Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here. I
Speaker 2: am your occasional host, Molly Conger, and today I have
Speaker 2: exactly the kind of story you probably expect when you
Speaker 2: hear my voice on this feed. A white nationalist has
Speaker 2: gone and done something we all wish that he was
Speaker 2: not doing. If you listen to my show Weird Little Guys,
Speaker 2: you already know a little bit about this particular guy.
Speaker 2: On that show, I talk about white nationalists, Neo Nazis,
Speaker 2: right wing extremists, aspiring terrorists, things of that nature. My
Speaker 2: domain is mostly guys you've never heard of because they
Speaker 2: failed to live up to their goal of becoming the
Speaker 2: next Hitler or whatever. It's funnier than it sounds, I swear,
Speaker 2: But unfortunately for all of us, sometimes one of those
Speaker 2: guys breaches containment talking about today, wants to be more
Speaker 2: than just one of the weird little guys trying to
Speaker 2: make a name for himself on the fringes of the
Speaker 2: white nationalist movement. He wants to be a Congressman. He's
Speaker 2: trying to make himself everybody's problem, and that makes him
Speaker 2: part of what is happening here. Back in August, Representative
Speaker 2: Nancy Mace announced that she wouldn't seek reelection in South
Speaker 2: Carolina's first congressional district and she would instead focus on
Speaker 2: making a run for governor, And that announcement opened the floodgates.
Speaker 2: All but one of the ten Republicans vying for the
Speaker 2: nomination to replace her filed their paperwork after the announcement.
Speaker 2: I don't pay a ton of attention to this sort
Speaker 2: of thing. It's not really my wheelhouse. But last month
Speaker 2: a man named Tyler Dikes joined the race, filing paperwork
Speaker 2: as a congressional candidate in Mace's district. Now, like I said,
Speaker 2: it's a crowded field. There are ten people in this primary,
Speaker 2: and it's Nancy Mace's district. So being a little bit
Speaker 2: of a conspiracy theorist with an extremely right wing policy
Speaker 2: platform doesn't really set you apart. They all kind of
Speaker 2: blend together most years. I probably couldn't tell you a
Speaker 2: whole lot about every primary candidate in my own district,
Speaker 2: let alone won two states away. So on the surface,
Speaker 2: he's just another carbon copy America first Zelot trying to
Speaker 2: fit this particular mold. He's created an image for his
Speaker 2: campaign that's not unlike Nancy Mace's and I guess that
Speaker 2: makes sense, right. These people voted for her, so maybe
Speaker 2: that's what works here. Tyler Dykes's campaign website is pretty
Speaker 2: similar to Nancy Mace's. They both emphasize their personal connection
Speaker 2: to military service. Nancy Mace graduated from the Citadel Military
Speaker 2: College and Hyler Dykes features photos of himself and his
Speaker 2: Marine Corps dress blues. They both describe themselves as entrepreneurs
Speaker 2: and business owners, and they both hate immigrants so much
Speaker 2: that their lust for mass deportation isn't even confined only
Speaker 2: to the pages devoted to their position on the issue.
Speaker 2: It's in their candidate biographies, and they frame themselves as fighters.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of fight based language, fighting for America,
Speaker 2: fighting for Christ, and they both really position their devotion
Speaker 2: to God as something they have to fight for and
Speaker 2: fight against the Christ hating whardes on the left to
Speaker 2: keep like this is something someone's trying to take from them.
Speaker 2: Their platforms are pretty similar to America first, South Carolina first,
Speaker 2: law and order, tough on crime, deport millions of people.
Speaker 2: Nancy Mace is running for governor on eliminating the state
Speaker 2: income tax and if he gets to congress. Tyler Diyke
Speaker 2: says he wants to slash taxes too, But of the
Speaker 2: five main policy ideas on his congressional campaign website, the
Speaker 2: one that's about taxes the tax that he will cut
Speaker 2: as a congressman. He wrote that he will end property
Speaker 2: taxes now. Regardless of how you feel about property taxes,
Speaker 2: those are imposed by your state and local government. The
Speaker 2: federal government doesn't tax your property. So I guess he's
Speaker 2: got that Republican tax cut spirit. But he's a little confused.
Speaker 2: But overall just another far right America First candidate trying
Speaker 2: to elbow his way into this attention economy. It's distasteful,
Speaker 2: it's bigoted, it's chrysto fascist, enophobic, poorly articulated, economically unsound,
Speaker 2: but it's not unique or interesting. These guys are a
Speaker 2: dime a dozen and they'll mostly be gone by the
Speaker 2: time the primaries end. But there is one really weird
Speaker 2: thing about Tyler Diyke's campaign messaging. He keeps bringing up
Speaker 2: that he's not a Nazi. He wants you to know
Speaker 2: that no one's asking him this. He's bringing it up preemptively.
