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Speaker 1: Col Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: On May fifteenth, nineteen sixty six, the clock ran out

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Speaker 2: in negotiations between Local twelve thirty four of the United

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Speaker 2: Auto Workers Union, an aerospace manufacturer, Pratt and Whitney. The

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Speaker 2: contract expired. They'd been working around the clock to meet

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Speaker 2: the demand for jet engines for the Vietnam War and

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Speaker 2: the fuel cells needed for the Apollo program. The company

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Speaker 2: was producing equipment the United States government desperately needed if

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Speaker 2: they hoped to win the war in the space race.

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Speaker 2: No one could afford a strike, so the union didn't

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Speaker 2: authorize one. Union leadership agreed to a day by day

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Speaker 2: extension of the contract as they continued the mediation process,

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Speaker 2: but the workers weren't satisfied with that answer. At midnight

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Speaker 2: that night, workers at the plant walked off the production

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Speaker 2: floor and gathered outside.

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Speaker 1: It was a wildcat strike.

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Speaker 2: The workers picketed through the night, and on the morning

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Speaker 2: of Monday, May sixteenth, the striking workers were there outside

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Speaker 2: the plant. Factory workers on first shift stayed away or

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Speaker 2: joined the picket, but a few dozen office workers showed

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Speaker 2: up in their cars at the plant for work. Newspaper

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Speaker 2: reports from May of nineteen sixty six say only that

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Speaker 2: two cars were damaged.

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Speaker 1: But fifty four years later and.

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Speaker 2: A memoir written by the son of a man who

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Speaker 2: drove his car to work at Pratt and Whitney in

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Speaker 2: North Haven, Connecticut on the day of that wildcat strike,

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Speaker 2: a new detail emerged. Kelvin Pierce was just six years

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Speaker 2: old in nineteen sixty six. His father was a jet

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Speaker 2: propulsion researcher at Pratt and Whitney, but he remembers this

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Speaker 2: day clearly. It was the day his father, William Luther Pierce,

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Speaker 2: decided to give up his career as a physicist and

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Speaker 2: go to work full time for the American Nazi Party.

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Speaker 2: One of the cars that was damaged that Monday morning

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Speaker 2: was his. The striking workers kicked his car and snapped

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Speaker 2: off his radio antenna as he attempted to drive his

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Speaker 2: car directly through the picket line. That was his last

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Speaker 2: week at Pratt and Whitney.

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Speaker 1: He quit.

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Speaker 2: No one was injured that morning, but the incident was

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Speaker 2: a turning point for Pierce. He disappeared for a few weeks,

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Speaker 2: leaving his wife and young sons without any explanation. By

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Speaker 2: the time the factory workers had a new contract in June,

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Speaker 2: Hears had packed up his family and moved to Virginia

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Speaker 2: be closer to American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell

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Speaker 2: and to focus on his own budding career as professional Nazi.

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Speaker 2: That morning in May, as he sat in his car

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Speaker 2: outside the plant, staring at the picket line, something changed

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Speaker 2: as he shifted his foot off of the brake and

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Speaker 2: onto the gas and drove towards those union workers. I

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Speaker 2: think he became the man who would eventually write The

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Speaker 2: Turner Diaries, a novel that has inspired the murders of

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Speaker 2: hundreds of people. I'm Molly Conger, is weird that Gods,

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Speaker 2: this isn't an episode about William Luther Pierce. He's such

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Speaker 2: a key figure in the history of American extremism that

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Speaker 2: as often as he comes up, I just keep putting

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Speaker 2: him off. But it is an episode about hitting people

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Speaker 2: with your car. Last week we were talking about James

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Speaker 2: Alex Fields, the young Nazi from Ohio who murdered Heather

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Speaker 2: Higher and Charlottesville in twenty seventeen. I wrote about Fields

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Speaker 2: because I felt like I had to. I hadn't planned

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Speaker 2: on ever doing an episode about him. I kind of

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Speaker 2: felt like I'd said all I have to say about him.

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Speaker 2: In my prior coverage of his criminal trial and in

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Speaker 2: the year's long civil litigation brought by the survivors of

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Speaker 2: his crime. But in recent weeks, I can't seem to

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Speaker 2: escape the echoes of that crime. People are talking about

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Speaker 2: running people over. People are giddy at the very idea

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Speaker 2: of ramming their cars into crowds of protesters. Florida Governor

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Speaker 2: Ron Desanta says you're allowed to do it. Several sheriffs

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Speaker 2: have voiced their support for it. Trump aligned minor internet

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Speaker 2: celebrities are posting memes and jokes, walking right up to

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Speaker 2: and often over the line to outright calls to action.

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Speaker 2: Run them over, hit the gas, all lives splatter. Two

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Speaker 2: weeks ago, on June thirteenth, twenty twenty five, a Twitter

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Speaker 2: account called Anti Left Memes post a question what should

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Speaker 2: happen to people who block the road. The account has

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Speaker 2: more than one hundred and twenty five thousand followers, and

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Speaker 2: the post received nearly thirty thousand replies. Yes, one of

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Speaker 2: the top replies with thousands of likes on the post

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Speaker 2: is just an image. It's pretty low quality, the hallmark

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Speaker 2: of a meme that's been screenshotted, saved, and reposted too

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Speaker 2: many times. But it's a picture of a white pickup truck. Well,

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Speaker 2: it's mostly white. The entire front half of the truck

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Speaker 2: is splattered and red, and the text over the image

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Speaker 2: reads the all new Dodge Ram Protester Edition. A day later,

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Speaker 2: as millions of Americans took to the streets and cities

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Speaker 2: across the country to protest the Trump administration, the same meme,

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Speaker 2: that same blood spattered white truck was posted on Facebook

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Speaker 2: by James Muller, the Sheriff of Adams County, Pennsylvania. I

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Speaker 2: found dozens of posts made that weekend alone with that

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Speaker 2: specific image, and thousands of posts that weekend expressing the

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Speaker 2: same sentiment, it's morally and legally acceptable to hit protesters

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Speaker 2: with your car, not only that it's funny, it's good,

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Speaker 2: and you should do it, and they're not just posting

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Speaker 2: it's happening. I found at least six incidents across the

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Speaker 2: country between June tenth and June fifteenth of cars driving

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Speaker 2: directly into crowns of protesters. A young woman in Los

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Speaker 2: Angeles was left in critical condition, a woman in Chicago

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Speaker 2: has a broken arm. A driver in Petaluma hit a

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Speaker 2: group of protesters while they were in a crosswalk. There's

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Speaker 2: a lot we still don't know about the specific details

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Speaker 2: of these most recent incidents, and every one of these

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Speaker 2: incidents is unique in its specific facts, but there's a

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Speaker 2: pattern and it's not new. I remember when Summer Taylor died.

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Speaker 2: It was the fourth of July back in twenty twenty.

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Speaker 2: Their killer drove the wrong way up a highway on

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Speaker 2: ramp and around vehicles that had been parked to form

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Speaker 2: a barricade to protect the protest. That attack on a

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Speaker 2: Black Lives Matter protest in Seattle is one of the

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Speaker 2: only ones I remember clearly from that summer. I didn't

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Speaker 2: know Summer, but I know people who did, and they

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Speaker 2: were just twenty four years old. I remember a few others,

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Speaker 2: one because it was so close to home, just outside

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Speaker 2: of Richmond, Virginia. No one was badly hurt, but the

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Speaker 2: driver skipped Rogers as a clansman that I've seen at

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Speaker 2: some Confederate rallies, they all kind of run together. Though

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Speaker 2: there was so much violence that summer, Apparently there were

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Speaker 2: over a hundred similar attacks that summer. That's according to

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Speaker 2: Ari wyl who was at the time a researcher at

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Speaker 2: the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University

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Speaker 2: of Chicago. He documented one hundred and four incidents of

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Speaker 2: vehicular assault on protests during a four month period from

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Speaker 2: May twenty seventh to September twenty seventh, twenty twenty, with

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Speaker 2: the majority of those incidents occurring during Black Lives Matter

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Speaker 2: protests after the death of George Floyd. According to Wiles analysis,

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Speaker 2: there is evidence of malicious intent in at least forty

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Speaker 2: three of those one hundred and four incidents, and in

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Speaker 2: the fall of twenty twenty thirty nine of those drivers

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Speaker 2: had been criminally charged. The question of how often this

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Speaker 2: is actually happening, when it started, who's doing it, and

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Speaker 2: why it is.

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Speaker 1: Hard to answer. As it turns out.

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Speaker 2: While I was researching this episode, I read papers and

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Speaker 2: analysis and speculation and confident pronouncements from journalists, researchers and nonprofits,

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Speaker 2: analysts and think tanks, papers from government agencies and academic journals,

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Speaker 2: and it's hard to find a clear picture. Fatal encounters

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Speaker 2: between pedestrians and cars are as old as cars themselves.

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Speaker 2: Cars are dangerous, people are careless, and about seven thousand

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Speaker 2: pedestrians a year are killed by cars in the United States,

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Speaker 2: and I'm sure plenty of drivers have independently arrived at

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Speaker 2: the conclusion that you could use a car.

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Speaker 1: As a weapon. They're ubiquitous.

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Speaker 2: Not everyone can go out and buy a gun, and

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Speaker 2: most people don't know how to build a bomb, but

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Speaker 2: almost anybody can find a way to get behind the

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Speaker 2: wheel of a car, even if you.

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Speaker 1: Don't own one.

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Speaker 2: It's cheap, it's accessible, and it can be extremely deadly.

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Speaker 2: So why doesn't vehicular ramming of groups of pedestrians appear

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Speaker 2: as an identifiable method of terrorist attack until the nineteen nineties.

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Speaker 2: The academic papers I read all seem to agree vehicular

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Speaker 2: ramming attacks didn't really start happening until the early nineties,

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Speaker 2: and they didn't really catch on until more than two

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Speaker 2: decades later, starting in around twenty fourteen.

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Speaker 1: Some earlier recorded.

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Speaker 2: Incidents are noted in the literature, with one of the

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Speaker 2: oft cited studies claiming that the earliest recorded incident they

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Speaker 2: found was in Japan in nineteen sixty four, but most

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Speaker 2: researchers seemed to agree that it was Palestinians who invented

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Speaker 2: the tactic in the early nineties, and there are just

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Speaker 2: a handful of incidents cited to support this, mostly involving

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Speaker 2: young men driving into groups of IDF soldiers in the

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Speaker 2: West Bank. One study published earlier this year in the

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Speaker 2: European Research Studies Journal incorrectly attributes these attacks in Israel

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Speaker 2: in the West Bank to Hamas, But aside from being inaccurate,

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Speaker 2: I think the actual truth here is more illuminating. People

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Speaker 2: are doing this on their own. A twenty eighteen paper

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Speaker 2: in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism analyzed data about sixty

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Speaker 2: two vehicular attacks in Israel and the West Bank between

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty sixteen.

