Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: There is a regular episode this week, a proper second
Speaker 2: episode for a brand new show, something I put a
Speaker 2: lot of time into to give listeners to the show
Speaker 2: what I hope is an impressive introduction to it. It's
Speaker 2: already recorded and edited and scheduled, but I realized on Sunday.
Speaker 1: Night what the date was? August eleventh?
Speaker 2: How can I tell you my new listeners about the
Speaker 2: weird little guys trying to ruin America without acknowledging that today,
Speaker 2: as I'm writing this, it's Monday, August twelfth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Seven years ago, Charlottesville was invaded by Neo Nazis, Confederate secessionists,
Speaker 2: white supremacists, white nationalists, racists, and anti Semites of all allegiances.
Speaker 2: That's what started my obsession. That's where this show was
Speaker 2: truly born, because I spent the last seven years trying
Speaker 2: to understand those men, What brought them here, what made
Speaker 2: them that way, what do they actually believe in? What
Speaker 2: are they just saying out of opportunism or for shock value?
Speaker 2: And do they even know the difference anymore? Weird little guys?
Speaker 2: This show wouldn't exist but for the years I've spent
Speaker 2: looking for and then looking at those guys in particular,
Speaker 2: and then trying to track them back in time.
Speaker 1: What groups were they in?
Speaker 2: Who runs those who founded them? What ideological lineage do
Speaker 2: they spring from? When I look at a photograph of
Speaker 2: a man beating my neighbors in the streets of my hometown,
Speaker 2: I wonder not just who is he, but how did
Speaker 2: he get here? And I don't mean did he fly
Speaker 2: into the Charlesville Airport and then rent a car? Did
Speaker 2: he park in the garage downtown or on some side
Speaker 2: street in front of a house where someone I love
Speaker 2: is raising their family.
Speaker 1: I mean who did he follow?
Speaker 2: And how did that man arrive at a place where
Speaker 2: he could command strangers from the internet to follow him
Speaker 2: into battle. It's like making a family tree, but the
Speaker 2: fruit is bitter and rotten, and the roots are cracking
Speaker 2: our foundations. I think as the show progresses, many of
Speaker 2: the men who played a role in the Unite the
Speaker 2: Right rally will earn their own full episode. A lot
Speaker 2: of them are incredibly weird little guys without a doubt.
Speaker 2: But it didn't feel right letting this week go by
Speaker 2: without marking it, without putting a pin in this state
Speaker 2: to say here's where the show was born, because over
Speaker 2: the years, as I accumulated thousands of pages of notes
Speaker 2: trying to find a source for what happened here, I
Speaker 2: realized the timeline of one man's crimes doesn't begin with
Speaker 2: the date of the charged conduct on the half a David.
Speaker 2: It doesn't begin the day he decided ideological violence was
Speaker 2: an option for him. It doesn't begin the day he
Speaker 2: joined an extremist organization, or the day he was radicalized,
Speaker 2: or even the day he was born. The more I
Speaker 2: dug on any one story, the more I realized you
Speaker 2: have to reach decades into the past to even begin
Speaker 2: to understand why you were looking at a photograph of
Speaker 2: a man with his hands or on the throat of
Speaker 2: a counter protester in full view of an entire police
Speaker 2: department Charlottesville, as people refer to that day, that event
Speaker 2: in this place didn't begin when they bought their boarding
Speaker 2: passes or joined the discord.
Speaker 1: It started before they were born, and.
Speaker 2: It continues long after the barricades were removed and everyone
Speaker 2: went home. That's a very long story, and I hope
Speaker 2: I can get started on it with his show, But
Speaker 2: today we can't start at the beginning we're still in
Speaker 2: the middle. I don't know how much pre emble you need.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember the Unite the Right rally.
Speaker 2: Beyond a handful of the same photos, every outlet seems
Speaker 2: to run as shorthand for white supremacist violence.
Speaker 1: A few fleeting images.
Speaker 2: A close up photo of men shouldered to shoulder, torches
Speaker 2: in hands, mouths open, mid shout, faces contorted with the
Speaker 2: effort to be heard above the roar, to have their
Speaker 2: cry of Jews will not replace.
Speaker 1: Us be the loudest.
Speaker 2: A man's body tossed into the air bouncing off a
Speaker 2: dodge challenger.
Speaker 1: You've seen the photo. I know you have, But do
Speaker 1: you know his name?
Speaker 2: A photo of a line of men in home made
Speaker 2: uniforms and plastic helmets costplaying as American Black Shirts, plowing
Speaker 2: through peaceful protesters.
Speaker 1: You'd recognize these images if you saw them. You've seen them.
