Speaker 1: What's clear in my throats. I'm Robert Evanson. This is
Speaker 1: once again Behind the Bastards, the podcast where YadA YadA,
Speaker 1: bad people talk about him whatnot. This is the fourth
Speaker 1: chapter of my audiobook, The War on Everyone. It's our
Speaker 1: second day recording it. I'm here with Cody Johnston, Katie Stole. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: we are all higher than we were last time. Goodness
Speaker 1: very much. The first time we were not high. We
Speaker 1: were not We were all strung out too, yeah, tired.
Speaker 1: And now we're a little bit high. We're more than
Speaker 1: a little bit high. We're more than a little bit high,
Speaker 1: but we're not as strung out. So I have a
Speaker 1: considerable assortment of throwing things around me that doesn't worry
Speaker 1: me at all. Cody called this hyper normalization, um, because
Speaker 1: I can no longer be satisfied with just just look
Speaker 1: at this, tossing some fucking bagels. You to do nothing
Speaker 1: for me, nothing for me. So I have a bag
Speaker 1: of roughly twenty paper towel rolls. I have to say that.
Speaker 1: Right before we started recording, Robert suggested that we all
Speaker 1: get on helmets and armor and he would practice his
Speaker 1: throwing knives. And that's a that's a null practice is
Speaker 1: a strong word. I just want to throw knives one
Speaker 1: episode and see if I could stick him in the
Speaker 1: soundproofing on the wall. Yeah yeah, I mean I would
Speaker 1: argue that we don't have to be here in front
Speaker 1: of you for that. Well you could be on my side.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Okay, now that you've said that you want
Speaker 1: to throw around knives and we're like, no, you can
Speaker 1: say something a little bed you can have. I have
Speaker 1: these throwing prinkles. You can throw some pringles. I have
Speaker 1: a box of around twelve little hundred calorie packs of
Speaker 1: pringles that are all in an open topped box together.
Speaker 1: I am excited to throw that if I can kind
Speaker 1: of wing it. My my theory, because it's kind of
Speaker 1: rectangular shaped, is if I can wing it like a frisbee,
Speaker 1: I can get it to go straight until it hits
Speaker 1: the wall and then bursts like a scatter bomb over
Speaker 1: an Afghan wedding right right. If angle it properly enough,
Speaker 1: you could get it on the stone boards. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean that that's the dream. That's the dream, But I
Speaker 1: think it might be a little bit unreasonably bounce out
Speaker 1: and you have to start like sharing pictures of this
Speaker 1: room so that people can get an idea of what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. We did this morning there's Danil shared
Speaker 1: a picture of the of the bagels that are stuck
Speaker 1: on the top of the sound perfect I do have
Speaker 1: a plan for those bagels and for if you guys
Speaker 1: remember two months ago we threw the coffee mate on
Speaker 1: top of the poison room. Um, so when we start
Speaker 1: our new podcast, which will be named some variant of
Speaker 1: the worst Year Ever, for the worst year of our lives,
Speaker 1: we haven't we haven't quite set yere bad year for everybody.
Speaker 1: Bad year, bad podcast, fine podcast about a bad, bad year.
Speaker 1: In January. We should inaugurate the show by taking the
Speaker 1: by that point, very very very stale bagels off of
Speaker 1: the soundproofing and taking the very very very bad uh
Speaker 1: coffee mate off of the top of the poison room
Speaker 1: and having ourselves some coffee made bagels. Gross. That sounds awful.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Let's do it, terrible bagels to start
Speaker 1: a terrible year. We can at least see what comes out.
Speaker 1: You know, choose some coffee cream. I mean it was
Speaker 1: expired the last time we had. How much worse could
Speaker 1: it get? One pump a portion of a cream curdled cream,
Speaker 1: just like several several dusts. What that's the Joe Biden. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he covered her mouth with that. Her reaction is
Speaker 1: hard to place. No, what do other podcast talk about
Speaker 1: before they start? Well, coach doesn't like for us to
Speaker 1: talk about too much because we always feel like, well,
Speaker 1: I feel like we've talked for like ten minutes at
Speaker 1: this point. We have, we have, we have, but like
Speaker 1: so we normally just talk. We um, we say whatever
Speaker 1: holiday it is, happy, whatever, and we make a couple
Speaker 1: of jokes or whatever about that, and then we get started.
Speaker 1: What is your book? You know? It is my audio
Speaker 1: book and there's a version of it with none of
Speaker 1: this where it's just me reading it. So I feel
Speaker 1: like they've got options, So fuck it. Fuck them assholes
Speaker 1: who donated money generously so that I do work theoretical
Speaker 1: bastards that haven't actually complained, but that I'm imagining. Well,
Speaker 1: what are you doing, Sylphie read the book to it? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: we might be high. It's it's possible. Chapter four, How
Speaker 1: to Build an Army Fun times. Everything you're going to
Speaker 1: read about in this chapter or listen about here about
Speaker 1: in this chapter I wrote here, but I said read
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Maybe because I'm reading is documented history.
Speaker 1: I feel the need to emphasize that here at the beginning,
Speaker 1: because the history I'm about to discuss is very much underreported.
Speaker 1: Most of this is probably not stuff you heard about,
Speaker 1: certainly not in a textbook, And the question of why
Speaker 1: that is the case is a really good one, because
Speaker 1: the story that I'm going to tell in this chapter
Speaker 1: is the story of a bloody, vicious, and exceptionally deadly
Speaker 1: insurgency that, had a few things broken differently, might have
Speaker 1: plunged the nation into mass violence. As it was, hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of people were killed, and the killing continues
Speaker 1: to this day. A weird way to read that last
Speaker 1: line there. Yeah, this story of the story of this
Speaker 1: insurgency starts, as most stories of insurgencies do, with a
Speaker 1: single guy. Now, this guy's name was Louis Beam. Guys
Speaker 1: remember talking about Louis Beam a little bit in our
Speaker 1: Border episode? Um is he uh? One of the He's
Speaker 1: one of them? Listiamen that yep, yep had a border
Speaker 1: KKK guy. He had a lot to say, a lot
Speaker 1: to say, so like me, Louis Beam was a Texan.
Speaker 1: He was born in ninety six in Lufkin, Texas. And
Speaker 1: I had a roommate who was from Lufkin. Once he
Speaker 1: used to drunkenly punch out light bulbs. But that's neither
Speaker 1: here nor there. Um fun guy Sam was his name.
Speaker 1: I'd like to hear sometimes it's that's the whole story.
Speaker 1: He would get drunk and he would punch light bulbs.
Speaker 1: He was seven ft tall. Okay, so Lefkin alright. Wi.
Speaker 1: Beam was from Lefkin. He grew up in the America
Speaker 1: that modern conservatives still longingly hearkened back to. His parents
Speaker 1: were working class people, and his father served in combat
Speaker 1: during World War Two. That tradition inspired Beam to enlist
Speaker 1: in the army at age nineteen. He had a pregnant
Speaker 1: wife at this point and every reason to avoid conflict,
Speaker 1: but Beams sought out a baptism by fire and he
Speaker 1: got it. So when Beam entered the U. S. Military,
Speaker 1: he was entering an organization that, for the very first time,
Speaker 1: was racially integrated. Vietnam was the first war where like
Speaker 1: black guys and white guys would fight and mixed units
Speaker 1: and black people were allowed to do all the jobs.
Speaker 1: And yeah, um, now This did not sit well with
Speaker 1: Beam because he was a big supporter of George Wallace.