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Speaker 1: The data was provided to.

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Speaker 2: The researchers directly by the Israeli Security Agency, and the

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Speaker 2: authors also examined court records, media published in both Hebrew

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Speaker 2: and Arabic, as well as social media posts made surrounding

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Speaker 2: the attacks. And none of those attacks were carried out

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Speaker 2: by Hamas. They weren't carried out by a group of

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Speaker 2: any kind. Only sixteen percent of the attackers in that

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Speaker 2: data set had ever been imprisoned for any reason prior

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Speaker 2: to the attack, and less than a quarter of them

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Speaker 2: even had a family member with any kind of security

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Speaker 2: or criminal record. The attacks in the nineties were sporadic.

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Speaker 2: Aside from these couple of incidents in Israel and the

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Speaker 2: West Bank. There were a handful of incidents elsewhere in

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Speaker 2: the world in the nineties and early two thousands. But

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Speaker 2: if you look at the data included in these studies

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Speaker 2: and chart it over time, the line shoots off the page,

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Speaker 2: starting in about twenty fourteen, and suddenly they're happening all

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Speaker 2: over the world. I think it's worth a little sidebar

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Speaker 2: here to talk about definitions. What exactly is a vehicle

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Speaker 2: ramming attack? Most of the papers I read about the

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Speaker 2: tactic use that term, abbreviated as just VR.

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Speaker 1: They're sometimes also called.

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Speaker 2: VTA's vehicular terrorist attack, and deciding what is or isn't

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Speaker 2: a VIRA is something every author seems to decide for himself.

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Speaker 2: Two of the papers I'm relying on here both included

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Speaker 2: a description of how they built their own data set

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Speaker 2: because there was no comprehensive worldwide list to look at.

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Speaker 2: A twenty nineteen paper by Keith Hayward and Vincent Miller

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Speaker 2: and the British Journal of Criminology analyzed one hundred and

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Speaker 2: twenty five incidents between nineteen ninety nine and twenty seventeen.

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Speaker 2: The incidents they included in the data had to meet

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Speaker 2: these criteria. A vehicle had to be used as a

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Speaker 2: weapon on pedestrians or populated vehicles. The vehicle had to

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Speaker 2: be the primary weapon. Any other weapons used like knives

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Speaker 2: or firearms could only be used once the vehicle was

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Speaker 2: disabled and not part of an armed or carbomb. The

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Speaker 2: incident was not part of a kidnapping attempt. Pedestrian casualties

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Speaker 2: were intended and not part of a chase of aasion

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Speaker 2: or accident. The vehicle was not primarily used for demolition,

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Speaker 2: and the Hayward and Miller paper is more interested in

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Speaker 2: the idea of social contagion, how these attacks appear to

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Speaker 2: come in waves clustered together in time, even when the

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Speaker 2: attacks themselves have almost nothing else in common aside from

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Speaker 2: the similarity of the physical act. A paper that same

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Speaker 2: year by Brian Michael Jenkins and Bruce Butterworth from the

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Speaker 2: Minetta Transportation Institute is much more focused within the academic

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Speaker 2: niche that is terrorism studies.

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Speaker 1: And it's written by guys.

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Speaker 2: Who've been in the business for so long they can't

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Speaker 2: shift their focus beyond Islamic extremism.

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Speaker 1: So there's a lot of package here. And this paper

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Speaker 1: notes that no.

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Speaker 2: Two databases of such incidents will ever agree. But the

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Speaker 2: authors created a list of one hundred and eighty four

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Speaker 2: incidents from nineteen sixty four to twenty nineteen that they

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Speaker 2: were able to identify as vehicle attacks on public targets.

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Speaker 2: They excluded vehicle ramming incidents that occurred in war zones,

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Speaker 2: those that occurred while the driver was fleeing a crime

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Speaker 2: scene or evading police, altercations between motorists, incidents where the

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Speaker 2: vehicle rammed a government building, accidents, and domestic disputes. And

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Speaker 2: while they say they excluded attacks in war zones, they

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Speaker 2: do not exclude attacks that occurred in the occupied Palestinian territories.

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Speaker 1: And from both of these studies.

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Speaker 2: I was unable to find an appendix that actually list

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Speaker 2: the events that they included in their data sets, and

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Speaker 2: that leads me with a lot of unanswered questions. And

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Speaker 2: neither paper really clearly defines what they mean by terrorism either,

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Speaker 2: And that's a little.

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Speaker 1: Bit sticky too.

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Speaker 2: It's a loaded word. In post nine to eleven America,

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Speaker 2: it usually means one thing, Islamic extremism, isis al Kaida,

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Speaker 2: the Aliban, etc. And in more casual parlance, the word

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Speaker 2: gets thrown around a little too casually. It may not

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Speaker 2: be worth trying to salvage the word by defining it

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Speaker 2: in a way that's useful, but it appears in most

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Speaker 2: of the writing about this, so I'll take a stab

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Speaker 2: at telling you what it probably means if you're talking legally.

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Speaker 2: The United States Code defines terrorism as activities that involve

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Speaker 2: acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of

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Speaker 2: criminal laws in the United States, and those acts appear

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Speaker 2: to be intended to intimidate orquer civilians, influence government policy

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Speaker 2: by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of

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Speaker 2: a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping. The law

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Speaker 2: is not the only way to define something. The National

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Speaker 2: Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism

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Speaker 2: at the University of Maryland, which maintains the Global Terrorism Database,

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Speaker 2: has a lengthy explanation of the definition that they use

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Speaker 2: in deciding what goes in the database. The short answer

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Speaker 2: is the threatened or actual use of illegal force and

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Speaker 2: violence by a non state actor to attain political, economic, religious,

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Speaker 2: or social goals through fear, quertion or intimidation. Pretty straightforward,

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Speaker 2: but every paper I read us slightly different. Frameworks seemed

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Speaker 2: to rely on slightly different definitions, and they all use

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Speaker 2: their own hand picked data sets. Few actually included information

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Speaker 2: about what incidents were in those data sets, but for

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Speaker 2: the most part, they all agree vras didn't really happen

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Speaker 2: until Palestinians started doing them in the nineties and then

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Speaker 2: twenty fourteen era surgeon popularity is mostly discussed in terms

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Speaker 2: of a handful of very deadly, high profile attacks where

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Speaker 2: the perpetrator was inspired by an Islamic extremist group. The

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Speaker 2: Meneta Transportation Institute paper focuses heavily on Jihadis motivated attacks,

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Speaker 2: as their own data shows that only ten percent of

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Speaker 2: the attacks in that data set fit in that category.

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Speaker 2: They acknowledge that the vast majority of vehicle ramming attacks

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Speaker 2: in the United States have no connection at all to

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Speaker 2: Al Qaida or ISIS, but quote in the public's mind,

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Speaker 2: they are blended with the jihadist attacks and add to

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Speaker 2: the general level of fear. The Jahadas propaganda machine was

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Speaker 2: therefore able to brand the tactic and benefit from its occurrence,

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Speaker 2: regardless of who was responsible. And now, as much as

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Speaker 2: I'm sure ISIS would love to take credit for that

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Speaker 2: branding success, it looks to me that its Western researchers

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Speaker 2: were too eager to see this tactic as a jihadist

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Speaker 2: one that just happens to have leaked out into broader usage.

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Speaker 2: I read the literature, I took notes, but I also

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Speaker 2: spent two full days combing through newspaper archives going back

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Speaker 2: one hundred years, all the way back to the nineteen

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Speaker 2: twenties when we started to see widespread car ownership.

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Speaker 1: In the United States.

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Speaker 2: And I think these studies are missing a really particular

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Speaker 2: category of vehicular attack. People driving through union picket lines.

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Speaker 2: It happens all the time. Members of the Communications Workers

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Speaker 2: of America wear red shirts every Thursday in memory of

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Speaker 2: Jerry Horgan. Morgan was a CWA member who was struck

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Speaker 2: and killed when a scab worker drove through the picket

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Speaker 2: line in nineteen eighty nine. And just weeks after his death,

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Speaker 2: out there on the picket line, one of his union

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Speaker 2: brothers ended up in the hospital after being hit by

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Speaker 2: a company truck. The president of Jerry's local CWA eleven

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Speaker 2: oh three told the paper, We're tired of these people

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Speaker 2: running us over.

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Speaker 1: It was common.

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Speaker 2: In March of this year, a member of the Amalgamated

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Speaker 2: Transit Union was hospitalized after being intentionally struck by a

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Speaker 2: company vehicle during a strike of Santa Clara Valley Transportation

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Speaker 2: Authority workers. In twenty twenty three, five members of the

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Speaker 2: United Autoworkers Union were hit by a car that plowed

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Speaker 2: through the picket line outside the General Motors Splint Processing

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Speaker 2: Center in Swartz Creek, Michigan. One of them was hospitalized.

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Speaker 2: The driver fled the scene and was later convicted of

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Speaker 2: leaving the scene of an accident, but the plea deal

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Speaker 2: dropped the charge of assault with a deadly weapon. Even

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Speaker 2: with my limited time and ability to search these old records,

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Speaker 2: I found multiple examples in every decade for the last

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Speaker 2: century of union workers being hit, sometimes killed, when a

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Speaker 2: car intentionally drove into their picket line. The earliest of

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Speaker 2: these incidents that I could find were in May of

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Speaker 2: nineteen twenty nine, during a strike of textile workers at

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Speaker 2: the Rayon Manufacturing Plants and Elizabethton, Tennessee. The strike had

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Speaker 2: been going on since March and things had gotten pretty violent.

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Speaker 2: The National Guard was brought in to beat back the protester,

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Speaker 2: most of whom were young women. Many of them were teenagers,

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Speaker 2: and there was at least one incident of a non

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Speaker 2: union worker driving through the picketers, injuring several of them.

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Speaker 1: But there was a second.

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Speaker 2: Incident that I don't think you can deny clearly meets

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Speaker 2: the criteria of a vehicular ramming attack. On May sixteenth,

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Speaker 2: nineteen twenty nine, a bus full of scabs plowed through

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Speaker 2: the line of striking workers. One of the workers who

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Speaker 2: was hit was a teenage girl named Evelyn Heaton, and

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Speaker 2: she was so badly injured that onlookers believed that she

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Speaker 2: had died.

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Speaker 1: But she didn't die, and.

