mind was very much re oriented to
Speaker 1: the present reality. Driving through the gate, I had to
Speaker 1: prepare myself to the new possibility of actual exigency, and
Speaker 1: I thought, oh shit, there's something to this well pitter pattern.
Speaker 1: Motherfucker's I'll just send a message to Penny saying that
Speaker 1: he was free of his tail, and she opened up
Speaker 1: the gate quickly. He drove up the same dirt road
Speaker 1: I did a few days later to the dome who
Speaker 1: had a scared and sleep deprived unicorns were hiding from
Speaker 1: the code and from the same people who had just
Speaker 1: tailed him down the Debt road. Once at the house,
Speaker 1: we made introductions and I explained that a trusted source
Speaker 1: had boosted their call for help and I was willing
Speaker 1: to drive over to see what, if anything, I could
Speaker 1: do to offer them in the form of assistance. They
Speaker 1: gave me situational awareness of the property, who lived there,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Then went over what had been happening up
Speaker 1: until my arrival. The local harassment people following them and
Speaker 1: doing drive byes of their property, the Kiwi farms threats
Speaker 1: of quote burning them out of their home. They had
Speaker 1: also mentioned there was a probing incident a couple of
Speaker 1: nights before that had really set them off when they
Speaker 1: caught another unknown individual probing their fence on the southern
Speaker 1: side of the ranch. They detailed how they hadn't slept
Speaker 1: for almost forty eight hours since that incident, which had
Speaker 1: prompted their call for help. I could tell they were
Speaker 1: just done mentally, emotionally, physically, but still keeping it together.
Speaker 1: So I said something to the effect of you've done
Speaker 1: a great job, go get some rest. I'll stay up
Speaker 1: and take the watch. That was around nine pm. The
Speaker 1: crew went to get some deserved rest and I got
Speaker 1: ready to go out. Before stepping back outside, I had
Speaker 1: to ask myself what the actual funk is going on?
Speaker 1: I walked outside, grabbed my rifle and plates, put on
Speaker 1: some extra layers of warm clothes, and got ready for
Speaker 1: what turned out to be a long night. Quickly as
Speaker 1: a unicorn slept, I would have got to work making
Speaker 1: a plan to keep the property and the people they're safe.
Speaker 1: Having never been on the property, I went ahead and,
Speaker 1: to the best of my ability in the dark, started
Speaker 1: a domaining distances high low ground, points of opportunity, weakness,
Speaker 1: cover concealment, hazards, and any other unclear backdrops. Like the
Speaker 1: other residences that I had needed to be aware of
Speaker 1: that all came into play later. Based off what I
Speaker 1: found my best guesses, I started working at patrol on foot,
Speaker 1: covering the areas I thought were vulnerable and most likely
Speaker 1: for incursion. The roadside seemed like the most likely point
Speaker 1: of opportunity for them since there was no barbed wire
Speaker 1: and a single low wire fence being the only barrier
Speaker 1: to entry on the property. Pretty quickly things go weight.
Speaker 1: At around I heard the first vehicle pass by. There
Speaker 1: was decent moonlight at the time, and I could see
Speaker 1: that it matched the shape and size of the Durango.
Speaker 1: They were driving by with their lights off, slow rolling
Speaker 1: and had made a stop about halfway down the property
Speaker 1: line on the roadway. They repeated this multiple times, so
Speaker 1: this kind of confirmed my theory they would go for
Speaker 1: the easiest point of access off the roadway. The drive
Speaker 1: bys continued sporadically, and twice from high point on property,
Speaker 1: I watched them turn their headlights back on, heading towards
Speaker 1: the highway and stop on the hard pack, where another
Speaker 1: vehicle could be seen sitting with its headlights on. Although
Speaker 1: it is pretty experience in this scenario, so it's pool
Speaker 1: another of the defenders who came a few days later,
Speaker 1: And it's not my first radio with these things either,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean it wasn't scary for all of us,
Speaker 1: but especially for Adah arrived first and was patrolling a
Speaker 1: small farm he'd never seen, facing attacks from an unknown
Speaker 1: number of armed assailants. I can't remember how many times
Speaker 1: I wish I had my m v g's with me
Speaker 1: for better situational awareness, but they have been sent off
Speaker 1: for repairs, so I relied heavily on the moonlight which
Speaker 1: there was a decent amount of not ideal doing a
Speaker 1: foot patrol on your own and the dark with an
Speaker 1: unknown number of people. Multiple times I thought I should
Speaker 1: get one of them up. There's way more ground than
Speaker 1: I can safely cover. I don't know the terrain well enough,
Speaker 1: and doing this alone is fucking dumb if this turns bad.
Speaker 1: But of course I ignored that intuition and told myself, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm overthinking this right now. These dudes are just trying
Speaker 1: to funk with the queers, and this is purely intimidation.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna keep working the vulnerable areas, watch them
Speaker 1: play their dumb bulsh ship games, and let the tenacious
Speaker 1: Unicorn ranch folks rest. Besides, at the time, I didn't
Speaker 1: know the Nacus Unicorn ranch folks before that night. While
Speaker 1: they did great with what they had available to them,
Speaker 1: I had no idea how they would respond and a
Speaker 1: ship hit the fan situation, what their personal capabilities were,
Speaker 1: if they could be relied on for team movements, and
Speaker 1: didn't want to risk relying on someone running on fumes,
Speaker 1: so I said, fuck it, it'll be fine. His fears,
Speaker 1: as it turned out, were more than justified. A little
Speaker 1: before midnight cloud cover came in while I was walking
Speaker 1: along the west fence line and saw what I assumed
Speaker 1: was a dim flashlight or a cell phone light flash
Speaker 1: about halfway along the north fence line by the road,
Speaker 1: and at fifty to twenty seconds later another flash, making
Speaker 1: me think that they were moving west towards the ranch gate.
Speaker 1: It was the first time I noticed anyone on foot,
Speaker 1: so I started slowly working my way down quietly to
Speaker 1: see if I could get closer for a good visual
Speaker 1: on who it was walking the roadway. Since the moonlight
Speaker 1: went away, I stopped about forty or so yards from
Speaker 1: the gate and squatted download or reduced my profile and
Speaker 1: just watch. After about ten minutes, I heard quiet voices
Speaker 1: and then a very distinct from the man that appeared
Speaker 1: and turned to call out after he activated the gate's
Speaker 1: motion sensing light. I remember I had to stop myself
Speaker 1: from laughing from them not only having such shitty discipline,
Speaker 1: but also at what was a perfectly comical chud name.
Speaker 1: I stood up and watched another dude come out of
Speaker 1: the dark into the light of the ranch gate, who
Speaker 1: very much had the build of an earl. The first
Speaker 1: guy began lifting and pulling at the gate lock and
Speaker 1: chain while Earl was trying to cover the most sensing light.
Speaker 1: They stood at the gate and I could hear them
Speaker 1: whispering for about a minute before I got annoyed at
Speaker 1: just how dumb they were and how they didn't notice
Speaker 1: me creeping closer to them while they were doing all this. Finally,
Speaker 1: from around fifteen yards, I went ahead and lit up
Speaker 1: the two males on my flashlight, who both had their
Speaker 1: faces covered in no visible weapons and a fairly sarcastic voice.
Speaker 1: I said something to the effect of, Hey, what are
Speaker 1: you idiots doing? Stop playing with the gate. Go away
Speaker 1: it would I didn't really feel I had much recourse
Speaker 1: other than to give a verbal warning at that point,
Speaker 1: because they were still technically not on the branch property
Speaker 1: and they had not made any visible attempts to trespass
Speaker 1: or do any property damage. Both of them ran off
Speaker 1: in the most awkward, non athletic way you could think of.
Speaker 1: I didn't see anyone else in the area, so I
Speaker 1: approached the road to watch them jump into a car
Speaker 1: and drive off. I kind of laughed at myself and
Speaker 1: remember saying out loud, cut, you guys are impressively stupid. Okay,
Speaker 1: they're probing the property. Now I realized these guys weren't
Speaker 1: working at a higher operational capability. I also felt a
Speaker 1: little more comfortable that even though I didn't have my
Speaker 1: n VGs to work in the dark environment, they didn't either.
Speaker 1: After staying out for another thirty minutes to make sure
Speaker 1: they were taking a break, I went back inside to
Speaker 1: warm up for a few minutes, get some food, and
Speaker 1: change my socks. After it seemed they had maybe gone
Speaker 1: and reconvened after they got caught trying to tamper with
Speaker 1: the gate, I turned off the lights inside the house
Speaker 1: that were visible from the road so I wouldn't be visible,
Speaker 1: and also just to see if that might make someone
Speaker 1: tempted to believe that the nation's unicorn ranch folks had
Speaker 1: turned in for the night. Things were quiet for the
Speaker 1: next hour or so. While out walking close to the
Speaker 1: east fence line toward the road, I remember a fox
Speaker 1: letting out a scream from less than a hundred feet
Speaker 1: away from me that honestly was more startlingly all the
Speaker 1: other events in the night up until then. If you
Speaker 1: haven't heard of fox screaming, it does indeed sound like
Speaker 1: someone being murdered in the most brutal way possible. I
Speaker 1: had a fox, probably the same fox a few nights
Speaker 1: later on the ranch. Even in the midst of the siege,
Speaker 1: it was still a working ranch, and so as well
Speaker 1: of protecting people from violence, the ranches and they're pretty
Speaker 1: and mountain dogs also had to make sure they were
Speaker 1: protecting the chickens from foxes. Sadly, though foxes weren't the
Speaker 1: only business that night. A few hours later, a much
Speaker 1: more serious threat emerged. The night continued to be quiet
Speaker 1: for the next while, and I decided to move along
Speaker 1: the east side of the property line. The cloud cover
Speaker 1: broke around two fifteen and I could see some movement
Speaker 1: and hear low voices again. I got low and held
Speaker 1: my position since it was fairly safe. It could make
Speaker 1: out two figures walking towards me inside the property boundary.
Speaker 1: I waited until they were about thirty or so yards away,
Speaker 1: and I was pretty sure there were no others working
Speaker 1: flanks before using my rifle light to begin the process
Speaker 1: of p I d and figuring out if they were armed.
Speaker 1: As soon as I saw them, I noticed they were
Speaker 1: both armed, one with an a r with no op
Speaker 1: X and the other with an m one a with
Speaker 1: optical on it. I realized that while I had the
Speaker 1: high ground, I was not comfortable with the backdrops due
Speaker 1: to the house across the road potentially being in line
Speaker 1: with my firing position, and started shifting to a safer
Speaker 1: spot in case the confrontation escalated into an engagement. I
Speaker 1: called out my first command, while moving to a better
Speaker 1: position to their left side. You are trespassing on private property.
Speaker 1: Slowly place your weapons on the ground and show me
Speaker 1: your hands. Do it now. The two men frozen place
Speaker 1: but did not comply, and I recognized in that moment
Speaker 1: that these were two different men than who I had
Speaker 1: seen earlier. I called out again, drop your weapons or
Speaker 1: I will fire on you. Do it now. As soon
Speaker 1: as I finished that sentence, they both looked at each
Speaker 1: other with their rifles and low ready turned to the
Speaker 1: right and ran. I pursued them so that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: lose the advantage I had, and to make sure there
Speaker 1: was no way they can make it up hill towards
Speaker 1: the house or get into a more advantageous firing position
Speaker 1: if they decided to turn on me. While parallel to them,
Speaker 1: so I could keep on the uphill side, I called out,
Speaker 1: stop and place your weapons on the ground. Realizing there
Speaker 1: might be others out there watching my light move, I
Speaker 1: turned it off so I wasn't such an obvious target
Speaker 1: and made short bursts of the two men fleeings that
Speaker 1: I could maintain a visual on them. It wasn't an
Speaker 1: ideal way to handle it, but this was all an
Speaker 1: incredibly unideal situation to begin with. After sustaining a fast
Speaker 1: paced run over uneven terrain and somehow not falling on
Speaker 1: my face, I realized we were moving toward the fence
Speaker 1: line and quickly looked around with my light to make
Speaker 1: sure no one else was waiting for them and also armed.
Speaker 1: At that point, I turned my light back on them,
Speaker 1: and they both pivoted directly to the fence, since we
Speaker 1: were still some distance from the gate, where it appeared
Speaker 1: they were heading toward. The first one with the m
Speaker 1: one A pushed the fence down and hopped over. The
Speaker 1: second one panicked and with both hands tossed his a
Speaker 1: R across the small ditch on the other side of
Speaker 1: the fence, and I watched it fly halfway across the
Speaker 1: road While he struggled over the fence. He scurried over
Speaker 1: and kicked his rifle across the road before picking it up,
Speaker 1: and disappeared with the other mail into the small ravine
Speaker 1: on the other side. I realized I was disadvantaged where
Speaker 1: I was located and repositioned to a small rocky mountain
Speaker 1: nearby so that I could at least get prone and
Speaker 1: have some cover if they decided to fire on me.
Speaker 1: I laid there and recovered my breath for a minute
Speaker 1: or so, watching to see if anyone else was out there,
Speaker 1: and then moved toward the house to make sure there
Speaker 1: weren't other incursions I may have missed while occupied with
Speaker 1: the other two who disappeared after trying and failing for
Speaker 1: a second time. It seems that the local biggots took
Speaker 1: a break for the evening, but out on the unicorns couldn't.
