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Speaker 1: Col Zone Media. Hello everyone, Molly Conger here. This is,

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Speaker 1: as you've probably noticed, a rerun. I'm enjoying some much

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Speaker 1: needed time off at the moment. I hope you'll forgive me.

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Speaker 1: This pair of episodes originally ran at the end of

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Speaker 1: October and beginning of November of last year. It tells

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Speaker 1: the story of Ethan Melzer, the United States Army private

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Speaker 1: sentenced to more than forty years in prison or a

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Speaker 1: failed plot to have his own unit ambushed during a

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Speaker 1: sensitive mission in Turkey. It felt timely to re release

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Speaker 1: this one now. The strange satanic Nazi cult that Melzer

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Speaker 1: was drawn into as he planned for murder and mayhem.

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Speaker 1: It's back in the news just recently. In March of

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, a teenager in Wisconsin was arrested and

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Speaker 1: charged with the murder of his mother and stepfather. On

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Speaker 1: his phone, authorities found material related to the Order of

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Speaker 1: Nine Angles, the same group Melzer had been involved in.

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Speaker 1: It's too soon to say much about Nikita Kaysap, that

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Speaker 1: teenager in Wisconsin. He's been charged at the state level

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Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, and it looks like federal charges are probably

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Speaker 1: coming down the line. At some point. Two I'm sure

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Speaker 1: his story will be won for the show eventually, but

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Speaker 1: it isn't quite over yet. For now, though, I can

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Speaker 1: offer you a little insight into what can happen when

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Speaker 1: a young man starts looking for answers in the Devil's

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Speaker 1: chat room. On May twenty sixth, twenty twenty, a U. S.

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Speaker 1: Army private stationed in Italy celebrated his twenty second birthday.

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Speaker 1: He was blissfully unaware that the FBI had spent that

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Speaker 1: day confirming his identity as the Nazi satanist who was

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Speaker 1: trying to get Al Qaeda to wipe out his entire unit.

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Speaker 1: Half a world away. That very same day, Minneapolis police

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Speaker 1: officer Derek Chauvin knelt on an unarmed man's neck for

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Speaker 1: nine minutes and twenty nine seconds. The man cried out,

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Speaker 1: saying he couldn't breathe. He begged the officer not to

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Speaker 1: kill him. He cried out for his mother, and then

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Speaker 1: he fell silent. The murder of George Floyd was caught

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Speaker 1: on camera by a bystander, and protests against this act

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Speaker 1: of police brutality started within hours in the Minneapolis area.

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Speaker 1: The video spread rapidly, and so did the protests in

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Speaker 1: the months that followed, protest marches, rallies, and memorials were

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Speaker 1: held in thousands of cities, reaching every state in the

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Speaker 1: country and dozens of countries around the world. Millions of

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Speaker 1: Americans took to the streets and public squares to protest

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Speaker 1: police brutality, and in countless cities, the police responded by

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Speaker 1: demonstrating the very brutality that people were protesting. Three days

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Speaker 1: after the murder, then President Donald Trump tweeted, when the

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Speaker 1: looting starts, The shooting starts. By Monday, June first, less

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Speaker 1: than a week after George Floyd's murder, the president was

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Speaker 1: publicly threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow

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Speaker 1: him to use the military to put down civil disorder.

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Speaker 1: Governors in more than thirty states activated the National Guard

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Speaker 1: to assist state and local police in responding to the protests.

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Speaker 1: Governors in twelve states deployed National Guard troops to Washington,

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Speaker 1: d c. At the request of the Pentagon. On June second,

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Speaker 1: a hundred members of the Ohio National Guard received orders

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Speaker 1: that they'd be heading to the nation's capital that afternoon.

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Speaker 1: The administrator of a small telegram channel for fans of

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Speaker 1: a fascist YouTuber posted, they activated my unit and were

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Speaker 1: getting real ammunition to shoot and to kill. He ended

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Speaker 1: the message by saying rahoa, a portmanteau of the phrase

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Speaker 1: racial holy war, a Nazi rallying cry. He told his

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Speaker 1: followers that they may not hear from him again, but

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Speaker 1: they might hear about him in the news. Some urged

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Speaker 1: him not to do anything stupid. Others egged him on,

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Speaker 1: telling him he should accelerate the collapse. They were thrilled

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Speaker 1: at the possibility that full scale civil conflict could be

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Speaker 1: incited by shooting into the crowd of protesters in Washington,

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Speaker 1: d C. Maybe the race war really was about to begin.

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Speaker 1: Whether he was just ship posting, or if he really

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Speaker 1: was considering kicking off the race war, we'll never know.

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Speaker 1: If we're to take him at his word, always a

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Speaker 1: shaky proposition. He was deployed with his National Guard unit

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Speaker 1: at Lafayette Park, just outside the White House when FBI

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Speaker 1: agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force showed up to

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Speaker 1: have a chat. Soon after, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced

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Speaker 1: that one of the National guardsmen he'd sent to DC

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Speaker 1: was being called back. On June fifth, twenty twenty, Governor

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Speaker 1: de Wine tweeted.

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Speaker 2: I want to take a moment to address a situation

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Speaker 2: regarding a member of the Ohio National Guard who was

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Speaker 2: removed from the mission in Washington, d C. After the

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Speaker 2: FBI uncovered information that this guardsman expressed white supremacist ideology

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Speaker 2: on the Internet prior to the assignment.

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Speaker 1: He didn't name the guardsman in question, and no explanation

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Speaker 1: was offered about what exactly had been said, where it

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Speaker 1: was said, or how the FBI came to see it.

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Speaker 1: Jared Holt at right Wing Watch uncovered the small telegram

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Speaker 1: channel where those comments had been made a few days later,

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Speaker 1: and journalists at the nonprofit media collective Unicorn Riot quickly

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Speaker 1: identified the man in question as Shandon Simpson, a member

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Speaker 1: of the now defunct neo Nazi organization Vanguard America who

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Speaker 1: had been photographed standing shoulder to shoulder with James Alex

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Speaker 1: Fields Junior at the United Right rally in Charlettsville in

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Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, just hours before Fields committed a hate crime murder.

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Speaker 1: But that still didn't explain why the governor of Ohio

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Speaker 1: was making public statements about an FBI investigation into this guardsman,

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Speaker 1: especially considering no charges had been filed. Simpson claims he

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Speaker 1: was held in solitary confinement for a week, but the

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Speaker 1: Ohio National Guard has disputed that claim. He was never

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Speaker 1: charged with a crime and later received a general discharge

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Speaker 1: from the National Guard. It wasn't until a federal criminal

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Speaker 1: case against Ethan Melzer was unsealed two weeks later that

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Speaker 1: the pieces fell into place. They hadn't been investigating Shandon

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Speaker 1: Simpson at all. They just happened to come across his

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Speaker 1: posts about murdering protesters in Washington, d C. While they

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Speaker 1: were investigating somewhat else's plot to murder an entire platoon

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Speaker 1: of United States Army paratroopers five thousand miles away. I'm

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Speaker 1: Molly Conger, and this is weird, Little guys. This episode

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Speaker 1: is coming out on Halloween. That didn't occur to me

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Speaker 1: until halfway through the week. I don't have a great

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Speaker 1: sense of time, even under the best of circumstances. But

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Speaker 1: when I realized that, I ditched what I was working

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Speaker 1: on and tried to come up with something halloweeny. I

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Speaker 1: think that's something people do, right. I should have seasonal

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Speaker 1: themed episodes, But what does it mean to do a

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Speaker 1: Halloween episode of a show where every episode is about

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Speaker 1: a monster, How can you go spookier than we already

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Speaker 1: are getting every week? But then I realized, what's scarier

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Speaker 1: than Satan himself? This story has all the classic weird

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Speaker 1: little guy stuff. It's got neo Nazis, it's got white

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Speaker 1: supremacist troops. It's got hate groups splintering off into new

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Speaker 1: hate groups because of our cane internaccene, ideological squabbles and

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Speaker 1: power struggles and personal beefs. It's got a foiled terror

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Speaker 1: plot and a court record full of peerful letters from

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Speaker 1: friends and family insisting that the young man they know

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Speaker 1: really isn't as bad as you think. But this episode

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Speaker 1: is a little different because the evil guys we're talking

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Speaker 1: about aren't shying away from that label. They want you

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Speaker 1: to think they're evil. They're devil worshiping, neo Nazis, hell

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Speaker 1: bent on ending life as we know it. This episode

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Speaker 1: is not about Shandon Simpson. Don't worry, Shandon, Today is

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Speaker 1: not your day. When I met Shandon last year, while

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Speaker 1: I was covering a pro Russia rally masquerading as an

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Speaker 1: anti war protest at the Lincoln Memorial, he denied ever

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Speaker 1: having been a member of Adam Waffen or any related groups. Now, personally,

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Speaker 1: I don't think he was telling me the truth, but

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Speaker 1: it's not exactly easy to prove someone was a member

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Speaker 1: of a secret of organization and he's never been charged

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Speaker 1: with anything, so I guess we'll just have to agree

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Speaker 1: to disagree. But it can be said without dispute that

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Speaker 1: Shandon Simpson was a member of a telegram channel for

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Speaker 1: a group called rape Waffen. Yes, rape Waffen. I'm so

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Speaker 1: sorry because that's what we're talking about today. And just

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Speaker 1: a quick note at the top, this show doesn't have

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Speaker 1: content warnings because it's always about something bad. I don't

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Speaker 1: want to get into the discourse about content warnings. They

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Speaker 1: certainly have their place, but this show is never not

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Speaker 1: going to be about violence, and it would be redundant

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Speaker 1: to mention it every time. But the particular subsect of

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Speaker 1: Nazi Satanists we're talking about today are really really obsessed

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Speaker 1: with sexual violence. I'm going to use the word rape

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Speaker 1: a lot, but there aren't any descriptions of anyone actually

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Speaker 1: being sexually assaulted. A few side characters do commit some

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Speaker 1: sexual assaults, and we're found to possess child sexual abuse material,

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Speaker 1: but we won't dwell on it in any kind of detail.