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Speaker 2: When Evelyn Heaton was released from the hospital, she swore

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Speaker 2: out a criminal complaint for attempted murder against the driver,

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Speaker 2: a man named Joe Calhoun. But she also swore out

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Speaker 2: a complaint of aiding in a betting attempted murder, and

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Speaker 2: this one was against Tennessee National Guard Adjutant General W. C.

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Speaker 1: Boyd.

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Speaker 2: Heaton acqus void of ordering the attack, of personally directing

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Speaker 2: the bus to drive into the workers, and he didn't

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Speaker 2: deny it. He said he'd ordered the path to the

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Speaker 2: plant to be cleared. He was arrested, questioned, and released

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Speaker 2: on bond, but a grand jury never indicted him. I

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Speaker 2: couldn't help get a little lost down this rabbit hole.

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Speaker 2: The whole incident looks like a fascinating chapter of labor

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Speaker 2: history that I'd never heard of. The same week his

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Speaker 2: charges were dropped, Boyd got into a little trouble with

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Speaker 2: the Secretary of War. You see, the governor of Tennessee

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Speaker 2: hadn't actually deployed the National Guard, at least not correctly.

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Speaker 2: He didn't deploy the National Guard. He had the National

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Speaker 2: guardsmen sworn in as state troopers before deploying them as

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Speaker 2: strike breakers. So as they're tear gassing these teenage girls

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Speaker 2: from the textile mill, they're wearing their United States Army uniforms,

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00:22:00,320 --> 00:22:04,359
Speaker 2: carrying weapons that were federal government property. But that was

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00:22:04,400 --> 00:22:07,520
Speaker 2: illegal because they were not acting in their capacity as guardsmen.

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Speaker 2: From what I can find, violating federal law and ordering

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Speaker 2: a bus driver to plow through a crowd of teenage

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00:22:14,840 --> 00:22:19,320
Speaker 2: girls didn't seem to affect his career. W. C. Boyd

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Speaker 2: didn't retire from the Tennessee National Guard until the year

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00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:39,439
Speaker 2: before he died two decades later. But back to the

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Speaker 2: issue at hand, though, I found scores of these incidents

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Speaker 2: over the last century in which striking workers are hit

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Speaker 2: by cars. These kinds of incidents don't tend to have

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Speaker 2: a high fatality rate, and some of them are definitely

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Speaker 2: just accidents. Picket Lines are often in close proximity to

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Speaker 2: vehicular traffic, and any time a pedestrian is near a.

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Speaker 1: Car there's a risk.

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Speaker 2: But in the stories where it appears to be intentional,

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Speaker 2: of which there are many, it's usually a scab worker

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Speaker 2: or a boss driving through the crowd when entering or

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Speaker 2: exiting the area around the workplace. You could argue that

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Speaker 2: this kind of incident is different. This isn't a driver

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Speaker 2: seeking out a confrontation with a pedestrian. This is a

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Speaker 2: pedestrian who is in some cases very intentionally blocking the

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Speaker 2: path of that vehicle because that is his goal. The

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00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:33,240
Speaker 2: striking worker does not want the scab to cross the

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Speaker 2: picket line and enter the job site. But you can't

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Speaker 2: argue that it's not political. Union workers have a right

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Speaker 2: to strike. What they're doing is not illegal. Hitting them

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Speaker 2: with a car is, and the people hitting them with

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00:23:50,720 --> 00:23:55,600
Speaker 2: those cars have a motive. Remember those definitions. A vehicle

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Speaker 2: ramming attack is just the intentional use of a vehicle

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Speaker 2: as a weapon, intending because in to a pedestrian. And

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00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:06,120
Speaker 2: what's terrorism the threatened or actual use of illegal force

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Speaker 2: and violence by a non state actor to attain a political, economic, religious,

388
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Speaker 2: or social goal their fear, coercion, or intimidation. I'm not

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Speaker 2: saying we should charge scabs who run over someone's foot

390
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Speaker 2: with terrorism. That doesn't make any sense. That's not the

391
00:24:21,160 --> 00:24:24,320
Speaker 2: point I'm trying to make here. I just think that

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Speaker 2: ignoring this entire category of vehicular assaults is missing something important.

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Speaker 2: Because people are using cars as weapons to intimidate, harass,

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Speaker 2: and injure workers who are exercising their right to engage

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Speaker 2: in strikes. They're threatening and carrying out violence against a

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Speaker 2: particular group of people, and there is an identifiable political

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00:24:47,800 --> 00:24:53,560
Speaker 2: and economic motivation to frighten these people off the picket line.

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00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:56,080
Speaker 2: And after all that time searching all those old newspapers,

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00:24:56,800 --> 00:24:58,600
Speaker 2: it's not just picket lines that I feel like the

400
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:03,000
Speaker 2: researchers overlooked. The narrative in these studies seems to be

401
00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:07,840
Speaker 2: that the tactic originated with Palestinians was popularized by jihadas

402
00:25:07,880 --> 00:25:11,840
Speaker 2: groups from twenty fourteen to twenty seventeen, and around that

403
00:25:11,880 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 2: same time period, the idea spread rapidly online getting picked

404
00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:20,600
Speaker 2: up by people with other motivations and backgrounds. But I

405
00:25:20,600 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 2: don't think that's true either. I don't think white Westerners

406
00:25:24,640 --> 00:25:29,520
Speaker 2: learned about this online from isis and in looking through

407
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:32,080
Speaker 2: the historical record, I admit I ran into some of

408
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:35,920
Speaker 2: the same problems the researchers did. It's hard to find

409
00:25:35,960 --> 00:25:38,560
Speaker 2: information about this that goes further back than a few

410
00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:43,840
Speaker 2: decades before this was a named phenomenon. It wasn't really

411
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:46,480
Speaker 2: something that earned more than a passing mention in the newspaper.

412
00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 2: It seems no one particularly cared when a union member,

413
00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:56,040
Speaker 2: a civil rights activist, an environmentalist, a communist, a hippie,

414
00:25:56,200 --> 00:25:59,880
Speaker 2: an anti war protester, or some other nasty undesirable got

415
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:06,040
Speaker 2: they deserved, And when it is mentioned, the tone is nasty.

416
00:26:06,240 --> 00:26:11,720
Speaker 2: So nothing's really changed, I guess, but it does impact

417
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:16,119
Speaker 2: my ability to find these historical vehicular attacks.

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Speaker 1: Here's some I did find.

419
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:23,800
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty three, the Congress of Racial Equality staged

420
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:26,680
Speaker 2: a sit in at Jones Beach State Park on Long Island.

421
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:29,800
Speaker 2: They wanted the Long Island Park Commission to hire more

422
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:33,560
Speaker 2: black and Puerto Rican workers. As part of their demonstration,

423
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:36,320
Speaker 2: they blocked the road leading to the parking area at

424
00:26:36,359 --> 00:26:40,679
Speaker 2: the beach. People get so in their feelings about blocking

425
00:26:40,720 --> 00:26:45,720
Speaker 2: a roadway. Yeah, it probably is annoying to you, but

426
00:26:45,800 --> 00:26:50,480
Speaker 2: that's the point of the protest. They are making themselves unignorable.

427
00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:52,720
Speaker 2: You know, you might say you've blocked the road, what

428
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:55,800
Speaker 2: do you expect? But a car is a deadly weapon.

429
00:26:57,080 --> 00:27:00,480
Speaker 2: Think of it like a gun. It's legal to a gun,

430
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 2: and if you're in fear for your life, it self

431
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:07,480
Speaker 2: defense to fire that gun. But if you are being

432
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:12,840
Speaker 2: prevented from conveniently accessing the beach on Long Island, you

433
00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:16,600
Speaker 2: don't have grounds for the use of deadly force. You

434
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:20,080
Speaker 2: might be inconvenienced, and you might be annoyed. You know,

435
00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:22,439
Speaker 2: I guess it might be annoying that the fight for

436
00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:26,960
Speaker 2: civil rights ruined your beach day. But you cannot hurt

437
00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:30,480
Speaker 2: people with a deadly weapon because they're in your way,

438
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:34,680
Speaker 2: because you're impatient, because you don't like what they're doing,

439
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:37,720
Speaker 2: because you think what they're doing is wrong. That is

440
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 2: a disproportionate escalation and it's not healthy. Photos of that

441
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:47,520
Speaker 2: demonstration clearly show the protesters sitting cross legged, side by

442
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:51,719
Speaker 2: side across the road. One newspaper article I found that

443
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:57,080
Speaker 2: didn't include the picture. Describe the scene with these words,

444
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:00,399
Speaker 2: Negro and white members of the Congress of Racial Quality

445
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:03,520
Speaker 2: through themselves and their children in front of moving cars

446
00:28:03,560 --> 00:28:06,199
Speaker 2: here Thursday to draw attention to a campaign to get

447
00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 2: jobs for Negroes with the Long Island State Park Commission.

448
00:28:09,520 --> 00:28:12,240
Speaker 2: A number of demonstrators were struck by cars, whose operators

449
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:16,920
Speaker 2: were forced to halt abruptly. Another newspaper wrote that twenty

450
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:21,800
Speaker 2: demonstrators were quote bumped or brushed by cars, with another

451
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:24,720
Speaker 2: paper mentioning just in passing that three people were injured.

452
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:29,840
Speaker 2: On the night of April fourth, nineteen sixty eight, there

453
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:32,960
Speaker 2: were hundreds of people marching in the streets of Battle Creek, Michigan.

454
00:28:34,840 --> 00:28:36,679
Speaker 2: That date might feel a little familiar to you.

455
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:38,800
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King.

456
00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:43,880
Speaker 2: Junior had been assassinated just hours earlier. Battle Creek Police

457
00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 2: Chief Clifford Barney was later quoted in the local paper

458
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:51,760
Speaker 2: describing the all night march as quote mostly orderly, but

459
00:28:51,840 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 2: the headline that ran in wire stories nationwide was Negro

460
00:28:55,760 --> 00:29:00,360
Speaker 2: violence in Battle Creek. In the early morning hours of

461
00:29:00,360 --> 00:29:04,000
Speaker 2: April fifth, as the march continued through the night, the

462
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:07,600
Speaker 2: vice president of the local NAACP Young Adult council was

463
00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 2: hit by a car that drove through the march. Demonstrators

464
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 2: claimed police who witnessed this incident refused to call an ambulance,

465
00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:18,200
Speaker 2: and Stanley Morrow was taken to the hospital by another marcher.