Speaker 1: That was it for the rest of the night. I
Speaker 1: did go back down and find their entry point, where
Speaker 1: the fence had been newly damaged and bent inward, and
Speaker 1: tracks leading over the patchy snow from the roadway. Then
Speaker 1: I walked back to their egress point where the fence
Speaker 1: had been bent outward. Everything that occurred that night was
Speaker 1: clearly a hostile incursion, and they demonstrated intent to harm
Speaker 1: others on their own property. The only reason that didn't
Speaker 1: happen is because we were armed and prepared. I think
Speaker 1: they realized at that point that the ranch was not
Speaker 1: a soft target, and the occupants these men painted as
Speaker 1: weak were in fact hard people willing to protect themselves
Speaker 1: and stand up against their aggression. More importantly, the residents
Speaker 1: of the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch just wanted to be left
Speaker 1: the funk alone. It was a couple of days after
Speaker 1: Although had its run with the locals when I arrived,
Speaker 1: if one was on edge. If where we went, it
Speaker 1: was with guns. So I remember there was a point
Speaker 1: when I was here, which was like a week or
Speaker 1: so after the Aldo run, those guys off that like
Speaker 1: we were going out somewhere, and so folks like, well,
Speaker 1: can someone who is comfortable using a gun stay behind? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what it was at, Like, yeah, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: because not all of us like want to or can
Speaker 1: Like I can't, I'm too scared of guns. Like I
Speaker 1: recognize that they're very important. I'm glad I am surrounded
Speaker 1: by people who can like defend me, but um, and
Speaker 1: I think that's important to allow space for that too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what kind of saying there is really important, not just
Speaker 1: for this story, but for folks listening to this and thinking,
Speaker 1: oh funk, I need to get guns. If you want
Speaker 1: to get guns, go ahead and get some if you
Speaker 1: can safely and legally. But what you need is community.
Speaker 1: Everyone at the Ranch works hard every day to keep
Speaker 1: their project going. Sometimes that's with a gun, most of
Speaker 1: the time it's with a sack of crunchy al pack
Speaker 1: of food, or sometimes with a keyboard. The community that
Speaker 1: sustains the Ranch is much bigger than the people on
Speaker 1: the ground, and it's a great illustration of the power
Speaker 1: of solidarity to sustain a project, which, in times like today,
Speaker 1: is the world a really needs today. Hundreds of queer
Speaker 1: people visit the ranch every year for hundreds of different reasons.
Speaker 1: CAT takes care of the ranches visitors a monitor social
Speaker 1: media gen helps administer a Patreon account for the ranch,
Speaker 1: complete with daily alpaca photos and updates on events. When
Speaker 1: I arrived at the ranch in it became pretty clear
Speaker 1: that I wasn't the only one who'd seen the tweet
Speaker 1: Paul Now the both have backgrounds in combat arms, both
Speaker 1: of him before it was they now I don't think
Speaker 1: we're a great idea. Both of them were waiting to
Speaker 1: use skills of State gave them to protect people who
Speaker 1: to state wouldn't Paul like Caldo and I came because
Speaker 1: of a tweet. I saw Aldo tweet like a stop
Speaker 1: sign or something, and it said, you know, a few
Speaker 1: years ago, I never would imagined being on like a
Speaker 1: transgender anarchist alpaca farm, but here I am, and I
Speaker 1: think I d med him or something. I was like,
Speaker 1: what the funk are you talking about? And uh, we
Speaker 1: ended up signal chatting and he explained what was happening
Speaker 1: and what had happened the day he was there, or
Speaker 1: one of the days he was there, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, that sounds super fucked up. Hey, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: book a flight. Before they left, they picked up another tail.
Speaker 1: We went into Westcliffe, the closest town, for something, I think,
Speaker 1: just to the gas station. And when we when we
Speaker 1: came back down at the query down by the airport,
Speaker 1: which is like three or four miles down the road
Speaker 1: towards the town, two to three vehicles pulled out and
Speaker 1: started following us, and one of them pulled down the
Speaker 1: road the ranches on and we we just drove straight
Speaker 1: and then they followed us, and we turned around two
Speaker 1: or three roads down, and then the third vehicle that
Speaker 1: had been waiting now was waiting for us to come
Speaker 1: back and pull in, so like they were trying very
Speaker 1: hard to tail anyone and get like identified. When I arrived,
Speaker 1: Paul and I slept in the guard trailer. Well, I slept,
Speaker 1: Paul stayed up all night walking patrols and keeping it
Speaker 1: on the fence line. If you're familiar with Hayduke and
Speaker 1: Edward Abby's echo anarchist novel The Monkey Ranch Gang, that's
Speaker 1: a pretty good way to envision Pool, albeit without the
Speaker 1: misogyny and racism that makes it pretty hard to have
Speaker 1: any respect for that bookoys author. Through Out the night,
Speaker 1: I check in on Paul. It wasn't a large trailer,
Speaker 1: and when I did, I looked through his night vision
Speaker 1: at the strange movement in the fields around the ranch.
Speaker 1: People seemed to huddle behind a pickup and they used
Speaker 1: a headlight to try and blind us. Now vision doesn't
Speaker 1: really work that way anymore, but they moved around throughout
Speaker 1: the night thinking that we couldn't see them, staging in
Speaker 1: different areas on the ridge, above us with the commanding
Speaker 1: field of view and presumably a field of fire as well.
Speaker 1: We assume they were trying to watch us as we
Speaker 1: sat there watching them. It was actually pretty fascinating. Um
Speaker 1: So a house that happens to be visible from the
Speaker 1: or another property that's visible from from the hilltop of
Speaker 1: the ranch was on here. Like every evening. It would
Speaker 1: start to get dark out and then like fifteen or
Speaker 1: twenty cars would show up. Oh yeah, it was like,
Speaker 1: which has never happened since yeahs, like fifteen twenty cars
Speaker 1: would show up, and um, I can't remember what precipitated it.
Speaker 1: But the second night I was here, Oh, I know
Speaker 1: what it was. Somebody had walked their dog and I
Speaker 1: happened to kind of meet them down by the gate
Speaker 1: because they were walking up the road. It was like
Speaker 1: two o'clock in the morning during a blizzard, and I
Speaker 1: was like, this is very unusual. So I met them
Speaker 1: down there, and um, I happened to have like night
Speaker 1: vision gear and they it was obviously like from them
Speaker 1: because from that point on they would actually point vehicles
Speaker 1: at the ranch with their headlights on the entire night.
Speaker 1: From some properties that are closer to the highway, which
Speaker 1: like is semi effective. It makes this bloom for fifteen
Speaker 1: ft around that vehicle, but then everything else you can
Speaker 1: just see, so it didn't matter. Inside the house, it
Speaker 1: got harder and harder to move over the course. In
Speaker 1: the next few days, a support came flooding in. There
Speaker 1: was sounding the rounds of ammunition plate carriers, plates, the
Speaker 1: kind of stop bullets, and boxes the first aid supplies.
Speaker 1: One day Paul Knight set around staging first aid kits,
Speaker 1: unwrapping and preparing the products to make them Easia to Use.
Speaker 1: People messaged every day volunteering to help, and we looked
Speaker 1: them up using some background check websites they often use
Speaker 1: to work to check that they weren't to trying to
Speaker 1: infiltrate their ranch. The amount of support that we've seen
Speaker 1: is largely absurd, Like I would have never guess that,
Speaker 1: Like people would have come out. It's hard for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they must be nice to know that, Like everybody fucking
Speaker 1: wants you to succeed, right, yeah, Like it gives us through,
Speaker 1: Like you can't troll me. Yeah, no, there are no
Speaker 1: haters that can get to us because of how much
Speaker 1: support that we know is out there, not only locally
Speaker 1: but internationally, like you're nationally, we have people from all
Speaker 1: over the world that have taken a moment to be
Speaker 1: like what can I do? Like what do you need
Speaker 1: right now? Like that is just like you can't roll
Speaker 1: that out of me. There is nothing you can say
Speaker 1: that and be like yeah, but also I've got twelve
Speaker 1: people who would kill you for me, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: The Ranch became something of a course celebration. The arm left,
Speaker 1: the outpouring of support was incredible. In March one, we
Speaker 1: all probably felt a little bit helpless. A summer of
Speaker 1: uprising and VAULT had yielded a new geriatric white dude
Speaker 1: in charge. COVID was still raging, and the cops had
Speaker 1: shown less anger at thousands of church storm in Congress
Speaker 1: than they did at kids holding Black Lives Matter platts
Speaker 1: in the street. In a time when it was difficult
Speaker 1: to feel powerful, the Ranch openly defying attempts to scare
Speaker 1: them out of the valley gave people a sense of
Speaker 1: success and they were more than willing to show up
Speaker 1: and help. So, yeah, I want to talk about that
Speaker 1: because you guys attempted to basically stuck up on far
Speaker 1: around at the time in American history when that may
Speaker 1: have been hardest and most expensive, And what sort of
Speaker 1: got you through was a lot odd of people from
Speaker 1: all over the Internet, sharing from all over the world,
Speaker 1: like it was literally all over the world. Any fascist organizations, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got sent plate plate carriers. People did runs for Ammo,
Speaker 1: like people would like buy Ammo like or organize something
Speaker 1: and get Ammo and food and things and then just
Speaker 1: drive up, drop it and leave, because you know, not
Speaker 1: everybody's ready to be in like an active zone where
Speaker 1: you could get shot, but they would do runs up
Speaker 1: to drop stuff off for us. Like it was crazy crazy,
Speaker 1: But that solidarity wasn't just on the Internet. It was
Speaker 1: in the valley as well. Even before the attacks on
Speaker 1: the ranch began, the unicorns knew they were coming. They
Speaker 1: knew because people told them, and people told them because
Speaker 1: they cared about them and wanted them to be safe.
Speaker 1: They cared about them because from the outset, the unicorns
Speaker 1: had made themselves an important part of their community. When
Speaker 1: the County Star recycling waste it could be recycled, the
Speaker 1: vehiclen steppedop and volunteered to do it themselves. On my
Speaker 1: first trip, I joined Penny and Ja for the long
Speaker 1: drive into Canyon City with a rickety horse trailer full
Speaker 1: of old beer cans and a truck with a struggling transmission.
Speaker 1: The money they get paid to recycle the cans is
Speaker 1: less than the gas they spend getting there. But it's
Speaker 1: an important thing to do, so they do it. Hey Garrison, here,
Speaker 1: Now that we have talked about how the siege happened,
Speaker 1: we need to explain why. At the start of this series,
Speaker 1: we said that this was a story that was about
Speaker 1: the Internet, and it is. It's a story about how
Speaker 1: the Internet has allowed a section of the American right
Speaker 1: that's always existed to develop links and gained both power
Speaker 1: and coherence in the last two decades, thanks largely to
Speaker 1: online organizing. The story of all these groups got where
Speaker 1: they are is a long one. It starts with talk
Speaker 1: radio with Rush Limbaugh and then with Glenn Beck and
Speaker 1: the gradual drift to Fox News, from bad journalism to
Speaker 1: outright barking for genocide seven nights a week at prime time.
Speaker 1: The story that we can't tell here, not in its entirety,
Speaker 1: but we can show you a little of what it
Speaker 1: looks like when that rhetoric leaves the forums and Facebook
Speaker 1: comments and lands on the ground in a small town
Speaker 1: in Colorado. There are two versions of the truth in Westcliffe.
Speaker 1: There's the one that most of you are going to hear,
Speaker 1: and then there's the one that you can find George
Speaker 1: Gramlich purveying in his local newspaper, the Sangree Cristo Sentinel.
Speaker 1: The Sentinel is probably best summarized as a print version
Speaker 1: of the Facebook comments from some of your older relatives
Speaker 1: that you've hopefully long since muted. It's the guy who
Speaker 1: doesn't know when to stop booming on about Obama at
Speaker 1: the Thanksgiving table. But in a stream of consciousness, unedited
Speaker 1: print format, we're gonna let George lay out what the
Speaker 1: Sentinel is about in his own words. We didn't get
Speaker 1: much joy out of trying to speak with him, and
Speaker 1: not for lack of trying. I approached his office numerous times,
Speaker 1: knocking on the door and trying to have a good
Speaker 1: old chat with George. But luckily he did go on
Speaker 1: the record for the Texas t l in Exile podcast.
Speaker 1: This kind of spectacular programming two white dudes shooting the
Speaker 1: breeze is certainly a tried and true recipe for success
Speaker 1: in the podcasting space. But you could be forgiven for
Speaker 1: not having heard of this particular podcast before, because even
Speaker 1: though we knew about it, it took us forever to
Speaker 1: even find it on the hit podcasting app Rumble. Wait
Speaker 1: to Custer County from the Antarondack Mountains in northern New
Speaker 1: York about twelve years ago, and Uh, the Wois and
Speaker 1: I were basically political and second amended refugees. We had
Speaker 1: a couple of friends who had moved to uh, southern Colorado,
Speaker 1: and they said that, Uh, the most conservative county maybe
Speaker 1: in the state, So certainly in southern Colorado is Custer County.
Speaker 1: It's about an hour and a half south of Colorado Springs,
Speaker 1: high in the Rocky Mountains, population hundred m a ranking community,
Speaker 1: stunning dues, just simply beautiful. Uh. Two small towns right
Speaker 1: in the middle of the county. Each was about five
Speaker 1: six hundred people in it, and hardcore conservatives. I'd say
Speaker 1: six of the county's registered Republicans. Even in his conservative paradise,
Speaker 1: George found that most folks couldn't live up to his
Speaker 1: high standards for political engagement. After Obama got elected his
Speaker 1: first term, totally over that four year period, UH, interest
Speaker 1: in the Tea party started to diminishing as Obama was
Speaker 1: destroying the country. Um, after he got elected the second time,
Speaker 1: we had our first meeting since his election in January,
Speaker 1: and normally at that point after four years, we were
Speaker 1: again fourty sixty people showing up. At that meeting, only
Speaker 1: twelve people showed up, and it was doom and gloom.