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Speaker 1: But here's your exit ramp if you just aren't in

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Speaker 1: the mood to hear me say the word rape thirty

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Speaker 1: or forty times. The fact that Shandon Simpson was a

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Speaker 1: member of the rape Waffen telegram channel is again undisputed.

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Speaker 1: He said it himself, for what it's worth. Simpson has

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Speaker 1: claimed that he was only a member of the chat

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Speaker 1: because he was documenting the malevolent influence of Satanism on

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Speaker 1: the fascist movement, which sounds incredibly stupid, but honestly, that

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Speaker 1: might be the truth. And I'm not just saying that

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Speaker 1: because he has threatened to sue me for merely repeating

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Speaker 1: what was published by The Washington Post, which is that

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Speaker 1: he was a member of rape Waffen. He takes issue

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Speaker 1: with the implication that he was an ideological adherent of

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Speaker 1: the group's satanic beliefs. He insists that being a member

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Speaker 1: of the channel, which he again doesn't deny, doesn't mean

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Speaker 1: he was a member of the group. I can kind

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Speaker 1: of see that that might be true, but that's a

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Speaker 1: distinction without a difference. To me, he was a member

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Speaker 1: of rape Waffen the telegram channel, but he insists he

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Speaker 1: was not a member of rape Waffen the group do

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Speaker 1: without what you will, And this allegation got new life

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Speaker 1: a few months ago when he was making a scene

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Speaker 1: outside the Democratic National Convention with a hes Bula flag.

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Speaker 1: Videos of him antagonizing people outside the venue got some

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Speaker 1: traction online and people recognized him as a Nazi we've

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Speaker 1: seen before, and that two year old Washington Post article

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Speaker 1: about him started circulating again. So stupid games, stupid prizes,

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Speaker 1: et cetera. Take it up with Jeff Bezos, I guess,

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Speaker 1: and in his defense, to the degree I'm interested in

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Speaker 1: such a thing, He did co author a document in

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Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, two years before he was outed as a

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Speaker 1: member of the rape Waffen, chat with another former member

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Speaker 1: of Adam Waffen, outlining the ways in which they felt

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Speaker 1: the movement was being damaged by influential Adam Woffen member

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Speaker 1: John Cameron Denton's embrace of Satanism. So maybe he was

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Speaker 1: just in there collecting evidence. Who can really say. It's

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Speaker 1: not like it really clears his name to say, you know, hey,

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Speaker 1: I didn't have a huge issue with the Nazi stuff

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Speaker 1: or the murders, but this blood magic devil thing is

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Speaker 1: taking it in a bad direction. I know, I said,

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Speaker 1: this episode is not about Shandon Simpson and it's not

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Speaker 1: don't worry, But this ideological split within the Nazi terrorism

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Speaker 1: enthusiast community over whether or not Satanism was cool is

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Speaker 1: an important bit of context for where we're going. I

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Speaker 1: promise Rape Waffen was one of the groups to crop

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Speaker 1: up during this period of conflict within Adam Woffen about

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Speaker 1: the growing influence within the group of the Order of

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Speaker 1: Nine Angles, a militant Satanist occult organization that insists it

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Speaker 1: isn't a Nazi group. It is hard to describe the

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Speaker 1: Order of Nine Angles ONA for short, in a way

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Speaker 1: that makes any sense, and that's intentional, I mean, quite

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Speaker 1: literally and beyond the usual sort of esoteric nature of

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Speaker 1: occult groups. Writings attributed to Ona invented a concept called

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Speaker 1: Labyrinthos mythologicus. The idea is that the writings are intentionally contradictory,

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Speaker 1: bordering on incomprehensible on purpose, and their true meaning is

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Speaker 1: only legible to those who are worthy of interpreting them.

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Speaker 1: So if you don't get it, that's because you aren't

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Speaker 1: meant to. Because of Ona's decentralized leaderless structure. All members

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Speaker 1: are self initiated. To join the Order of Nine Angles,

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Speaker 1: you have to figure it out on your own. The

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Speaker 1: texts are available, but the true process, apparently, is only

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Speaker 1: revealed to you in the course of performing the ritual

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Speaker 1: of self initiation. Part of the self initiation ritual involves

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Speaker 1: walking into a river and imagining the moon's energy flowing

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Speaker 1: into you, which sounds like a fine way to spend

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Speaker 1: an evening. But it's not all moonlight skinny dipping. There's

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Speaker 1: a lot of carving swastikas into your own arm with

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Speaker 1: the razor blade and then smearing your blood all over

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Speaker 1: a magical race war manifesto. I know, I know. These

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Speaker 1: are Nazi wizards and they're doing blood magic to conjure

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Speaker 1: demons to end the world. This is worse than the

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Speaker 1: fact that the clan calls their chapters claverns, and the

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Speaker 1: secretary of a clavern is called a clay wrap. It's

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Speaker 1: so frustrating that these scary murderers all sound like fucking

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Speaker 1: dorks for all the trappings of wizardry, though it might

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Speaker 1: help to just think of them like any other kind

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Speaker 1: of accelerationists. We've talked a lot about accelerationists. In other episodes,

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Speaker 1: they want to destabilize society and force it into a

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Speaker 1: collapse so that something new can be born, just like

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Speaker 1: any right wing extremist taking shots at an electrical transformer.

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Speaker 1: All this extra stuff about how they believe that collapse

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Speaker 1: paves the way for the return of a messianic figure

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Speaker 1: called Vindex, who will usher in a new social order

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Speaker 1: called the Imperium, during which a new superior race of

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Speaker 1: humans will evolve, and these new areans will colonize the galaxy.

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Speaker 1: It's not important. It absolutely does not impact your ability

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Speaker 1: to follow this story to know more about Nazi Jesus

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Speaker 1: taking the Hitler Wizards to space. Quite frankly, I refuse

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Speaker 1: to find out more information about the galactic Imperium. It

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Speaker 1: sounds too stupid. In the end, I guess every cult

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Speaker 1: ends up in space. You dig deep enough into just

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Speaker 1: about any cult they're going to space, and like I said,

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Speaker 1: it's confusing. On purpose. You could drive yourself to madness

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Speaker 1: trying to parse out what's a metaphor what's a what's

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Speaker 1: intentional obfuscation in the spirit of the sinister dialectic, what

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Speaker 1: someone actually believes or what they're only pretending to believe.

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Speaker 1: In one telegram message from a rape Waffen member, the

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Speaker 1: poster jokes that if a federal agent is reading his

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Speaker 1: private messages, quote, he has to read through hella esoteric

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Speaker 1: conversation and probably still doesn't even understand it. And I'm

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Speaker 1: not a federal agent, but I did read through some

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Speaker 1: of those chats, and I gotta say he's right. It

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Speaker 1: was hella esoteric and I didn't get all of it.

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Speaker 1: And that's fine, because in the end, all you can

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Speaker 1: really judge them by is their actions and their impact.

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Speaker 1: Whether or not they truly believe the demonic Entityvindex is

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Speaker 1: going to incarnate in human form and bring about the imperium,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter. So for as much time as

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Speaker 1: I spent reading every available academic paper on the subject,

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Speaker 1: which is surprisingly few, actually, I'm not sure it's going

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Speaker 1: to do much good for me to explain more about

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Speaker 1: the a causal realm. I'm sorry to any of the

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Speaker 1: cool wizards in the listening audience, some of you are

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Speaker 1: very nice people, but my general feeling about the ways

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Speaker 1: in which magic and religion exist as driving forces in

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Speaker 1: history is that it doesn't really matter what's real. If

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Speaker 1: someone sincerely believes that they are practicing magic by engaging

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Speaker 1: in ritual acts that in turn have a real world impact,

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Speaker 1: you know, like an act of terrorism. What does it

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Speaker 1: mean to say the magic isn't real? Does it matter

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Speaker 1: if a spirit was really summoned to aid in this act,

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Speaker 1: if in the end it still happened. And I say

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Speaker 1: that not because I think any of you are listening

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Speaker 1: to this on your drive to work and asking yourself, oh,

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Speaker 1: are they really communing with Satanic deities on another plane

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Speaker 1: of existence? I don't really think many of you are

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Speaker 1: asking yourselves that, but a lot of you might be

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Speaker 1: asking yourself, do they really believe they are doing that?

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Speaker 1: And I think the answer is the same. Does it

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Speaker 1: matter if they're only pretending to believe it? But it

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Speaker 1: still guides the way they operate in this realm, you know,

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Speaker 1: the real world. What difference does it make if I

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Speaker 1: punched you in the face and then said, oh, I

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Speaker 1: was only pretending I wanted to hurt you? Does that

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Speaker 1: change the fact that your nose is bleeding? And as

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Speaker 1: for the claims in some owner writings that the group

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Speaker 1: is not inherently committed to neo NAT's or fascist ideologies,

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Speaker 1: I'll give you the same answer. Adherents have claimed that

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Speaker 1: their fondness for Nazi ideology is simply a manifestation of

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Speaker 1: a core principle of left hand Path magic, that is,

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Speaker 1: to be intentionally transgressive and provocative, to engage in the

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Speaker 1: most taboo possible behavior, and to violate all conceivable social norms.

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Speaker 1: These are things that make your magic more potent. There

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Speaker 1: are onotechs that explicitly encourage the magical practitioner to adopt

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Speaker 1: things like neo Nazi ideology, not because they believe it,

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Speaker 1: but because it is part of this sinister strategy, and

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Speaker 1: it will hasten the revolution required to bring about the imperium.

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Speaker 1: And you know, you can tell me you don't actually

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Speaker 1: believe the Nazi stuff you're saying. But if you're saying

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Speaker 1: Nazi stuff, and you're doing Nazi stuff and your goal

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Speaker 1: is for a demonic messiah to wipe out the Jews,

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Speaker 1: your group is a Nazi group. If you think a

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Speaker 1: supernatural entity is going to return to cleanse the world

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Speaker 1: of subhumans to clear the path for a new Aryan race,

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Speaker 1: that's Nazi stuff. No matter how you've tried to obscure

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Speaker 1: that in your weird little texts. There is, of course,

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Speaker 1: the obvious point that the Order of Nine Angles was

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Speaker 1: for decades led by a British Nazi named David Mayat.