Speaker 1: You might remember from the last Segregation Forever fella. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of common you know, idols and heroes and
Speaker 1: people that these people towards. Yeah, they're all connected in
Speaker 1: at least two or three ways. Part of the trouble
Speaker 1: putting this together was figuring out, like where to stop
Speaker 1: talking about their connections, like with Matt Brack and the
Speaker 1: guy who wrote the third series of books inspired by
Speaker 1: the Turner Diaries, also a guest on Alex Jones's show. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of these sea And at what
Speaker 1: point is it? Are you saying it too much? And
Speaker 1: it's like taking the time to from it? Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Louis Beam joins the military, love and segregation and
Speaker 1: George Wallace. Uh, and yeah, he's frustrated by the military
Speaker 1: that he finds himself in frustrated it serving alongside black people.
Speaker 1: At one point, Beam and several of his most racist
Speaker 1: comrades hang Confederate flags in their barracks and active protest
Speaker 1: against the civil rights movement. That was the right thing
Speaker 1: to protest during the Vietnam War. So that's the guy
Speaker 1: Beam is super psyched about Vietnam, hates black people being
Speaker 1: able to drink from the same water. Fans Yeah, so
Speaker 1: Bring the war Home by Kathleen Blue provides good context
Speaker 1: for the nature of racial strife among the U S
Speaker 1: soldiers in Vietnam during the time Beam enlisted. Quote will
Speaker 1: white and black soldiers faced combat together, the rear echelon
Speaker 1: was intensely segregated. One black soldier described Saigon as just
Speaker 1: like Mississippi. In Beams camp at Chiu Chi and Vietnam,
Speaker 1: black and white soldiers frequently exchanged insults, slights, and blows.
Speaker 1: Beam served in the twenty Aviation Battalion at a moment
Speaker 1: of escalating racial tensions. As the language of black power
Speaker 1: circulated between home and battlefront, black soldiers created a culture
Speaker 1: of a frozen black berets greeting each other with fist bumps.
Speaker 1: Some white soldiers in the twenty five reported feeling alienated
Speaker 1: are threatened because of such actions. Klansman, serving as active
Speaker 1: duty personnel in Vietnam announced plans for cross burnings and
Speaker 1: spray painted racial epithets on rear echelon buildings. By nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps recorded more than a thousand incidents of
Speaker 1: racial violence and installations, both in Vietnam and back home. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's actually I've never heard that before. That you never
Speaker 1: hear that story. Yeah, I'm not surprised. But also back
Speaker 1: in the States there were murders and lynchings on military bases. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course there were. I can't stop using those voice
Speaker 1: of like mild interest, not not appropriate for this. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty four, four members of the United Clans
Speaker 1: of America murdered a Black Army Reserve lieutenant colonel. Later
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, the Camp Pendleton Clan chapter reached
Speaker 1: two hundred members in size and carried out a campaign
Speaker 1: of shootings, fire bombings, torture, and harassment of black marines.
Speaker 1: Beam did not join the United Clans until after he
Speaker 1: was discharged from service, but he served in a military
Speaker 1: where racial violence was common and where membership in extremist
Speaker 1: groups by uniformed service members was also common. It was
Speaker 1: not illegal yet you could openly be a clansman and
Speaker 1: serving the U. S. Military. At this point. That changes
Speaker 1: as a result of some of the things that happened
Speaker 1: in the story. It's a good change, yea positive change.
Speaker 1: Good move. Maybe soldiers shouldn't have the right to join
Speaker 1: organizations that urge the enslavement of huge chunks of the populace.
Speaker 1: What's the It's no, it's a quarter of soldiers. It's
Speaker 1: a quarter of active duty in the u S. Soldiers. No,
Speaker 1: not our members have have met white supremacists at some
Speaker 1: point during their time. So yeah, yeah, but it's not
Speaker 1: a quarter of them are experienced. Yeah it's common though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah common. Yeah. Beam was a helicopter doorgunner. He manned
Speaker 1: a fifty caliber machine gun on a Huey and by
Speaker 1: his own recollection, killed over fifty people. Um, yeah, so
Speaker 1: he had he had a hardcore job. He saw some
Speaker 1: hardcore combat. He expressed appreciation for quote the joys of
Speaker 1: killing your enemy, but he also struggled with what would
Speaker 1: later become known as PTSD. Beam and many others at
Speaker 1: the time called it post Vietnam stress syndrome because again,
Speaker 1: like this is not something people really had vocabulary for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: after coming home from the war, he said this to
Speaker 1: an undercover reporter at a KKK event. Quote, after I
Speaker 1: got home from the war, things didn't seem like they
Speaker 1: were before I went to Vietnam. Everything seemed different. The
Speaker 1: whole climate of the nation had changed. Before I went
Speaker 1: over to fight, most of the people seemed behind US soldiers,
Speaker 1: but when I returned, it seemed the majority of Americans
Speaker 1: were against us, against the war as a whole. So
Speaker 1: he doesn't see that as a good thing. It kind
Speaker 1: of sees it as like a stab in the back
Speaker 1: sort of tuation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's never happened to
Speaker 1: a soldier before later turned into a fascist revolutionary. Louis
Speaker 1: Bim came home in nineteen sixty eight and almost immediately
Speaker 1: joined the KKK. He was racist, certainly, but the primary
Speaker 1: hatred he developed in Vietnam was an intense discussed with
Speaker 1: the left and with communism. In the early nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: he was involved in a spate of terroristic crimes, machine
Speaker 1: gun attack on a Communist party headquarters in Houston, the
Speaker 1: bombing of a left wing radio station. No one died
Speaker 1: in these attacks, and he managed to avoid charges for
Speaker 1: either of them. In nineteen seventy six, he switched to
Speaker 1: a different section of the KKK, the Knights of the
Speaker 1: ku klux Klan lived by a little tyke named David Duke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: d Duke, Yeah, so Duke had grown up as we
Speaker 1: stayed in the last episode, reading Willis Carto's Western Destiny
Speaker 1: paper and flirting with Nazism in college, dressing in his
Speaker 1: SSU learn Well, he's a little bit, a little bit Nazism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he was wearing his S. S uniform as
Speaker 1: a protest for a guy whose name I have forgotten
Speaker 1: when he marched in it a been down to school's
Speaker 1: free speech alley, but he also had an S. S uniform.
Speaker 1: Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan became the most
Speaker 1: prominent clan group of the nineteen seventies, due in large
Speaker 1: part to Duke's decision to wed the organization more closely
Speaker 1: with outright Nazism and help organize clan border patrols to
Speaker 1: stop migrants. Racial paranoia and fear of communism led to
Speaker 1: a vast surgeon clan ranks throughout the nineteen seventies. What's
Speaker 1: up coding to this racial paranoia? Yeah, this is never
Speaker 1: this has never happened again, thankfully. In nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: there were an estimated sixty clansmen nationwide. By nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: that number had increased to ten thousand. Plus another seventy
Speaker 1: five thousand Clans sympathizers. So for a while, Duke seemed
Speaker 1: like a pretty good pick for someone who might manage
Speaker 1: to take on the role of being the next George
Speaker 1: Lincoln Rockwell. He was charismatic and go to drawing media attention.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy eight and seventy nine, he became a
Speaker 1: constant figure on American talk shows, who would have him
Speaker 1: on because they thought he was funny. In nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: Willis Harte covered Duke's campaign for the Louisiana Senate in
Speaker 1: an issue one of his weekly magazine, The National Spotlight.
Speaker 1: Carto wrote, he sees the Clan not as a terrorist organization,
Speaker 1: but as a political movement with ideological leadership now zing
Speaker 1: and whatnot. Duke only one about one third of the vote,
Speaker 1: but that was still seen rightly as a huge improvement
Speaker 1: in the political fortunes of the fascist right. Gallup reported
Speaker 1: that the number of Americans with favorable opinions of the
Speaker 1: Clan nearly doubled from nineteen nineteen seventy five. Duke then
Speaker 1: represented the best hopes of main streamers in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, Beam and a number of other clansmen would
Speaker 1: wind up on the side of the Vanguardists. One of
Speaker 1: these other men was Bill Wilkinson, a former mid level
Speaker 1: leader in Duke's clan who created his own group, the
Speaker 1: Invisible Empire, in the late nineteen seventies. Bill was noteworthy
Speaker 1: for his sheer willingness to make violent threats, saying in
Speaker 1: an interview, I'm the only clan member who believes in
Speaker 1: having guns around. These guns aren't for shooting rabbits, therefore
Speaker 1: wasting people, cool, cool company, wonderful thing to just publicly
Speaker 1: say today, loud, very loud. If he were saying that today,
Speaker 1: he would be posting it on Facebook, and there would
Speaker 1: be a minion in the background on all those little
Speaker 1: image messages. Maybe. In nineteen seventy nine, Wilkinson's clan protested
Speaker 1: a march by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Indicatur, Alabama.