Speaker 1: You know, Obama's destroying the conscious. Nothing we can do,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. We started talking law pool, you know,
Speaker 1: we've got to keep Custter County red and uh and uh.
Speaker 1: And the fact came up, which is the problem in
Speaker 1: the county forever, was that the local newspaper, in the
Speaker 1: only newspaper in the county was extremely liberal paper. And
Speaker 1: we had done research over the years and we found
Speaker 1: out that a corporal America, this phenomenon was common, that
Speaker 1: the rural counties that tended to have liberal papers. And
Speaker 1: it's just to goes the lists vegetate to that media
Speaker 1: and they know they could have an influence on the
Speaker 1: population via that. So I mean, I mean it was over.
Speaker 1: We went home and on the way home, I turned
Speaker 1: to Advice said we're gonna start a paper. So uh,
Speaker 1: next day, I like it's been a whole day building
Speaker 1: a business plan on how to start a Christian conservative
Speaker 1: newspaper in the rural community. Now, we couldn't find the
Speaker 1: research that George is talking about, and that's probably because
Speaker 1: it's not true. What we can find is that largely
Speaker 1: small newspapers closed in the past fifteen years. To learn
Speaker 1: more about the newspaper business in southern Colorado, we spoke
Speaker 1: to George's arch rival, the publisher of the only other
Speaker 1: publication in the west, or at least the only other
Speaker 1: one in the valley, Jordan Hedberg. You are the editor
Speaker 1: of the owner and publisher and I could barely spell
Speaker 1: my own name, so the publisher of the Wet Mountain
Speaker 1: Tribute newspaper. Jordan's and George aren't exactly best pals, largely
Speaker 1: thanks to George's attacks on Jordan's and his publication. We
Speaker 1: asked Jordan to give us a sense of the competition
Speaker 1: in the local media market and for his overall thoughts
Speaker 1: on the Sentinel. I think it's his lies. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the problem with the Sentinel. I don't see the
Speaker 1: media spaces as zero sum game. Um, if somebody wants
Speaker 1: to have a openly conservative newspaper, in this town. I
Speaker 1: think there's plenty of readers. Um, it doesn't really compete
Speaker 1: with me because we do just community news and we
Speaker 1: always have since three so we've been here for a
Speaker 1: little while. But I don't see it as a zero
Speaker 1: sum game until you start lying about things because you're
Speaker 1: in what you perceived to be a power struggle. So
Speaker 1: that's the problem of the Sentinel. There's there's no problem
Speaker 1: with the Sentinel overall, other than that they like to
Speaker 1: tell lies two kind of justify their existence. Yeah, Jordan's
Speaker 1: take on the founding of the Sentinel, whose logo prominently
Speaker 1: features a bald eagle on the cover. If you hadn't
Speaker 1: quite picked up on the vibe yet, it was a
Speaker 1: little different. You know. They got started in their minds
Speaker 1: during the Tea Party movement to combat hyper liberal newspaper.
Speaker 1: But they only labeled the Tribune that because they needed
Speaker 1: an enemy. You know, they were they're very whipped up
Speaker 1: about Obama getting elected and Um, at the time, there
Speaker 1: had been that Aurora shooting, and so the real reason
Speaker 1: they really got started was when Carroto put a assault
Speaker 1: weapons magazine ban into place, so you couldn't have anything
Speaker 1: that could fire more than fifteen rounds after the Aurora
Speaker 1: Theater shooting, which was I guess ten years ago this week. Um,
Speaker 1: so that that was one of the big things that
Speaker 1: really got him started, was what they felt like an
Speaker 1: attack on weapons. But they did it in a community
Speaker 1: that's very you know, pro Second Amendment. I mean at
Speaker 1: the time it was probably Republican. These days it's fifty
Speaker 1: but still a majority. Um, even the moderates and most
Speaker 1: Democrats probably have guns and are okay with the idea
Speaker 1: of that. But they had a much more militant style saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we should be allowed to arm ourselves with whatever. But
Speaker 1: again they still had to create a bunch of lies
Speaker 1: locally saying that, um, you know, at the time it
Speaker 1: was the former owner that the Tribune was hyperum liberal communist,
Speaker 1: you know, against guns, which wasn't the truth. Gun rights
Speaker 1: and the threat of gun confiscation have been a constant
Speaker 1: source of profitable panic for agitators on the right for
Speaker 1: decades now. In Westcliffe, that doesn't really seem to be
Speaker 1: much controversy about guns. People who want them have them,
Speaker 1: and people who don't don't. On my drive from the
Speaker 1: airport to the ranch, I stopped at a couple of
Speaker 1: gun stores, and I've seen people lining up to by magazines,
Speaker 1: guns and other things that they'd worried about the government banning,
Speaker 1: which seems a very odd reaction to a mass murder
Speaker 1: in your state. But once I got to rural Colorado
Speaker 1: and pass Mantique's gun room, there wasn't really any of that.
Speaker 1: It was just some old dudes depining about the relative
Speaker 1: value of different big bore revolvers and then SKS, which
Speaker 1: has been entirely violated by someone's attempt to make it
Speaker 1: more modern. George apparently has seen an earlier mass shooting
Speaker 1: in Aurora as an opportunity for the liberals and rhinos
Speaker 1: he's so loath to take away his guns, and an
Speaker 1: opportunity for him to take a stand against him. He
Speaker 1: decided to take a stand at a place where no
Speaker 1: one really disagreed with him and against the thing that
Speaker 1: wasn't really happening. But nonetheless he decided to rally the
Speaker 1: troops and whole as well. Well. But he described what
Speaker 1: he held about. I don't know, six or seven years ago,
Speaker 1: t l the lists and called Ronald Endeavor passed the
Speaker 1: gun uh gun laws, and they one of them was
Speaker 1: the magazine limitation law and before there's no limitation and
Speaker 1: they passed laws that you can't have any you can't
Speaker 1: pay any new magazines. Was more than fifteen rounds in it,
Speaker 1: but they all went to grandfather. Now during this the
Speaker 1: legislative session, as you as you remembered, the whole state
Speaker 1: was up and on about this. I mean it was
Speaker 1: demonstrations in Denver. I mean, uh, we were passed off
Speaker 1: and the SLPs passed it. So Westcliffe has uh July
Speaker 1: Forces parade that we actually took over. The settle took
Speaker 1: over at a couple of years. Uh and uh and
Speaker 1: there's usually maybe twenty five thirty floats in the entry.
Speaker 1: You know, they got the horses, who know, hold on,
Speaker 1: hold on, George. Let's dwell on that for a minute.
Speaker 1: When when I mentioned that, I came down there and
Speaker 1: then you had like five or six hundred people in
Speaker 1: this parade, Um, I think it might have got glossed over.
Speaker 1: How big are these towns to start with? Because it's
Speaker 1: it's basically a combination of Silver Cliff and West Cliff, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: each town has about five people out of five people
Speaker 1: out of out of a total of a thousand people.
Speaker 1: I mean you you can you can describe it, but
Speaker 1: describe that to the listeners for a little bit about um,
Speaker 1: what that parade looks like versus how many people are
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk. Yeah, in the in the Pea Party
Speaker 1: had an entry and we usually had maybe people marks
Speaker 1: down with you know, gas and flags and stuff. But
Speaker 1: that that those gun laws, the MacMan I mean, just
Speaker 1: energized the sentinel tremendously. So we decided a couple of
Speaker 1: months before July fourth that we were gonna turn the
Speaker 1: Tea Party parade entry into a Second Amendment protests uh entry.
Speaker 1: So we printed up flyers and uh we innovated Southern
Speaker 1: Colorado every gun shot, park shot everything with thousands of
Speaker 1: flyers come to the Westland July forth, saying and told
Speaker 1: them what part to go to, what place to go to,
Speaker 1: and protested the c S laws and stuff like that
Speaker 1: and so uh uh So that morning the priest parts
Speaker 1: of Dena Cross, uh we set up shop in front
Speaker 1: of uh uh. We told the parade or gus, we
Speaker 1: might have some more people coming. So we've had a
Speaker 1: field where we could set up, and we set up
Speaker 1: there and we had a couple of sir we had
Speaker 1: three of us the guys there to check guns. We said,
Speaker 1: you know, you could bring uh long rifles, no magazines.
Speaker 1: They got to be clear shoulder uh carried on the
Speaker 1: holter pistols, you know. And we had all us people
Speaker 1: to check for safety and stuff like that. And so
Speaker 1: we had no idea how many people are gonna show off.
Speaker 1: And normally there's twenty five entries and maybe a hundred
Speaker 1: fifty people in the parade, maybe two hundred total, And
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, uh, on Main Street where our
Speaker 1: field was, around eight thirty, there was a traffic jam
Speaker 1: that went down like a mile both ways, and people
Speaker 1: were turning into our part a lot field there and
Speaker 1: going nowhere else and they kept common and common and
Speaker 1: common and comming. This went offor hour and a half
Speaker 1: the sha for freaking out. We had over five laundret
Speaker 1: heavily farm citizens there that morning, with about twenty military
Speaker 1: trucks and a half we had a Korean War half
Speaker 1: tract there with a fifty cow on top. Jildan the
Speaker 1: Tribune publisher, so things a little bit differently. So, but
Speaker 1: right before the sentinel got started, they were like, Hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna advertise, and they did it. All across the state.
Speaker 1: They said, bring your big black evil guns to um
Speaker 1: Custer County. And the problem is is, you know, that
Speaker 1: was the issue. It was this is a family event
Speaker 1: and so ever since then. So what happened was in response,
Speaker 1: the Republican town Council and the Republican Chamber of Commerce
Speaker 1: all said, we're not going to have a parade. We
Speaker 1: we can't have a bunch of Rando's showing up right
Speaker 1: after the Aurora Theater shootings, carrying of amounts of firepower,
Speaker 1: even if you claim it's unloaded or whatever. We just
Speaker 1: can't have that for a family event. And so the
Speaker 1: thing is is they took out a permit and did
Speaker 1: the parade themselves. So that's really how things. So Fourth
Speaker 1: of July for them is sort of their anniversary every year.
Speaker 1: You know, they're very they really consider that whole thing
Speaker 1: to be that way. But that's really what happened. And
Speaker 1: it's a conservative area. There's no bravery MARCHI assault rifles
Speaker 1: Sucusta County. Now, if they've done in downtown Denver, where
Speaker 1: guns are banned, or at least those types of guns,
Speaker 1: at least you could say they had a backbone and
Speaker 1: taking down. But it's not MLK gang. So the problem
Speaker 1: the Sentinel is the lies. You know, if they're just
Speaker 1: a conservative paper, fine, they're allowed to have their opinion,
Speaker 1: but they tend to tell lies constantly. George had miraculously
Speaker 1: managed to turn a mass murder into a sort of
Speaker 1: pseudo victory parade for a cultural war he was fighting
Speaker 1: every day with his newspaper. Soon enough and large he
Speaker 1: sanks to this parade. The culture war will be opening
Speaker 1: a whole new front on this tenacious unicorn ranch. Of course,
Speaker 1: the Sentinel has opinions about the ranch and transpoke in general.
Speaker 1: When we arrived in Westcliffe Garretson, I grabbed a coffee
Speaker 1: at Peregrine Coffee Roasters, long term friends at the ranch
Speaker 1: and supporters of me staying up all night with Paul
Speaker 1: and an up all day with Penny and j. We
Speaker 1: also grabbed a coffee of The Sentinel from a spencer,
Speaker 1: pulled up a chair and started a live reading. Even
Speaker 1: after a year of me being aware of their rhetoric,
Speaker 1: it did not disappoint. So I just I just sarched
Speaker 1: the word gender on the Sentinel's website. We got a
Speaker 1: We got an article on social emotional Learning, which is
Speaker 1: basically the al right trying to rebrand their like a
Speaker 1: critical race theory ship, but make it even broader. Um.
Speaker 1: And we do have an article from January of last
Speaker 1: year called meat at the gun toting tenacious unicorn ins
Speaker 1: an happy Valley. That's a let's click on that and
Speaker 1: see what the Sentinel has to say. What is this?
Speaker 1: What is this guy's name, the Eric Siegel? Yes, High
Speaker 1: Country new Oh that's then what they've done. They have
Speaker 1: just they's plage rights piece fro high Gundry News. Oh
Speaker 1: so they just stroll this from somewhere else. If we're
Speaker 1: stopping here to point out that the Sentinel does this
Speaker 1: a lot. It's not clear if they have permission or not,
Speaker 1: but they seem to dedicate at least half their print
Speaker 1: prages to aggregating content. But it's mostly from the far
Speaker 1: right of the internet. Notable examples include a really spectacularly
Speaker 1: racist piece on anti material rifles which we will not read,
Speaker 1: and numerous fire right commentary sites which turned shreds of
Speaker 1: news into a thousand words of panic rundering opinion. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let's see what they have to say about the pretty
Speaker 1: good article of Eric Siegel wrote about the Unicorn ranch
Speaker 1: for High Country News. Note The Sentinel has predominantly featured
Speaker 1: in this article negatively, of course. Hold onto your cowboy hats,
Speaker 1: fellow patriots, this is one wild ride. For the first
Speaker 1: time ever, we are warning our readers that the article
Speaker 1: below is very, very disturbing in many aspects. It may
Speaker 1: not be appropriate for some folks or children. Are apologies,
Speaker 1: but the citizens of this wonderful county need to know
Speaker 1: how the county has been betrayed so apparent, I guess
Speaker 1: the article is kind of a yeah, so they do
Speaker 1: have an edit at the bottom that that's the central
Speaker 1: road based on the article. Well, folks, the veil has
Speaker 1: been lifted. For those of you who haven't seen or
Speaker 1: experienced left wing fascism here it is from Biden to
Speaker 1: Polis and all the way down to this hypocritical bunch
Speaker 1: of hate filled xenophobes. They're all the same, felt with hate, paranoia, solbrighteousness, intolerance,
Speaker 1: and the desire to rule and control, and obsessed with violence.