Speaker 2: I am not a Nazi. Letters that he mailed to
Speaker 2: the homes of hundreds of voters in his district are
Speaker 2: starting to raise questions he thinks are already answered in
Speaker 2: those letters.
Speaker 3: And here's the thing. They still call me a Nazi.
Speaker 4: To this there they still random me is all these evil,
Speaker 4: horrific things.
Speaker 3: But let me tell you this, what makes me a Nazi?
Speaker 4: I love Christ, I love God. I love my country.
Speaker 4: I love my safe, my family, and my community and
Speaker 4: the entirety of the Low Country area. And that's why
Speaker 4: I live here because I love it so much. So
Speaker 4: does that make me a Nazi? Does loving your family,
Speaker 4: loving God? Does love in your country? Does that make
Speaker 4: you a Nazi?
Speaker 3: That makes you a nazi?
Speaker 2: Sophiets, Oh wow, he's just another tragic victim of cancel culture.
Speaker 2: He's being attacked by the woke mobs who hate good
Speaker 2: Christian men, and that's why they're calling him nazi.
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Is there another reason that this keeps coming up? Or
Speaker 2: is it just because he loves his family so much?
Speaker 4: So it's quite interesting. You know, my experience is anily six.
Speaker 4: For example, my brand is a neo Nazi domestic terrorists
Speaker 4: because of the wave.
Speaker 2: Oh it's not just because he loves his family. It's
Speaker 2: because he's a peaceful, patriotic supporter of Donald Trump who
Speaker 2: visited the Capitol Building and the communists who run the
Speaker 2: mainstream media are unfairly showing a photograph of him where
Speaker 2: he was simply waving hello to a friend. And that's
Speaker 2: why they're calling him a Nazi, because he loves America
Speaker 2: too much and he waved to load to a friend
Speaker 2: while on a sightseeing trip to the Capitol Building. It
Speaker 2: probably won't surprise you to know that that is not
Speaker 2: the whole story. He's getting closer. It's definitely a little
Speaker 2: bit more about what specifically he was doing with his
Speaker 2: right arm at the top of the east stairs of
Speaker 2: the Capitol Building a little after two pm on January sixth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one. It's more about that than it is
Speaker 2: about his love of his family. He's getting warmer. See.
Speaker 2: The reason he keeps bringing up that he doesn't want
Speaker 2: to be called a Nazi is because there are Nazi allegations.
Speaker 2: But these allegations aren't just lies from the evil left
Speaker 2: wing media. It's something he's been asked about by the FBI,
Speaker 2: by the DOJ, and the Marine Corps and police in
Speaker 2: multiple jurisdictions. Across several states. A lot of people are
Speaker 2: asking him about the Nazi thing, so it makes sense
Speaker 2: that he'd want to get out ahead of it and
Speaker 2: assure the voters that there's a good explanation when he
Speaker 2: brings up that innocent wave that's being taken out of
Speaker 2: context to smear him as a Nazi. He's talking about
Speaker 2: a photograph, a particular photograph and one of many that
Speaker 2: federal prosecutors included in their sentencing memorandum after Tyler Dykes
Speaker 2: accepted a plea agreement in federal court, he pleaded guilty
Speaker 2: to two counts of assaulting an officer during the breach
Speaker 2: of the Capitol on January sixth, twenty twenty one. In
Speaker 2: exchange for his cooperation, the government dropped the other eight
Speaker 2: counts on the indictment. So in that sentencing memorandum there's
Speaker 2: a picture. It's a still frame that was taken from
Speaker 2: a video, but obviously you can't put a video on paper,
Speaker 2: so it's just a still frame, and it shows a
Speaker 2: mass of people making their way up the east steps
Speaker 2: of the Capitol Building on the afternoon of January sixth.
Speaker 2: Whoever's taking the video was standing at the bottom of
Speaker 2: the stairs, so you're just seeing the backs of the
Speaker 2: people in this crowd who are walking up the stairs,
Speaker 2: except for the figure in the center. In the center
Speaker 2: of the picture, at the top of the stairs, a
Speaker 2: very tall man in a black jacket and a gray
Speaker 2: mask has turned around so he's facing the plaza below,
Speaker 2: and he's sort of squared up facing down the stairs,
Speaker 2: and his right arm is completely extended at about a
Speaker 2: forty five degree angle, elbow straight wrists, straight, fingers together.