466
00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:22,080
Speaker 2: At a community meeting about the event a few days later,

467
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:25,200
Speaker 2: the NAACP demanded to know why the driver hadn't been

468
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:29,040
Speaker 2: arrested for leaving the scene of an accident. Chief Barney

469
00:29:29,040 --> 00:29:33,560
Speaker 2: said the driver had quote exercised good judgment and that

470
00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 2: they shouldn't have been in the road. Nothing's changed. In

471
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:44,400
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, Canadian college students staged a demonstration on

472
00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 2: the Blue Water Bridge between Michigan and Ontario. They were

473
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:51,840
Speaker 2: protesting the nuclear testing the United States was carrying out

474
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:55,840
Speaker 2: on the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska. According

475
00:29:55,840 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 2: to the Port Huron Times Herald, a car with Michigan

476
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 2: plates gunned it through the crowd on the bridge. Twenty

477
00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:04,920
Speaker 2: year old David Pettinger was one of the students who

478
00:30:05,000 --> 00:30:09,560
Speaker 2: was hit, and while another student was slightly injured, his

479
00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:12,680
Speaker 2: leg got stuck in the car's wheel well, causing him

480
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:15,440
Speaker 2: to be dragged for nearly four hundred feet as the

481
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:19,920
Speaker 2: driver attempted to flee the scene. Pettinger was described in

482
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:24,680
Speaker 2: one newspaper as quote not seriously injured, but according to

483
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:27,800
Speaker 2: his later lawsuit, he lost most of the skin on

484
00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:31,120
Speaker 2: both of his legs and spent seven weeks in the

485
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:35,800
Speaker 2: hospital with David's legs stuck in her wheel. The driver

486
00:30:36,040 --> 00:30:38,920
Speaker 2: was unable to flee and was arrested on scene, but

487
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 2: she was never charged with a crime. He was awarded

488
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 2: less than seven thousand dollars in his lawsuit against the driver.

489
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:50,560
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy, just days after the Kent State shooting,

490
00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:54,720
Speaker 2: students were protesting at Eastern Michigan University, and five of

491
00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 2: them were injured when a man rammed his car into

492
00:30:56,800 --> 00:31:00,760
Speaker 2: a crowd on campus. There's no exports a nation offered

493
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:02,960
Speaker 2: in any of the newspaper articles I can find about

494
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:06,720
Speaker 2: why he did this or who he was, but the

495
00:31:06,760 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 2: description is very intentional. He was driving slowly as he

496
00:31:11,320 --> 00:31:14,760
Speaker 2: approached the crowd of students, sort of inching towards them,

497
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:18,160
Speaker 2: and then he suddenly accelerated directly into them before fleeing

498
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 2: the scene. And in nineteen seventy one, Margaret Ann Knott

499
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 2: was killed in Butler, Alabama, after a man drove his

500
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 2: car through a sit in. The group had a permit.

501
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 2: Local black leaders had met with the mayor and the

502
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:40,040
Speaker 2: sheriff ahead of the march. They were allowed to march

503
00:31:40,040 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 2: in the street. The police were there, and as the

504
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:47,760
Speaker 2: march proceeded through the center of town, they were granted

505
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:50,360
Speaker 2: permission by the captain of the state troopers who were

506
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 2: there on the scene, to stop in an intersection outside

507
00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 2: the courthouse just for a few minutes, for a five

508
00:31:58,320 --> 00:32:03,520
Speaker 2: minute silent prayer of it Chun Margaret was sitting on the

509
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:09,320
Speaker 2: ground and praying when the car came. She was just

510
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:12,960
Speaker 2: nineteen years old. Her mother was one of the black

511
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:18,120
Speaker 2: teachers whose unfair firing the march was protesting. The young

512
00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 2: man had been sitting right beside her there in the square,

513
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 2: managed to get up and run away as the car approached,

514
00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:26,640
Speaker 2: but Margaret was sitting with her back turned to it,

515
00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:32,560
Speaker 2: and she didn't react fast enough. After she was hit,

516
00:32:33,680 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 2: he says, she just kept saying, I died for freedom,

517
00:32:38,280 --> 00:32:45,320
Speaker 2: I died for freedom. Her killer was arrested, but a

518
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:49,800
Speaker 2: grand jury didn't indict. He claimed he was attacked, that

519
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 2: he feared for his life, and according to newspaper accounts,

520
00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:59,480
Speaker 2: from the time. White eyewitnesses backed his story. Margaret's fellow

521
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:05,240
Speaker 2: demonstrates told a different one. He says they were rocking

522
00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:07,440
Speaker 2: his car and trying to turn it over. That's why

523
00:33:07,480 --> 00:33:11,240
Speaker 2: he got scared. They say they didn't put their hands

524
00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:16,760
Speaker 2: on that car until after Margaret was under it. And

525
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 2: if you listened to last week's episode about James Alex Fields,

526
00:33:20,200 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 2: that might actually sound kind of familiar. He was afraid,

527
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 2: he was afraid for his life. He had to do it.

528
00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:30,160
Speaker 2: They were attacking him, but nobody put their hands on

529
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:36,280
Speaker 2: Fields's car until after a woman was dead. Margaret's mother

530
00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:38,480
Speaker 2: raised money for a granite marker to be placed at

531
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:41,960
Speaker 2: the courthouse square to memorialize Margaret's death as a martyr

532
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:45,720
Speaker 2: in the civil rights movement, and the county refused.

533
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 1: To allow it.

534
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:52,080
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety nine, twenty eight years after her daughter's murder,

535
00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:55,520
Speaker 2: Harry May Johnson got up to speak during public comment

536
00:33:55,560 --> 00:34:00,719
Speaker 2: at a Chalktaw County Commission meeting. She asked again, please,

537
00:34:01,800 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 2: could we place the marker in the square, and they

538
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:12,360
Speaker 2: said no, no, that's very racially divisive. Margaret Ann Knott

539
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:16,600
Speaker 2: was finally memorialized with a public marker in twenty nineteen.

540
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:22,879
Speaker 2: I found a number of incidents in nineteen seventy two,

541
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:27,840
Speaker 2: mostly involving anti war protesters hit by cars. During the

542
00:34:27,880 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 2: Republican National Convention in Miami that summer, there were two

543
00:34:31,160 --> 00:34:35,640
Speaker 2: separate instances of limousines carrying convention delegates driving into crowds

544
00:34:35,640 --> 00:34:40,120
Speaker 2: of protesters and injuring people, one leaving a Vietnam veteran

545
00:34:40,160 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 2: with a fractured skull and another breaking a woman's leg.

546
00:34:44,920 --> 00:34:49,479
Speaker 2: The Democratic National Convention was inexplicably also in Miami that year,

547
00:34:49,840 --> 00:34:53,680
Speaker 2: just a week earlier, and during that event, protesters occupied

548
00:34:53,719 --> 00:34:56,799
Speaker 2: an intersection to demand answers over an alleged hit and

549
00:34:56,880 --> 00:35:00,400
Speaker 2: run incident involving a staffer for Senator Hubert Humphrey who

550
00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 2: ran a woman over. The official DOJ report on policing

551
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:08,960
Speaker 2: during the conventions that summer mentions what appeared to be

552
00:35:09,120 --> 00:35:14,560
Speaker 2: at least half a dozen incidents of cars intentionally striking protesters.

553
00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 2: I could go on, like in nineteen seventy nine, when

554
00:35:18,560 --> 00:35:21,560
Speaker 2: a Los Angeles sheriff's deputy drove into a crowd protesting

555
00:35:21,600 --> 00:35:23,719
Speaker 2: outside the Beverly Hills mansion owned by the Shah of

556
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:27,239
Speaker 2: Iran's mother, or the National guardsmen who drove a troop

557
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:30,440
Speaker 2: carrier directly at a crowd of anti nuclear protesters in

558
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:34,000
Speaker 2: California in nineteen eighty one. In nineteen ninety, the president

559
00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:36,799
Speaker 2: of a timber company struck an environmental activist with his

560
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:39,399
Speaker 2: vehicle and sped away from the scene with the woman

561
00:35:39,520 --> 00:35:40,520
Speaker 2: still on the hood.

562
00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:41,120
Speaker 1: Of his car.

563
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:47,160
Speaker 2: None of these people were charged with a crime. My

564
00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:50,279
Speaker 2: point is not just that I have a methodological disagreement

565
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:53,240
Speaker 2: with the study I read. I don't think they simply

566
00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:55,920
Speaker 2: failed to look in the right place to find additional

567
00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 2: incidents to add to their data set. I think the

568
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:00,800
Speaker 2: disagreement is cheaper than that.

569
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:03,400
Speaker 1: We disagree about.

570
00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:07,800
Speaker 2: What kind of violence matters, who we think of as violent,

571
00:36:07,880 --> 00:36:12,319
Speaker 2: who we think of as victims, what's normal, what's acceptable,

572
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:19,560
Speaker 2: what's politically beneficial, and who deserves it. By their reasoning,

573
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 2: it was a series of high profile attacks motivated by

574
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 2: Islamic extremism that started a worldwide wave of vehicle ramming attacks,

575
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 2: and it wasn't until then that researchers identify and name

576
00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:39,200
Speaker 2: this phenomenon that I'm arguing has always been here. The

577
00:36:39,239 --> 00:36:42,080
Speaker 2: two papers I'm pulling from primarily were both written in

578
00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:45,760
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, and they both open with a little vignette

579
00:36:45,760 --> 00:36:51,280
Speaker 2: about a vehicle ramming attack. The paper called Smashing into Crowds,

580
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:54,760
Speaker 2: an Analysis of Vehicle ramming Attacks, published by the Meneta

581
00:36:54,760 --> 00:37:01,720
Speaker 2: Transportation Institute, opens with this paragraph. On April third, twenty nineteen,

582
00:37:02,120 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 2: police in Maryland arrested a man for plotting to drive

583
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:07,280
Speaker 2: a stolen rental van into crowds of people at National Harbor,

584
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:11,600
Speaker 2: a popular tourist site along the Potomac River. A convert

585
00:37:11,600 --> 00:37:13,840
Speaker 2: to Islam, he claimed to have been inspired by the

586
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:17,880
Speaker 2: Islamic state of Iraq and Syria. The defendant had stolen

587
00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:20,800
Speaker 2: the rental van several days before in Virginia and originally

588
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:24,239
Speaker 2: contemplated driving into passengers at Dulla's Airport, but found the

589
00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 2: crowds there were two spars for his purpose. He then

590
00:37:27,719 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 2: changed the target to National Harbor, just under ten miles

591
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:33,840
Speaker 2: from the Capitol in Washington, d C. The incident was

592
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 2: one of nearly thirteen to occur in the first three

593
00:37:36,280 --> 00:37:40,799
Speaker 2: quarters of twenty nineteen across the world. And again, this

594
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:44,239
Speaker 2: paper selected one hundred and eighty four incidents from the

595
00:37:44,280 --> 00:37:47,960
Speaker 2: sixties through twenty nineteen that they feel fit the criteria,

596
00:37:48,719 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 2: and in the paper, they classified the perpetrators of these

597
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 2: attacks into four primary categories, Palestinian gee, hottest, right wing extremist,

598
00:37:59,360 --> 00:38:04,200
Speaker 2: and mentally disturbed. The authors made these determinations based on

599
00:38:04,239 --> 00:38:08,759
Speaker 2: available media recording. Based on that paragraph I just read you,

600
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:11,799
Speaker 2: I assumed that they would place this incident into the

601
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 2: jahattist category. I don't actually know, because they don't include

602
00:38:16,080 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 2: the incidents in an appendix, But honestly, I'm actually curious

603
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:26,280
Speaker 2: why they would include it at all. They clearly say

604
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:31,239
Speaker 2: the incident was one of nearly thirteen to occur. First

605
00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:36,440
Speaker 2: of all, what is nearly thirteen? But this incident didn't occur.