Speaker 1: Their radical, narrow minded view of the world and our
Speaker 1: rural community is the only allowable viewpoint. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the citizens of Custer County are fascists and nazis this
Speaker 1: fascist rhetoric. The George himself a transplant from outside the
Speaker 1: valley who has tried to transform local politics. It's referring
Speaker 1: to it's what sparked off the confrontation that bought me
Speaker 1: Aldough and pull to the ranch last year. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that one wasn't even a parade. What it was was
Speaker 1: it was a protest on the fourth of July because
Speaker 1: during COVID they weren't doing any parade things, so they
Speaker 1: just did this as a protest, right, and so the
Speaker 1: sheriff and everybody, I mean, you couldn't distinguish it from
Speaker 1: a Fourth of July prade, except there wasn't. I don't
Speaker 1: think the fire department and stuff took you know, the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's office and the fire department didn't take part. And
Speaker 1: it was just it was really a bunch of people
Speaker 1: with on horses, marching guns, stuff like that. But the
Speaker 1: flags were a little more disturbing. You know, most of
Speaker 1: the American flags were replaced with three percent flags or
Speaker 1: the thin blue line flags. Um, there was a couple
Speaker 1: of Confederate flags. Always fun. I still can't figure out
Speaker 1: I still can't figure out the Confederate South here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, but there is that lost cause myth that
Speaker 1: does take place here and and you know, they'll say
Speaker 1: it's not a racist flag, but it absolutely isn't. This
Speaker 1: was the parade the Unicorns called out, and this was
Speaker 1: what put them at the center of Gramlich's conspiracy riddled
Speaker 1: hate machine. Jordan gave us a little more insight into
Speaker 1: exactly who those fascist groups were, the people that The
Speaker 1: Sentinel brought to town for their little protest parade. George
Speaker 1: grime Like is a member of Oathkeepers. We've been able
Speaker 1: to confirm that through not only himself, but Thompson Writers
Speaker 1: had an investigative reporter that confirmed that for us um so,
Speaker 1: Oathkeepers is a big one three percent. You'll see some
Speaker 1: of those shirts around that the two of them are
Speaker 1: kind of synonymous. That none of it's super organized. You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like saying that antifa's superorganized. It's it's
Speaker 1: very decent. The problem is is that they do write
Speaker 1: extreme things, and I think people like um myself, and
Speaker 1: then you know, definitely the Unicorn ranch suffers because they
Speaker 1: they can't really spread their message without an enemy. And
Speaker 1: you were asking earlier how how much influence do they have? Ye,
Speaker 1: not a lot. They have about out eight hundred subscriptions
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, some receipts accidentally got put
Speaker 1: in my box versus there. Because we're the wet Mound
Speaker 1: Publishing company. Yeah um, and they are the Mountain Publishing
Speaker 1: the post Office at all their glory occasionally give me
Speaker 1: a win. But you know there're eight hundreds and maybe
Speaker 1: a thousand by their own own numbers. The sentinels stance
Speaker 1: on vaccines will definitely not shock you, considering everything else
Speaker 1: we've said about George and the Sentinel thus far. So
Speaker 1: this comes from market ticket dot org. Effective as a
Speaker 1: primary infection against severe, critical or fatal COVID nineteen reinfection
Speaker 1: with ninety seven point three irrespected a variant of primary
Speaker 1: infection or reinfection and were similar and with no evidence
Speaker 1: for waning some results. We found the subgroup analyzies for
Speaker 1: those less than fifty years of age. Got it? No,
Speaker 1: let me explain it. If you've got COVID ninteen lived,
Speaker 1: you're more than certain with a very narrow confidence band
Speaker 1: protected against severe or fatal d in hospital dead second infection,
Speaker 1: even though coronavirus is always mutate and I'm just going
Speaker 1: to check really quickly if that's what they're saying. Ah
Speaker 1: and normally yet they've quite a dis sort of out
Speaker 1: of context and there is no evidence of protection ever
Speaker 1: goes away. That is not what the quote says. If
Speaker 1: you look at the JAB, I think you get the picture.
Speaker 1: It's pseudo science babble, transphobia and general boomer anti wokism.
Speaker 1: Oh there's a piece here said about the You know,
Speaker 1: the U. S. Army is really struggling to recruit right now.
Speaker 1: Right Imagine you're an eighteen year old white Christian male
Speaker 1: in Georgia with a family history of military service. As
Speaker 1: you progress through your teen years, you watch Confederate statutes
Speaker 1: being torn down, a military base is being renamed, endless
Speaker 1: media and elitist demonization of your culture as racist and
Speaker 1: deplorable and backwards, and military and civilian leadership that thinks
Speaker 1: diversity and inclusion are fewer white men. It's the best
Speaker 1: thing since slight breast, I spread? Would you volunteer? Identity
Speaker 1: politics works both ways. Trash my tribe and I won't
Speaker 1: associate with you, let alone risk my life. Shouldn't be
Speaker 1: a shock then that those expressing a great deal of
Speaker 1: trust and confidence in the military dropping today. So that's why.
Speaker 1: And no one wants to do in the military because
Speaker 1: we're not doing enough confederacy. Wow, there's a whole piece
Speaker 1: on how to protect your wealth, but oh well, no,
Speaker 1: there's a whole section of this called the Second Amendment corner. Okay, interesting,
Speaker 1: there's a picture here of a bunch of a t
Speaker 1: F agents, obviously armed in plate carriers and a Pride flag.
Speaker 1: And this this is a joke, This is a funny,
Speaker 1: and it says corporate wants you to find the difference
Speaker 1: between this picture and this picture, and then it says
Speaker 1: they're the same picture. So I guess, and the A
Speaker 1: t F are out there enforcing Pride. The little meme
Speaker 1: comic that we've seen was frankly bizarre. The two pictures
Speaker 1: on this comic were an A t F a visit.
Speaker 1: This particular a t F of it got hyped up
Speaker 1: all over the right wing media as a raid, a
Speaker 1: gun grab, etcetera, etcetera. In fact, what happened was a
Speaker 1: dude purchased a lot of guns and the A t
Speaker 1: F came by to check if he had sold any
Speaker 1: of them. It's not routine, but it's not super uncommon
Speaker 1: either anyway. On one side was a photo of the
Speaker 1: A T F agents and plate carriers with rifles, and
Speaker 1: on the other was a Pride flag because apparently in
Speaker 1: Custer County the existence of queer people is a similar
Speaker 1: oppression to the people who did Waco coming to your door.
Speaker 1: Jordan's has also noted this turn in the rhetoric of
Speaker 1: the Sentinel. For two years, their sole purpose was to
Speaker 1: rail against COVID restrictions. Now, with many of those gone,
Speaker 1: along with twenty two people from the county where the
Speaker 1: average age of sixty, they've pivoted to culture war topics
Speaker 1: when election fraud and COVID don't seem to have stuck.
Speaker 1: Now it's just we're it. Um. It was all you know,
Speaker 1: the big live the election was stolen, critical race theory,
Speaker 1: even though it's a bunch of crap, and unfortunately you know,
Speaker 1: the unicorn match, if there's if there's In the past,
Speaker 1: it was more against anybody that was gay. Um, but
Speaker 1: there's not many of those in the community more because
Speaker 1: they kind of got run out and it just conserves
Speaker 1: in general really hostile deite. Yeah, but now it's you know,
Speaker 1: totally on the trans um, and again it kind of
Speaker 1: fights back against the conservative upbringing that I had, which was,
Speaker 1: as long as you're not interfering with me, then there's
Speaker 1: really no conflict. We've talked about queer extermination as rhetoric before,
Speaker 1: and it's very evident to that what we are seeing
Speaker 1: here is a version of that. Fortunately, George doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have stuck the landing, but it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: this stuff isn't dangerous. It goes without saying that the
Speaker 1: Unicorns weren't trying to try anyone's gender from their ranch.
Speaker 1: They were just trying to be left alone. It's not
Speaker 1: their actions that people disagreed with, it's their mere existence.
Speaker 1: And sadly, while the attack on the ranch might have failed,
Speaker 1: other attacks on queer folks haven't, and that makes havens
Speaker 1: like the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch even more important. Today. Next episode,
Speaker 1: we want to talk about what brought people to the
Speaker 1: ranch and how to make a queer home in rural America.
Speaker 1: The ranch in July two is a very different place
Speaker 1: to the one I've visited in March of one. For
Speaker 1: one thing, it's not so called that my water bottle
Speaker 1: freezes every night but more notably, there's less tension in
Speaker 1: the air, and no one's wearing a plate carrier. Not
Speaker 1: everyone who was there for the seed stayed. Some of
Speaker 1: them had only been visiting or they found other places
Speaker 1: to live since then, but Penny, cat Jen and Jay
Speaker 1: have been constant on the ranch since something I've drugged
Speaker 1: away so far, it's giving a sense of just what
Speaker 1: a welcoming and friendly place to tenaceous unicorn ranches. It's
Speaker 1: a thing I haven't really stopped thinking about since I
Speaker 1: first visited, and I think that a lot of folks
Speaker 1: have been looking for for a very long time, even
Speaker 1: in the worst time to the siege, when Penny and
Speaker 1: Jay barely slept when I was out running off ched
Speaker 1: with guns, or when Paul and I were sat up
Speaker 1: all night absolutely destroying the costcoatnag milunge that Penny had
Speaker 1: prepared for us. People always seem to be laughing. When
Speaker 1: we sat down to talk about the siege, we started
Speaker 1: off by laughing. It's a difficult topic and it was
Speaker 1: a scary time, but I guess it's easier to laugh
Speaker 1: about it a year later, when you know everyone's okay, Well,
Speaker 1: let's go over everyone's legal names, date of births, such
Speaker 1: a security number, maybe you're four digit, what art or
Speaker 1: list of fears, that sort of thing. Lots they don't have.
Speaker 1: We don't want this to be just a story about
Speaker 1: the worst week the ranch ever had. We wanted to
Speaker 1: be a story about a community that overcame adversity and
Speaker 1: is thriving. That community extends way beyond the dome which
Speaker 1: unicorns called home, and even beyond the valley that they
Speaker 1: live in. But we should start with that valley, because
Speaker 1: even at the peak of the siege, it seems like
Speaker 1: most people were on the unicorn side, or at least
Speaker 1: they just wanted to leave them alone. It was because
Speaker 1: of warnings from other people in the valley they need
Speaker 1: to patrol their perimeter at night. Had they not been there,
Speaker 1: this might be a very different story a year later,
Speaker 1: everyone in the valley values the unicorns being there. During
Speaker 1: the few days we spent there this summer, we visit
Speaker 1: neighbors for drinks. We went into town for donuts and coffee,
Speaker 1: and dropped in on Jordan's The Tribune, Polisha hits Ranch.
Speaker 1: It's none of the unicorns of pariahs sitting up in
Speaker 1: the house, surrounded by guns and afraid of what's coming next.
Speaker 1: The active members of the community, and they're very welcome.
Speaker 1: There was a time when this community wasn't as friendly
Speaker 1: to queer people, but they've always been here. I spoke
Speaker 1: to Penny about this last year, what we drove to
Speaker 1: recycling center in the next county to recycle Westliff cats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we're doing the same thing y'all are doing. Like
Speaker 1: you not pick up on that, like not to mention
Speaker 1: also that like there are queers here. We first wave
Speaker 1: like yeah, it's like we're not breaking any fucking mold,
Speaker 1: like you know what I mean, Like it's we're definitely loud.
Speaker 1: We're not like we didn't like get cowed down and
Speaker 1: fucking like bent over and like told to shut up
Speaker 1: our whole life. So we're definitely like fuck you were queer,
Speaker 1: uh And they don't like that, like like yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes good old boys uncomfortable and I get it. Also
Speaker 1: fuck you, Like yeah, I know we're gonna be who
Speaker 1: we are, living the way we want to. Like if
Speaker 1: you can hang to Trump flags and a Confederate flag
Speaker 1: from the back of your truck and drive down Main
Speaker 1: Street screaming fucking horrible, hateful things, and feel perfectly justified
Speaker 1: in doing that. I'm gonna just be queer, Like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and be as loud as I want
Speaker 1: to be. Like, obviously you think it's okay to have
Speaker 1: personal expression. Yeah, like right there, right, you really really
Speaker 1: think it's okay. So I'm gonna go ahead and take
Speaker 1: you up on that. They had to, like I keep
Speaker 1: it was some kind of like donasco tell yeah, well
Speaker 1: that's what they keep saying, does right. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be in our face about it.