Speaker 2: The government's caption reads still from video showing Dikes performing
Speaker 2: what appears to be the Sein Kyle's salute after he
Speaker 2: arrives on the landing in front of the East Rotunda doors.
Speaker 2: He maintains that he was waving to a friend. For
Speaker 2: what it's worth, I've seen a lot of these waves,
Speaker 2: and I know what it looks like to me, and
Speaker 2: regardless of what it looks like to you in this photograph,
Speaker 2: I have a video of him doing the exact same
Speaker 2: wave at a Nazi rally, so it's not just a picture.
Speaker 2: He only served three of the fifty seven months he
Speaker 2: was sentenced to spend in prison before he was released
Speaker 2: in January of twenty twenty five. As a result of
Speaker 2: Trump's blanket pardons for the nearly sixteen hundred January sixth defendants.
Speaker 2: But that's not the issue here. He's not ashamed of
Speaker 2: being a January sixth defendant. That's a badge of honor.
Speaker 2: That's not a problem. If he can spin this Nazi
Speaker 2: thing into a story that reinforces this narrative of brave
Speaker 2: January sixth patriots who are being persecuted by communists and
Speaker 2: liberals and the wop mob, it stops being a problem
Speaker 2: for the people whose attention and votes and donations he wants.
Speaker 2: So his story is pretty simple. All the people calling
Speaker 2: him a Nazi are lying. They're taking a single photograph
Speaker 2: out of context. It's not a Nazi salute. It's a wave.
Speaker 2: And all of this, all of this Nazi talk, it's
Speaker 2: all just about this one single incident, this one picture,
Speaker 2: this one wave, and the government, the government is preventing
Speaker 2: him from proving that to.
Speaker 4: You and then the honorable judge that I had denied
Speaker 4: me being able to get that evidence and being able
Speaker 4: to show the other people, and so a lot of
Speaker 4: these people, unfortunately, because of a lot of the news
Speaker 4: media and because of the efforts of the Biden administration.
Speaker 4: They see me as an enemy and as a terrorist.
Speaker 2: That's Tyler Dyke's in mid October of this year, telling
Speaker 2: a local TV news crew in Hiltonhead that the media
Speaker 2: is complicit in spreading these lies the government told about
Speaker 2: him in court. When he was interviewed last month by
Speaker 2: a conspiracy theorist and right wing podcaster named Anne Vandersteele,
Speaker 2: she was on his side. She was earnest and she
Speaker 2: wanted to get to the bottom of this. He told
Speaker 2: her that the government's entire case was lie after lie,
Speaker 2: and there's proof that he never did any of those
Speaker 2: things on January sixth. And she's excited to hear this,
Speaker 2: and she wants to see these videos because she would
Speaker 2: love to see proof that the government is persecuting our
Speaker 2: brave January sixth patriots. But there's one little problem.
Speaker 3: Well, you know that's a very funny thing. The honorable
Speaker 3: judge in my case actually put out a gaggle order
Speaker 3: banning me from being able to have any of the
Speaker 3: discovery evidence for me to be able to defend myself
Speaker 3: from these That is the in the dockets.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's in the dockets. It's in the dockets. Phenomenal
Speaker 2: I can look at the dockets. We can look at
Speaker 2: that together. That's easy. And I do see here that
Speaker 2: there is a protective order filed in this case. Shortly
Speaker 2: after he was first arrest the judge entered an order
Speaker 2: prohibiting the public dissemination of certain discovery materials. If you
Speaker 2: look at enough J six cases, this kind of protective
Speaker 2: order was almost universal. The government didn't want to publicly
Speaker 2: release stuff like the names of confidential informants, security footage
Speaker 2: from inside certain secure government areas, personal information about witnesses,
Speaker 2: just a laundry list of kinds of evidence that was
Speaker 2: likely to be produced in these cases that would be sensitive.