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Speaker 1: Mayat is a strange and mysterious figure for another day,

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Speaker 1: but it's worth pointing out that he was also a

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Speaker 1: founding member of Combat eighteen, a UK based Nazi terrorist

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Speaker 1: organization originally formed to act as the violent arm of

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Speaker 1: the British National Party. Harold Covington, another weird Little Guy's

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Speaker 1: recurring character, was also instrumental in forming Combat eighteen before

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Speaker 1: he returned home to the US to try to get

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Speaker 1: an ethno state going in Idaho, and one of Ona's

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Speaker 1: more prolific authors under the pen name AA Moraine, was

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Speaker 1: an English Nazi named Ryan Fleming. When he wasn't writing

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Speaker 1: esoteric Nazi wizard books, Fleming was a regional organizer for

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Speaker 1: the UK based terrorist organization National Action, and a pedophile

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Speaker 1: in his spare time. He was arrested again in twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty one after violating a court order that prohibited him

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Speaker 1: from having unsupervised contact with my nurse. The court order

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Speaker 1: was put in place after his conviction in twenty seventeen

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Speaker 1: for sexually abusing a fourteen year old girl he met

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Speaker 1: on Facebook, and a conviction in twenty fourteen for imprisoning

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Speaker 1: and sexually abusing a teenage boy. He served twenty two

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Speaker 1: months for the first sex crime against a child and

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Speaker 1: three years for the second one. When he was arrested

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Speaker 1: for trying to do it a third time, he got

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Speaker 1: six months, which means he must be out and about now.

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Speaker 1: But I couldn't find any more recent news coverage. In

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Speaker 1: the course of reat searching for this show, I read

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Speaker 1: a lot of material that I do not enjoy. But

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Speaker 1: I did not force myself to read this pedophile's wizard books.

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Speaker 1: I just I didn't do it. I didn't do it

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Speaker 1: this week. I'm not sure what it would have added.

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Speaker 1: I'm kind of a completionist. I thought about it, but

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Speaker 1: I didn't. I mean, I'm sure there are some really

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Speaker 1: exciting passages in his book Sithane Vampiric Witchcraft of the

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Speaker 1: dracon Covenant, and honestly, this description of Codex Aristarchus is

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Speaker 1: a little tempting.

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Speaker 2: From the bloodstained moors of West Yorkshire, England comes a

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Speaker 2: genuinely a moral vampiric praxis, melding the black arts of

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Speaker 2: predatory astral vamporism with a harsh ordeal based approach of

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Speaker 2: the sinister Sevenfold way. In Codex Aristarchus AA, Moran presents

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Speaker 2: the definitive collective work of the dracon Covenant, including vampiric theory,

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Speaker 2: rights and methods by which the reader themselves can step

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Speaker 2: upon the black path, the vamporee feeding upon the human herd,

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Speaker 2: and taking the treacherous road to confrontation with the bleak,

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Speaker 2: ascended masters the undead.

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Speaker 1: Okay, I did, I did? I downloaded a copy of it,

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Speaker 1: so I do have a copy of Codex Aristarchus. Maybe

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Speaker 1: I'll let you know next week if I found out

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Speaker 1: if vampires are real. My point is a lot of

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Speaker 1: Nazi perverts are doing magical rituals, and all of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: these influential figures within Adam Woffin are really encouraging it.

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Speaker 1: So in twenty eighteen, this move towards Satanism was a

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Speaker 1: big point of contention within the Accelerationist community. In twenty seventeen,

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Speaker 1: Adam Woffin's founder, Brandon Russell went to prison. He's back

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Speaker 1: in prison now for something else. This was a different thing.

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Speaker 1: It's come up a few times in other episodes. This

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Speaker 1: was kind of a big moment in modern Nazi history,

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Speaker 1: I guess. But Brandon Russell's roommate, Devin Arthur's, had murdered

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Speaker 1: their other two roommates. Devin Arthur's conversion to Islam shortly

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Speaker 1: before these murders is often misunderstood as evidence that he

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Speaker 1: was getting out of Nazism, because why would a racist

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Speaker 1: convert to Islam?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 1: But I think this conversation about this strange syncretism is

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Speaker 1: better left for another day. I will, eventually, I promise,

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Speaker 1: do an episode about the Hitler loving DC transit cop

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Speaker 1: who went to prison for sending gift cards to Isis.

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Speaker 1: But suffice it to say, for now, there is absolutely

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Speaker 1: no contradiction inherent in an American neo Nazi getting really

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Speaker 1: interested in the violent side of Islamic extremism, up to

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Speaker 1: and including coverting to Islam. So after Devon Arthur's told

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Speaker 1: the police that he had murdered Jeremy Himmelman and Andrew Onischuk,

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Speaker 1: the cop searched the home that they'd all shared with

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Speaker 1: Brandon Russell. The police found the dead bodies of two

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Speaker 1: Adam Waffen members, obviously, but they also found Brandon Russell's

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Speaker 1: bomb making supplies, so he was down for the count

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Speaker 1: for a while, and in his absence, John Cameron Denton

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Speaker 1: was among those Adam Woffin members whose influence grew within

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Speaker 1: Adam Woffin. Denton used the pseudonym rape, just rape, that's

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Speaker 1: what he was called. They called him rape and based

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Speaker 1: on his Internet footprint. Denton had been involved with the

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Speaker 1: Order of Nine Angles for several years already, and within

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Speaker 1: Adam Woffin he quickly became a protege of James Mason,

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Speaker 1: the elderly pedophile who served as the ideological adviser for

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Speaker 1: Adam Woffin from its early days. James Mason is the

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Speaker 1: author of Siege, a terrorist's handbook that was Adam Woffin's

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Speaker 1: most important text, but he's also been to jail several

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Speaker 1: times for possessing pornographic photographs of underage girls, sexual exploitation

399
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Speaker 1: of a minor, and threatening his underage girlfriend with a gun.

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00:27:20,480 --> 00:27:23,200
Speaker 1: His fondness for blowing up the power grid is arrivaled

401
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 1: only by his love of fifteen year old girls. He

402
00:27:26,840 --> 00:27:30,480
Speaker 1: still regularly receives Nazi admirers at his home in Colorado,

403
00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:33,359
Speaker 1: and when Adam Woffin was at its height. Making the

404
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:36,320
Speaker 1: trip out to see Mason was a pretty big deal,

405
00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:40,879
Speaker 1: and of course every member of Adam Woffin had to

406
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:46,320
Speaker 1: read Siege. That sprawling collection of essays advocating for various

407
00:27:46,359 --> 00:27:49,320
Speaker 1: ways and aspiring young terrorist might kick off the race war.

408
00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:53,760
Speaker 1: Mason wrote Siege as a newsletter throughout the early to

409
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Speaker 1: mid eighties. The essays were collected and published in book

410
00:27:57,280 --> 00:28:00,359
Speaker 1: form in the early nineties, but it wasn't until twenty

411
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Speaker 1: years later that the book really exploded onto the scene.

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Speaker 1: I guess that's a bad choice of word it's given

413
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Speaker 1: the amount of bombs built by guys who read it.

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Speaker 1: But what I mean is it didn't become as popular

415
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:15,040
Speaker 1: as it is now until it was reborn as a

416
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:18,119
Speaker 1: PDF on the pages of the Iron March Forum in

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00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:21,840
Speaker 1: the early twenty tens, and that's where Adam Woffin was born.

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Speaker 1: In the years since, Siege has been updated, revised, and

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Speaker 1: republished several times under the pseudonym Vincent Snyder. John Cameron

420
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:38,720
Speaker 1: Denton edited the fourth edition of Siege, adding a new

421
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 1: final chapter and updating the artwork with the help of

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Speaker 1: Canadian neo Nazi and graphic designer Patrick Gordon MacDonald. Before

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00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:50,520
Speaker 1: McDonald was identified by Vice News in twenty twenty one,

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00:28:50,640 --> 00:28:56,520
Speaker 1: he was known only as Dark Foreigner. Like Denton, McDonald

425
00:28:56,560 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 1: has deep connections to the Order of Nine Angles, and

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00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:04,440
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen almost any propaganda from groups like

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Speaker 1: Adam Woffin, the Order of Nine Angle, sonen Kreeg Division,

428
00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:10,920
Speaker 1: the Base, or any of these other little offshoots in

429
00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 1: that milieu, you have almost certainly seen Dark Foreigners artwork.

430
00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:21,320
Speaker 1: He was prolific. He set the tone, he set the style.

431
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:25,120
Speaker 1: I can't imagine he's still making the artwork for these

432
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:29,760
Speaker 1: kinds of groups, but the style remains, and his style

433
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 1: greatly influenced the online culture around Saint worship, which we

434
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 1: talked about in the Terrogram episode. A lot of the

435
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:41,600
Speaker 1: images circulating on telegram in the early days of forming

436
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: this culture around the canonization of mass murderers were images

437
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:50,960
Speaker 1: made by Patrick MacDonald. McDonald was arrested in Canada last

438
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 1: year for facilitating terrorist activity, and it was during this

439
00:29:55,560 --> 00:29:59,200
Speaker 1: time period that Adam Woffin was splintering, spinning off a

440
00:29:59,280 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: variety of re related groups like Sonnen Kreeg Division, feuer

441
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:06,840
Speaker 1: Krieg Division, the Northern Order for Hairshoft Division, and of

442
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:11,840
Speaker 1: course rape Waffen and a lot of these groups, like

443
00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: Adam Woffen at the time, are deeply steeped in the

444
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:19,040
Speaker 1: beliefs of the Order of Nine Angles. And it was

445
00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:22,240
Speaker 1: within this rape Waffen telegram chat that we finally find

446
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:27,800
Speaker 1: the subject of this story. US Army private Ethan Pheelin Melzer.