Speaker 1: They showed up with clubs and wound up fighting with
Speaker 1: both the marchers and the local police. Gunfire ensued and
Speaker 1: three people were wounded. No one was killed, but that
Speaker 1: would change November nineteen eighty, when Wilkinson's clan marched against
Speaker 1: communist demonstrators in Greensboro, North Carolina. Now, have you heard
Speaker 1: of Greensboro, North Carolina. Yeah, it's a long story that
Speaker 1: we won't be getting into enough detail in this because
Speaker 1: we just have to so much to cover. But there's
Speaker 1: a clash between the communists in between the klansmen, and
Speaker 1: the clansmen opened fire, killing five of the protesters, and
Speaker 1: their stories of them like specifically targeting black protesters and
Speaker 1: like not shooting white ones. It's it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a murder. They murder five people. Now, later investigation reveals
Speaker 1: that police were complicit in the massacre, actively directing officers
Speaker 1: away from the side of the protest in order to
Speaker 1: ensure that no law enforcement was present when the clan attacked,
Speaker 1: aside from an FBI agent who was embedded with the
Speaker 1: clan attackers but did nothing to stop them from firing
Speaker 1: into the crowd. Cool, yeah, go FBI. Why would you?
Speaker 1: Why would you do anything in that situation. It's one
Speaker 1: of those surprising yeah. Now, none of the killers in
Speaker 1: Greensboro were found guilty. In a subsequent criminal trial, they
Speaker 1: argued that opening fire into the crowd, often when the
Speaker 1: back of moving vehicles, had been justified because of the
Speaker 1: threat to their lives. Posed by the communists. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: communists are inherently dangerous. There's one thing we know about communists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love these feelings that all these people are gravitating towards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I us legal facts, do care about their feelings. I wish,
Speaker 1: like it would be cool if like someone who embodies
Speaker 1: a lot of these things became the leader of the country.
Speaker 1: That would probably end well, would be interesting to watch,
Speaker 1: interesting to watch, like a guy. And yeah, I like, now,
Speaker 1: let's talk about real history rather than your nonsense fantasizing.
Speaker 1: Just what happened, not crazy theories about the future. It
Speaker 1: was just like what if? Like all right. So, Greensboro
Speaker 1: was a huge moment for the clan, and it was seen,
Speaker 1: as many within the American fascist movement as nothing less
Speaker 1: than the first shots fired in a war to take
Speaker 1: back their country from communist infiltraders. The Greensboro Clansmen went
Speaker 1: on to become heroes in the movement, giving speaking tours
Speaker 1: and acting as living billboards for the cause. So that's cool,
Speaker 1: very cool. It's so pretty cool. And this brings us
Speaker 1: back to Louie Beam. While he was not president Greensboro,
Speaker 1: Beam kept extremely busy in the late nineteen seventies. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, Dang Joping, the leader of China at
Speaker 1: the time, visited the United States. When he arrived in Texas,
Speaker 1: Beam attempted to spray him with red paint in the
Speaker 1: lobby of his hotel. He was punched out by a
Speaker 1: security guard. Later variations of the story would mark it
Speaker 1: down as an assassination attempt against the Chinese statesman, but
Speaker 1: the reality seems to have been much dumber than that.
Speaker 1: He was just trying to cover him with paint, paint
Speaker 1: him red because he's communist. That's such a like cheap attempts.
Speaker 1: It was the seventies, okay, everything was a little more primitive,
Speaker 1: except for Indiana Jones movies. Great time. Yeah, speaking of
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones movies, you know what else is perfect art?
Speaker 1: What the products and services and stuff that represents the show.
Speaker 1: And unlike Indiana Jones, it was not made with the
Speaker 1: female protagonists being initially envisioned as a fourteen year old.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't talk about that. Well, we're back. Sophie just
Speaker 1: opened an enormous bag of chips, made a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of noise. Yeah, it was so loud, really really unprofessional.
Speaker 1: So I can't believe you, Sophie, excited to see what
Speaker 1: I throw next. Speaking of professional we're back. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Robert lecturing about professionalism. I'm a I'm a consummate professional.
Speaker 1: Thank you anything yet? Yeah, except for those bagels. I
Speaker 1: started throwing bagels and they brought me no joy now
Speaker 1: because I've just moved past that, but not past throwing.
Speaker 1: Never moved past throwing. So when we last left Louis Beam,
Speaker 1: he had tried to literally paint Dang Jiao Ping red
Speaker 1: and gotten the ship punched out of him by a
Speaker 1: security GUARDA that will be the most emotionally satisfying beat
Speaker 1: of this story. The rest is just frustrating. Okay. So
Speaker 1: right around the same time he was attacking Danja Pain
Speaker 1: with paint uh, Louis Beam began to operate a paramilitary
Speaker 1: training camp in Oklahoma called Camp Polar. White supremacists would
Speaker 1: gather there to train and combined arms techniques and prepare
Speaker 1: for it to fight in a civil war against communists, Blacks,
Speaker 1: and Jews. Attendees with military experience were encouraged to wear
Speaker 1: their medals in insignia over their clan fatigues. So I
Speaker 1: found an interesting article from U p i UH in
Speaker 1: November of nineteen eighty that covered this camp and a
Speaker 1: little kerfuffle it ran into legally when they kind of
Speaker 1: brought a bunch of Boy Scouts over. Quote a Ku
Speaker 1: Klux klansman who says he is prepared to do battle
Speaker 1: against communists and homosexuals and structs explorer Scouts and Civil
Speaker 1: Air Patrol cadets and guerilla warfare techniques at a paramilitary camp.
Speaker 1: A newspaper reports. The post, which has not been fully
Speaker 1: chartered by the Boy Scouts of America, is run by
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson Sente of Deer Park, who denies he as
Speaker 1: a clan member, and Lewis Beam of Pasadena, the Grand
Speaker 1: Dragon of the Texas. I am proud to be a
Speaker 1: member of the clan, said Bogert, a former marine from
Speaker 1: the Port, Texas, who said he had been a member
Speaker 1: for two years. There are only two groups. I'll do
Speaker 1: battle with communists and homosexuals. That's the basic reason I
Speaker 1: joined the clan. Yeah, what a statement, what a man.
Speaker 1: The Grand Dragon just a simple paramilitary training camp teaching
Speaker 1: Boy Scouts. It's not a clan camp. It's just run
Speaker 1: by the Grand Dragon of the clan and another random guy. Unbelievable,
Speaker 1: just a guy. The article notes that the concerns about
Speaker 1: the camp were initially sparked when parents of Explorer scouts
Speaker 1: and Civil Air Patrol cadets complained that their fifteen and
Speaker 1: nineteen year old sons were learning guerilla warfare techniques and
Speaker 1: racial slurs from leaders of the camp, which would be
Speaker 1: a thing to complain as a parent. I usually think
Speaker 1: parents are being too sensitive about stuff like this, but
Speaker 1: not stuff actually yeah soft these days. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: kids are still too soft. But maybe it's bad for
Speaker 1: the KKK to teach them how to fight a war.