Speaker 2: So they're not saying they can't turn it over to
Speaker 2: the defense in discovery. They're just saying this stays between us, right,
Speaker 2: This doesn't get released to the public. This was normal
Speaker 2: and it was routine, and it was agreed to by
Speaker 2: everyone involved. The Defense council agreed to this. So okay,
Speaker 2: off to a good start. I do see a protective
Speaker 2: order on the docket. But if you skip down a
Speaker 2: year down to the bottom of the docket, to the
Speaker 2: end of the case, after the guilty plea, the government
Speaker 2: filed their exhibit list for the sentencing hearing, and in
Speaker 2: that document, the federal prosecutor wrote, the government does not
Speaker 2: object to any photo or video evidence being released to
Speaker 2: the public. So of the exhibits they planned to show
Speaker 2: in court at sentencing, they said, it's okay if everyone
Speaker 2: sees these, the media can have these, And so the
Speaker 2: judge in turn asked defense counsel how they felt about that,
Speaker 2: and the defense replied, defendant Tyler Bradley Dyke's buy and
Speaker 2: through his attorneys, does not object to the video and
Speaker 2: photo evidence identified and the government's noticed ECF number forty
Speaker 2: four being made publicly available. Defendant does subject to any
Speaker 2: public disclosure of his military records identified in Exhibit nineteen.
Speaker 2: And so the judge signed an order the exhibits that
Speaker 2: the government identified for the sentencing hearing, which the file
Speaker 2: names are in that document. It includes the video of
Speaker 2: the wave, the video of him grabbing the policeman's shield,
Speaker 2: the things he's saying he can't get based on the
Speaker 2: file names, those videos can absolutely be requested from the court.
Speaker 2: These aren't under seal. There's not a gag order. He
Speaker 2: can request these and I think he should do that.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of videos on that exhibit list,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure people would like to decide for themselves
Speaker 2: if he's describing them faithfully. The only exhibit on that
Speaker 2: list for the Defense objected to making publicly available. The
Speaker 2: only one that remains sealed and isn't available for public
Speaker 2: access are his military records. Those military records are specifically
Speaker 2: the ones related to the other than honorable discharge he
Speaker 2: received from the Marines. See those campaign flyers, the ones
Speaker 2: he was mailing to people's houses. They're all signed at
Speaker 2: the bottom. Tyler Dykes, US Marine Corps veteran business owner,
Speaker 2: pardoned J six's patriot On November tenth, the Marine Corps birthday.
Speaker 2: He posted a photo of himself in his dress blues
Speaker 2: on the campaign's Instagram account. Being a Marine Corps veteran
Speaker 2: is as big a part of his campaign identity as
Speaker 2: talking about how he's not a Nazi. These are kind
Speaker 2: of the top two things. He's a marine, and he
Speaker 2: really wants you to know that Nazi stuff isn't true,
Speaker 2: and he was a marine. That's true. He definitely was
Speaker 2: in the Marine Corps. But those military records that he
Speaker 2: doesn't want released would really undermine his narrative about being
Speaker 2: a proud honorable veteran who definitely isn't a Nazi, because
Speaker 2: they would show that he received an other than honorable
Speaker 2: discharge for participating in prohibited extremist activity on November eighth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, and that's in the file. I know that
Speaker 2: specifically is in that sealed file because in other documents
Speaker 2: that refer to it, that's all it says. I don't
Speaker 2: know what else is in that record. All I know
Speaker 2: for sure is that the stated reason for his other
Speaker 2: than honorable discharge is something that happened on November eighth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. Now, luckily for us, I know that on
Speaker 2: November eighth, twenty twenty, a security camera in Sumter County,
Speaker 2: South Carolina recorded footage of two men. One of the
Speaker 2: men looked exactly like Tyler Dikes. Even his father had
Speaker 2: to agree it kind of did. And the men were
Speaker 2: putting up flyers with swastikas on them outside local businesses.
Speaker 2: I don't know if his military discharge records include anything else.
Speaker 2: Was it really just the flyers, just the one time
Speaker 2: with the swastika flyers and that was it. I don't
Speaker 2: know if the military was aware that he had been
Speaker 2: attending things like a paramilitary training weekend at a compounded
Speaker 2: Michigan hosted by members of the neo Nazi group the Base.