447
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:32,120
Speaker 1: He was arrested three days after his twenty second birthday

448
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:36,240
Speaker 1: and a few days before he planned to die alongside

449
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:38,720
Speaker 1: forty other soldiers in an attack he hoped al Qaida

450
00:30:38,760 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 1: would carry out based on classified military information he'd provided.

451
00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:56,960
Speaker 1: He was hoping it would start a war. There is

452
00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:00,840
Speaker 1: always going to be disagreement about whether a group is

453
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:04,520
Speaker 1: or isn't a splinter faction or a sub sect of

454
00:31:04,600 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 1: some ideological predecessor. In some cases, there's a question of

455
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:13,239
Speaker 1: whether a group even really existed at all, or if

456
00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:15,560
Speaker 1: it was just a chat room for a particular click

457
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 1: within another organization, or if it was just a meme.

458
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 1: There are probably not more than a few dozen researchers

459
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 1: out there who know enough about this particular moment in

460
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:30,480
Speaker 1: time that, if they're listening to this, are shaking their

461
00:31:30,520 --> 00:31:34,040
Speaker 1: heads in dismay at my characterization of some detail or another,

462
00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:36,960
Speaker 1: but it's as close as we're going to get sort

463
00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:43,160
Speaker 1: of a dissertation, so good enough, because it's difficult now,

464
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:47,960
Speaker 1: years later to piece back together the scraps of archived

465
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:51,520
Speaker 1: materials from these banned chat rooms to sort out what

466
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:56,960
Speaker 1: rape Waffen ever really was. The earliest remnants I can

467
00:31:57,000 --> 00:31:59,120
Speaker 1: find of rape Waffen date back to the summer of

468
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:03,160
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, but I really wouldn't be surprised if someone

469
00:32:03,320 --> 00:32:06,240
Speaker 1: produced to me evidence that it existed in private chats

470
00:32:06,280 --> 00:32:11,360
Speaker 1: for months prior to that. The group's telegram channels were

471
00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:15,560
Speaker 1: banned at various points, forcing them to reinvent themselves over

472
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:19,520
Speaker 1: and over again, sometimes forming new channels every couple of weeks.

473
00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:24,440
Speaker 1: The channel's administrator was explicit in stating that rape Waffen

474
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:29,000
Speaker 1: was a splinter from Adam Woffen, and in every online

475
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:32,480
Speaker 1: space where rape Waffen members were posting, their involvement in

476
00:32:32,720 --> 00:32:36,720
Speaker 1: and support for the Order of Nine Angles was terribly

477
00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:41,600
Speaker 1: explicit in every sense of the word. And so as

478
00:32:41,640 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 1: Adam Woffin is falling apart over this debate, rape Waffen

479
00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:50,560
Speaker 1: is taking a boldly pro Satanism stance and they claim

480
00:32:50,600 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 1: to have nexxions, which is the ona term for a

481
00:32:54,320 --> 00:33:00,280
Speaker 1: cell in the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia, Portugal, and

482
00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 1: other unlisted countries. In November of twenty nineteen, a channel

483
00:33:06,320 --> 00:33:10,880
Speaker 1: that was just called rape in all caps posted that

484
00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:16,440
Speaker 1: rape waften was once again open for recruiting. The same week,

485
00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:20,240
Speaker 1: that channel posted, among other things, instructions for making meth,

486
00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:23,160
Speaker 1: a message that can't be viewed because it was found

487
00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:28,040
Speaker 1: to violate the law, and the statement quote we need

488
00:33:28,080 --> 00:33:30,560
Speaker 1: to bring this world to total chaos. If we want

489
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:34,280
Speaker 1: to change something, we will do this through mass rape

490
00:33:34,320 --> 00:33:39,920
Speaker 1: of infidels. In the chat, members shared videos of women

491
00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:44,280
Speaker 1: being raped, as well as more standard accelerationist fair you know,

492
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:49,040
Speaker 1: gore videos, footage of atrocities committed in Wars, mass shooting,

493
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:54,080
Speaker 1: live streams, isis beheading videos, the usual things like that,

494
00:33:56,320 --> 00:33:59,200
Speaker 1: and if I haven't mentioned it yet in some other episode,

495
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:03,880
Speaker 1: I would like to say, you don't need to try

496
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:08,319
Speaker 1: to find these things. I can't stop you. I'm not

497
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:10,799
Speaker 1: telling you what to do. I'm not your boss or

498
00:34:10,800 --> 00:34:13,840
Speaker 1: your mom, but I'm telling you you don't have to

499
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:18,359
Speaker 1: these chats in particular, you probably wouldn't be able to

500
00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:22,680
Speaker 1: find they're gone for the most part. But in general,

501
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:26,919
Speaker 1: I know that curiosity can be a very powerful thing.

502
00:34:28,120 --> 00:34:30,759
Speaker 1: But unless this is a particular area of research for

503
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:35,120
Speaker 1: you in a professional or academic capacity, there's really nothing

504
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:38,440
Speaker 1: to gain from trying to see it for yourself. I

505
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:42,319
Speaker 1: promise you. Having the ability to quickly scroll past a

506
00:34:42,400 --> 00:34:45,040
Speaker 1: gift of a woman being shot in the head and

507
00:34:45,120 --> 00:34:49,960
Speaker 1: having the involuntary, instant reaction of categorizing that as the

508
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 1: final moments of a particular person's life from a particular

509
00:34:54,680 --> 00:34:58,239
Speaker 1: video that I wish I'd never seen, is not a

510
00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:02,800
Speaker 1: skill I wanted. Sometimes I have to close the chat

511
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: and pull up a picture of what that woman looked

512
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:10,760
Speaker 1: like when she was alive, smiling, because she wasn't a gift.

513
00:35:11,640 --> 00:35:15,000
Speaker 1: She wasn't just the moment of her death. She was

514
00:35:15,040 --> 00:35:17,560
Speaker 1: a young woman trying to make a life for herself.

515
00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:24,120
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to gatekeep Nazi gore videos or whatever.

516
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:28,880
Speaker 1: I just want you to know you don't need to

517
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:32,880
Speaker 1: see them if it helps at all. If this is

518
00:35:32,920 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 1: something that you need, you have my permission to not

519
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:40,680
Speaker 1: find out more. There's no valor in making yourself sick,

520
00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:46,319
Speaker 1: and these chat rooms can be really disturbing places. So

521
00:35:46,520 --> 00:35:50,320
Speaker 1: if hopefully you're not familiar with the messaging app Telegram,

522
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:56,279
Speaker 1: there are both chats and channels. That is, there are

523
00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:59,680
Speaker 1: spaces on Telegram where only the channel owner can post,

524
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:03,279
Speaker 1: and you can subscribe to see their posts, and there

525
00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:07,000
Speaker 1: are also chat rooms where every member can post messages

526
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:10,880
Speaker 1: and have conversations with one another. I don't know if

527
00:36:10,920 --> 00:36:12,880
Speaker 1: I could possibly have explained that in a way that

528
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:16,760
Speaker 1: sounded more elderly. I do know how to use the Internet,

529
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: I promise, and the channel administrator for most of these

530
00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:27,080
Speaker 1: official rape Waffen channels with someone using the names Sinisterius

531
00:36:27,719 --> 00:36:32,600
Speaker 1: or Sinistrous rape. The member chat, however, was run by

532
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:38,400
Speaker 1: a user called Sinister Noctulian. A Noctulian is a practitioner

533
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:44,600
Speaker 1: within this particular subset of being a Nazi wizard. In

534
00:36:44,640 --> 00:36:48,920
Speaker 1: all my research, through court documents and publicly available research

535
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:54,440
Speaker 1: and reporting, the only two people ever concretely identified as

536
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:57,239
Speaker 1: having been members of rape Waffen chats and channels on

537
00:36:57,280 --> 00:37:03,279
Speaker 1: Telegram were Ethan Melzer and Shandon Simpson. So I can't

538
00:37:03,320 --> 00:37:07,279
Speaker 1: tell you with any certainty who Sinister Noctulian could be.

539
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:10,760
Speaker 1: It wasn't either of them. It wasn't Ethan or Shandon.

540
00:37:11,800 --> 00:37:15,920
Speaker 1: But I can tell you without implying anything in particular,

541
00:37:16,600 --> 00:37:20,560
Speaker 1: that it is interesting to me that Sinister Noctulian never

542
00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:26,560
Speaker 1: posted in the chat again after January tenth, twenty twenty, which,

543
00:37:27,480 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 1: in a strange coincidence, is the same day that Adam

544
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:33,840
Speaker 1: Waffen member John Kirby Kelly was arrested by the FBI.

545
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:38,840
Speaker 1: Two days later, a message from Sinister Noctulian was forwarded

546
00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:42,600
Speaker 1: by another user into the rape Waffen channel. Now the

547
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:46,400
Speaker 1: archive is so fragmented, you know, collecting these broken links

548
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:50,239
Speaker 1: and old screenshots from the Internet's darkest corners, So it

549
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:53,040
Speaker 1: isn't one hundred percent clear to me where the message

550
00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:56,440
Speaker 1: was originally posted. It may have been a private message

551
00:37:56,440 --> 00:38:00,160
Speaker 1: that the recipient then forwarded to a broader audience. But

552
00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:04,200
Speaker 1: on January twelfth, twenty twenty, two days after John Kirby

553
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:09,120
Speaker 1: Kelly was arrested, the user called Sinister Noctulian sent a

554
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:14,960
Speaker 1: message to someone on Telegram and it said in jail lol,

555
00:38:15,520 --> 00:38:19,960
Speaker 1: snuck my cell in. And the message was accompanied by

556
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:23,719
Speaker 1: a one second long video showing the inside of a

557
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:27,160
Speaker 1: jail cell, and the camera sort of pans shakily and

558
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:30,880
Speaker 1: quickly over the legs of the person holding the cell phone.