Speaker 1: The other guy, Well, yeah, you're right. The other guys
Speaker 1: not with the KK So I guess that's fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got both sides. That's why all of us kids
Speaker 1: are pussies because we didn't grow up been talking like
Speaker 1: you get it, we're all I just gave up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how can you? So, if there's anything to edit out,
Speaker 1: it's that no, no, no, no, no, send him a verity, katie.
Speaker 1: That's what this is. So uh yeah, the parents complained. Uh.
Speaker 1: Civil Air Patrol Major Paul Renfro, who invested gated the camp,
Speaker 1: stated to the newspaper quote. There was nothing boy scout
Speaker 1: about it. They were on maneuvers, they were firing unloading
Speaker 1: using live ammunition, and the parents were very upset because
Speaker 1: they were told nothing about this. These guys misled the Scouts.
Speaker 1: So Camp Puller was you know, shut down after this
Speaker 1: as resulted the controversy, but not forever. Oh no, Now,
Speaker 1: Camp Pollar came together again during a very different time
Speaker 1: in the US, So the fact that a lot of
Speaker 1: these guys were active due to U S service members
Speaker 1: was not a problem. Uh. It was also consequently a
Speaker 1: time in what's weapon theft and the smuggling of military
Speaker 1: grade armaments like rocket launchers to civilian militias and terrorist
Speaker 1: groups was incredibly common. So might be tied together those
Speaker 1: two things. I don't know what you're talking about. So
Speaker 1: in two thousand nineteen, as I write this episode, the
Speaker 1: state of Oregon is currently ground zero for a resurgent
Speaker 1: militia movement. You can trace the start of our most
Speaker 1: recent band of troubles back to the standoff at the
Speaker 1: Bundy Compound in Bunkerville, Nevada, which led to the occupation
Speaker 1: of Malhair Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. A number of the
Speaker 1: men who were involved in that are currently helping state
Speaker 1: level Republican legislators hide in Idaho or where. When I
Speaker 1: wrote this, they've since come back after getting their way
Speaker 1: because they threatened people with violence. Um. Yeah, so even
Speaker 1: from that brief summary, it should be obvious groups like
Speaker 1: this work. They don't have the numbers to enforce their
Speaker 1: will democratically, but they do have guns, which they used
Speaker 1: to threaten people with horrible violence to get what they want.
Speaker 1: They're gambling on the fact that nobody else will deploy
Speaker 1: violence against them because for some weird reason, those people
Speaker 1: would be seen as having started it. Yeah, so we're
Speaker 1: all what it all is that angry? Angry angry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's anti democratic. Yeah, but it's fine for them now.
Speaker 1: If they were Puerto Rican would not be okay, which
Speaker 1: is why the Puerto Rican group that attacked the capital
Speaker 1: with guns got wiped out and uh I think executed. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was bad for them, but cool to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're that it was like in the seventies or eighties,
Speaker 1: there was like an attack by a puerter terrorist group.
Speaker 1: I should have looked this up before bringing it up,
Speaker 1: but yeah, wend circle around. It's they got heavily punished, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but not not so much this pardoned. Yes they do,
Speaker 1: oh boy. Uh. So you know, when these people are
Speaker 1: not confronted and forced to face consequences for breaking the law,
Speaker 1: they continue to push. Which is what we've seen with
Speaker 1: all the guys involved in the Bundy standoffs who have
Speaker 1: now continued to push local laws and stuff in Oregon.
Speaker 1: And it's what we saw with Louis Beam in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties. He and his fellow klansmen had not
Speaker 1: been punished for greensborow they hadn't really been punished for
Speaker 1: Camp Fuller, and so Beam started looking for more opportunities
Speaker 1: for he and his men to enforce their own rule
Speaker 1: of law in places where they felt the government wouldn't
Speaker 1: have the guts to stand up to them. Greensboro obviously,
Speaker 1: had been proof positive of how well this would work.
Speaker 1: So Beam looked south from Camp Puller and he saw
Speaker 1: the town of Sea Drift, Texas. He thought it was
Speaker 1: another place where he and his comrades might be able
Speaker 1: to exercise their will and force the cowardly state to
Speaker 1: flee before them. Now, Sea Drift was a crabbing town
Speaker 1: with a population of about a thousand people. Life there
Speaker 1: had been recently disrupted by the arrival of roughly one
Speaker 1: Vietnamese refugees overnight. Seedrift went from a very homogeneous culture
Speaker 1: where everybody spoke English to a town where only ninety
Speaker 1: percent of the people spoke English. It's toms, that's why genocides. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that on its own might not have been an issue.
Speaker 1: But the Vietnamese families proved to be extremely good at
Speaker 1: fishing for crabs. They worked together in large collaborative family
Speaker 1: fishing groups and worked more efficiently and effectively than the
Speaker 1: native crabbers of sea drifts. That's going to be a problem. Now,
Speaker 1: you'd think capitalism, being capitalism, they'd just be rewarded for this. Yeah, Nope.
Speaker 1: In August ninety nine, there was a dispute over the
Speaker 1: distance between two sets of crab traps a fighting suit,
Speaker 1: and a white crabber was shot dead to Vietnamese crabbers
Speaker 1: were acquitted for the shooting on self defense grounds. So
Speaker 1: so far, what happened next will sound very familiar. Rumors
Speaker 1: began to percolate that the Vietnamese refugees were being funded
Speaker 1: on sketchy government welfare checks, but they smuggled gold out
Speaker 1: of Vietnam before they'd fled. Several of the men in
Speaker 1: Sea Drift were Vietnam veterans, and the scars of war
Speaker 1: hardened their hatred to their new neighbors. Which was ironic
Speaker 1: because the Vietnamese refugees who settled in Seadrift did so
Speaker 1: because they'd sided with the Americans and worked with the
Speaker 1: South Vietnamese government and it had to flee the country
Speaker 1: when the Communists took over. They had way more costing
Speaker 1: Communism than who were angry. Really ironic, fortunate, Yeah, communicate. Well,
Speaker 1: this is another thing that I didn't know about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: little talks about Drift anymore. Drift good name for a
Speaker 1: crabbing town, is a good name for it? Is? Absolutely Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could see like the movie starting I'm imagining what's
Speaker 1: his name, the guy who played Sheriff Brody and Jaws.
Speaker 1: He was in Sequest too, incredible acting. Roy Scheider. I'm
Speaker 1: imagining Roy Scheider was the sheriff of this little town. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I can accept that. I wish Roy Scheider was still
Speaker 1: alive so they can make a he wants the Draft movie?
Speaker 1: What for this movie? I want to see drifting of
Speaker 1: a Yeah, not SeaQuest. We got enough seaquests. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: SeaQuest cameo a movie called Sea Drift. You know, you
Speaker 1: know what we could have, We could have, We could
Speaker 1: have the big boat and SeaQuest comes saved the day
Speaker 1: with that dolphin. That's spoilers, but saves the day. That
Speaker 1: is not what happens. So uh. In nineteen eighty, the
Speaker 1: first of these new immigrants to See Drift earned their
Speaker 1: American citizenship. This provoked a paroxysm of rage. Three Vietnamese
Speaker 1: boats and one mobile home where fire bombed. There were beatings.
Speaker 1: One man pulled a gun on a Vietnamese fisherman walking
Speaker 1: across the deck and shot him in the leg. Louis
Speaker 1: Beam and his clan waded into this mess with glee
Speaker 1: and consummate expertise. They started putting out reams of propaganda
Speaker 1: newsletters and magazines, calling the Vietnamese refugees boat people and
Speaker 1: accusing them of being riddled with tuberculosis and malaria. Clan
Speaker 1: propaganda also sought to stoke fears that the new immigrants
Speaker 1: would sexually assault local white women. Yeahs. The clan even
Speaker 1: named their activities and Sea Drift operation hymn Line, a
Speaker 1: reference to the modest, decent white women that were supposedly protecting.