Speaker 2: You'd look at them and say, that's from Charlottesville. But
Speaker 2: you wouldn't mean Charlesville, a place, the mid size college
Speaker 2: town where people cross the street and that spot every
Speaker 2: day to get to the public library. No, you'd mean Charlottesville,
Speaker 2: the moment in time, Charlottesville, the violence Charlottesville, the Nazi rally.
Speaker 2: And that's not your fault, that's completely understandable. That just
Speaker 2: means it's my responsibility to ground these stories in the
Speaker 2: places where they happen, to tether these individual men to
Speaker 2: the context from which they arose. Today, as I write this,
Speaker 2: I had to get up from my computer to go downtown.
Speaker 2: I stopped at Fourth Street. There are always purple ribbons
Speaker 2: tied around a street sign, the intersection where Heather Hire
Speaker 2: was murdered, her favorite color. Today there is a small vigil.
Speaker 2: I didn't know Heather, but I stop on that spot
Speaker 2: often to think of her. Today I stopped at that
Speaker 2: spot for a few minutes, and then I walked to
Speaker 2: the courthouse to sit for hours listening to lawyers argue
Speaker 2: motions in a case against one of the headline speakers
Speaker 2: at the rally.
Speaker 1: That killed her.
Speaker 2: Seven years to the day, to the hour, to the
Speaker 2: minute even and I'm sitting in a tiny upstairs courtroom
Speaker 2: with a man who never got to give his speech
Speaker 2: at the rally that day. A courthouse employee held a
Speaker 2: door open for me. I'm there so often, they're used
Speaker 2: to seeing me in my little notebook. He told me,
Speaker 2: I look nice today. I said thank you, because the
Speaker 2: alternative was to say that I'm wearing my blue sun
Speaker 2: dress with birds on it because the birds are purple,
Speaker 2: and it was the only thing I could find this morning.
Speaker 1: In Purple was Heather's favorite color.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter at all, but when there's nothing you
Speaker 2: can do, you do things.
Speaker 1: That don't make sense.
Speaker 2: I didn't know her. I don't think she would care
Speaker 2: that the birds on my dress are purple. But I
Speaker 2: woke up this morning on the date that she died,
Speaker 2: and all I can really do is to keep trying
Speaker 2: to tell the stories of the men who set a
Speaker 2: murderer on a collision course with the crowd she marched
Speaker 2: with that day. Heather Hire was a person, a real
Speaker 2: person with a job, a little dog, and friends and
Speaker 2: a family who loved her. It isn't fair to her
Speaker 2: memory to reduce her to a martyr, a concept, an idea,
Speaker 2: to shrink her down to the moment of her death,
Speaker 2: and to use her name as shorthand for lives lost
Speaker 2: to fascist violence. She was not the first or the
Speaker 2: last innocent life lost to right wing extremism, but her
Speaker 2: death is what set me on this path, and I remember.
Speaker 1: Her today and I hope you will too.
Speaker 2: It is perhaps a bit trite to end with a
Speaker 2: quote from doctor Martin Luther King Junior, but in his
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty three book Strength to Love, he wrote returning
Speaker 2: hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a
Speaker 2: night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness.
Speaker 2: Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate.
Speaker 2: Only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence,
Speaker 2: and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.
Speaker 2: Doctor King may have had the strength to love his enemies.
Speaker 2: Your pastor would tell you Jesus wants you to love
Speaker 2: your enemies. I don't know that I have that strength,
Speaker 2: but I work so hard not to harden my heart.
Speaker 2: I am actively working every day to remind myself. I
Speaker 2: don't do this because I hate my enemies. I do
Speaker 2: this because I love everyone else. I know doctor King
Speaker 2: had something else in mind. But when I say only
Speaker 2: love can drive out hate, I don't mean we have
Speaker 2: to love the ones that hate us. I don't think
Speaker 2: our love can transform the hate in their hearts. Maybe
Speaker 2: your pastor can do that, Maybe you can do that.
Speaker 2: But what I mean is that we have to love
Speaker 2: each other enough to protect the most vulnerablem We have
Speaker 2: to love our vision of the world that we want
Speaker 2: to live in enough to fight for it. We have
Speaker 2: to love the idea of society without them in it
Speaker 2: enough to throw our bodies down like sandbags against a
Speaker 2: rising tide of fascism and the light driving out of
Speaker 2: the darkness. That's what I hope to be. I want
Speaker 2: to shine a light into these dark corners, like laundry
Speaker 2: hung on the line to bleach the stains. I want
Speaker 2: to be the hot Southern sun on an afternoon in August.
Speaker 1: And that's why I'm showing you these weird little guys.
Speaker 1: Weird Little Guys is the production of coal Zone Media.
Speaker 1: Or more from coal Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Visit our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out
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