559
00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:34,279
Speaker 1: They're lying on the cot in the cell, and they

560
00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:38,240
Speaker 1: appear to be wearing the blue disposable scrubs that jails

561
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:41,400
Speaker 1: put on prisoners when they transport them from one facility

562
00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:45,040
Speaker 1: to another. I think the idea is that the uniform

563
00:38:45,080 --> 00:38:47,160
Speaker 1: belongs to the jail, and so if you go to

564
00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 1: a different jail, the first jail doesn't want to lose

565
00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:54,560
Speaker 1: that uniform. The point is, we don't know who Sinister

566
00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: Noctulian is, but if anyone is familiar with what the

567
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:04,719
Speaker 1: segregation cells inside the Alexandria City Jail look like. I

568
00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:07,320
Speaker 1: did try to find images online, but there aren't a

569
00:39:07,360 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 1: lot of pictures of the insides of jail cells. But

570
00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:13,960
Speaker 1: he was arrested in Alexandria, and the jail in Northern

571
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:16,960
Speaker 1: Virginia that has the contract with the federal prison system

572
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 1: to hold detainees would probably be the Alexandria City Jail.

573
00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 1: So if you know what the inside of those cells

574
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:28,239
Speaker 1: look like, let me know. I'm just curious. And in

575
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:32,120
Speaker 1: this constant cycle of death and rebirth of these chats,

576
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 1: a new telegram channel was formed in March of twenty twenty,

577
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:39,520
Speaker 1: and this time the channel administrator was a user called

578
00:39:39,719 --> 00:39:43,720
Speaker 1: Iron Cult. The channel announced the following month, in April,

579
00:39:43,760 --> 00:39:48,720
Speaker 1: that Sinistrous Rape would be taking an indefinite hiatus. Again,

580
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:51,919
Speaker 1: it's hard to say whose Sinistrous Rape might have been,

581
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:55,960
Speaker 1: but I will just note in an unrelated fashion that

582
00:39:56,120 --> 00:40:00,759
Speaker 1: John Cameron Denton Rape himself was arrested in February of

583
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:05,400
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, along with Adam Woffin members Johnny Garza, Cameron Shay, Taylor,

584
00:40:05,400 --> 00:40:09,560
Speaker 1: Parker de Pepe, and Caleb Cole. And the channel that

585
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:13,200
Speaker 1: was formed after Denton's arrest didn't last long either. It

586
00:40:13,280 --> 00:40:17,680
Speaker 1: was abandoned within weeks after Adam Woffen member Timothy Wilson

587
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:20,359
Speaker 1: was killed in a shootout with the FBI while they

588
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:23,160
Speaker 1: were trying to arrest him while he was trying to

589
00:40:23,160 --> 00:40:27,279
Speaker 1: blow up a hospital in Missouri. And Wilson had only

590
00:40:27,360 --> 00:40:30,719
Speaker 1: come under investigation because his name came up after the

591
00:40:30,800 --> 00:40:34,560
Speaker 1: arrest of Jarrett Smith, a soldier stationed in Kansas who

592
00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:38,319
Speaker 1: was arrested in twenty nineteen for distributing information to other

593
00:40:38,400 --> 00:40:42,040
Speaker 1: Adam Woffen members about how to create weapons of mass destruction.

594
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:46,440
Speaker 1: Jarrett Smith, too was a member of Adam Woffin and

595
00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:50,560
Speaker 1: a Satanist. A new rape Waffen channel was formed a

596
00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:54,320
Speaker 1: few days after Timothy Wilson's death. One of the first

597
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:59,680
Speaker 1: posts was a recipe for a bomb. There's no clear

598
00:40:59,719 --> 00:41:02,160
Speaker 1: eva evidence that was ever produced in any of these

599
00:41:02,200 --> 00:41:05,440
Speaker 1: cases that would let me tell you with certainty that

600
00:41:05,520 --> 00:41:08,480
Speaker 1: any of those Adam Woffen members were also members of

601
00:41:08,520 --> 00:41:12,880
Speaker 1: the rape Waffen channels. But a lot of Rapewaffen posters

602
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:17,360
Speaker 1: disappeared suddenly in the early months of twenty twenty, and

603
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:22,359
Speaker 1: the ones remaining grew intensely paranoid about infiltration by informants

604
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:27,080
Speaker 1: and federal agents. And you've probably guessed by now, since

605
00:41:27,080 --> 00:41:31,320
Speaker 1: we're talking about it, that paranoia did not protect them.

606
00:41:31,680 --> 00:41:34,600
Speaker 1: And so it was during this period of intense turnover

607
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 1: within rape Waffen itself that Ethan Melzer finds the group.

608
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:43,680
Speaker 1: Just four days after the channel administrator had announced that

609
00:41:43,800 --> 00:41:48,480
Speaker 1: Sinistrous Rape was on hiatus, Melzer was exchanging private messages

610
00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:52,759
Speaker 1: with the channel's new administrator. Now in the court documents,

611
00:41:52,880 --> 00:41:57,040
Speaker 1: this user is only identified as the channel administrator or

612
00:41:57,320 --> 00:42:01,759
Speaker 1: co conspirator. I. They don't list the username, so I

613
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:04,439
Speaker 1: don't know if it was ironed cults. Again, I'm trying

614
00:42:04,480 --> 00:42:06,919
Speaker 1: to piece together a very fragmented record, so they could

615
00:42:06,920 --> 00:42:09,920
Speaker 1: be referring to a chat I don't see, but he

616
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 1: was chatting with a channel administrator and the government never

617
00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:17,279
Speaker 1: names this person, but they do indicate in a footnote

618
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:21,520
Speaker 1: that based on their investigation, they believe that this individual

619
00:42:21,680 --> 00:42:27,839
Speaker 1: is a Canadian teenager posing as a former paratrooper. And

620
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:32,800
Speaker 1: this is, believe it or not, not, the only time

621
00:42:33,239 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 1: that a literal child in a foreign country has tricked

622
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:43,719
Speaker 1: members of the United States military into becoming a Nazi terrorist. Like,

623
00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:46,840
Speaker 1: they need to have some kind of training, specifically about

624
00:42:47,040 --> 00:42:50,120
Speaker 1: how to not get fooled into joining an online terror

625
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:53,520
Speaker 1: cell run by a kid. I mean, I guess if

626
00:42:53,520 --> 00:42:56,640
Speaker 1: you could keep them out of all terror cells, that

627
00:42:56,920 --> 00:42:59,839
Speaker 1: really solves the whole problem. Is probably a better goal.

628
00:43:00,719 --> 00:43:04,279
Speaker 1: But oh my god, it is really embarrassing for the

629
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:07,600
Speaker 1: whole world to know that our troops are this gullible.

630
00:43:08,320 --> 00:43:11,720
Speaker 1: I mean, just like national security wise, that doesn't seem

631
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:17,280
Speaker 1: great for us. So in April twenty first, twenty twenty,

632
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:22,240
Speaker 1: Ethan Melzer is finally chatting with someone from rape Waffen

633
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:25,360
Speaker 1: and he's chatting with this teenager that he thinks is

634
00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:28,959
Speaker 1: an adult veteran, and he asks if he can join

635
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:33,280
Speaker 1: rape Waffen. They don't mention this in the court record,

636
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:37,120
Speaker 1: but April twenty first is the day after Hitler's birthday,

637
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:39,880
Speaker 1: which would have made this the first day of the

638
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:44,319
Speaker 1: new year. For adherence to the order of nine angles. See,

639
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:48,600
Speaker 1: they have their own calendar that starts on April twenty,

640
00:43:49,239 --> 00:43:54,360
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty nine, the day Hitler was born. So eighteen

641
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:57,439
Speaker 1: ninety is year one, and it makes twenty twenty four

642
00:43:57,560 --> 00:44:02,200
Speaker 1: the year one thirty five, and they y F one

643
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 1: three five. The YF used to stand for year of

644
00:44:06,600 --> 00:44:10,799
Speaker 1: the Furor, which makes perfect sense if we're talking about,

645
00:44:10,840 --> 00:44:14,319
Speaker 1: you know, years since Hitler was born, but sometimes in

646
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:17,279
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, ONA tech start referring to it

647
00:44:17,320 --> 00:44:23,280
Speaker 1: as year of Feean, which makes no sense. One academic

648
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:26,800
Speaker 1: article I found claimed that no one actually knows where

649
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:31,200
Speaker 1: that originated or what it derives from, but within ONA

650
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 1: the claim is that it means year of rejoicing. I

651
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:38,960
Speaker 1: guess we've been rejoicing ever since Hitler was born. Like

652
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:44,520
Speaker 1: it's still a Hitler thing. And in the spirit of honesty,

653
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:48,960
Speaker 1: I do have a confession to make For years, I

654
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:51,920
Speaker 1: have assumed that the Order of Nine Angles invented this

655
00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:56,520
Speaker 1: Hitler based dating system, right, Like, surely no one else

656
00:44:56,600 --> 00:45:00,239
Speaker 1: is corny enough to invent a whole new hit Bler

657
00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:06,080
Speaker 1: based calendar. So imagine my surprise and quite frankly embarrassment

658
00:45:06,760 --> 00:45:09,840
Speaker 1: when I stumbled across a few months ago an old

659
00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:13,840
Speaker 1: letter written by Mattias Cole to William Luther Pierce in

660
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:17,960
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six. So it's on the original American Nazi

661
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:21,920
Speaker 1: Party letterhead with their po box in Alexandria, and it

662
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:29,279
Speaker 1: stated twenty two January y f seventy seven. So the

663
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:33,360
Speaker 1: Wizards didn't invent the Hitler calendar. I guess George Lincoln

664
00:45:33,440 --> 00:45:38,120
Speaker 1: Rockwell did. But I'm sorry I've gotten lost again. Sometimes

665
00:45:38,160 --> 00:45:40,040
Speaker 1: I just feel like all roads are taking me back

666
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:45,200
Speaker 1: to William Luther Peers. It's just inescapable. So this Canadian

667
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:50,160
Speaker 1: child right tells Ethan Melzer that initiation into the Order

668
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:53,759
Speaker 1: of Nine Angles is a prerequisite from membership in rape Waffen. Like,

669
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:56,359
Speaker 1: we can't even continue talking about you getting into rape

670
00:45:56,400 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 1: Waffen until you become a wizard. Elser assures him, Oh,

671
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:04,120
Speaker 1: I've already done that. I've already self initiated, no worries,

672
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 1: and with that out of the way, the teenager begins

673
00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:10,640
Speaker 1: vetting the soldier for rape waff in membership.