Speaker 1: I'm just living like I'm not like you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not coming into your home and humping your couch like
Speaker 1: I'm just like. It can be easy, especially if you
Speaker 1: only connect with the royal places through the media, to
Speaker 1: see cities as queer spaces and the countryside is unfriendly
Speaker 1: to quit people. Well, politics and roll America can be
Speaker 1: pretty bad. It's never really been true that quit people
Speaker 1: don't belong there. The Unicorns pointed this out historically if
Speaker 1: you know anything about history, like country spaces are queer
Speaker 1: fucking spaces, Like we're the ones out here doing the
Speaker 1: actual work while fucking old fucking sis white men just
Speaker 1: collecting money from doing shitty ranching that damages the animals,
Speaker 1: damages the earth, and fucking does not build community or
Speaker 1: help anybody but themselves. For your integration into country spaces
Speaker 1: is so fucking important because we bring heart and empathy
Speaker 1: and all these things. Uh that that capitalism has stripped
Speaker 1: out of these areas. Um, we bring that back, and
Speaker 1: we've always fucking been here. Like fun off, real cowboys
Speaker 1: were constantly fucking constantly, They fucked a lot each other,
Speaker 1: and they were mostly like black and brown people. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't white. The West was not white. And by
Speaker 1: the way, like we have said this before and we'll
Speaker 1: say it again, nature is inherently queer. And we fucking
Speaker 1: belong here, like we fucking belong wherever the funk we go,
Speaker 1: Like that is a queer space. There is no like
Speaker 1: hard line that country spaces are for sis people. Fuck that, Like,
Speaker 1: we belong here. We've always been here, and we're really
Speaker 1: good at it. After the siege and its coverage, everyone
Speaker 1: knows that the Unicorn Tolte quer icons, but they are
Speaker 1: only parts artical queer community and they have other folks
Speaker 1: over for Game ninth once a week. They told us
Speaker 1: one story about Pride Month in Westcliffe this year, and
Speaker 1: thankfully it didn't involve the a t F. There was
Speaker 1: a really adorable during Pride Month, we went to Family Dollar,
Speaker 1: which is like one of the few stores in town,
Speaker 1: and I guess we were talking to the manager who
Speaker 1: was checking us out and uh and he mentioned like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I have, like I have a gay and a
Speaker 1: trans working here, Like you know, I love y'all, you know,
Speaker 1: And it was it was very it was a little
Speaker 1: a little embarrassing, but but the heart was there. It
Speaker 1: was very like But but the point is, like, like
Speaker 1: even Family Dollar, in the middle of nowhere Westcliff has
Speaker 1: two queer employees, Like, you know, we're everywhere. Queer people
Speaker 1: had always been in the valley, but it had become
Speaker 1: harder to share who they were with their neighbors in
Speaker 1: recent decades. They never stopped existing, but they stopped being safe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're connecting with a lot of queer people that have
Speaker 1: lived here for a long time. Yeah. It's the fact
Speaker 1: that a community is so hostile that their queer community
Speaker 1: has to be closeted does not mean that the queer
Speaker 1: community isn't here. It just means that a lot of
Speaker 1: assholes are here. Don't ask, don't tell, an institutional version
Speaker 1: of closeting, is something that Penny is very familiar with.
Speaker 1: She was in the Army as a Calvary scout while
Speaker 1: the policy was still in place. If you're not familiar,
Speaker 1: Don't Ask, Don't tell was a military policy that was
Speaker 1: in place nineteen ninety four until two thousand eleven. Under
Speaker 1: the policy, anyone who wasn't straight was to remain in
Speaker 1: the closet, and in theory they were protected from discrimination,
Speaker 1: but if they came out as gay or buy or
Speaker 1: trans or otherwise queer, they could be discharged. Queer people
Speaker 1: were not even allowed to talk about anything related to
Speaker 1: their queerness because doing so, quote would create an unacceptable
Speaker 1: risk to the high standards of morale, good order, and
Speaker 1: discipline and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.
Speaker 1: Don't ask, don't tell. Like, I remember a girlfriend when
Speaker 1: I was in the military, UM, and I definitely was like,
Speaker 1: this is my best friend of Germany and it sometimes
Speaker 1: spends the night because we're best friend knows, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It was really really damaging. It was just really really
Speaker 1: damaging to like not being able to be yourself. Um.
Speaker 1: But then also like be able to leave posts and
Speaker 1: have a secret life where you were yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: like and then when you go out with the guys,
Speaker 1: like there's always those weird moments where you like do
Speaker 1: run into other gay locals that you have like known
Speaker 1: and like you've had deep conversations with another context and
Speaker 1: just have to be like, no, don't don't talk to me.
Speaker 1: Everyonet know each other, um, which is I'm sure damaging
Speaker 1: for them, you know, like that can't be fucking normal, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, that's weird. And then on the throw
Speaker 1: on top of that that you're also a girl, like
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, so you're pretending to
Speaker 1: be a gay man who's straight sometimes around certain people, um,
Speaker 1: but really you're gay. You're a bisexual woman um pre
Speaker 1: surgery and with the wrong um hormones. And so it
Speaker 1: just ends up being a soup of just like compartmentalization
Speaker 1: to the point where you just like forget people and
Speaker 1: then they show back up and you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're from this quadrant of my life. Like I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's not healthy. Yeah, it doesn't do good things.
Speaker 1: Don't ask, don't tell. Had pretty devastating consequences for the
Speaker 1: mental health of thousands of service people. The National Transgender
Speaker 1: Discrimination Survey found that of trans people have served in
Speaker 1: the military over twice the rate of cis gender people,
Speaker 1: but until very recently, they weren't even allowed to do
Speaker 1: so openly. Not being able to be yourself with people
Speaker 1: that you're expected to risk your life for isn't really
Speaker 1: conductive to good morale or indeed quote the unit cohesion
Speaker 1: that is the essence of military capability. There's no doubt
Speaker 1: that being familiar with guns, something they gained from military experience,
Speaker 1: did help the unicorns, but it's not the only thing
Speaker 1: that helped them. Sometimes, especially on Twitter, where things seem
Speaker 1: to get reduced to simple terms to fit into the
Speaker 1: discourse of the day, the Tenaceous Unicorn Ranch story has
Speaker 1: been reduced to a story about guns. Undoubtedly, guns are
Speaker 1: a part of the story, but they would have been
Speaker 1: useless without community and solidarity. That is something that the
Speaker 1: unicorns at the ranch have taken to heart. A year later,
Speaker 1: they're doing mutual aid work with the Lakota people on
Speaker 1: the Pine Ridge Reservation, driving truckloads of donations to them
Speaker 1: every few months and using their Internet presence to get donations.
Speaker 1: If we want to look at this story as an
Speaker 1: example of anarchism in action, and it's important to remember
Speaker 1: that if we want a world where the state is
Speaker 1: not the only entity with the ability to do violence,
Speaker 1: then should also want a world where it's not the
Speaker 1: only entity responsible for caring for people with unmet material needs.
Speaker 1: Alongside ranch work, Penny and j also make ends meet
Speaker 1: by working construction jobs on local buildings. Something that George
Speaker 1: from the Sentinel is very proud of and that other
Speaker 1: local residents are beginning to regret, is that Custer County
Speaker 1: doesn't have a building code. Here's the snippet of his
Speaker 1: conversation with t L about that. Then one example, t
Speaker 1: L is, who county is so free? We don't even
Speaker 1: have building codes. If you're going to live here, you
Speaker 1: can build yourself a shock with tway to live in it.
Speaker 1: You know. That's uh, that's the way it is here
Speaker 1: in my little Bergen, Texas too. Do you really need him?
Speaker 1: Do you really need I mean, that's something I think
Speaker 1: should be attacked in other ways. But go ahead, but
Speaker 1: to one of the things that make Custer County and
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I moved to this one. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that basically cause housing crisis, who become unreachable
Speaker 1: for the middle class. The problem with this conservative utopian
Speaker 1: vision is that it has resulted in a lot of
Speaker 1: residents getting ripped off by less than upstanding builders and
Speaker 1: now left with their homes falling apart. That's where Penny
Speaker 1: and Jake can step in and make a decent side
Speaker 1: income drywalling and finishing buildings that well often are not
Speaker 1: very old, are already crumbling. Like we've always said, um,
Speaker 1: this community is awesome. UM and that has held true.
Speaker 1: We uh we do contracting work because there are no
Speaker 1: UM building codes in Custer County, as opposed to what
Speaker 1: like the libertarian ideal of no building codes is. It
Speaker 1: actually just means that there's a bunch of shoddy houses
Speaker 1: that need repaired constantly. UM. And we have construction skills.
Speaker 1: So we're in people's homes, repairing them and doing work
Speaker 1: for the actual people of the county daily. UM. We
Speaker 1: frequent businesses up here because we're all about local support.
Speaker 1: We build community, UM gleefully, we build community like we
Speaker 1: really enjoy it up here. The community now is a
Speaker 1: little smaller than when James first visited. Currently five people
Speaker 1: live at the ranch full time, but they still have
Speaker 1: a couple of trailers open to transfolks in need of
Speaker 1: a safe place to stay or you know, visiting journalists
Speaker 1: looking for a safe place to stay. Is how Jay
Speaker 1: first came to the ranch. Like a lot of us,
Speaker 1: she had a difficult time at the start of the pandemic.
Speaker 1: The world was changing and it seemed in May of
Speaker 1: that America was as well. For a lot of people
Speaker 1: with less progressive parents, the BLM uprising presented a difficult
Speaker 1: choice between family and community. Jay was one of those
Speaker 1: people that had to face that choice. So basically, um,
Speaker 1: I was living in Dallas, work in retail when living
Speaker 1: in my car when the um pandemic started, and so
Speaker 1: I was furloughed. Luckily, Texas is actually surprisingly good about unemployment,
Speaker 1: so I you know, had that. Um it was my
Speaker 1: parents are retired from the military around there, and when
Speaker 1: the BLM uprisings happened, Uh, I participant, you know, did
Speaker 1: some things, and basically my parents were like, you either
Speaker 1: can stay here or and not be associated with Antifa,
Speaker 1: or you know, you you can't stay here if you're
Speaker 1: as social shaded with Antifa and so I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm I guess I'm leaving then, which is fine. Um,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of tension there anyways. Uh it
Speaker 1: wasn't good for me, so um I because of the unemployment.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I you know, for once, have
Speaker 1: some resources. I can just kind of you know, I'm
Speaker 1: already living in my car. I can just kind of
Speaker 1: travel around for a bit. Why not? And I think
Speaker 1: I just posted on Twitter like trans commune whin you know,
Speaker 1: as as probably most queer people have, and one of
Speaker 1: my permaculture mutuals actually it was like, hey have you
Speaker 1: heard of this place? It's not far from you and
Speaker 1: posted a link to I think it was the Vice article. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I sent a message and with a bunch of
Speaker 1: questions about it and making sure it wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: like trans medicalists or anything like that, which is always
Speaker 1: like what you want to see when somebody contacts the ranch,
Speaker 1: think about coming up, I wait, prefer an in depth
Speaker 1: breakdown and a lot of questions to I'll just show
Speaker 1: up and figure it out. In case you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with what a trans medicalist is, will let Paul ask
Speaker 1: that question for you. And we're gonna play this not
Speaker 1: to make Paul look bad. We're playing it for you
Speaker 1: because I think it's important to see what kind of
Speaker 1: space the ranch is. It's not one where you can't
Speaker 1: get things wrong. It's one where you can ask if
Speaker 1: you don't know something. And because everyone there had shown
Speaker 1: that they're willing to risk life and limb for one another,
Speaker 1: they assume that you're asking it because you care about
Speaker 1: them and you want to know how to say things
Speaker 1: in a way that won't hurt anyone. What the fund is?
Speaker 1: A trans medicalist someone who think that primarily well, so
Speaker 1: this does not describe any of us, but a trans
Speaker 1: medical list is someone who, uh, first and foremost thinks
Speaker 1: that all trans people should be on hormones, all trans
Speaker 1: people should have surgery, all trans people drive towards or
Speaker 1: and they don't believe in yeah, and they don't believe
Speaker 1: in anything but the gender binary as well, Like basically,
Speaker 1: if you don't want to transition directly from like a
Speaker 1: male to a female or direct whatever to a male, like,
Speaker 1: you're not not transon did they think they think those
Speaker 1: trans people are making it worse for other trans people? Like? Okay, so,
Speaker 1: like that was my next question to like our non binary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they hate those people. They think they're faking so but
Speaker 1: like do they say they're not trans and different groups
Speaker 1: they often call them trans trenders because it's like a
Speaker 1: popularity contest. They think, so, yeah, okay, and those people suck.
Speaker 1: Jay has found a home at the Ranch now, and
Speaker 1: just like everyone else there, she's a part of the
Speaker 1: family which takes care of one another. It was actually
Speaker 1: really funny because Jay showed up and the assumption I
Speaker 1: thought was that just gonna stay for a little bit
Speaker 1: and then you just didn't leave it. It was great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was very exactly what you know a lot of
Speaker 1: queer people talk about online, which is ye, well, when
Speaker 1: Jay brought a passion that we hadn't seen with a
Speaker 1: lot of people that had come up. A lot of
Speaker 1: people had come up with this like yeah, we'll just
Speaker 1: see what it is or whatever. But Jay came up
Speaker 1: with like knowledge about theory and like had studied and
Speaker 1: was really like conscientiously a part of this project um,
Speaker 1: which was huge. I mean for me, like part of
Speaker 1: what Jay has been able to help with is organizing
Speaker 1: the moving of animals to different pastors. James was at
Speaker 1: the Ranch last year when they were replacing their old
Speaker 1: fence and planning out their fields ready as fence. UM
Speaker 1: and this back fence here as we build the new
Speaker 1: kind of structure for the girls out in matt Field. UM,
Speaker 1: when we're doing the fence heightening, so it's not only
Speaker 1: um security increase, but we're also we'll fence off the
Speaker 1: driveway and then the girls watch the babies that mama
Speaker 1: will actually get access all the way down the driveway
Speaker 1: and up this hill a little bit. Hey, babies, come on,
Speaker 1: um and uh yeah, we'll just structure our fields a
Speaker 1: little bit better, and then the girls will have two pastures,
Speaker 1: which is kind of we can rotate them into. We
Speaker 1: can start actual perma culture or is it perma culture?