606
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:42,479
Speaker 2: There was no incident. This didn't happen. They don't name

607
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:45,480
Speaker 2: this man in the paper, but I recognize the description

608
00:38:45,600 --> 00:38:49,520
Speaker 2: of it. His name is Rondel Henry, and he was

609
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:52,120
Speaker 2: originally indicted on a single count of driving a stolen

610
00:38:52,200 --> 00:38:55,799
Speaker 2: vehicle across state lines. He ended up pleading guilty to

611
00:38:55,880 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 2: the charge of attempting to perform an act of violence

612
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:02,120
Speaker 2: at an international airport, even though by their own admission,

613
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 2: he decided not.

614
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:03,759
Speaker 1: To do that.

615
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:07,600
Speaker 2: But he was arrested after stealing the U haul van

616
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:12,399
Speaker 2: and before he did anything else. He has also been

617
00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:18,360
Speaker 2: diagnosed with schizophrenia. Yes, Rondel Henry did make statements to

618
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:20,960
Speaker 2: the police after his arrest that he wanted to create

619
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:25,760
Speaker 2: a panic quote like what happened in France, likely referring

620
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:28,439
Speaker 2: to a twenty sixteen attack in Nice, France that killed

621
00:39:28,440 --> 00:39:30,440
Speaker 2: eighty six people when a man drove a truck through

622
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:34,880
Speaker 2: a crowd gathered for bestial day. I'm not disputing rondel

623
00:39:34,920 --> 00:39:38,200
Speaker 2: Henry's own stated intent or the fact that he'd viewed

624
00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:41,759
Speaker 2: ISS propaganda on his cell phone. I just wish I

625
00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:45,120
Speaker 2: could see the author's data set. First of all, how

626
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:48,680
Speaker 2: do they decide to include an incident that didn't actually happen.

627
00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:52,720
Speaker 2: But in a larger sense, how are they deciding based

628
00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:57,280
Speaker 2: largely just on media reporting, which attacks are attributable solely

629
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:01,680
Speaker 2: to the perpetrator's mental disturbance, and that category makes up

630
00:40:01,680 --> 00:40:06,080
Speaker 2: the bulk of their data. Media sources are very quick

631
00:40:06,080 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 2: to assume gee hottest intent if the perpetrator is Muslim,

632
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 2: and they're very quick to ignore the possibility of political

633
00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 2: motivations if the attacker is anyone else. So I just

634
00:40:17,600 --> 00:40:23,120
Speaker 2: wonder how they're making these determinations, because, again, this paper,

635
00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:25,759
Speaker 2: with its hand selected data set of one hundred and

636
00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:30,359
Speaker 2: eighty four vehicle ramming incidents. They categorized just ten of

637
00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:34,239
Speaker 2: those as right wing extremism, and according to one of

638
00:40:34,280 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 2: the tables, six of those occurred between twenty fourteen and

639
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:41,160
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, the time period when these attacks are really

640
00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 2: starting to spike worldwide. And again, the paper doesn't include

641
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:48,520
Speaker 2: a list of incidents, so I can only guess which

642
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:51,920
Speaker 2: six right wing attacks they included and categorized as such.

643
00:40:53,120 --> 00:40:55,799
Speaker 2: But the table indicates that of those six attacks during

644
00:40:55,800 --> 00:40:59,319
Speaker 2: that five year time period, there was only one fatality.

645
00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:04,400
Speaker 2: And I know that's not right by any definition of

646
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:08,520
Speaker 2: a right wing vehicle ramming attack. More than one person

647
00:41:08,719 --> 00:41:12,600
Speaker 2: died during that five year period, because we know there

648
00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:15,439
Speaker 2: was James alex Fields and Charlottesville in twenty seventeen. That's

649
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:19,400
Speaker 2: one attack, one fatality had their hire died. James Alex

650
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:21,960
Speaker 2: Fields was a Nazi. He had a framed picture of

651
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:25,600
Speaker 2: Hitler on his bedside table. So what else are they

652
00:41:25,640 --> 00:41:28,799
Speaker 2: categorizing as a right wing vehicle ramming attack during that

653
00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:34,600
Speaker 2: time period. Now I could accept the explanation that Elliott

654
00:41:34,719 --> 00:41:39,799
Speaker 2: Roger may not count. Roger was an Inceel, I'm not

655
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:43,040
Speaker 2: conceding that his murders free wasn't right wing extremism. That's

656
00:41:43,080 --> 00:41:46,080
Speaker 2: non negotiable. He hated women, he was racist, he was

657
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:49,640
Speaker 2: pretty into Hitler. I'm not going to do an episode

658
00:41:49,680 --> 00:41:52,240
Speaker 2: about him. But if you don't remember the twenty fourteen

659
00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:56,480
Speaker 2: ile Vista killings, you can look it up. That's what

660
00:41:56,520 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 2: they were called. There's plenty of information about it online.

661
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:03,279
Speaker 2: But no, I would accept it if the researchers said

662
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:06,920
Speaker 2: that they chose to exclude this attack altogether because the

663
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 2: vehicle ramming of random pedestrians wasn't the primary or central attack.

664
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:16,919
Speaker 2: Right I would argue that the vehicular assaults carried out

665
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:19,320
Speaker 2: after he left the scene of the sorority house shootings

666
00:42:19,920 --> 00:42:24,479
Speaker 2: do count as their own independent assaults. But like I said,

667
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:26,520
Speaker 2: i'd hear them out if they wanted to say that

668
00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:28,839
Speaker 2: that doesn't fit their criteria because it occurred as he

669
00:42:28,880 --> 00:42:31,239
Speaker 2: was leaving the scene of the shooting, or that the

670
00:42:31,320 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 2: vehicle was a secondary weapon in an attack that was

671
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:35,759
Speaker 2: primarily a shooting and stabbing spree.

672
00:42:36,120 --> 00:42:36,520
Speaker 1: Whatever.

673
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:39,360
Speaker 2: Okay, I will accept that maybe Elliott Roger is not

674
00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:43,919
Speaker 2: included in this data, but surely their list of right

675
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:47,960
Speaker 2: wing vehicle attacks from twenty fourteen to twenty nineteen. Surely

676
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:52,840
Speaker 2: that includes the Finsbury Park van attack. That attack was

677
00:42:52,880 --> 00:42:55,480
Speaker 2: in June of twenty seventeen outside of a mosque in London,

678
00:42:57,280 --> 00:43:00,960
Speaker 2: a little after midnight. People were leaving them off after Tarawi,

679
00:43:01,520 --> 00:43:05,920
Speaker 2: the nighttime prayer said during Ramadan. As they walked outside,

680
00:43:05,920 --> 00:43:07,600
Speaker 2: they saw a man at a nearby bus stop who

681
00:43:07,600 --> 00:43:10,479
Speaker 2: seemed to be in some medical distress, so a group

682
00:43:10,480 --> 00:43:12,839
Speaker 2: of men from the mosque walked over to offer aid.

683
00:43:14,640 --> 00:43:17,560
Speaker 2: It was there that Darren Osborne rammed his van into

684
00:43:17,560 --> 00:43:21,359
Speaker 2: the group. After driving up onto the curb and into

685
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:23,759
Speaker 2: the group of men, Darren Osborne jumped out of the

686
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:26,719
Speaker 2: van shouting I want to kill all Muslims. I did

687
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:30,200
Speaker 2: my bit before the men wrestled him to the ground

688
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:33,840
Speaker 2: as he was attempting to flee the scene. All this

689
00:43:33,960 --> 00:43:36,080
Speaker 2: noise must have drawn the AmAm out onto the street,

690
00:43:36,600 --> 00:43:39,640
Speaker 2: because the AmAm arrived on the scene just in time

691
00:43:39,680 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 2: to stop the men from beating Osborne pretty badly. And

692
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:48,080
Speaker 2: I know the author of this paper knows about this attack,

693
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:51,640
Speaker 2: which left one man dead, so it can't possibly be

694
00:43:51,680 --> 00:43:56,680
Speaker 2: in this data set because their paper cites heavily from

695
00:43:56,719 --> 00:44:00,800
Speaker 2: another paper One that I also read that is called

696
00:44:01,239 --> 00:44:05,400
Speaker 2: I did my bit terrorism car and the vehicle ramming

697
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:11,200
Speaker 2: attack as imitative event. And why then, does this data

698
00:44:11,239 --> 00:44:15,200
Speaker 2: set also appear to misclassify the twenty eighteen Toronto van attack.

699
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:19,880
Speaker 2: That attacker Alec Manassian is mentioned by name in the paper,

700
00:44:20,040 --> 00:44:22,719
Speaker 2: and one of the tables listing fatalities by country does

701
00:44:22,760 --> 00:44:25,640
Speaker 2: appear to include the ten people who died in that attack.

702
00:44:26,640 --> 00:44:29,200
Speaker 2: An eleventh victim passed away from their injuries in twenty

703
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:31,480
Speaker 2: twenty one, but that was after the paper was published,

704
00:44:32,680 --> 00:44:35,960
Speaker 2: so I can only assume the author included it as

705
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:39,759
Speaker 2: a data point, but they didn't classify it as right

706
00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:44,799
Speaker 2: wing extremism. And with only four categories, that must mean

707
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:50,000
Speaker 2: that they're classifying the obsessively violent racism and misogyny of

708
00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:56,480
Speaker 2: the Inceell movement as mental disturbance. I know it sounds

709
00:44:56,480 --> 00:44:59,600
Speaker 2: like I'm being too hard on this paper. Why am

710
00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:01,800
Speaker 2: I even telling you about it? If it's so flawed?