Speaker 2: I don't know if there's a memo in there about
Speaker 2: the time in January of twenty nineteen that an FBI
Speaker 2: agent from the Joint Terrorism Task Force questioned him about
Speaker 2: his possible connections to domestic extremist groups. I don't know
Speaker 2: if the Marine Corps knew that he was one of
Speaker 2: just a handful of white nationalists who attended the Unite
Speaker 2: the Right Too, the flop of a Nazi rally held
Speaker 2: in Washington, d C. In twenty eighteen to commemorate the
Speaker 2: deadly rally that had happened a year earlier, and along
Speaker 2: that same line of thought. I don't know if the
Speaker 2: Marine Corp knew back then the Tyler Dykes had attended
Speaker 2: the Unite the Right rally in Charlesville in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they saw the videos of him
Speaker 2: marching with a tea he torched, or the videos of
Speaker 2: him punching wildly at counter protesters that he'd helped trap
Speaker 2: in that sea of flames. And with the exception of
Speaker 2: the Unit the Right rally in twenty seventeen, which was
Speaker 2: before he enlisted. All of the rest of that conduct
Speaker 2: occurred while Tyler Dykes was a Marine. He went to
Speaker 2: Nazi rallies, he joined Nazi groups, he put up Nazi flyers,
Speaker 2: he went to Nazi training camps to prepare for the
Speaker 2: race war, and he fought his way into the Capitol
Speaker 2: Building on January sixth. So, okay, yeah, he was a
Speaker 2: United States Marine. He can post that picture in his
Speaker 2: uniform on his campaign website. I don't care. I'm not
Speaker 2: personally offended about him being a stain on the honor
Speaker 2: of the US military or whatever, but I think a
Speaker 2: lot of voters would feel like this isn't quite honest.
Speaker 2: By the time Tyler Dykes was arrested in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three and extradited back to Virginia to face charges for
Speaker 2: men missing those counter protesters with a lit torch, he'd
Speaker 2: already been kicked out of the Marines. He had apparently
Speaker 2: hidden that fact from his parents, and there was a
Speaker 2: lot they didn't know about their son. The day he
Speaker 2: was arrested in twenty twenty three, he'd been out with
Speaker 2: other members of a group called the Southern Sons Active
Speaker 2: Club a sort of white supremacist fight club for friendless
Speaker 2: young men. They were trying to hang Nazi banners from
Speaker 2: a highway overpass, but Tyler Dykes was bitten by a
Speaker 2: dog and had to go to the hospital instead. He
Speaker 2: eventually pleaded guilty to that felony charge in Almarle County,
Speaker 2: Virginia related to the torch March, and he spent a
Speaker 2: few months in the local jail. On the day he
Speaker 2: was supposed to go home, he was picked up by
Speaker 2: a federal marshal. The doj had waited until the last
Speaker 2: day of his sentence here to unseal the charges against
Speaker 2: him for January sixth, and after that he spent a
Speaker 2: year out on pre trial bond in that case, and
Speaker 2: then he eventually pleaded guilty to those charges in the
Speaker 2: summer of twenty twenty four, and he finally reported to
Speaker 2: federal prison in October of twenty twenty four, expecting to
Speaker 2: be there for almost five years, but he was released
Speaker 2: a few months later in January of this year after
Speaker 2: receiving a federal pardon. And now he wants to go
Speaker 2: back to the Capitol Building, not as a rioter this time,
Speaker 2: but as a congressman. The campaign is barely a month old.
Speaker 2: He's using a right wing crowdfunding site for campaign donations,
Speaker 2: so you can see that he hasn't cracked two hundred
Speaker 2: dollars yet. The only photo of his launch party is
Speaker 2: so tightly cropped that you can only see the candidate
Speaker 2: himself standing in an empty field in a public park.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's a lot of grassroots excitement for
Speaker 2: Tyler Diykes in South Carolina's first district. But if he
Speaker 2: does keep making the rounds, and if he ever ends
Speaker 2: up in front of a real reporter, I hope they'll
Speaker 2: ask him why doesn't he just produce those exhibits. The
Speaker 2: videos he's claiming are being kept from him under seal aren't.
Speaker 2: And if he's so against any exhibits being held back
Speaker 2: from the court of public opinion, he could go ahead
Speaker 2: and release the one he actually has in his own possession,
Speaker 2: the only one that is sealed. He has his own
Speaker 2: discharge records show him to us. I'm dying to know
Speaker 2: how many of those Nazi rallies the Marine Corps knew
Speaker 2: about before they finally kicked him out. If you're interested
Speaker 2: in hearing more about this particular weird Little Guy. There
Speaker 2: are two episodes available right now over on the Weird
Speaker 2: Little Guy's feed. It's a cool Zone Media show you
Speaker 2: can listen to wherever you get your podcasts, if you're
Speaker 2: in the Charleston area, or more importantly, if your conservative
Speaker 2: boomer parents are, it can't hurt to let folks know
Speaker 2: that one of your local candidates isn't being entirely forthcoming
Speaker 2: about why people are calling him a Nazi. And wherever
Speaker 2: you're conservative parents live, maybe this is a useful example
Speaker 2: of the kind of thing you might find when you
Speaker 2: start gently scratching the surface of these America First candidates.
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