Speaker 1: I said, I mean it's regeneration in this context, it's
Speaker 1: like regenerative agriculture. Thank you, That's what I was like.
Speaker 1: You know, you can also like perma culture. People do
Speaker 1: it too, you know. Yeah, but but what we're doing
Speaker 1: is that's both. Really we'll be doing both. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can use either our experts. There's definitely an
Speaker 1: industry like, oh, regenerative agriculture is the new thing, and
Speaker 1: but it's still capitalism and it's still exploitative, but there
Speaker 1: are also people doing real regenerative talking with j it's
Speaker 1: very evident just how passionate they are about these topics
Speaker 1: and how things like biodiversity and regenerative and permaculture processes
Speaker 1: tie you into many aspects of the ranch itself. The
Speaker 1: you know, capitalist project is homogenization and simplification. The entire
Speaker 1: goal is things like mono crops. The entire goal is
Speaker 1: you know, you know, the gender binary and controlling the
Speaker 1: reproduction of labor, controlling sis, women and queer gender expression
Speaker 1: is a big part of that. Like you can't have
Speaker 1: those things and have a capitalist, white supremacist environment where
Speaker 1: you can extract from the earth and from labor. That
Speaker 1: is such a key component of this whole, like you know,
Speaker 1: m Western project or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: And nature doesn't care. Nature is queer nature, like nature
Speaker 1: is just exists. Fungi have thousands of sex as engenders
Speaker 1: and that's fine, in fact, that's in fact, like the
Speaker 1: part of the point of nature is biodiversity because that
Speaker 1: is the most effective method for actually iterating and testing
Speaker 1: what works and sing and surviving and and we're biomodal
Speaker 1: by the way not binary like, and you know, if
Speaker 1: you need to look that up, you can go ahead
Speaker 1: and do that. And in Perman culture in particular, you
Speaker 1: know some one big problem with Perman culture is there's
Speaker 1: a lot of white people who uh use the practices
Speaker 1: and don't acknowledge that it all comes from indigenous cultures.
Speaker 1: It all comes from indigenous life ways, and they make
Speaker 1: a lot of money by not saying that not. You know,
Speaker 1: so that's important to address. Uh. Perma culture has its
Speaker 1: you know, value. But if you're not learning from indigenous
Speaker 1: people and giving back to Indigenous people, you're doing wrong.
Speaker 1: Just because the immediate threat of armed men breaking into
Speaker 1: the ranch has gone away doesn't mean that they still
Speaker 1: don't have to be careful. In April one, after the
Speaker 1: siege was over, the then sheriff Shannon Byerley claimed that
Speaker 1: one of his deputies went to the ranch to ask
Speaker 1: questions about a road traffic accident that one of the
Speaker 1: ranchers had been involved in. He claimed the deputy was
Speaker 1: met by armed and uncooperative ranchers who barred the deputy
Speaker 1: from entering. Bodycam video obtained by Reuter's thanks to a
Speaker 1: Public Records Act request, shows nothing of the sorts, the
Speaker 1: deputy met a single person, not visibly armed, who was
Speaker 1: polite and courteous. In subsequent interviews, Bierley acknowledged that he
Speaker 1: had been mistaken in his account, but we'll let you
Speaker 1: hear Jay's account of the events that day. So, my
Speaker 1: Chevy Blazer had been sitting over the winner. Um, it
Speaker 1: had a bad alternator, and I've finally like we finally
Speaker 1: got you know, the money together, fixed to replace the alternator. UM,
Speaker 1: looked it over. Everything seemed fine. Um, And I was
Speaker 1: going back to Texas to grab some stuff and bring
Speaker 1: it back. Um. And I went around apparently Black Ice Corner,
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty sure what happened was my tire popped
Speaker 1: around Like I was only going like thirty because you know,
Speaker 1: black there's ice. It's still went Yeah it was. It
Speaker 1: was like four or five o'clock in the morning or
Speaker 1: something like that, and I'm pretty sure what happened was
Speaker 1: my tire popped and then my Blazer proceeded to tumble,
Speaker 1: uh you know, roll over, yeah, into the Luckily not
Speaker 1: a ditch or anything, just on the left of the
Speaker 1: south left side of the road. And so I called
Speaker 1: Penny and got picked up. Yeah, we take care of
Speaker 1: them when we're not going to call the cops. It
Speaker 1: was it only was you there no reason. And then
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, let me look at towing around
Speaker 1: the area. Let me see and the towing the local
Speaker 1: towing company which is just like a small family owned
Speaker 1: one guy basically. Um, they on their Facebook like business
Speaker 1: page they said they opened at like nine or ten
Speaker 1: or something like that. So I was like, okay, So
Speaker 1: I'm it's gonna be on the side of the road
Speaker 1: until then. That's fine, I'll call and I'm going to
Speaker 1: go to sleep until then because I was just in
Speaker 1: a rollover actually probably can cuss, like yeah, probably whiplashed
Speaker 1: at least. And then so I was in my trailer
Speaker 1: and I suddenly in my pj's and suddenly get a
Speaker 1: call from dispatch and they're like, there's a deputy at
Speaker 1: your gate. Uh you know, can you go blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So I was like, okay, take took a vehicle downs.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't have a pistol in the car
Speaker 1: around me, and um, I basically just you know, as
Speaker 1: you do with cops, as any sane human does, answer
Speaker 1: to the extent that you're legally required to be polite,
Speaker 1: but also like I'm not going to invite you on.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be your friends. You're not my friend,
Speaker 1: um he he he. You know, he did the usual,
Speaker 1: like you know, where you were you drinking, and I
Speaker 1: was like, it's like five o'clock in the morning. It's
Speaker 1: like six o'clock right now, Like I was going back.
Speaker 1: I was driving back to Texas to pick up stuff.
Speaker 1: I was starting a road trip. That's not when you
Speaker 1: like get blitzed, like yeah, and uh so he gave
Speaker 1: me his card and left, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's fine. That was weird, but and
Speaker 1: it was weird to me too that like they apparently
Speaker 1: have some kind of relationship with this toeing guy where
Speaker 1: because they didn't even ask me, like, hey, do you
Speaker 1: they just to this place? Yeah, they just towed it
Speaker 1: before they even contacted me. And so either you bring
Speaker 1: the title over to sign it over to the towing person,
Speaker 1: or you pay him like four or five out here
Speaker 1: to bring it back here. So that's what actually happened.
Speaker 1: But then for some reason, the local sheriff started telling
Speaker 1: a very different account of what took place outside the
Speaker 1: unicorns driveway. So that was the that was the actual incident.
Speaker 1: Then Byerley, the sheriff started getting interviewed, and in those
Speaker 1: interviews he would say they there were six of them.
Speaker 1: They met us at the gate, armed, were extremely hostile,
Speaker 1: to the point where my my sheriff felt definitely felt
Speaker 1: fear for his life and had to retreat back and
Speaker 1: fear for his life. But he also said we don't
Speaker 1: go there anymore. He said on record, we don't go
Speaker 1: there anymore because it's too scary. And so that is
Speaker 1: setting us up to be killed. That is setting us
Speaker 1: up to be marked by the place. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is Kiwie Farm, says this all the time, this
Speaker 1: is trany Waco. Yeah, And that is the setup for
Speaker 1: it to become that. And so because then now all
Speaker 1: of his deputies are just ready to shoot us on
Speaker 1: site because we're dangerous. A reporter from Reuters was looking
Speaker 1: into the incident and heard the conflicting stories from the
Speaker 1: sheriff and the unicorns, but she thought of an easy
Speaker 1: fix to definitively know what happened. She just boy the
Speaker 1: body cam footage, which proved unequivocally that they were lying
Speaker 1: there fucking ass off and we were telling the truth.
Speaker 1: And Byerley retired this year. I don't know if well,
Speaker 1: and she when she oh, yet it she went back,
Speaker 1: oh god, yeah, And Byerley was like, can I remove
Speaker 1: my comments from because she asked she she like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was a follow up, do you
Speaker 1: have any additional comments? And his additional comments were, can
Speaker 1: you please remove my my previous statements from the record,
Speaker 1: she said, And she emphatically said no and then published
Speaker 1: it internationally. This wasn't the first suspect incident regarding the
Speaker 1: local sheriffs. When Paul was at the ranch and the
Speaker 1: immediate aftermath of the original siege, he witnessed cops hanging
Speaker 1: out with a group of people who were actively harassing
Speaker 1: the ranch. I was here for a week and at
Speaker 1: one point they always like fifteen to twenty cars at
Speaker 1: shud Ranch. Which it's up to you to release that location, right,
Speaker 1: we just call the ranch. You can you can visit.
Speaker 1: You can see it from the you can you can
Speaker 1: see it from here. And um, there were two sheriffs
Speaker 1: deputies sitting at the curb the entire time as those
Speaker 1: cars pulled in there, and they were protecting our assets. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: they were sitting there side by side talk to each
Speaker 1: other while the cars told them that you probably said
Speaker 1: have said this before and I just don't didn't remember. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it must them. So the other end of
Speaker 1: that is then when it got publicized, the sheriff then said, oh,
Speaker 1: we don't, we don't know anything about it, Like they
Speaker 1: didn't contact us. We didn't, They couldn't verify the statements
Speaker 1: made in the media about threats against the ranch. Were
Speaker 1: just hanging out at the fascist and they were super
Speaker 1: stooty about it. They made it sound like, well, ranch
Speaker 1: clearly doesn't want to be part of our community, so
Speaker 1: I would help them. That seemed to be the implication.
Speaker 1: Sheriff Byerley, who spoke at aft Oathkeepers rally, has since
Speaker 1: resigned as a sheriff, but for understandable reasons, the Unicorns
Speaker 1: still don't dial when they feel in danger. Instead, they
Speaker 1: reach out to Paul to Aldo and a network of
Speaker 1: community members who helped with their security both online and
Speaker 1: on the ground. They also routine train with firearms and
Speaker 1: have added a much more serious fence to the property
Speaker 1: than the one that the intruders climbed over. Right after
Speaker 1: James and I's most recent visit this past summer, Kiwi
Speaker 1: Farms started being in the news a lot more due
Speaker 1: to a campaign attempting to take it down. But as
Speaker 1: the hate Forum entered the discourse again, the Unicorns had
Speaker 1: started noticing cars driving past the ranch repeatedly, something that
Speaker 1: Paul Aldo and James observed during the siege, and now
Speaker 1: in just the past few weeks, trans people have been
Speaker 1: killed in a nightclub just an hour away from their house,
Speaker 1: just a few miles away from the bar where we
Speaker 1: met them this past summer. To celebrate at Jay's birthday tomorrow,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about what those threats mean for the ranch
Speaker 1: and where they are now. On our drive down from
Speaker 1: Denver to Westcliff. We were first going to meet up
Speaker 1: with the Unicorns in Colorado Springs for a little birthday dinner.
Speaker 1: James and I arrived a few hours early, so I
Speaker 1: had the bright idea to stop at the headquarters of
Speaker 1: the evangelical media organization focus on the Family. I hadn't
Speaker 1: been there since I was a little Christian kid, so
Speaker 1: I was curious what it would be like for me
Speaker 1: to walk through. Now, what was it like walking through
Speaker 1: their little headquarters and welcome center. What were the general vibes?
Speaker 1: That was fucking bonkers? Um, so we went in Initially,
Speaker 1: We've gone into the bookshop and I found a book
Speaker 1: that told me the holding hands is for play. That
Speaker 1: was called sex in a Marriage. I've seen a book
Speaker 1: with a pink triangle on the cover it that it's
Speaker 1: about LGBTQ people, which is deeply truck and traveling. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's about men struggling with their sexual identity.
Speaker 1: I see on the way to stop that struggling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: genocide queer elimination of st rhetoric hasn't just been confined
Speaker 1: to Christian bookstores or the Internet. In November, it once
Speaker 1: again became very clear how this kind of NonStop hate
Speaker 1: speech being beamed into everyone's homes impacts them. On the
Speaker 1: eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, as Club Q gay
Speaker 1: bar in Colorado Springs was preparing for an all ages
Speaker 1: drag show, a twenty two year old shooter walked in
Speaker 1: and killed five people, leaving twenty five more injured. The
Speaker 1: shooter was ultimately tackled and pistol whipped by a US
Speaker 1: Army veteran, Richard Fierro, and stomped in the face by
Speaker 1: an unidentified trans woman. A few days after the club
Speaker 1: que joting on so called Thanksgiving, the Focus on the
Speaker 1: Family headquarters was defaced, leaving behind a graffiti message pointing
Speaker 1: out the organization's culpability from pioneering the kind of gay
Speaker 1: exterminationist propaganda that the modern conservative right is embracing. The
Speaker 1: message left on the property that James and I visited
Speaker 1: just a few months prior, read quote, their blood is
Speaker 1: on your hands, five lives taken way back in I
Speaker 1: put together behind the Bastards on Focus on the Family
Speaker 1: and their founder, James Dobson, and I've covered Focus on
Speaker 1: the Family's increase in anti trans propaganda earlier this year
Speaker 1: on this very show. After the graffiti was left on
Speaker 1: their headquarters on Thanksgiving, a statement was released by the
Speaker 1: Colorado People's Press, and I'm going to read a few
Speaker 1: parts of that quote. It is no accident that the
Speaker 1: club queue shoeoting happened in Colorado Springs, a city steeped
Speaker 1: in homophobia, transphobia, and white supremacy. It is no surprise
Speaker 1: that somebody did this in this city that is home
Speaker 1: to such a hateful organization as Focus on the Family.