711
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:05,040
Speaker 2: Why did I use it? Because as I was reading

712
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 2: through reports prepared by federal government agencies, internal memos, training materials,

713
00:45:10,440 --> 00:45:15,359
Speaker 2: public bulletins from the DHS, the FBI, the TSA, this

714
00:45:15,440 --> 00:45:18,759
Speaker 2: is the study that's always in the footnotes, so I

715
00:45:18,800 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 2: think it bears dissecting because it's the one the government

716
00:45:22,160 --> 00:45:26,440
Speaker 2: is reading. And these flaws become even more apparent when

717
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:28,719
Speaker 2: you read the follow up paper written by the same

718
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:32,680
Speaker 2: authors a year later in the fall of twenty twenty.

719
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:37,120
Speaker 2: That paper is called Metal against Marchers, an Analysis of

720
00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:40,920
Speaker 2: recent incidents involving vehicle assaults at US political protests and rallies,

721
00:45:42,239 --> 00:45:47,080
Speaker 2: and it is dismissive of the one hundred and four

722
00:45:47,160 --> 00:45:49,600
Speaker 2: vehicle ramming incidents on protests during the summer of twenty

723
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 2: twenty that were cataloged by Ari wil. The paper says,

724
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:58,440
Speaker 2: these encounters are being described as quote attacks or quote

725
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:02,600
Speaker 2: domestic terrorism, but as this report indicates, the events taking

726
00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:05,080
Speaker 2: place at the protests differ in a number of ways

727
00:46:05,120 --> 00:46:07,880
Speaker 2: from the vehicle ramming attacks previously carried out by terrorist

728
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:11,800
Speaker 2: organizations and reviewed in our earlier report Smashing into Crowds

729
00:46:11,800 --> 00:46:16,359
Speaker 2: and Analysis of Vehicle Ramming Attacks. And in their analysis,

730
00:46:16,480 --> 00:46:19,759
Speaker 2: they looked at just fifty two of those incidents, and

731
00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:22,839
Speaker 2: they immediately discard nine of them as obvious accidents. And

732
00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:26,560
Speaker 2: I don't doubt that some of them were. Of the

733
00:46:26,600 --> 00:46:30,920
Speaker 2: forty three incidents that they examined more closely, they determined

734
00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 2: that there was clear evidence of malicious intent nineteen of

735
00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:41,279
Speaker 2: them and another sixteen were possibly malicious. So, by their

736
00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:45,399
Speaker 2: own analysis, eighty one percent of the incidents that they

737
00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:49,320
Speaker 2: decided met their own criteria for being examined as vehicle

738
00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:55,160
Speaker 2: ramming attacks. Eighty one percent of them looked intentional and malicious.

739
00:46:56,600 --> 00:46:58,120
Speaker 2: And even if you just look at the ones where

740
00:46:58,120 --> 00:47:02,319
Speaker 2: they say it's definitely malicious, forty four percent, and that's

741
00:47:02,400 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 2: right in line with the forty five percent of attacks

742
00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 2: that were deemed malicious in Ari Wil's original analysis. So

743
00:47:09,480 --> 00:47:13,440
Speaker 2: it sounds like they agree, right, But the next ten

744
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:18,239
Speaker 2: pages are devoted to downplaying, excusing, writing off, and ignoring

745
00:47:18,480 --> 00:47:24,200
Speaker 2: the danger that this data suggests when particularly appalling passage reads.

746
00:47:25,280 --> 00:47:27,799
Speaker 2: In a number of cases, it appears that drivers found

747
00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:30,840
Speaker 2: themselves in a crowd, which led to a heated exchange

748
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:33,080
Speaker 2: during which the driver pushed.

749
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:34,120
Speaker 1: Through the pedestrians.

750
00:47:34,960 --> 00:47:38,080
Speaker 2: It could be described as the vehicle pedestrian equivalent of

751
00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:43,799
Speaker 2: road rage. In still others, drivers deliberately drove to a

752
00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:49,320
Speaker 2: demonstration and then plowed through a crowd to display belligerents

753
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:54,320
Speaker 2: and intimidate the protesters. This would be the vehicular equivalent

754
00:47:54,360 --> 00:48:12,200
Speaker 2: of brandishing a weapon. Now, first of all, what they're

755
00:48:12,239 --> 00:48:16,720
Speaker 2: talking about here is a premeditated confrontation that the driver

756
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:21,480
Speaker 2: escalated to an assault with a deadly weapon. Brandishing a

757
00:48:21,560 --> 00:48:25,320
Speaker 2: weapon just means like pulling your gun out and showing

758
00:48:25,320 --> 00:48:27,800
Speaker 2: it in a way that could be perceived as threatening.

759
00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:34,040
Speaker 2: Hitting someone with your car even a little bit is

760
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:37,399
Speaker 2: more akin to I don't know, pulling out your gun

761
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:41,840
Speaker 2: during a disagreement, taking the safety off, chambering around, holding

762
00:48:41,920 --> 00:48:45,200
Speaker 2: it to someone's temple, and then pistol whipping them with it.

763
00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:49,080
Speaker 2: You're not just demonstrating that you have a weapon, which

764
00:48:49,080 --> 00:48:51,279
Speaker 2: would be I don't know, parking across the street and

765
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:52,520
Speaker 2: revving the engine a little bit.

766
00:48:53,560 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 1: You're using it. You're using the weapon.

767
00:48:58,480 --> 00:49:01,720
Speaker 2: The extremely low fatality rate of those attacks from twenty twenty,

768
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:05,200
Speaker 2: as well as the general apparent lack of intent to kill,

769
00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:09,120
Speaker 2: even among those attackers who clearly demonstrate malicious intent and

770
00:49:09,160 --> 00:49:12,480
Speaker 2: intent to harm, are both cited as evidence that these

771
00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:15,640
Speaker 2: incidents aren't the same as the vehicular ramming attacks in

772
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:19,560
Speaker 2: the earlier paper. But nowhere in that paper did they

773
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:23,320
Speaker 2: claim that intent to kill was a requirement, and terrorism

774
00:49:23,360 --> 00:49:26,800
Speaker 2: itself broadly defined both in the law and in general

775
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:32,439
Speaker 2: research doesn't require intent to kill. Remember, the definition used

776
00:49:32,440 --> 00:49:34,640
Speaker 2: by the researchers that this author cites in his own

777
00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:38,920
Speaker 2: work is just the threatened or actual use of illegal

778
00:49:38,960 --> 00:49:42,520
Speaker 2: force and violence by a nonstate actor to attaining political, economic, religious,

779
00:49:42,560 --> 00:49:44,600
Speaker 2: or social goal through fear, querition, or intimidation.

780
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:46,960
Speaker 1: And what is that.

781
00:49:47,880 --> 00:49:50,040
Speaker 2: If you bump somebody a little bit with your car,

782
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:53,279
Speaker 2: that is actual use of force as well as the

783
00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:57,440
Speaker 2: threat of lethal force. If these people who are engaging

784
00:49:57,440 --> 00:50:01,040
Speaker 2: in political activity that you disagree with, don't go home,

785
00:50:02,520 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 2: that's what it is. And then there are claims in

786
00:50:06,680 --> 00:50:12,759
Speaker 2: the paper that just outright contradict their own prior work quote. However,

787
00:50:13,200 --> 00:50:15,800
Speaker 2: more of the earlier cases could be connected with ongoing

788
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:21,359
Speaker 2: campaigns of terrorist violence jihadists, wigers Palestinians, even if they

789
00:50:21,360 --> 00:50:24,600
Speaker 2: were carried out by individual perpetrators who were inspired, as

790
00:50:24,600 --> 00:50:28,400
Speaker 2: opposed to being directed to take action. Only two of

791
00:50:28,400 --> 00:50:31,359
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty cases can be connected with an identifiable group.

792
00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:35,040
Speaker 2: None of the twenty twenty cases thus far show evidence

793
00:50:35,040 --> 00:50:39,800
Speaker 2: of being ordered or assisted by an organization. And you

794
00:50:39,880 --> 00:50:42,960
Speaker 2: might think that sounds like it makes sense, right, but

795
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:47,880
Speaker 2: it doesn't. It doesn't hold water. When Palestinians were carrying

796
00:50:47,920 --> 00:50:50,800
Speaker 2: out car attacks in the nineties, there was no group

797
00:50:51,040 --> 00:50:54,880
Speaker 2: calling for that as a tactic. In later years, people

798
00:50:54,920 --> 00:50:57,640
Speaker 2: are talking about it, people are calling for it. But

799
00:50:57,719 --> 00:51:00,719
Speaker 2: a study of Palestinian vehicle attacks from two thousand to

800
00:51:00,719 --> 00:51:05,360
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen shows no group affiliation for any perpetrator in

801
00:51:05,400 --> 00:51:10,000
Speaker 2: the data set. The vast majority of jihadist inspired vehicle

802
00:51:10,080 --> 00:51:11,799
Speaker 2: tax in the United States and Europe in the last

803
00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:15,720
Speaker 2: ten years were carried out by perpetrators with no known

804
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:21,759
Speaker 2: actual contact with any group. They weren't members, they never

805
00:51:21,800 --> 00:51:26,680
Speaker 2: talked to anybody. They just saw it online. And if

806
00:51:26,719 --> 00:51:31,960
Speaker 2: seeing political propaganda online is sufficient to connect an attacker

807
00:51:32,600 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 2: to a group or ideology, you can't exclude the attacks

808
00:51:36,680 --> 00:51:41,480
Speaker 2: on protests in the United States. The American drivers plowing

809
00:51:41,520 --> 00:51:44,960
Speaker 2: through protests aren't doing it in a vacuum.

810
00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:45,960
Speaker 1: They're right.

811
00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:49,320
Speaker 2: Most of these attackers aren't affiliated with what they're thinking

812
00:51:49,360 --> 00:51:55,000
Speaker 2: of as official groups, terrorist organizations, hate groups. Skip was

813
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:57,719
Speaker 2: definitely a klansman, but that was an outlier. Most of

814
00:51:57,760 --> 00:52:02,560
Speaker 2: them aren't moo cases. We do know what they believe

815
00:52:03,080 --> 00:52:06,960
Speaker 2: and what kind of media environment they're existing in. I'm

816
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:09,160
Speaker 2: not talking about going on the dark corners of the

817
00:52:09,200 --> 00:52:13,080
Speaker 2: Internet to download copies of al Qaeda magazines and isis videos.

818
00:52:14,200 --> 00:52:14,959
Speaker 1: There's always a lot.

819
00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:18,040
Speaker 2: Of airtime for discussion about Islamic extremist content and couraging

820
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:21,759
Speaker 2: these kinds of attacks, and that is out there. Don't

821
00:52:21,760 --> 00:52:23,879
Speaker 2: get me wrong, I'm not saying it's not out there.