674
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:16,359
Speaker 2: Are you ready to cause damage both mentally, physically and

675
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:21,839
Speaker 2: magically and be serious? I already have so, yes. How

676
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:25,200
Speaker 2: do you incorporate the sinister numinous way in your life?

677
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:27,840
Speaker 2: Always working on some form of insight role, work in

678
00:46:27,880 --> 00:46:31,400
Speaker 2: the pathways when I have time? Building up to internal adept.

679
00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:38,800
Speaker 1: Internal adept here refers to the fourth of the seven

680
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:41,600
Speaker 1: levels through which a member of the Order of Nine

681
00:46:41,640 --> 00:46:44,920
Speaker 1: Angles can progress. So you start as a neophyte, then

682
00:46:44,960 --> 00:46:52,080
Speaker 1: you're an initiate, an external adept, internal adept, Master, grand Master,

683
00:46:52,520 --> 00:46:57,480
Speaker 1: and eventually immortal. I don't know that anyone has ever

684
00:46:57,560 --> 00:47:02,400
Speaker 1: achieved immortal adherence said that very few members actually progressed

685
00:47:02,440 --> 00:47:06,080
Speaker 1: to those upper levels, and so if Melzer was working

686
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 1: up to internal adept in April of twenty twenty, that

687
00:47:09,680 --> 00:47:14,520
Speaker 1: means he was at the time an external adept. To

688
00:47:14,600 --> 00:47:17,840
Speaker 1: become an external adept you have to engage in a

689
00:47:17,960 --> 00:47:21,359
Speaker 1: ritual where you lie down on the ground all night

690
00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:27,040
Speaker 1: without moving or falling asleep. To be fair, that's probably

691
00:47:27,080 --> 00:47:30,160
Speaker 1: a lot harder than it sounds, but it still sounds

692
00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:34,280
Speaker 1: like child's play compared to the requirement to advance again,

693
00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:38,800
Speaker 1: because to become an internal adept, a practitioner must withdraw

694
00:47:38,880 --> 00:47:43,319
Speaker 1: from society completely for several months, living alone in the

695
00:47:43,360 --> 00:47:47,840
Speaker 1: wild with no contact with society or no modern conveniences.

696
00:47:49,080 --> 00:47:52,600
Speaker 1: And before you even attempt the necessary ritual to advance

697
00:47:52,640 --> 00:48:00,360
Speaker 1: to internal adept, an external adept should practice culling. That

698
00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:07,720
Speaker 1: is human sacrifice. Now, I don't want to be entirely

699
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:12,200
Speaker 1: sensationalistic about this. Right when we're talking about esoteric occult text,

700
00:48:12,239 --> 00:48:17,840
Speaker 1: when you're talking about magic, not everything is literal. A

701
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:22,360
Speaker 1: lot of practitioners will say that, well, culling is symbolic.

702
00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:28,560
Speaker 1: This human sacrifice can be metaphorical some ritualized performance during

703
00:48:28,560 --> 00:48:33,880
Speaker 1: a ceremony. But I've read more ONA literature than I

704
00:48:34,120 --> 00:48:38,400
Speaker 1: would have preferred, and generally it seems like they mean it.

705
00:48:39,480 --> 00:48:45,239
Speaker 1: Members should kill in an essay called culling as art

706
00:48:45,800 --> 00:48:50,480
Speaker 1: Anton Long, the ONA grand Master most researchers believe, is

707
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:56,800
Speaker 1: actually just David Myyat wrote, some humans, by nature, by character,

708
00:48:57,120 --> 00:49:01,920
Speaker 1: are rotten, worthless, and this rotten character is revealed by

709
00:49:01,960 --> 00:49:07,960
Speaker 1: their deeds. It is beneficial to remove them, to cull them.

710
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:12,480
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like that's a metaphor and long or

711
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:18,759
Speaker 1: David Mayant has written multiple treatises on culling, advising that

712
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:23,880
Speaker 1: culling should target quote the sworn enemy, any of whom

713
00:49:23,960 --> 00:49:29,560
Speaker 1: are deemed acceptable targets. That doesn't sound like a metaphor.

714
00:49:31,520 --> 00:49:33,839
Speaker 1: And that's what was on Ethan Melser's mind that day.

715
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:38,880
Speaker 1: As an external adept, he was actively working towards a

716
00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:41,960
Speaker 1: plan that would result in a mass casualty incident in

717
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:46,480
Speaker 1: the short term and if he was lucky, thousands more

718
00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:51,600
Speaker 1: deaths in the war he hoped would follow. The question

719
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:54,120
Speaker 1: of whether or not Ethan Melzer had ever tried to

720
00:49:54,200 --> 00:49:59,960
Speaker 1: kill someone before is Murky. A few days before his arrest,

721
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:04,279
Speaker 1: the rape Waffen Channel administrator messaged him and said, and

722
00:50:04,480 --> 00:50:09,160
Speaker 1: I quote, yo, can you give me some background, like

723
00:50:09,280 --> 00:50:15,360
Speaker 1: some sinister deeds you've done? You can't break man as so.

724
00:50:15,480 --> 00:50:18,880
Speaker 1: Melser claimed that as a teenager, he'd been working in

725
00:50:18,920 --> 00:50:22,120
Speaker 1: the Louisville, Kentucky area as a street level drug dealer

726
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:27,320
Speaker 1: for a gang called the Bounty Hunter Bloods. In January

727
00:50:27,360 --> 00:50:29,880
Speaker 1: of twenty seventeen, he arranged to meet with someone to

728
00:50:29,920 --> 00:50:33,440
Speaker 1: purchase the marijuana, and instead of paying for the drugs,

729
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:37,719
Speaker 1: he ran, and when the seller gave chase, the men

730
00:50:37,760 --> 00:50:44,240
Speaker 1: struggled and Melser shot him. Now, Melzer was never arrested

731
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:48,319
Speaker 1: for drug dealing, let alone shooting a man, So you

732
00:50:48,400 --> 00:50:51,000
Speaker 1: might think he was making that up to impress the

733
00:50:51,040 --> 00:50:54,919
Speaker 1: other wizards. Maybe if you're from Louisville, you're saying, oh,

734
00:50:54,960 --> 00:50:59,040
Speaker 1: of course I know the bounty hunter bloods, But to

735
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:01,840
Speaker 1: be honest, I didn't known they had bloods in Kentucky.

736
00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:06,960
Speaker 1: It sounds fully made up to me. Investigative journalist Ali

737
00:51:06,960 --> 00:51:09,120
Speaker 1: Winston wrote on a piece for Rolling Stone that a

738
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:13,960
Speaker 1: record's request to the Louisville Metropolitan Police produced no responsive

739
00:51:14,040 --> 00:51:18,400
Speaker 1: record of an incident matching the details provided here. But

740
00:51:18,440 --> 00:51:22,320
Speaker 1: the shooting is laid out in some pretty clear detail

741
00:51:22,400 --> 00:51:27,120
Speaker 1: in the prosecution sentencing memorandum, and the defense doesn't dispute it.

742
00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:30,320
Speaker 1: In fact, they referred to it as well as something

743
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:33,480
Speaker 1: that happened, And if the case had gone to trial,

744
00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:37,200
Speaker 1: the government was prepared to put on witnesses, including someone

745
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:39,960
Speaker 1: who was prepared to testify that not only had Melzer

746
00:51:40,040 --> 00:51:43,279
Speaker 1: told him about the shooting immediately after it happened. He

747
00:51:43,360 --> 00:51:46,320
Speaker 1: actually knew the victim and was aware that the man's

748
00:51:46,400 --> 00:51:48,680
Speaker 1: humorous had been shattered by the bullet and he had

749
00:51:48,920 --> 00:51:52,520
Speaker 1: permanently lost the use of that arm. And a witness

750
00:51:52,520 --> 00:51:54,960
Speaker 1: who had been Melzer's roommate at the time planned to

751
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:58,600
Speaker 1: testify that he was aware of Melzer's drug dealing activities

752
00:51:58,680 --> 00:52:02,600
Speaker 1: during that time period. He'd seen photographs of the bullet wound.

753
00:52:03,840 --> 00:52:07,400
Speaker 1: So I guess he really did shoot a guy in

754
00:52:07,440 --> 00:52:13,520
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen. But we are not talking about Ethan Melzer

755
00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:16,560
Speaker 1: because he was a drug dealer who shot another drug

756
00:52:16,560 --> 00:52:19,960
Speaker 1: dealer in a drug deal in Louisville in twenty seventeen.