Speaker 1: In one interview with the reporter, a Klansman and Seddrift. Instead,
Speaker 1: Galveston Bay is just like a fine woman. If you're
Speaker 1: rape her, she's never good anymore. The clan awful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no comment. Also, how do you rape a bay? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean actually Charles Coke could answer that question about
Speaker 1: this bay because he's largely responsible for ruining Galveston Bay.
Speaker 1: He's had his way with guy, do you He's had
Speaker 1: his way with Galveston Bay, and it's no good anymore.
Speaker 1: That old sea song, do you know the way to Galveston? No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't work because
Speaker 1: we're you know what, I'm angry that we got high
Speaker 1: with do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna throw
Speaker 1: the box at wrangles. Wait wait, you know what I
Speaker 1: got to do this? Yeah, I knew that would happen.
Speaker 1: That was a real problem. It rained the pringles, It
Speaker 1: rained pringles everywhere the box. That's exactly what you wanted everywhere.
Speaker 1: So happy about it about how that works to clear
Speaker 1: their little their little containers of pringles. There aren't like
Speaker 1: individual pringled chips everywhere. That would cause that would cause mice.
Speaker 1: You know what I love is how satisfying that is
Speaker 1: on a podcast. M hm, m hm. You have to
Speaker 1: take pictures of it. You have to take pictures of it.
Speaker 1: She's shaking your head. Now, she's ashamed, as she should
Speaker 1: be anyway, scouraging it. On January, the Vietnamese owns shrimping
Speaker 1: vessel Tru dB, was lit on fire in its dock.
Speaker 1: The next night, another Vietnamese shrimping boat was burned. Local
Speaker 1: police reported seeing four white males and clan robes starting
Speaker 1: the fires. Wait, was there was there a fifth person? Nope? Nope, alright,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's probably the clan. Would it be a
Speaker 1: basketball team if it were fine, the Texas Longhorns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this would prove to be but a prelude. In February,
Speaker 1: the Texas KKK held a massive clan really in Santa Fe, Texas,
Speaker 1: drawing three or four hundred armed paramilitaries. As master of ceremonies,
Speaker 1: Louis Beim burned a small rowboat named the U S. S.
Speaker 1: Viet Cong. He told the gathered klansmant to pay attention
Speaker 1: to his technique because he was illustrating the proper way
Speaker 1: to destroy a boat by arson. This was illegal because reasons.
Speaker 1: He decried the theft of the job security of real
Speaker 1: Americans by immigrants and promised that if the Vietnamese fishermen
Speaker 1: and sea drifted and flee by May fifteenth, the KKK
Speaker 1: would quote take matters into its own hands. In March,
Speaker 1: robed klansmen started carrying out armed boat patrols of the
Speaker 1: Galveston Bay, wielding assault rifles and displaying an effigy of
Speaker 1: a lynched Vietnamese person on the rigging of their boat.
Speaker 1: Several Vietnamese families living on the water fled their homes
Speaker 1: after close passes by the clan's armed patrol. There are
Speaker 1: pictures you can find of these patrols, and they are
Speaker 1: quite shocked to behold. This is crazy. This is a revolution. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's the clan taking over law enforcement of a
Speaker 1: town to enforce their laws. It's so terrifying. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: one of these yeah that this just happened. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just happened. In one of these patrol pictures, we see
Speaker 1: seven men and one young woman in a mix of
Speaker 1: clan robes and military fatigues. They wear rifles and stare
Speaker 1: out with certainly expressions into the sea. Most of them
Speaker 1: are overweight, and on an individual basis, they look distinctly
Speaker 1: observed in their costumes and military gear, But there is
Speaker 1: nothing funny about the broader image of the squadron of
Speaker 1: armed and uniform racists enforcing their own laws on American soil. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like if you just make fun of
Speaker 1: these people for appearing absurd, Uh, it allows them to
Speaker 1: do a lot of dangerous ship without getting taken seriously.
Speaker 1: Ye yeah, what if one of them was like the
Speaker 1: leader of the country, him in a military uniform, Like
Speaker 1: he'll do it eventually. No, yeah, and it's going to
Speaker 1: spawn like a bunch of jokey hashtags. I hope that
Speaker 1: never happened. Yeah, it's okay. I'll call him drump and
Speaker 1: that'll deal with the problems. That'll that'll show him. So.
Speaker 1: Camp Poler had closed briefly after their controversy with the
Speaker 1: recruiting Boy Scouts, but it reopened in April of n
Speaker 1: which was just fine. For some reason, dozens of uniform
Speaker 1: militiamens again showing up again, firing their guns past the
Speaker 1: homes of several black families who lived nearby on their
Speaker 1: own land. The local sheriff complained that he could do
Speaker 1: nothing because quote, no one has filed a complaint. They
Speaker 1: won't file complaints because they fear reprisal or potential reprisal. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: that guy qualifies as the good guy in this story.
Speaker 1: Because the mayor of Kima, a small neighboring town to
Speaker 1: See Drift, where many of the threatened Vietnamese fishermen lived,
Speaker 1: was less sympathetic. He admitted that the site of klansmen
Speaker 1: and robes was disturbing, but declared I don't have any
Speaker 1: reason to believe the Vietnamese or not safe. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: the boat's being litten on fire. Might be might be
Speaker 1: one the guy that got shot in the leg, frustrating
Speaker 1: the lynched effigy of a Vietnamese fisherman long ago. No,
Speaker 1: this is like cheers is on the air. Dr Frasier
Speaker 1: Crane had taken to the screen. If I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe not by one? Was it eight two? Oh?
Speaker 1: So he's holding up two fingers because it's times you
Speaker 1: look up when she started, so that I can when
Speaker 1: she did that. Yeah, because if if Frasier Crane was around,
Speaker 1: so Frasier Crane should have said something about this. At
Speaker 1: least it's a cold open. Yeah, yeah, at least they're
Speaker 1: cold open. Doesn't have to it doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: about it. Okay, Well, we're gonna pull the ads now
Speaker 1: because I can't keep up with with all these Cheers gags.
Speaker 1: So we're back are We're not talking about Cheers anymore
Speaker 1: because I don't know enough about Cheers to joke about it,
Speaker 1: all right, Yes, moving on, moving one. Ers. You know,
Speaker 1: I only know them for their cameos on Frasier, the
Speaker 1: show I did watch. Yeah, she wasn't both. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: turns out I know a lot about Cheers characters. Okay,
Speaker 1: I just know what I learned about them in Frasier. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the book A little Bit, A little Bit, So help
Speaker 1: did not come from the local government or rare or
Speaker 1: law enforcement. Instead, it came from the Southern Poverty Law Center,
Speaker 1: who helped a group of Vietnamese fishermen file suit against
Speaker 1: the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Beam showed up
Speaker 1: to court wearing his clan robes, carrying a gun and claimed,
Speaker 1: I'm only charged with loving this country. Again. He wore
Speaker 1: a gun to his own trial and at one point
Speaker 1: challenged Morris D's, the lawyer for the SPLC, to a
Speaker 1: duel to the death. This guy did he accept? No, No,
Speaker 1: we did not. Eventually, however, the sunlight of the court
Speaker 1: case acted as a moderate disinfectant, or at least the
Speaker 1: first sign of real resistance, finally checked the clan's escalating
Speaker 1: use of force. During the trial, video was played a
Speaker 1: Beam training militiamen at Camp Puller. In that segment, he
Speaker 1: was seen advising his soldiers on how to conduct themselves
Speaker 1: in battle. He said, quote utterly destroy everybody, maximum damage,
Speaker 1: maximum violence in the shortest period of time. They can
Speaker 1: do only one thing. Die. This did not go over
Speaker 1: well in court. Finally, on a third, nineteen eight nine,
Speaker 1: under an avalanche of death threats, the judge issued a
Speaker 1: court order demanding an into the clan harassment Beams paramilitary group.