822
00:52:24,719 --> 00:52:27,880
Speaker 2: In the fall of twenty ten, Inspire magazine, the English

823
00:52:27,960 --> 00:52:31,480
Speaker 2: language publication by an al Qaida group in Yemen, published

824
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:36,279
Speaker 2: an article called the Ultimate Mowing Machine. Most of the

825
00:52:36,280 --> 00:52:38,160
Speaker 2: first page of the article is taken up by a

826
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:42,080
Speaker 2: gigantic image of a Ford F two fifty, but the

827
00:52:42,120 --> 00:52:45,719
Speaker 2: text of the article encourages adherents to carry out these

828
00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:47,120
Speaker 2: kinds of attacks.

829
00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 1: Quote.

830
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:50,640
Speaker 2: The idea is to use a pickup truck as a

831
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:54,560
Speaker 2: mowing machine, not to mow grass, but to mow down

832
00:52:54,600 --> 00:52:57,160
Speaker 2: the enemies of a law, the magazine says.

833
00:52:58,560 --> 00:53:00,240
Speaker 1: Quote. The ideal location.

834
00:53:00,239 --> 00:53:02,040
Speaker 2: Is a place where there are a maximum number of

835
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:05,799
Speaker 2: pedestrians and the least number of vehicles. In fact, if

836
00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:08,560
Speaker 2: you can get through to pedestrian only locations that exist

837
00:53:08,640 --> 00:53:11,920
Speaker 2: in some downtown city center areas, that would be fabulous.

838
00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:14,960
Speaker 2: There are some places that are closed down for vehicles

839
00:53:15,000 --> 00:53:19,440
Speaker 2: at certain times due to the swarms of people. That

840
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:23,799
Speaker 2: magazine article did exist, and there was another article in

841
00:53:23,840 --> 00:53:27,480
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen published by an ISIS affiliated group that had

842
00:53:27,480 --> 00:53:32,719
Speaker 2: a similar message. Notably, though, most researchers go out of

843
00:53:32,719 --> 00:53:36,560
Speaker 2: their way to explain that there was actually no measurable

844
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:39,440
Speaker 2: increase in this type of attack after either of those

845
00:53:39,520 --> 00:53:42,920
Speaker 2: articles were published, and in fact, both of those articles

846
00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:47,520
Speaker 2: were published immediately after a relatively high profile attack of

847
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:52,600
Speaker 2: this kind, so rather than inspiring future attacks, they seem

848
00:53:52,640 --> 00:53:56,719
Speaker 2: to be trying to capitalize on the publicity surrounding an

849
00:53:56,719 --> 00:54:02,719
Speaker 2: attack that had just happened. But yes, there are, of

850
00:54:02,760 --> 00:54:06,520
Speaker 2: course Islamic extremist groups that do put out explicit calls

851
00:54:06,520 --> 00:54:07,600
Speaker 2: for this kind of attack.

852
00:54:08,320 --> 00:54:12,160
Speaker 1: I'm not hiding that from you. But they're not alone.

853
00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:17,480
Speaker 2: In January twenty seventeen, The Daily Caller, a right wing

854
00:54:17,520 --> 00:54:21,680
Speaker 2: news website founded by Tucker Carlson, posted a video online

855
00:54:21,800 --> 00:54:26,200
Speaker 2: with the headline, here's a reel of cars flowing through

856
00:54:26,239 --> 00:54:29,600
Speaker 2: protesters trying to block the road.

857
00:54:30,239 --> 00:54:31,440
Speaker 1: And the video was just that.

858
00:54:32,600 --> 00:54:36,280
Speaker 2: It's a ninety second compilation of clips of vehicular ramming

859
00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:37,640
Speaker 2: attacks on protesters.

860
00:54:38,960 --> 00:54:40,880
Speaker 1: It's set to a.

861
00:54:40,239 --> 00:54:44,600
Speaker 2: Bizarre I don't know sort of a pop rock soft

862
00:54:44,920 --> 00:54:51,279
Speaker 2: piano cover of Ludacris's song Move Bitch, and before the

863
00:54:51,400 --> 00:54:55,040
Speaker 2: violence starts on the screen, the Daily Caller helpfully warns

864
00:54:55,120 --> 00:54:57,480
Speaker 2: viewers that the song has a lot of profanity in it,

865
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:00,439
Speaker 2: you know, in case you don't like to hear bad

866
00:55:00,480 --> 00:55:03,520
Speaker 2: words and might want to mute it before viewing people

867
00:55:04,040 --> 00:55:08,160
Speaker 2: get thrown into the air by speeding cars. There's no

868
00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:12,320
Speaker 2: mention or warning that there will be graphic violence, although

869
00:55:12,360 --> 00:55:16,000
Speaker 2: I guess you can assume that from the title. The

870
00:55:16,040 --> 00:55:19,800
Speaker 2: site's video editor, Mike Roused wrote on the post, here's

871
00:55:19,800 --> 00:55:22,440
Speaker 2: a compilation of liberal protesters getting pushed out of the

872
00:55:22,480 --> 00:55:27,120
Speaker 2: way by cars and trucks. Study the technique. It may

873
00:55:27,239 --> 00:55:30,680
Speaker 2: prove useful in the next four years. None of these

874
00:55:30,680 --> 00:55:35,920
Speaker 2: clips are new, but that doesn't mean they're not still fresh.

875
00:55:35,960 --> 00:55:39,920
Speaker 2: And that post stayed up for eight months after James

876
00:55:39,920 --> 00:55:42,680
Speaker 2: alex Field's murdered Heather Higher and August of that year,

877
00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:46,680
Speaker 2: the Daily Caller quietly deleted the post and didn't respond to.

878
00:55:46,640 --> 00:55:47,839
Speaker 1: Requests for comment about it.

879
00:55:49,640 --> 00:55:52,600
Speaker 2: Fox News did issue an official statement saying that they

880
00:55:52,680 --> 00:55:56,560
Speaker 2: regretted reposting the video to Fox Nation, which at the

881
00:55:56,600 --> 00:55:59,440
Speaker 2: time was an official Fox news companion site focused on

882
00:55:59,480 --> 00:56:00,640
Speaker 2: opinion and commentary.

883
00:56:02,400 --> 00:56:05,400
Speaker 1: But the video was there all year, was there.

884
00:56:05,280 --> 00:56:10,360
Speaker 2: All summer twenty seventeen. It wasn't just James alex Field's

885
00:56:10,360 --> 00:56:12,919
Speaker 2: and the other Unite the Right attendees posting memes about

886
00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:18,359
Speaker 2: running people over. And as if that weren't enough, that

887
00:56:18,480 --> 00:56:22,560
Speaker 2: twenty twenty paper from the Minetta Transportation Institute concludes with

888
00:56:22,640 --> 00:56:28,279
Speaker 2: one final handwaving dismissal of the very idea quote the

889
00:56:28,400 --> 00:56:31,560
Speaker 2: numbers cited in this review of meaning in the more

890
00:56:31,560 --> 00:56:34,480
Speaker 2: than ten thousand demonstrations during the late spring and summer

891
00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:37,120
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty, there was something on the order of

892
00:56:37,440 --> 00:56:41,760
Speaker 2: one hundred incidents. Ari Wyle assigned malicious intent to forty

893
00:56:41,760 --> 00:56:45,040
Speaker 2: three of these events, while we discern malicious intent in

894
00:56:45,120 --> 00:56:49,440
Speaker 2: thirty five of them. In either case, it is a

895
00:56:49,560 --> 00:56:50,720
Speaker 2: very small number.

896
00:56:52,560 --> 00:56:55,760
Speaker 1: No, it's not. No, it's not that's not true.

897
00:56:55,880 --> 00:56:59,319
Speaker 2: That is a lie. I did notice a lot of

898
00:56:59,440 --> 00:57:02,960
Speaker 2: errors in their first paper. They have a lot of tables,

899
00:57:03,040 --> 00:57:05,520
Speaker 2: you know, sort of slicing and dicing their numbers in

900
00:57:05,560 --> 00:57:08,520
Speaker 2: different ways, and I think a lot of the numbers

901
00:57:08,560 --> 00:57:11,480
Speaker 2: are wrong because from one table to the next sort

902
00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:15,000
Speaker 2: of rearranging the same numbers in different configurations than numbers

903
00:57:15,360 --> 00:57:16,200
Speaker 2: don't match.

904
00:57:16,680 --> 00:57:18,240
Speaker 1: So maybe they're just not numbers. Guys.

905
00:57:18,280 --> 00:57:20,880
Speaker 2: Maybe he doesn't know that this isn't a very small number,

906
00:57:21,320 --> 00:57:25,280
Speaker 2: because by their own methodology, they've identified thirty five separate

907
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:31,880
Speaker 2: incidents of malicious intentional vehicle ramming attacks on political protesters

908
00:57:31,920 --> 00:57:36,280
Speaker 2: during a four month period in the United States. Their

909
00:57:36,320 --> 00:57:39,760
Speaker 2: prior paper, which they're comparing this to and saying this

910
00:57:39,880 --> 00:57:42,280
Speaker 2: isn't like that, this is not a big deal, that

911
00:57:42,400 --> 00:57:47,040
Speaker 2: paper identified twenty four vehicle ramming attacks in the United

912
00:57:47,080 --> 00:57:51,120
Speaker 2: States between twenty fourteen and twenty nineteen twenty four over

913
00:57:51,160 --> 00:57:57,360
Speaker 2: a five year period. Thirty five in four months is

914
00:57:57,400 --> 00:57:59,840
Speaker 2: more than twenty times the frequency of the attacks in

915
00:57:59,840 --> 00:58:05,080
Speaker 2: the earlier data set. That's not a small number. That's

916
00:58:05,120 --> 00:58:08,240
Speaker 2: either an emergency or a sign you need to go

917
00:58:08,280 --> 00:58:12,960
Speaker 2: back to the drawing board and look at your fucking methodology.

918
00:58:13,080 --> 00:58:15,560
Speaker 2: In the paper by Miller and Hayward, they write that

919
00:58:15,640 --> 00:58:21,280
Speaker 2: vehicle ramming attacks have a virus like quality. In twenty sixteen,

920
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:26,040
Speaker 2: they very quickly rose from a fairly rare, isolated event

921
00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:28,959
Speaker 2: to what is now the most deadly form of terror

922
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:33,000
Speaker 2: attack in the Western world. And this paper takes a

923
00:58:33,000 --> 00:58:36,400
Speaker 2: more sociological approach than the other one, which is again

924
00:58:36,600 --> 00:58:42,240
Speaker 2: firmly entrenched in the problematic world of terrorism studies, inc. So,

925
00:58:42,320 --> 00:58:45,840
Speaker 2: instead of trying to categorize attackers by guessing at their motives,

926
00:58:46,600 --> 00:58:50,080
Speaker 2: this paper looks at the act itself, noting the wide

927
00:58:50,120 --> 00:58:55,000
Speaker 2: ideological diversity among the perpetrators in their data set. Despite

928
00:58:55,120 --> 00:58:59,560
Speaker 2: typically being framed in one of these two ways. Vehicle

929
00:58:59,640 --> 00:59:04,600
Speaker 2: ramming attacks aren't a jihattist tactic that escaped containment, and

930
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:06,160
Speaker 2: they weren't at Palestinian invention.