Speaker 1: If you visit their website, you will see them eagerly
Speaker 1: display their desire to rid the world of all queer people.
Speaker 1: It is important to us that you understand why Focus
Speaker 1: on the Family must be held accountable for the ramifications
Speaker 1: of their hateful theology. You have likely seen the onslaught
Speaker 1: of anti trans legislation, of which Focus on the Family
Speaker 1: is a huge proponent, both in funding and propaganda. Focus
Speaker 1: on the Family's goal is to eradicate queerness. Unquote. Two
Speaker 1: of the five people killed in the club queue shooting
Speaker 1: were trans people, and in the days after the attack,
Speaker 1: figures on the right continued to call for attacks on
Speaker 1: trans people and drag queens, using their familiar language of
Speaker 1: groomers and grooming, while of course completely ignoring multiple figures
Speaker 1: within their own myths to have very well documented relationships
Speaker 1: with people convicted or suspected of sex crimes. But obviously
Speaker 1: evidence or logic doesn't really make a difference in these
Speaker 1: types of situations. What's happened is that a handful of
Speaker 1: figures on the right have decided that they can gain power, influence,
Speaker 1: and money by whipping up hatred towards queer people. With
Speaker 1: this hate has come an uptick in violence, and this
Speaker 1: only makes queer havens like the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch more important.
Speaker 1: Last month, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after a donut shop hosted
Speaker 1: a drag queen and queer art event, a man in
Speaker 1: a maca hat smashed the windows of the store with
Speaker 1: a baseball bat and threw in a Molotov cocktail. The
Speaker 1: attacker also taped a note with Bible verses and homophobic
Speaker 1: and transphobic slurs on the window of a neighboring shop.
Speaker 1: This wasn't the time the store had been targeted, and
Speaker 1: this attack happened a day before the shop was set
Speaker 1: to host another drag art event. On December three, a
Speaker 1: right wing activist and former US Army psychological operations officer
Speaker 1: claimed on Facebook that God had caused a power outage
Speaker 1: in Moore County, North Carolina, in an effort to shut
Speaker 1: down a drag show that was currently taking place in
Speaker 1: a local theater. Earlier that same day, a holiday themed
Speaker 1: drag show in Columbus, Ohio, hosted by a Unitarian Universalist
Speaker 1: church was canceled due to threats and protests outside by
Speaker 1: Proud Boys, Patriot Front and a number of unidentified armed
Speaker 1: men in Cammo Patriot Front chanted blood, liberty, and victory,
Speaker 1: while the Proud Boys chanted Feds Feds Feds back at them.
Speaker 1: Despite their disagreements, the two groups seemed perfectly fine working
Speaker 1: together to shut down the drag event. The Nazi group
Speaker 1: White Lives Matter Ohio was set up a few blocks
Speaker 1: away in their skull masks and were seek hiling two
Speaker 1: drivers passing by. After it became clear the drag show
Speaker 1: was not going to take place, the groups moved to
Speaker 1: a busier, more visible street to waive their groomer signs.
Speaker 1: A few dozen Patriot Front members stood chanting outside of
Speaker 1: a Chipotle as a Christian Diminiist flag flew behind them.
Speaker 1: On December seven, someone fired a gun through the window
Speaker 1: of a bar in rent in Washington after threats against
Speaker 1: the bar were posted online for hosting a drag queen
Speaker 1: story time Just a few days ago. On December the
Speaker 1: FBI designated extremist militia group named This Is Texas Freedom
Speaker 1: Force showed up armed with guns outside of a Christmas
Speaker 1: themed drag show in San Antonio, Texas. Other right wing
Speaker 1: groups like the San Antonio Family Association and the Fascist
Speaker 1: Patriot Front also had numbers present. By the end, the
Speaker 1: crowd protesting the drag show was greatly outnumbered by people
Speaker 1: showing up to support and defend the queer event, some
Speaker 1: of whom also showed up armed. What do we do?
Speaker 1: Something that was mentioned across the multiple interviews we did
Speaker 1: while visiting the ranch is the idea of microcosm and macrocosm.
Speaker 1: The Tenacious Unicorn Ranch story and the threats of violence
Speaker 1: that they have faced really does embody a microcosm version
Speaker 1: of the transphobic and queer eliminationist rhetoric and genocide campaign
Speaker 1: that the country as a whole is experiencing. It's just
Speaker 1: that this local manifestation of it happened to be on
Speaker 1: an alpaca farm. As odd as that may be, apparently
Speaker 1: kind of funny. And and then put the way they
Speaker 1: run with their head all the way down to the ground,
Speaker 1: and just yeah that impracticalities. Yeah, little camels, animals straight
Speaker 1: out of you know what they really are. They have
Speaker 1: the same amount of magic. Yeah, just driving up here
Speaker 1: seeing them, I was like, wow, Yeah, they are like
Speaker 1: unicorns are like a mythical and it's just kind of like, wow,
Speaker 1: is this real? It's like a fucking tont on what's on.
Speaker 1: They just looks so snuggleble. I want to snuggle them.
Speaker 1: And the way they walked like that, like that like
Speaker 1: Crew you're ocome. Yeah, when they do a trot like Americana.
Speaker 1: This is clown. He's an asshole, but he's a really
Speaker 1: good dad. Yeah. For this last episode of the series,
Speaker 1: we want to give you a sense of what regular
Speaker 1: life is like at the ranch now that it's been
Speaker 1: almost two years since the siege and people have had
Speaker 1: time to process, grow and adapt. One thing that's growing
Speaker 1: is the number of alpacas, something like that. With the
Speaker 1: recent crea is born, we are a hundred so about
Speaker 1: an alpaca. Um, let's talk a little bit about alpacas.
Speaker 1: I think they're interesting, right, And you came into both
Speaker 1: your alpaca as rescues. Yeah, yeah, were so. At the
Speaker 1: original ranch, we purchased ten alpaca, but it was like
Speaker 1: a rescue purchase. The only way that we could get
Speaker 1: them to give them up as if we paid money
Speaker 1: for them. But they were like they needed new homes.
Speaker 1: That was all from really lovely people. It was just
Speaker 1: like these weren't alpaca. They wanted um. And then we
Speaker 1: learned really quickly that there is a that there's a
Speaker 1: problem in America with alpaca ranchers aging out of being
Speaker 1: able to take care of these really massive herds that
Speaker 1: they've built and either euthanizing or splitting up herds, which
Speaker 1: is both things are not great for the health of
Speaker 1: the alpaca. Yeah. Um, that ends that story. But so
Speaker 1: we found really quickly that there is a as a rescue,
Speaker 1: we were able to help more animals and afford animals,
Speaker 1: you know, like uh because and because we were on
Speaker 1: the acres that were on we could take in entire
Speaker 1: herds and not break them up, which is a big deal. Um.
Speaker 1: And so our first intake of rescues was seventies six
Speaker 1: alpaca from a really great couple in horse Tooth that
Speaker 1: was retiring really great animals, hardy, really quality fiber um
Speaker 1: and we just kind of have been with that model
Speaker 1: ever since as a rescue. And the way you you
Speaker 1: like sustainable as the run cheese, in addition to working outside,
Speaker 1: is selling the fiber, right, the fiber from the animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: both sheep and the alpaca provide fiber that we then
Speaker 1: turned into Really what we do is turn it into yarn.
Speaker 1: And then sell the yarn. We've never needed to go
Speaker 1: beyond that because we've always sold out of our yarn
Speaker 1: almost immediately. Speaking of sheep, here's a nice little clip
Speaker 1: of James fawning over some of the door sets. There's
Speaker 1: a dead nice looking sheep. There's some of them that
Speaker 1: are mixed with the remember what the black face Scotch
Speaker 1: black face? Yeah, um, and they're they're a really lovely mix. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a nice combination. Actually pretty rugged, big and just
Speaker 1: rugged like they put up with everything. Yeah. You can
Speaker 1: see their coats are just like bread, like they're just
Speaker 1: a doughey. Yeah. Yeah. The dorsets have like a nice
Speaker 1: thick fleece and they were like well fleas on the
Speaker 1: head and the night. Yeah, they make really good We
Speaker 1: mixed it with our alpacking yard this year. It's a
Speaker 1: wonderful yarn. It's really rough thinking that there's people that
Speaker 1: are just like fucking out pack of farmers. What's going
Speaker 1: wrong in your life? The US so angry at someone
Speaker 1: for looking after these fleefy animals. Yeah, Like the big
Speaker 1: thing was there was that moment where like they have
Speaker 1: the Nazi barid in town and that's what really like
Speaker 1: we called them out on it, and that's what started
Speaker 1: the animosity. But like it was a great of Nazis, Like, like,
Speaker 1: I don't feel bad, Like it's weird that they took
Speaker 1: it to the level of oh, yeah, well we're going
Speaker 1: to burn down your house and kill you all. That
Speaker 1: will show you, Yeah, it'll show us that your Nazis.
Speaker 1: In our conversation with Jordan's from The Tribune, as somebody
Speaker 1: who was born and raised in this area, he gave
Speaker 1: us his perspective on why people may have thought they
Speaker 1: could get away with attacking the ranch and how there
Speaker 1: has been this cultural shift in recent years to allow
Speaker 1: this kind of reactionary militancy. You know, again, I don't
Speaker 1: think it was anything super organized other than a bunch
Speaker 1: of these individuals that had already been sort of organized
Speaker 1: deciding to do something really stupid. Yeah, and knowing that
Speaker 1: the sheriff and will at other people wouldn't take it
Speaker 1: that seriously. That's what I wondered. Yeah, they thought they
Speaker 1: could get away with it, and they've been a history
Speaker 1: of that, Like if they've done as that sort of
Speaker 1: thing happened in the valley in the past, and there's
Speaker 1: been plenty of just as I said, but you know,
Speaker 1: but usually that stuff wasn't condoned, so eventually they get
Speaker 1: caught in terms of like like pressuring or minorities. You know,
Speaker 1: in the past, there was there was always some of
Speaker 1: those types of things, but it also wasn't condoned or
Speaker 1: even excused even against most If it came out, then
Speaker 1: those people were chunned and shamed even by Republicans. But
Speaker 1: these days it's much more like, well, we'll look the
Speaker 1: other way, you know. Now it's tipped the other direction, thankfully.
Speaker 1: So far, the efforts of these few individuals to harm
Speaker 1: or pressure the Unicorns out of the community have unequivocally failed,
Speaker 1: and in some ways just made stronger bonds. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: wanted you to leave, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean all
Speaker 1: of it was designed to make you so afraid you
Speaker 1: would go away. Yeah, like yeah, terrorism, and that hasn't happened, right,
Speaker 1: So you await a year and change, year and a
Speaker 1: half all nice? Yeah, two years in two years and
Speaker 1: change and a year plus since since racist And how
Speaker 1: are things now? I think at this point people legitimately
Speaker 1: love us like locals, like, yeah, people call us the Unicorns,
Speaker 1: and they everybody knows who we are. And it's and
Speaker 1: not in a bad way, like it's really we feel
Speaker 1: at home here. Because of the timing of their initial
Speaker 1: move over to West Cliff, it made local community building
Speaker 1: kind of challenging and little did they know that they
Speaker 1: would crucially need community and support in the month to come.
Speaker 1: So because it was during the pandemic uh and everything
Speaker 1: was on lockdown, we didn't establish a lot of community
Speaker 1: we Uh. Any moved in who was somebody we knew
Speaker 1: down in birth It which was very close to us, uh,
Speaker 1: and so she moved up here at the exact same
Speaker 1: time we were moving up here. So we did have
Speaker 1: like somebody that we could like talk to and interact with.
Speaker 1: But they were just as new to the area as
Speaker 1: we were. Um. And I mean honestly setting up a
Speaker 1: ranch and moving from one location to another when you're
Speaker 1: talking about like multiple hundreds of animals and at that
Speaker 1: point we were six people. Uh. We were very self
Speaker 1: focused for the first six months we were up here. UH.
Speaker 1: So our general sweep was they have Shakespeare in the
Speaker 1: park and it's a tourist town, so it seems great.
Speaker 1: We moved here because we could afford this house and
Speaker 1: no other house in Colorado uh, and then and then
Speaker 1: it slowly started to become a parent that we've moved
Speaker 1: into a very red area. But again, there wasn't any
Speaker 1: overt signs upon arrival, Like everybody was cool and honestly,
Speaker 1: like people are still pretty cool of people that suck.
Speaker 1: As things have steadily stabilized and settled into a version
Speaker 1: of normal, the Unicorns have been getting more involved throughout
Speaker 1: the local community. A little while back, they stepped up
Speaker 1: to assist with recycling for the county. We stepped up
Speaker 1: for a small period of time when the recycling company
Speaker 1: that was handling the counties recycling folded. We stepped up
Speaker 1: with our horse trailers and just collected recycling and drove
Speaker 1: it to a facility. Um. Now there's actually a facility
Speaker 1: in the Westcliffe Landfill that does recycling for the this
Speaker 1: county and the neighboring three counties. Um. And that was
Speaker 1: a building that like we designed and the person who's
Speaker 1: running at Rocky Mountain Rocky Mountain Recycling, Joni's her name.