Speaker 1: Camp Puller and four other far right militia training camps
Speaker 1: in the area were ordered shut down. The Vietnamese fishermen
Speaker 1: had one, but Louis Beam was far from defeated. Not
Speaker 1: eight nineteen nine, sorry n one. It's probably matter now, yeah,
Speaker 1: much matter. It probably has like other plans. Now he
Speaker 1: did start making other plans he continued to Yeah, spoilers,
Speaker 1: it ends with federal Actually. So. Beam continued to write speeches, newsletters,
Speaker 1: and articles in various far right journals of record, culminating
Speaker 1: in his nineteen eighty three book Essays of a Klansman.
Speaker 1: In this book, he encouraged his fellow fascist Vietnam veterans
Speaker 1: to bring the war on home to the United States.
Speaker 1: While the legal prescriptions against Beam and his fellow klansmen
Speaker 1: after Sea Drift were more effective than the complete exoneration
Speaker 1: they'd received after Greensboro, it effectively did nothing to actually
Speaker 1: stop clan organizing. While the fascist right receided ever so
Speaker 1: slightly in the first years after Reagan's election. By nine four,
Speaker 1: America's Nazis had realized that the president was not going
Speaker 1: to be the quasi nationalist leader they'd hoped he might be.
Speaker 1: How what what are they gonna do? Well? Nothing good? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So the white power movement began to grow again after
Speaker 1: Reagan failed to ban abortion and reinstate segregation. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote again from the book Bring the War Home. Quote.
Speaker 1: Scholars and watchdog groups who have attempted to calculate the
Speaker 1: numbers of people in the movements varied branches, including for instance,
Speaker 1: Klansmen and Neo Nazis, who are often counted separately. Estimate
Speaker 1: that there were about twenty five thousand hardcore members in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. An additional hundred and fifty two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five thousand people bought white power literature, sent
Speaker 1: contributions to groups, or attended rallies or other events, signifying
Speaker 1: a larger, although less formal Levell membership. Another four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand did not themselves participate or purchase materials,
Speaker 1: but did read the literature. The John Birch Society and contrast,
Speaker 1: reach only a hundred thousand members at its nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: five peak. That's cool, that's lot of people. So um.
Speaker 1: We focus mostly on Louis Bim and the KKK and
Speaker 1: Neo Nazis during this chapter, but it's important to know
Speaker 1: that an awful lot of other fascist groups were active,
Speaker 1: organizing and growing during this period. Militant right wing organizations
Speaker 1: popped up constantly throughout the nineteen eighties. One important group
Speaker 1: was the Posse Coomatatis. In brief, the Posse's were a
Speaker 1: series of militant anti government cells. They were believers of
Speaker 1: Christian identity theology, and these true Israelites also subscribed to
Speaker 1: a conspiratorial interpretation of American history in which all government
Speaker 1: above the county level was fundamentally illegitimate. Posse believers felt
Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve and the i r s were part
Speaker 1: of a Jewish plot to wipe out the white Man,
Speaker 1: and their view, the county sheriff was the only legitimate
Speaker 1: power in the land, and if he did not act
Speaker 1: in accordance with the wishes of the county, he should
Speaker 1: be hung by the neck until dead. Okay, slightly different flavor,
Speaker 1: but I follow you see where this is going. So
Speaker 1: as a big general rule, Posse members were big fans
Speaker 1: of hanging. Modern day sovereign citizens descend from the Posse coomatatis.
Speaker 1: You can draw a direct line between them and many
Speaker 1: modern militia movements, including the constitutional sheriffs who supported the
Speaker 1: Bundey Clan's malher occupation. In fact, when they got stopped
Speaker 1: in that guy Lavoy Finning and got killed, it was
Speaker 1: because the Bundy brothers were driving with some of their
Speaker 1: friends to go meet a constitutional sheriff. Of course, yeah cool.
Speaker 1: Appropriately enough, the first Posse Commatata cell was formed in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: back in nineteen Portland It's so weird, But POSSE beliefs
Speaker 1: did not generate national awareness until nineteen eighty three, when
Speaker 1: a guy named Gordon Call got into a series of
Speaker 1: gun fights with authorities. Call had declared himself a tax
Speaker 1: protester in nineteen sixty seven, writing the I R S
Speaker 1: to let them know he would no longer pay taxes
Speaker 1: to the quote Synagogue of Satan. He was a big
Speaker 1: old Christian identity fan guest. He was arrested in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, but got out on parole and went to
Speaker 1: ground near Medina, North Dakota. A warrant was officially issued
Speaker 1: for his arrest over parole violations, which prompted U S.
Speaker 1: Marshals to try and arrest him. While he and his
Speaker 1: family were driving home from a POSSE related meeting in February,
Speaker 1: A shootout ensued and Call and his family killed to
Speaker 1: federal marshals. Gordon went on the run after that, was
Speaker 1: finally brought down in June after a vicious gunfight that
Speaker 1: left in Arkansas sheriff and Call himself dead. By the
Speaker 1: time Called died, the POSSE movement had metastasized into which
Speaker 1: series of townships filled with white supremacist Christian identity believers
Speaker 1: who considered the federal government illegitimate, were heavily armed, fiercely independent,
Speaker 1: and more than willing to kill for their beliefs. This
Speaker 1: was part of a broader trend on the far right
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties to create autonomous enclaves for their
Speaker 1: ideology and isolated rural communities. Another such group was the
Speaker 1: Arian Nations and Neo Nazi organization centered around a compound
Speaker 1: in Hayden Lake, Idaho. On paper, the Nations were officially
Speaker 1: a Christian identity church led by the self proclaimed Reverend
Speaker 1: Richard Butler. In the early nineteen eighties, Butler's group began
Speaker 1: to reach out to incarcerated white Americans, eventually leading to
Speaker 1: the formation of the Aryan Brotherhood, a Christian identity prison
Speaker 1: gang that remains influential today. That's where that comes from. Well,
Speaker 1: that was a concise little run down to that. Did
Speaker 1: you know that Arian Brotherhood were Christian identity believers? I
Speaker 1: didn't either, Yeah, cool, I didn't know that, It's all
Speaker 1: I started researching and stuff. Another Christian identity compound was
Speaker 1: and still was today Elohim City in Oklahoma. By the
Speaker 1: early Elohem was a fully self sufficient community with its
Speaker 1: own sawmill, crops and weapons ranges on four hundred sprawling acres.
Speaker 1: Elohim's operations were funded by a Transcontinental trucking company and
Speaker 1: construction business operated from the compound. The denizens of Elohim
Speaker 1: considered American society to be decadent and sinful beyond salvation,
Speaker 1: and they homeschooled their children and stockpiled weapons in anticipation
Speaker 1: of societal collapse. I mean, I want to do all
Speaker 1: of that without the religion. Can we can? Can? I can?
Speaker 1: Can I just stockpile guns on a compound? I mean probably,
Speaker 1: I think that you can. Dreams. Seems like you can anyway.
Speaker 1: Donate to my go fund me by Robert A compound.
Speaker 1: So you're stocking yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, guns, Maybe a
Speaker 1: couple of legally bought rocket launchers. Chickens just to have
Speaker 1: a police bear cat. Yeah, pig farm bodies. Sure. I
Speaker 1: bet it would be illegal for me to do, he said, illegally,
Speaker 1: describing a few things. You know what I did, I
Speaker 1: did well. I don't really want to come to that place. Oh,
Speaker 1: come on, it'll be fine. It was fine with these people.
Speaker 1: It was fine with these people. They got to do it.