931
00:59:07,440 --> 00:59:08,080
Speaker 1: It's a tool.

932
00:59:09,160 --> 00:59:12,960
Speaker 2: The tool itself has no ideology. It's just something that

933
00:59:13,040 --> 00:59:16,120
Speaker 2: is low tech and accessible. You don't need to buy

934
00:59:16,120 --> 00:59:20,680
Speaker 2: special equipment or have particular training or skills. Anyone can

935
00:59:20,720 --> 00:59:26,160
Speaker 2: do it, and they do. Perpetrators of this kind of

936
00:59:26,200 --> 00:59:30,840
Speaker 2: attack run the entire spectrum, but that virus like quality

937
00:59:31,440 --> 00:59:34,720
Speaker 2: means you're more likely to catch it if you're exposed

938
00:59:34,720 --> 00:59:38,040
Speaker 2: to it on a regular basis and in large doses.

939
00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:43,000
Speaker 2: At the risk of being too blunt about it, the

940
00:59:43,040 --> 00:59:46,120
Speaker 2: papers from the Meneta Transportation Institute are.

941
00:59:45,960 --> 00:59:46,800
Speaker 1: Grotesque to me.

942
00:59:48,280 --> 00:59:51,520
Speaker 2: They downplay the violence of right wing actors and over

943
00:59:51,600 --> 00:59:55,320
Speaker 2: emphasize the threat of Islamic extremist attacks by spending most

944
00:59:55,360 --> 00:59:58,280
Speaker 2: of the paper discussing that type of attack, despite it

945
00:59:58,320 --> 01:00:02,080
Speaker 2: representing a very small portion of the TI data. There

946
01:00:02,120 --> 01:00:05,920
Speaker 2: have been a few dozen, very deadly, high profile attacks

947
01:00:05,920 --> 01:00:08,720
Speaker 2: in the last ten years, mostly in Europe, where the

948
01:00:08,760 --> 01:00:14,280
Speaker 2: attacker's motivation was absolutely Islamic extremism. I'm not saying those

949
01:00:14,280 --> 01:00:17,440
Speaker 2: attacks don't happen, that those events don't matter. I'm not

950
01:00:17,480 --> 01:00:19,480
Speaker 2: covering them up or hiding them from you, or making

951
01:00:19,480 --> 01:00:20,280
Speaker 2: excuses for them.

952
01:00:20,320 --> 01:00:22,800
Speaker 1: I don't approve of those but.

953
01:00:22,800 --> 01:00:26,960
Speaker 2: These self selected data sets put the spotlight on those events.

954
01:00:27,640 --> 01:00:31,480
Speaker 2: By excluding a long and bloody history of vehicles as

955
01:00:31,480 --> 01:00:35,560
Speaker 2: a tool of political violence, it is a political choice

956
01:00:36,080 --> 01:00:41,000
Speaker 2: to focus on a particular piece of data, and by

957
01:00:41,040 --> 01:00:44,600
Speaker 2: repeatedly reasserting this claim that the tactic was invented in

958
01:00:44,640 --> 01:00:49,080
Speaker 2: the nineties by Palestinians despite the existence of earlier data points,

959
01:00:50,000 --> 01:00:53,320
Speaker 2: they equate the desperate acts of an oppressed people fighting

960
01:00:53,320 --> 01:00:56,160
Speaker 2: an occupying army with the only tools at their disposal.

961
01:00:57,360 --> 01:01:02,040
Speaker 2: They're equating that with the activity excellent suburban American racist

962
01:01:02,040 --> 01:01:05,320
Speaker 2: and a pickup truck who thinks liberals don't have civil rights.

963
01:01:06,120 --> 01:01:09,160
Speaker 2: The only thing these two types of attacks have in

964
01:01:09,240 --> 01:01:13,400
Speaker 2: common is the attacker's access to a low tech, widely

965
01:01:13,440 --> 01:01:18,640
Speaker 2: available weapon, their intent, their context, their motivation. None of

966
01:01:18,640 --> 01:01:22,240
Speaker 2: these things are the same. These are not the same phenomenon.

967
01:01:22,680 --> 01:01:28,040
Speaker 2: It's just the same tool. The prevalence with which that

968
01:01:28,120 --> 01:01:31,640
Speaker 2: paper is cited in materials written by and for American

969
01:01:31,680 --> 01:01:36,520
Speaker 2: law enforcement agencies should tell you something. They want you

970
01:01:36,600 --> 01:01:39,240
Speaker 2: to be afraid of the people the government already doesn't like,

971
01:01:40,440 --> 01:01:42,600
Speaker 2: and they want you to be afraid to exercise your

972
01:01:42,640 --> 01:01:49,000
Speaker 2: right to protest. Palestinians didn't invent vehicular attacks. You don't

973
01:01:49,040 --> 01:01:51,800
Speaker 2: have to look to the West Bank. Look at our

974
01:01:51,840 --> 01:01:58,080
Speaker 2: own history, look at the relatively recent news. Americans who

975
01:01:58,080 --> 01:02:01,160
Speaker 2: have been victims of politically motive violence at the front

976
01:02:01,240 --> 01:02:05,120
Speaker 2: end of a car are union workers. They were people

977
01:02:05,120 --> 01:02:08,600
Speaker 2: who took to the streets to protest war and nuclear bombs.

978
01:02:09,360 --> 01:02:12,920
Speaker 2: There are people who wanted peace, people who wanted civil rights,

979
01:02:13,160 --> 01:02:17,280
Speaker 2: people who wanted equality, and the United States of America.

980
01:02:18,040 --> 01:02:22,600
Speaker 2: The blood on those bumpers is theirs. There seems to

981
01:02:22,640 --> 01:02:24,840
Speaker 2: be a vested interest in making sure that when you

982
01:02:24,880 --> 01:02:27,720
Speaker 2: think of a violent man driving into a crowd, that

983
01:02:27,800 --> 01:02:30,520
Speaker 2: you are thinking of a racist caricature of a Muslim man,

984
01:02:31,360 --> 01:02:34,560
Speaker 2: when you should be thinking of the bosses and the scabs,

985
01:02:34,640 --> 01:02:37,360
Speaker 2: and the racists and the cops and the people who've

986
01:02:37,360 --> 01:02:39,919
Speaker 2: had their brains rotted out. In the comment section under

987
01:02:39,960 --> 01:02:42,520
Speaker 2: a Twitter post from a meme account that sometimes gets

988
01:02:42,560 --> 01:02:47,760
Speaker 2: a laugh emoji reply from Elon Musk. After James alex

989
01:02:47,800 --> 01:02:52,040
Speaker 2: Field's murdered Heather Hire in twenty seventeen, a police officer

990
01:02:52,080 --> 01:02:54,720
Speaker 2: in Springfield, Massachusetts got on Facebook and he posted a

991
01:02:54,760 --> 01:03:00,600
Speaker 2: news story about the attack, and with that link he wrote, Ahaha,

992
01:03:01,360 --> 01:03:06,760
Speaker 2: love this. In twenty twenty, as Summer Tailor lay dying

993
01:03:06,800 --> 01:03:10,280
Speaker 2: in a hospital in Seattle, a King County Sheriff's detective

994
01:03:10,320 --> 01:03:14,440
Speaker 2: posted a mean depicting a vehicle running someone over and

995
01:03:14,480 --> 01:03:19,560
Speaker 2: the text read all lives splatter. To remove any doubt

996
01:03:19,560 --> 01:03:22,400
Speaker 2: that he was absolutely talking about Summer Taylor, who was

997
01:03:22,440 --> 01:03:25,280
Speaker 2: at that time not yet dead but would be soon,

998
01:03:26,520 --> 01:03:30,000
Speaker 2: he commented on his own post, I see a couple

999
01:03:30,040 --> 01:03:32,400
Speaker 2: of people got infected with COVID nineteen from the hood

1000
01:03:32,440 --> 01:03:36,440
Speaker 2: of a car on I five last night, and the

1001
01:03:36,480 --> 01:03:41,640
Speaker 2: media landscape today is even worse. Open encouragement to run

1002
01:03:41,680 --> 01:03:44,560
Speaker 2: protesters down in your car as being aired on major

1003
01:03:44,640 --> 01:03:48,840
Speaker 2: news networks. The governor of Florida says you should do it.

1004
01:03:50,200 --> 01:03:53,680
Speaker 2: People in right wing media ecosystems are consuming an incredible

1005
01:03:53,680 --> 01:03:57,960
Speaker 2: amount of content that normalizes this extremely specific act of violence.

1006
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:05,120
Speaker 2: They're being desensitized to it. It's a joke, but they

1007
01:04:05,200 --> 01:04:09,760
Speaker 2: mean it, and for a tiny fraction of a percentage

1008
01:04:09,760 --> 01:04:15,040
Speaker 2: of them, that seed will grow into something hideous. A

1009
01:04:15,120 --> 01:04:22,080
Speaker 2: sudden violent urge, a moment's premeditation were not of months

1010
01:04:22,080 --> 01:04:41,360
Speaker 2: of encouragement. We're Little Guys is a production of cools

1011
01:04:41,360 --> 01:04:44,600
Speaker 2: Home Media and iHeartRadio. It's research, written and recorded by me,

1012
01:04:44,760 --> 01:04:48,640
Speaker 2: Molly Conger. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtermann and Robert Evans.

1013
01:04:49,440 --> 01:04:51,800
Speaker 2: The show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan.

1014
01:04:52,360 --> 01:04:55,000
Speaker 2: The theme music was composed by Brad Dickord. You can

1015
01:04:55,040 --> 01:04:57,320
Speaker 2: email me at Worth Little Guy's podcast at gmail dot com.

1016
01:04:57,320 --> 01:04:59,600
Speaker 2: I will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it.

1017
01:05:00,200 --> 01:05:02,320
Speaker 2: You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other

1018
01:05:02,320 --> 01:05:06,040
Speaker 2: listeners on the Weird Little Guys subredd. It just don't

1019
01:05:06,040 --> 01:05:07,360
Speaker 2: post anything that's going to make you one of my

1020
01:05:07,440 --> 01:05:08,200
Speaker 2: rudlute guys.