Speaker 1: Amazing people. They're doing great things and we're glad that
Speaker 1: we could help in whatever we could. It just became
Speaker 1: a government project and that's when we stepped out because
Speaker 1: that's not really what we're about. But yeah, and as
Speaker 1: socialization has been able to get more possible since the pandemic,
Speaker 1: the Unicorns have developed ways to connect with the existing
Speaker 1: community of queers and weirdos in the area. Jen put
Speaker 1: together like a weekly game night, and it's it's like
Speaker 1: slowly growing and we're bringing in queer people to play
Speaker 1: board games and stuff. Yeah, we've got, uh, four different
Speaker 1: people from in town who you know, otherwise don't really
Speaker 1: have a connection to the ranch coming in to play
Speaker 1: a board game or maybe Magic Night and I never
Speaker 1: playing Suspicion. That's going to keep growing. Uh, it might
Speaker 1: be Arkham Horror third Edition, or it might be Mysterium,
Speaker 1: or it might be Magic. Okay, magic because I would
Speaker 1: I would would love to beat everyone here in a game.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, you should play with us. Yes, that fun,
Speaker 1: even little things like that, like like and it's just
Speaker 1: always to build a community. Yeah, it's important because we
Speaker 1: need to be here when like if it gets really
Speaker 1: bad on the macro cosm scale, things do seem to
Speaker 1: be getting bad. When we talked with Jordan's about how
Speaker 1: George from The Sentinel was targeting the Unicorns, the conversation.
Speaker 1: The segued into how there's been this shift from economic
Speaker 1: conservatism to this rising brand of far right Christian vanguardism.
Speaker 1: I think if I was to classify some of the
Speaker 1: movement you see in conservative America right now, where it
Speaker 1: all starts to make sense is that in the past,
Speaker 1: conservatism was always trying to push against sort of this
Speaker 1: idea of revolution or progress or too fast. You know,
Speaker 1: they always go back to the French Revolution. That's where
Speaker 1: the left and right kind of started saying, hey, if
Speaker 1: you move too quickly with progress, everybody gets their heads
Speaker 1: chopped off, you know. So that was kind of conservatism,
Speaker 1: which is, we don't really believe in anything necessarily, We're
Speaker 1: just going to hold the tradition and just kind of
Speaker 1: be saying no a lot. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: that's how conservatism was here until the Soviet Union fell,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden something switched, which is,
Speaker 1: we have the system that one our system should spread
Speaker 1: across the world, because if every day but he did
Speaker 1: American style capitalist democracy, we would enter this weird and
Speaker 1: randy in utopia. Yeah, into history, but on a conservative side. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: That's exactly what it was. And but the problems is
Speaker 1: two thousand one particularly here pushed it over. It went
Speaker 1: from like, okay, maybe two we're actually going to try
Speaker 1: to push this on other countries. And really what I
Speaker 1: called the right or the conservative right now they got
Speaker 1: bit by the utopian bug, which is if everybody is
Speaker 1: armed to the teeth, if everybody lives the way that
Speaker 1: they dictate they should live, which is some weird and
Speaker 1: randy in version of of life and morality, then we'll
Speaker 1: enter utopia. And so if anybody stands against you as
Speaker 1: that prophet, you are the enemy. So that can be
Speaker 1: That's why the right now turns on themselves all the time.
Speaker 1: Is any but it stands against them is the enemy?
Speaker 1: A liberal stops utopia? Is there definite? Anybody that stops utopia?
Speaker 1: You have to go through this is liberal or communist,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think if you look at it
Speaker 1: in that lens, the world makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 1: I don't see very much utopianism at all on the
Speaker 1: left anymore, whereas on the right it's everywhere. So it's
Speaker 1: one of those weird political things that's flopped the other
Speaker 1: direction now, just in different words, different ways. Utopianism is
Speaker 1: on the right now. They also need to have some
Speaker 1: type of conflict. They need to have a purging episode.
Speaker 1: You have to purge everybody that's on the other side
Speaker 1: to enter utopia. And that that's why Christians are really
Speaker 1: into it. They read the Book of Revelation. We have
Speaker 1: to have the civil war, we have to purge all
Speaker 1: the leftists because on the other side we enter the
Speaker 1: Kingdom of God. It's the exactly, It's absolute millinarianism. And
Speaker 1: that's what we're facing here. If I was a summit up,
Speaker 1: that's how would say it was. It's definitely millenarism in
Speaker 1: the local form it. If we are going to look
Speaker 1: at the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch story as a microcosm of
Speaker 1: transphobic violence, then I think it should also be seen
Speaker 1: as a case of study of the invaluable role solidarity
Speaker 1: and community have in resisting the concerted effort to harm
Speaker 1: queer people back when the siege was just starting. Simply
Speaker 1: feeling able to go to sleep because people were willing
Speaker 1: to show up for you is just one example from
Speaker 1: this story. That's a powerful display of the values many
Speaker 1: people claim to have but seldom implement. We were exhausted
Speaker 1: and so to have people show up and be like you,
Speaker 1: like you, you will be safe tonight, lay down, gets
Speaker 1: sleep and trusted enough to sleep like because it was incredible.
Speaker 1: It was incredible. As the unicorns continue to make connections
Speaker 1: and become a known staple of the larger local community,
Speaker 1: it's made organizing any harassment against them more difficult. I
Speaker 1: bet a bunch of those people who hate us have
Speaker 1: tested the waters with their friends, like all those unicorns,
Speaker 1: and they're like, what, they're cool, and oh, yeah that's
Speaker 1: what that's that's why I meant um. But that's been
Speaker 1: our ongoing precautions because it hasn't the animosity from that
Speaker 1: group hasn't gone away, and it does resurface every once
Speaker 1: in a while, like some people threatened to kill our
Speaker 1: dogs a little while back and things like that. So
Speaker 1: the same people, we're not sure possibly yeah, no way
Speaker 1: confirming or denying. Nowadays, some security measures have been integrated
Speaker 1: into their everyday lives thanks to support they've gotten from strangers.
Speaker 1: Uh we definitely we have cameras, so uh we we
Speaker 1: have to go fund me where people amazingly kind of
Speaker 1: like through a large amount of money at us, which
Speaker 1: afforded a better fence and cameras everywhere on property, so
Speaker 1: that in things like gear, yeah, better gear and upgrades
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. So um, we kind of earned
Speaker 1: an ongoing keep us safe mode. But like cameras and guns,
Speaker 1: that's how we do it. And I do, I really
Speaker 1: do think like we showed the shitty people of this
Speaker 1: town like, don't mess with well. We showed what well.
Speaker 1: What we showed was that community matters and if you
Speaker 1: weren't a ship hell, community will show up for you.
Speaker 1: The day after the club queue shooting once again, the
Speaker 1: ranch posted a tweet asking for people to come. This time.
Speaker 1: They didn't need help, they wanted to offer it. They're
Speaker 1: only an hour or so away from Colorado Springs, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to offer their home as a place to heal,
Speaker 1: to talk, and to begin moving forward as a part
Speaker 1: of the community struck by violence and hate. In addition
Speaker 1: to a home for the ranchers and the animals, the
Speaker 1: ranch also provides emergency housing for queer people who aren't
Speaker 1: safe wherever they currently are. There have been lots of
Speaker 1: residents at the ranch in the four years Stephen operating.
Speaker 1: Some of them come briefly and use the stability to
Speaker 1: get set up with a fresh start in some place.
Speaker 1: Some others intend to stay but find the country life
Speaker 1: isn't for them, and some like j become permanent fixtures
Speaker 1: on the ranch. The term you've kind of used a
Speaker 1: lot to describe this place is like a queer haven.
Speaker 1: And the past year, definitely there's been a pretty volatile
Speaker 1: increase in transphobia and queer phobia, even like a resurgence
Speaker 1: of homophobia. So as this type of stuff is happening,
Speaker 1: as we're seeing more kind of rhetoric around like a
Speaker 1: queer genocide or queer exterminationism, how do you see this
Speaker 1: place and you know, possible places like it fitting into
Speaker 1: kind of how we how the world seems to be going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what we've seen, aside from people wanting to come
Speaker 1: up here and live permanently that we're we've put that
Speaker 1: on hold right now because we're just kind of, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we don't have the space to like facilitate. But
Speaker 1: what we have found is something that we are as
Speaker 1: a haven. What the thing that we do that's most
Speaker 1: important is groups of queer people will come here for
Speaker 1: a recharge and to feel like it is recharging to
Speaker 1: spend a week up here in community with other queer
Speaker 1: people with no burden from the outside and just being
Speaker 1: yourself network. Yeah, and like kind of re igniting your
Speaker 1: fire for revolution and for your and kind of I
Speaker 1: don't know, like I don't know, like touching base and
Speaker 1: realizing that like the community is still big, it is
Speaker 1: still growing, people are still standing strong. Being able to
Speaker 1: come up here and really in vibe that for a
Speaker 1: week or two has been from the letters I get
Speaker 1: really important to people and so that that is what
Speaker 1: we like deliver routinely. Um. We do also like emergency,
Speaker 1: like save people when we can, Like if you're just
Speaker 1: got kicked out on the street, you don't know what
Speaker 1: to do, but you can kind of like you have
Speaker 1: somewhere to go, but you can't get there yet. We
Speaker 1: are a really good way station for people in that position.
Speaker 1: You come up, uh you know, touch grass for a
Speaker 1: week and then go back out into the world like
Speaker 1: and given you know, climate collapse and encroaching fascism, um,
Speaker 1: which if you don't get then you need to probably
Speaker 1: study your history. Listen to this podcast more often. Probably yeah,
Speaker 1: probably there there. You know, there's gonna be rainbow railroads. Um,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a lot of bad things happening,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna happen quickly. Well, we'll still be here.
Speaker 1: We're trying to grow out of a size that like
Speaker 1: and help people more directly. Well, but also we are
Speaker 1: already still here. Yeah we didn't grow, we'd still be
Speaker 1: here and you could count on us, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. But the networks that are set up, um
Speaker 1: like being able to quickly get people out of the country,
Speaker 1: being able to quickly get people to safety from anywhere
Speaker 1: in the country. Uh, that's what we have been focusing
Speaker 1: on what watching, much like we started in response to
Speaker 1: the violence that was that was ratcheting because of the
Speaker 1: Trump administration. We haven't lessened that right like we are.
Speaker 1: We're setting up networks and possibilities to get people safe
Speaker 1: from very unsafe situations in this country. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of where it's going fucking everywhere right now. So that
Speaker 1: kind of networking has we've found not only bolstered people,
Speaker 1: but is really important. The need for places like these
Speaker 1: is growing just as quickly as the any factured panic
Speaker 1: around drag shows. In response, the Unicorns have decided to
Speaker 1: expand to another property in the valley and one in
Speaker 1: Boulder County. These properties will allow them to serve a
Speaker 1: larger community, to grow crops, have horses, and increase the
Speaker 1: amount of emergency housing they can provide. The Unicorns have
Speaker 1: launched a new go fund meat to help cover some
Speaker 1: of the starting costs to get the new locations up
Speaker 1: and running and begin farming operations. The additions would not
Speaker 1: only be providing more housing and income, but also add
Speaker 1: the ability to offer support groups and host queer events
Speaker 1: that are safe and accessible to focus in and around
Speaker 1: Boulder County, Colorado. You know, we've had some really intimate
Speaker 1: conversations with some queer people that are like, you know,
Speaker 1: like what you're doing is kind of keeping me going.
Speaker 1: So it's it's pretty seriously big has Uh. It's why
Speaker 1: we weigh everything so heavily, because it's like, look, we
Speaker 1: can't fail. Like people people put that much faith and
Speaker 1: like belief on what you're doing. You can't, um, you
Speaker 1: can't let them down. Like we've said from the beginning,
Speaker 1: like this project isn't about us, Oh yeah, Like this
Speaker 1: project is about the community and giving giving us a
Speaker 1: stronghold of just fucking hope. Instead of walking away from
Speaker 1: this series thinking, oh I'm gonna go move to the ranch,
Speaker 1: because I guarantee there's not enough room for everybody listening,
Speaker 1: even with the ongoing expansion. But people should take what
Speaker 1: we've learned from the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch and apply it
Speaker 1: elsewhere wherever you are. You can apply this example, with
Speaker 1: all of its ups and downs, to perspective havens across
Speaker 1: the continent, whether in cities or in the country. Building
Speaker 1: queer zones doesn't need to take form as a comp
Speaker 1: letely isolated, closed off commune as we've seen here. Having
Speaker 1: connections and fostering community with those around you is a
Speaker 1: crucial part of maintaining a livelihood beyond just mere survival.
Speaker 1: While this has been a story about the Internet and
Speaker 1: how it provides both positive connections and a medium for
Speaker 1: some of the worst beginned hatred, and of story about guns,
Speaker 1: both how they have been used as a tool to
Speaker 1: protect trans people and rule Colorado, as well as being
Speaker 1: part of the original threat to translives and now a
Speaker 1: seemingly increasing one. But if there's one thing that I
Speaker 1: hope people can take away from this story, it's how
Speaker 1: all of these positive aspects are meaningless unless people are
Speaker 1: willing to demonstrate solidarity and work towards building a community
Speaker 1: that's capable of ensuring a queer haven, like the Tenacious
Speaker 1: Unicorn Ranch, is able to con tinue despite threats from
Speaker 1: queer exterminationists. If you want to keep up with the Ranch,
Speaker 1: you can find them at Tenacious Unicorn Ranch dot com,
Speaker 1: where you can also find their Patreon and the go
Speaker 1: fund me page for their expansion. You can find James
Speaker 1: at James Stout and you can find me at Hungry
Speaker 1: About I See you on the other side. Hey, We'll
Speaker 1: be back Monday with more episodes every week from now
Speaker 1: until the heat death of the Universe. It Could Happen
Speaker 1: Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
Speaker 1: media dot com, or check us out on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.