Speaker 1: But for how long they're still doing it? All right, man? Okay,
Speaker 1: keep telling a story. There were numerous other far right
Speaker 1: groups doing similar things around the country in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: and most of them fell either into the mold of
Speaker 1: the Lohan City urgent total separation from society, or the
Speaker 1: Area Nations attempting to build a white insurgency against the
Speaker 1: Zionist occupied government. These disparate groups were tied together loosely
Speaker 1: by Christian identity beliefs and recruited heavily from the nascent
Speaker 1: prepping movement that started to crop up in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: And Blood and Politics, Leonard Zeskin notes quote for William Pierce,
Speaker 1: survivalist events became an opportunity for nationalists interested in self
Speaker 1: preservation rather than the advancement of the white race, so
Speaker 1: they start reaching out to these guys survivalist community around
Speaker 1: the time. Now Pierce's gold became to infuse white racial
Speaker 1: consciousness into the survival movement and thus turn it from
Speaker 1: a disconnected community of armed loaners into something he could
Speaker 1: use to bring about the revolution. He desired independently. Klansman
Speaker 1: Louis Beams Smith the Early nine is on a similar goal,
Speaker 1: spreading white racial consciousness and a desire for revolution to
Speaker 1: disaffected white Vietnam veterans. In two he wrote, America's political leaders, bankers,
Speaker 1: church ministers, newsmen, sports stars, and hippies called us baby
Speaker 1: killers and through chicken blood on some of us when
Speaker 1: we return home. You're damn right. I'm mad. I've had enough.
Speaker 1: I want these same traders to face their enemy now,
Speaker 1: the American fighting man. They betrayed, all three million of us.
Speaker 1: This is the tact that Louis Beam takes. Beam wrote
Speaker 1: articles in which he warned up a coming mass gun confiscation.
Speaker 1: He told his readers to arm up and hide their
Speaker 1: weapons and hope that the future might bring headlines like
Speaker 1: and this is Louis bs like what what he wrote
Speaker 1: as his hoped foreheadlines. Millions of formerly peaceful, law abiding
Speaker 1: citizens up in arms, vigilantes of one and two persons
Speaker 1: take law and to own hands. Politician cut in two
Speaker 1: by shotgun blast as he steps from car. Federal judge
Speaker 1: killed by bomb blast as he starts car. Judge found dead,
Speaker 1: hands tied behind back, throat cut U S Senator found
Speaker 1: hanging from limb of Treon River Cool, cool and good,
Speaker 1: and cool and good. In June of two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: Walter Libkey, a Christian Democratic Union politician in Germany, was
Speaker 1: shot dead by a neo Nazi terrorist. Lubkey was hated
Speaker 1: for his support of Angela Merkel's open door refugee policy.
Speaker 1: His killer head ties to larger organizations of German Nazi radicals,
Speaker 1: which included members of law enforcement. On an unrelated note,
Speaker 1: several weeks after this, members of a neo Nazi ring
Speaker 1: within German law enforcement were found with a massive stockpile
Speaker 1: of arms and a list of politicians they planned to murder.
Speaker 1: Now what's happened? Like weeks ago this one was Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: this is the one I know about. This is the
Speaker 1: one that we all heard about. So that's cool. So
Speaker 1: it kind of sounds like the headlines Beam wrote. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just okay when you hear about it like this everything,
Speaker 1: it's like there's all these stories and at first you think,
Speaker 1: well that was so long. It's a crazy thing that happens,
Speaker 1: and you're like, this is fucking still happening. It's all
Speaker 1: the same you're talking. I start to think, like, maybe, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's the first do you know what
Speaker 1: the percentage of racist cops is now versus like that?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's got to be more versus in comparison
Speaker 1: toil later. I like, I like to think that, like
Speaker 1: this all happened so long ago, and that things are
Speaker 1: getting better, like there's a smaller percentage of people that
Speaker 1: are this terrible. But it's not true. It's is what
Speaker 1: I'm getting at, is like what my thought process has been,
Speaker 1: honestly this whole episode, and like the like the roles
Speaker 1: that those people gravitate towards. Anyway, we're still we're interrupting event.
Speaker 1: That's your job. So, like many white nationalists in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eight what go on being expressed to growing the
Speaker 1: satisfaction with the Republican Party in American conservatives in general,
Speaker 1: he damped compromise and wrote that his readers should take
Speaker 1: up the sword, adding the sword need not be literal,
Speaker 1: although many of us would enjoy righteous fast, the righteous
Speaker 1: satisfaction from actually lopping off heads of the enemy a
Speaker 1: sword in the year of our Lord nineteen eight one
Speaker 1: can be an m sixteen three sticks of dynamite taped
Speaker 1: together at twelve gage you can of gas or whatever
Speaker 1: is suitable to carry out any commission of the Lord
Speaker 1: that has been entrusted to you. Cool that this is
Speaker 1: legal to write falks Lord. In three Lewis Beam published
Speaker 1: an essay in the Interclan newsletter titled leaderless Resistance. This
Speaker 1: is where that term comes from. In the essay, he
Speaker 1: argued that the top down organization of traditional fascist groups
Speaker 1: like his own clan, Rockwell's Nazi Party, and that successor
Speaker 1: William Pierce his National Alliance, were fundamentally vulnerable to infiltration
Speaker 1: from law enforcement. This was backed up by the well
Speaker 1: own fact that Rockwell's marches had often been half composed
Speaker 1: of federal informants. It was also backed up by the
Speaker 1: disastrous nine eight one attempted by several American clansmen to
Speaker 1: conquer the island of Domenica. You guys, hear about that one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's quite a tale. Domenica is a small island nation
Speaker 1: near Venezuela. An assortment of neo Nazi commandos, including a
Speaker 1: clan leader named Don Black, who had previously been the
Speaker 1: driver of George Lincoln Rockwell's hate bus, had gathered enough
Speaker 1: weaponry that they believed they could deploy enough force to
Speaker 1: overthrow the prime minister of that country and install their
Speaker 1: own government. Then they could use Domerica as a base
Speaker 1: of operations and as a funding engine to support and
Speaker 1: insurgency in the US. Now, I should note that a
Speaker 1: lot of those guys also just wanted to make money
Speaker 1: by setting up casinos and stuff, so that there was
Speaker 1: a mix of people who just wanted money and Nazi mercenaries.
Speaker 1: That's the idea, right, Yeah, yeah, intersectionality exactly. The whole
Speaker 1: thing fell apart before any of these guys could set sail.
Speaker 1: FBI agents arrested Tin Nazi commandos and New Orleans on
Speaker 1: a rented boat filled with guns, dynamite bullets, and Confederate
Speaker 1: and Nazi flags. Don Black things to be with, great
Speaker 1: things there, just cover all your bases. Don Black and
Speaker 1: several of these other guys spent time in prison, and
Speaker 1: when Black got out, he went on to found the
Speaker 1: neo Nazi website Stormfront. Okay, that's where that comes from.
Speaker 1: He's actually pretty minor part of the well, not minor,
Speaker 1: he just wasn't a huge part of the Dominican thing.
Speaker 1: He's just kind of a kind of a guy there.
Speaker 1: He was just there. The is a big deal. So
Speaker 1: after Dominica, fascist thinkers like Beam were eager to find
Speaker 1: a new way to organize that wouldn't just get them
Speaker 1: caught by the FBI. Yeah. As he noted in the
Speaker 1: Leader List Resistance, an infiltrator can destroy anything which is
Speaker 1: beneath him in the pyramid of organization. In order to
Speaker 1: counter this, Beams suggested White supremacists adopt a cell type
Speaker 1: organization similar to those used by communist insurgencies. To quote
Speaker 1: Leonard Zeskin's bledded politics, small groups of people work together
Speaker 1: but were known to only one another. Other small groups
Speaker 1: worked independently, and the participants of one cell remained unknown
Speaker 1: to the personnel of another. Thus, an enemy infiltrator could
Speaker 1: possibly betray one cell, but couldn't break up the entire underground.