757
00:52:20,840 --> 00:52:23,880
Speaker 1: We're talking about Ethan Melzer because in twenty twenty, he

758
00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:29,120
Speaker 1: was charged with conspiracy to murder US nationals, attempted murder

759
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:33,960
Speaker 1: of US nationals, conspiracy to murder US service members, attempted

760
00:52:34,040 --> 00:52:38,239
Speaker 1: murder of US service members, provision of material support to terrorists,

761
00:52:38,840 --> 00:52:42,719
Speaker 1: conspiracy to murder and mame in a foreign country, conspiracy

762
00:52:42,719 --> 00:52:46,600
Speaker 1: to injure property of a foreign government, and illegal transmission

763
00:52:46,680 --> 00:52:51,920
Speaker 1: of national defense information. So, if you listened to the

764
00:52:51,920 --> 00:52:53,959
Speaker 1: episode a couple of weeks ago, when we were talking

765
00:52:54,040 --> 00:52:57,720
Speaker 1: about how it's relatively uncommon for someone to be charged

766
00:52:57,840 --> 00:53:01,360
Speaker 1: for lying on their enlistment page work about being involved

767
00:53:01,400 --> 00:53:05,279
Speaker 1: with an extremist group. Well, Ethan Melzer is someone I

768
00:53:05,400 --> 00:53:09,560
Speaker 1: was thinking about specifically when I said usually, by the

769
00:53:09,600 --> 00:53:13,840
Speaker 1: time it's obviously lied about this, the situation has gotten

770
00:53:13,960 --> 00:53:17,680
Speaker 1: a little more serious than lying on a form. So

771
00:53:18,640 --> 00:53:20,160
Speaker 1: it sounds like they could have hit him with that

772
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:26,120
Speaker 1: charge too. But at this point, why bother. And now

773
00:53:26,120 --> 00:53:28,839
Speaker 1: that we are more than halfway through this story, now

774
00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:31,359
Speaker 1: that you have a little context for where our weird

775
00:53:31,400 --> 00:53:35,359
Speaker 1: little guy ended up, which is Federal prison. Now that

776
00:53:35,400 --> 00:53:39,680
Speaker 1: you know something about a silly sounding but frightening Nazi

777
00:53:39,760 --> 00:53:43,600
Speaker 1: satanic cult and the messy situation within Adam Woffin in

778
00:53:43,640 --> 00:53:46,680
Speaker 1: the years between Brandon Russell's first trip to Federal prison

779
00:53:47,480 --> 00:53:50,280
Speaker 1: and his second trip to Federal prison and the eventual

780
00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:55,040
Speaker 1: collapse of Adam Woffin. Now I can start from the

781
00:53:55,080 --> 00:54:01,040
Speaker 1: beginning of Ethan Melzer's story, But unfortunately, because I started

782
00:54:01,040 --> 00:54:03,960
Speaker 1: so far from the beginning, I'll have to get to

783
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:07,160
Speaker 1: the end next week. I know this feels like a

784
00:54:07,200 --> 00:54:09,000
Speaker 1: little bit of a bait and switch. I told you

785
00:54:09,040 --> 00:54:11,360
Speaker 1: this was going to be about Ethan Melzer trying to

786
00:54:11,360 --> 00:54:13,279
Speaker 1: get al Qaida to kill a bunch of soldiers in

787
00:54:13,360 --> 00:54:16,000
Speaker 1: service of his advancement in a neo Nazi Satanic cult,

788
00:54:16,480 --> 00:54:19,719
Speaker 1: and we didn't even get to that. But words like

789
00:54:20,400 --> 00:54:27,600
Speaker 1: Nazi and Satanic cult are such loaded terms and ones

790
00:54:27,640 --> 00:54:32,520
Speaker 1: that have been abused and exploited to trigger a specific

791
00:54:32,640 --> 00:54:36,239
Speaker 1: kind of fear response in you. So I felt like

792
00:54:36,280 --> 00:54:38,359
Speaker 1: I owed it to you to give you this sort

793
00:54:38,400 --> 00:54:41,759
Speaker 1: of convoluted history that led to him being in that

794
00:54:41,920 --> 00:54:44,959
Speaker 1: chat room and to show you why I'm using those

795
00:54:45,000 --> 00:54:51,319
Speaker 1: words and why they are absolutely appropriate here. So I

796
00:54:51,360 --> 00:54:53,840
Speaker 1: hope you'll come back next week to see how it

797
00:54:53,880 --> 00:55:24,560
Speaker 1: all ended. When we left off last week, it was

798
00:55:24,600 --> 00:55:29,280
Speaker 1: April twenty first, twenty twenty, a US Army paratrooper Ethan

799
00:55:29,320 --> 00:55:32,400
Speaker 1: Melzer was having his first chat with the administrator of

800
00:55:32,400 --> 00:55:36,520
Speaker 1: a telegram channel for a group called rape Waffen, a

801
00:55:36,560 --> 00:55:40,040
Speaker 1: splinter cell from the Nazi terror organization Adam Waffen who

802
00:55:40,080 --> 00:55:42,400
Speaker 1: was committed to the Satanic cult called the Order of

803
00:55:42,480 --> 00:55:46,520
Speaker 1: Nine Angles. Melzer didn't know it at the time, but

804
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:49,719
Speaker 1: the user he was chatting with was a psychologically unstable

805
00:55:49,760 --> 00:55:53,359
Speaker 1: fifteen year old in Canada, and it seems unlikely that

806
00:55:53,520 --> 00:55:56,160
Speaker 1: either of them had any idea that the teenager's online

807
00:55:56,200 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 1: girlfriend was a government informant. Over the course, so the

808
00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:03,160
Speaker 1: next five weeks, Ethan Melzer developed a plan that he

809
00:56:03,200 --> 00:56:05,319
Speaker 1: hoped would result in the murder of forty of his

810
00:56:05,360 --> 00:56:10,520
Speaker 1: fellow soldiers and hopefully provoke a conflict in the Middle

811
00:56:10,520 --> 00:56:15,840
Speaker 1: East that would claim thousands more lives. I'm molly conger,

812
00:56:16,840 --> 00:56:36,080
Speaker 1: this is weird, little guys. Just a quick note at

813
00:56:36,080 --> 00:56:38,120
Speaker 1: the top. I do want to start off with a

814
00:56:38,200 --> 00:56:41,719
Speaker 1: correction today. When we were talking last week about the

815
00:56:41,840 --> 00:56:45,400
Speaker 1: Hitler based dating system used by the Satanic Nazi cult,

816
00:56:46,080 --> 00:56:49,160
Speaker 1: I foolishly repeated a claim that I'd read that the

817
00:56:49,200 --> 00:56:53,000
Speaker 1: origin of Faean was unknown, and that's on me. I

818
00:56:53,000 --> 00:56:56,399
Speaker 1: should have double checked for myself. The order of nine

819
00:56:56,400 --> 00:56:59,360
Speaker 1: angles marks the passage of time in years since the

820
00:56:59,360 --> 00:57:01,880
Speaker 1: birth of Hitler, so twenty twenty four would be the

821
00:57:01,960 --> 00:57:05,000
Speaker 1: year one thirty five, and they write that date out

822
00:57:05,040 --> 00:57:09,000
Speaker 1: as y F one three five, where y F stands

823
00:57:09,040 --> 00:57:12,720
Speaker 1: for year of Feyan. I did a little more digging

824
00:57:12,760 --> 00:57:16,880
Speaker 1: around because I just couldn't accept the explanation that there

825
00:57:16,960 --> 00:57:21,680
Speaker 1: is no explanation, And of course Feyan spelled fay e

826
00:57:21,880 --> 00:57:25,680
Speaker 1: n is almost certainly derived from a Middle English word

827
00:57:25,920 --> 00:57:31,960
Speaker 1: fane fay n, an adverb meaning gladly or joyfully, which

828
00:57:32,040 --> 00:57:36,120
Speaker 1: in turn comes from the Old English gafeon, meaning to rejoice.

829
00:57:36,960 --> 00:57:41,120
Speaker 1: So the Nazi wizards are at least etymologically on track

830
00:57:41,400 --> 00:57:43,880
Speaker 1: in their choice to refer to the year since Hitler's

831
00:57:43,880 --> 00:57:48,440
Speaker 1: birth as the year of rejoicing. You don't got a

832
00:57:48,480 --> 00:57:50,120
Speaker 1: hand it to him, but I had to correct the

833
00:57:50,120 --> 00:57:55,600
Speaker 1: record on that. Anyway, back to the foiled terror plot.

834
00:57:56,520 --> 00:58:00,000
Speaker 1: Ethan Melzer was taken into custody on May thirtieth, twenty time.

835
00:58:01,440 --> 00:58:04,680
Speaker 1: When military authorities detained him, he was standing outside at

836
00:58:04,680 --> 00:58:08,040
Speaker 1: Camp Utterly, part of a joint Italian American military complex

837
00:58:08,080 --> 00:58:11,080
Speaker 1: in Vicenza, Italy, with three dozen of his fellow soldiers.

838
00:58:12,200 --> 00:58:13,920
Speaker 1: They were waiting for the bus that would take them

839
00:58:13,920 --> 00:58:16,640
Speaker 1: to the airstrip where they would board a flight to Turkey.

840
00:58:18,240 --> 00:58:20,640
Speaker 1: His platoon had been assigned to a sensitive mission at

841
00:58:20,680 --> 00:58:23,640
Speaker 1: in Serlic Air Base, a Turkish air base near the

842
00:58:23,680 --> 00:58:26,640
Speaker 1: Syrian border and one of a handful of foreign bases

843
00:58:26,640 --> 00:58:29,000
Speaker 1: where the US military is known to store B sixty

844
00:58:29,040 --> 00:58:33,160
Speaker 1: one nuclear bombs. His platoon had spent the last few

845
00:58:33,160 --> 00:58:38,440
Speaker 1: weeks receiving classified briefings on their upcoming mission. They trained, drilled,

846
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:41,680
Speaker 1: and studied terrain maps. They sat through a training about

847
00:58:41,720 --> 00:58:44,400
Speaker 1: possible threat scenarios they could encounter on their mission and

848
00:58:44,440 --> 00:58:47,680
Speaker 1: how to spot them, none of them knowing that the

849
00:58:47,680 --> 00:58:51,360
Speaker 1: threat was there in the room, because all the while

850
00:58:51,480 --> 00:58:54,760
Speaker 1: Ethan Melzer was passing every piece of information he learned

851
00:58:55,360 --> 00:58:57,720
Speaker 1: on to his new friends in the order of nine angles,

852
00:58:58,880 --> 00:59:02,520
Speaker 1: every detail about the mission, down to photos he clandestinely

853
00:59:02,560 --> 00:59:05,360
Speaker 1: took of the maps shown in the briefing was shared

854
00:59:05,400 --> 00:59:10,720
Speaker 1: immediately with rape Waffen. His platoon had originally been scheduled

855
00:59:10,760 --> 00:59:14,680
Speaker 1: to deploy two days earlier, on May twenty eighth. The

856
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:17,120
Speaker 1: soldiers standing there with their packed bags waiting for the

857
00:59:17,160 --> 00:59:19,520
Speaker 1: bus hadn't been told why their departure date had been

858
00:59:19,560 --> 00:59:22,560
Speaker 1: pushed back, but they were worried. It meant something serious

859
00:59:22,640 --> 00:59:25,560
Speaker 1: was going on. None of them could have guessed, though,

860
00:59:25,600 --> 00:59:27,320
Speaker 1: that it was one of their own who meant them harm.