Speaker 1: While this cell structure was an improvement over the traditional pyramid,
Speaker 1: Beam decided it also had weaknesses. The problem was it
Speaker 1: required a central command to give directions to all the cells,
Speaker 1: and their new vision of vanguardism did not support one
Speaker 1: single leadership being proposed. Instead, a structure of cells, like
Speaker 1: the communists, it's operating independently of the others, but without
Speaker 1: a headquarters. Sounds like terrorism, Yes it does now. This
Speaker 1: put Beam in direct opposition to William Pierces National Alliance
Speaker 1: and the idealized Neo Nazi insurgency he'd imagined in the
Speaker 1: Turner Diaries. The order had included a strong central structure
Speaker 1: directing a series of semi independent cells and wielding them
Speaker 1: as weapons towards the greater goal disrupting society and rendering
Speaker 1: it ungovernable. Piercing Beam in their separate camps were at Loggerheads,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen eighty three a man came along with
Speaker 1: the vision to synthesize their dueling theories into one violent hole.
Speaker 1: Robert J. Matthews was born in Marfa, Texas, on January six,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, each in the John Birch Society at
Speaker 1: age eleven, yeah in nineteen seventy one, he was on
Speaker 1: his way to enlist at Fort Wachuca, Arizona, when he
Speaker 1: heard a radio report on the prosecution of Lieutenant Bill Kelly,
Speaker 1: the American officer who presided over the murder of hundreds
Speaker 1: of Vietnamese civilians in my ally. Matthews obviously thought the
Speaker 1: killing of women and children was imminently justified in the
Speaker 1: fight against communism. He decided not to join an army
Speaker 1: that wouldn't let him kill children with impunity. We all
Speaker 1: have to have values. Yeah, values are critical. I will
Speaker 1: not stand for this and think that I was all
Speaker 1: fired up to go to Vietnam until I learned that
Speaker 1: my army prosecutes Oh no, thank you, thank you. I've
Speaker 1: changed my mind about this guy. Good news is he
Speaker 1: did still find a war to fight. Good. I could
Speaker 1: see your worry written on your face. Was his destiny.
Speaker 1: It was his destiny. Matthews first found himself drawn to
Speaker 1: violand extremism as part of the tax protest movement. He
Speaker 1: formed an anti communist militia called the Sons of Liberty
Speaker 1: and the Time for Tax Fraud in the early nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: Through his involvement with the survivalist movement, Matthews was gradually
Speaker 1: trawn into the cause of white nationalism. He moved to Yeah,
Speaker 1: what shocking. He moved to Medeleine Falls, Washington in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen seventies, and in nineteen eighty he joined William
Speaker 1: Pierce's National Alliance. Matthews fell in love with the Turner
Speaker 1: Diaries and the vision of a possible white revolution. It provided.
Speaker 1: His earliest on the ground activism involved a series of
Speaker 1: childish fist fights with anti fascist protesters during a Nazi
Speaker 1: rally and Spokane. In a Spokane public park, he single
Speaker 1: handedly fended off several anti fascists and earned a place
Speaker 1: in Richard Butler's inner circle. And so Matthews was on
Speaker 1: the Area Nation Compound in Idaho in July for the
Speaker 1: yearly Congress of white power leaders. On that fine summer day,
Speaker 1: three hundred one of being an aryan revolutionary sat down
Speaker 1: to plan the future of their movement. Louis Beam and
Speaker 1: another fascist thinker, Robert Miles, seemed to have dominated the discussion.
Speaker 1: There are no minutes taken for such meetings, since what
Speaker 1: was being planned at the congress was the violent insurgeon
Speaker 1: overthrow of the U S government, but it is generally
Speaker 1: accepted that the white supremacist leaders who assembled that day
Speaker 1: walked away with two broad conclusions about their future. Number
Speaker 1: one was the need to use computer networks to organize
Speaker 1: and coordinate the leaderless resistance, Beam advocated. Number two was
Speaker 1: the value of cell style organizations and taking the movement
Speaker 1: forward into the future. The dreams were grand indeed, and
Speaker 1: Robert Miles sought to establish a series of no less
Speaker 1: than six hundred cells, each a hundred miles apart, so
Speaker 1: the nuclear war they all thought was coming wouldn't wipe
Speaker 1: them all out. Miles' theories were very much focused around
Speaker 1: the importance of building a white supremacist movement that could
Speaker 1: dominate America in the wake of a nuclear exchange with
Speaker 1: the USSR. Bam anticipated Nuclear War two, but he was
Speaker 1: more interested in building a network of terror cells that
Speaker 1: could start carrying out attacks on enemies of the white
Speaker 1: race and once. But in order to do all this,
Speaker 1: Beam and as fellow fascists were going to need a
Speaker 1: lot of money. Computer equipment was not cheap in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and the insurgency they needed to build required
Speaker 1: weapons to not just civilian weapons, military grade equipment rocket
Speaker 1: launchers and machine guns bought from Bride military supply officers.
Speaker 1: In order to fund all this, Miles suggested robbing armored cars,
Speaker 1: and bit by bit a plan began to take hold.
Speaker 1: Louis Beam and William Pierce has spent years sketching out
Speaker 1: theories and passing up propaganda. They've been rewarded by an
Speaker 1: American fascist movement that was hundreds of times larger and
Speaker 1: more capable than anything George Lincoln Rockwell had commanded. Now
Speaker 1: it was time to take the next step forward and
Speaker 1: make the fantasies William Pierce had written down in the
Speaker 1: Turner Diaries a reality. The man to do that would
Speaker 1: be young Bob Matthews. So that's the end of this chapter.
Speaker 1: You guys having a good time. Um, yeah, happy, everybody
Speaker 1: feeling good. I wish we hadn't smoked pot. I wish
Speaker 1: we hadn't smoked pot earlier. But I'm a little less high.
Speaker 1: That's great. I'm a little less high, and I'm really
Speaker 1: excited for this next chapter. I'm excited to throw these seats.
Speaker 1: Is that giant bag of sun flower seats ever been opened?
Speaker 1: It hasn't been great excellent than Sophia wonderful. I had
Speaker 1: a whole case of barrier and water that I do
Speaker 1: think it might but Sophie took the the case away,
Speaker 1: and I'm very unhappy. But I am at some point
Speaker 1: during this recording session going to steal the cans back
Speaker 1: and throw them. Oh she wasn't on mike, but that
Speaker 1: was a serious, serious, throw them at something. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do some damage. It doesn't seem like you're going through.
Speaker 1: I want to believe it. What was that chapter called
Speaker 1: how to build an Army? Yeah? Well there you go.
Speaker 1: There you go spelled it out for you. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: see what should I throw next? Yeah, you can do
Speaker 1: that something paper towels, yeah, soft and harm it before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should probably run. Yeah. Oh god, that was a throw,
Speaker 1: did you You could have hurt yourself. That was a
Speaker 1: big it's a huge the size of you, Katie. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Last time I met wave myself, I was twelve rolls
Speaker 1: of paper towels. So you're right, I wouldnt like a
Speaker 1: square footage. Well that too. Yeah. So your website, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: do you go. I'm not finishing sentences. Well today, google
Speaker 1: our names and the words like some more news, even
Speaker 1: more news and the website or like platform that you're
Speaker 1: looking for Patreon and twitterings. Yeah, thanks Google dot com.
Speaker 1: And you can use Google dot com to find out
Speaker 1: if I sell t shirts. He does, it's on public,
Speaker 1: thank you, Katie. What else we don't have a website?
Speaker 1: Use Twitter. It's a great way with white nationalists. It
Speaker 1: still is that. I mean, if you go to our Twitter.
Speaker 1: You'll see great tweet like from this guy at Salt
Speaker 1: Throne who wrote more like I pronounce okay, insulting Robert's
Speaker 1: Twitter a candle. That tweet was made days ago. Sophie
Speaker 1: has saved it for this moment. That's a good burn.
Speaker 1: That's a good burn. She's really really really good. Excellent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. That's at the end of the podcast.