861
00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:31,840
Speaker 1: But that is the end, and I said we were

862
00:59:31,840 --> 00:59:37,560
Speaker 1: going to start at the beginning. Ethan Melzer was born

863
00:59:37,600 --> 00:59:40,200
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight to parents who only married because

864
00:59:40,240 --> 00:59:44,960
Speaker 1: his mother got pregnant. The marriage didn't last. His father's

865
00:59:45,000 --> 00:59:48,080
Speaker 1: mother seems to blame Ethan's mother for this, and they

866
00:59:48,080 --> 00:59:51,080
Speaker 1: weren't good with money. His father, Nick Melzer, bought a

867
00:59:51,120 --> 00:59:54,040
Speaker 1: house the couple couldn't afford, and they filed for bankruptcy

868
00:59:54,040 --> 00:59:56,600
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, the same year their marriage ended.

869
00:59:58,040 --> 01:00:00,520
Speaker 1: His father traveled a lot for work, so Ethan lived

870
01:00:00,520 --> 01:00:04,320
Speaker 1: with his mother by her own admission. Ethan's mother, Julie,

871
01:00:04,320 --> 01:00:08,080
Speaker 1: suffered from alcoholism and a variety of mental illnesses, though

872
01:00:08,120 --> 01:00:11,520
Speaker 1: she didn't get diagnosed until after her son's arrest, and

873
01:00:11,600 --> 01:00:14,960
Speaker 1: judging by the court filings, one thing everyone can agree

874
01:00:14,960 --> 01:00:17,360
Speaker 1: on is that his mother, Julie struggled to provide a

875
01:00:17,400 --> 01:00:21,760
Speaker 1: safe and stable home environment for Ethan. She drank too much,

876
01:00:22,480 --> 01:00:26,000
Speaker 1: She dated terrible men. She came from a family of

877
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:30,480
Speaker 1: proud clansmen and dated men who used racial slurs. She

878
01:00:30,560 --> 01:00:33,880
Speaker 1: had a boyfriend who beat her and her son. That

879
01:00:33,960 --> 01:00:37,040
Speaker 1: same boyfriend had an older son who allegedly sexually abused

880
01:00:37,040 --> 01:00:41,240
Speaker 1: Ethan when he was still in elementary school. Ethan's father

881
01:00:41,280 --> 01:00:44,560
Speaker 1: remarried when he was nine, and his new stepmother resented him.

882
01:00:45,400 --> 01:00:47,560
Speaker 1: When his step siblings were born, he saw even less

883
01:00:47,600 --> 01:00:50,800
Speaker 1: of his father. There was no room for this strange

884
01:00:50,840 --> 01:00:53,960
Speaker 1: boy from her husband's previous marriage and his stepmother's new family.

885
01:00:55,720 --> 01:00:58,520
Speaker 1: When Ethan was in middle school, his mother's parents died.

886
01:00:59,760 --> 01:01:02,600
Speaker 1: This her into a deep depression and her drinking got worse.

887
01:01:03,920 --> 01:01:06,439
Speaker 1: And this left a troubled young boy mostly on his own.

888
01:01:07,400 --> 01:01:10,400
Speaker 1: He spent a lot of time online. He got really

889
01:01:10,440 --> 01:01:14,400
Speaker 1: into four chan. He started smoking pot in the eighth grade,

890
01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:18,280
Speaker 1: and his mother didn't seem to notice or care when

891
01:01:18,320 --> 01:01:20,600
Speaker 1: he skipped school to stay home and play video games

892
01:01:20,640 --> 01:01:23,840
Speaker 1: and get high, and she would sometimes even smoke pot

893
01:01:23,840 --> 01:01:28,400
Speaker 1: with him. The psychologist hired by his lawyers prepared a

894
01:01:28,440 --> 01:01:31,680
Speaker 1: report that expounds at length about this difficult period in

895
01:01:31,720 --> 01:01:36,760
Speaker 1: Ethan's young life. He was overweighted and unathletic. He was uncool,

896
01:01:37,640 --> 01:01:41,520
Speaker 1: was bullied. He was starting to realize that he was gay,

897
01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:46,880
Speaker 1: and that terrified him. He liked art and music, not sports.

898
01:01:48,240 --> 01:01:50,880
Speaker 1: The men in his mother's life bullied him, the kids

899
01:01:50,880 --> 01:01:54,840
Speaker 1: at school bullied him, and he retreated deeper and deeper

900
01:01:54,880 --> 01:01:59,120
Speaker 1: into the Internet and into drugs. By his sophomore year

901
01:01:59,160 --> 01:02:03,520
Speaker 1: of high school, he was using ecstasy and meth. I

902
01:02:03,520 --> 01:02:07,240
Speaker 1: think it's important to note that none of this excuses anything.

903
01:02:08,280 --> 01:02:11,960
Speaker 1: It barely even explains it. I know plenty of wonderful

904
01:02:12,000 --> 01:02:15,600
Speaker 1: people who were fat gay nerds in middle school. I've

905
01:02:15,600 --> 01:02:17,160
Speaker 1: come to think of it. I know a lot of

906
01:02:17,160 --> 01:02:19,280
Speaker 1: really great adults who would tell you today and that

907
01:02:19,280 --> 01:02:22,240
Speaker 1: they are proud and happy to be fat gay nerds.

908
01:02:22,480 --> 01:02:26,120
Speaker 1: It's a great kind of person to be. But there's

909
01:02:26,120 --> 01:02:28,600
Speaker 1: no denying that it's a difficult state of affairs for

910
01:02:28,640 --> 01:02:31,200
Speaker 1: a middle schooler whose stepmother hates him and whose mom

911
01:02:31,280 --> 01:02:33,560
Speaker 1: cares more about getting drunk than making sure he gets

912
01:02:33,560 --> 01:02:38,360
Speaker 1: to school on time. That alone doesn't create a monster.

913
01:02:40,080 --> 01:02:43,080
Speaker 1: But you can, I think, find a place in your

914
01:02:43,120 --> 01:02:47,040
Speaker 1: heart to feel sorry for this little boy. It doesn't

915
01:02:47,080 --> 01:02:49,200
Speaker 1: mean you have to feel sorry for the man he became,

916
01:02:49,680 --> 01:02:52,880
Speaker 1: and it doesn't change what he did. But there was

917
01:02:52,920 --> 01:02:58,080
Speaker 1: a time when he could have been someone different. There

918
01:02:58,120 --> 01:03:00,959
Speaker 1: were days years ago when a little boy who wanted

919
01:03:01,000 --> 01:03:05,600
Speaker 1: to be loved and accepted and nurtured didn't get that

920
01:03:07,280 --> 01:03:10,960
Speaker 1: it's okay to mourn the man who never was because

921
01:03:11,040 --> 01:03:17,040
Speaker 1: that sad boy went down the wrong path. He dropped

922
01:03:17,040 --> 01:03:18,760
Speaker 1: out of high school at the end of tenth grade,

923
01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:22,160
Speaker 1: which would have been in twenty sixteen. I think in

924
01:03:22,160 --> 01:03:24,440
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen is the date he gives for his earliest

925
01:03:24,480 --> 01:03:28,640
Speaker 1: criminal activity. This was also the year his mother remarried.

926
01:03:29,840 --> 01:03:33,560
Speaker 1: His mother describes this new husband as physically abusive, just

927
01:03:33,600 --> 01:03:36,840
Speaker 1: as her earlier boyfriends had been, and recounted an incident

928
01:03:36,880 --> 01:03:40,320
Speaker 1: in which he choked her until she lost consciousness. She

929
01:03:40,360 --> 01:03:43,080
Speaker 1: says her husband would also punch Ethan, and in one

930
01:03:43,120 --> 01:03:45,880
Speaker 1: notable incident, she says he punched Ethan repeatedly as he

931
01:03:45,960 --> 01:03:49,440
Speaker 1: lay on the couch trying to cover his face. So

932
01:03:49,440 --> 01:03:53,680
Speaker 1: Ethan moved out. He moved from flophouse to flophouse and

933
01:03:53,840 --> 01:03:59,320
Speaker 1: started dealing drugs. He shot another drug dealer. That shooting,

934
01:03:59,360 --> 01:04:01,480
Speaker 1: the one we talked about a bit in the first episode,

935
01:04:01,920 --> 01:04:04,920
Speaker 1: does seem well corroborated. I think it really did happen.

936
01:04:06,000 --> 01:04:09,360
Speaker 1: But there's also some mention of a possible earlier shooting,

937
01:04:09,520 --> 01:04:12,320
Speaker 1: an incident where he shot someone during an attempted mugging.

938
01:04:12,920 --> 01:04:17,320
Speaker 1: It's unclear if that one is corroborated or not, but

939
01:04:17,360 --> 01:04:20,480
Speaker 1: according to the psychologist, it was after that second shooting,

940
01:04:20,600 --> 01:04:23,240
Speaker 1: the one we know was real, when he realized his

941
01:04:23,280 --> 01:04:27,560
Speaker 1: life was falling apart. So he got off drugs, moved

942
01:04:27,600 --> 01:04:30,240
Speaker 1: back into his mom's house, got a steady job at

943
01:04:30,240 --> 01:04:35,280
Speaker 1: a restaurant, and started thinking about getting his ged. His

944
01:04:35,400 --> 01:04:38,920
Speaker 1: manager at the restaurant recommended the Job Corps, a program

945
01:04:39,000 --> 01:04:42,480
Speaker 1: administered by the Department of Labor that provides educational opportunities

946
01:04:42,520 --> 01:04:46,760
Speaker 1: and job training for low income young adults. In September

947
01:04:46,840 --> 01:04:50,080
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen, at twenty years old, Ethan Melzer enrolled

948
01:04:50,080 --> 01:04:53,520
Speaker 1: in the job Core program. His time in the Job

949
01:04:53,560 --> 01:04:58,720
Speaker 1: Core Program is marked by intense contradiction. He was praised

950
01:04:58,720 --> 01:05:01,920
Speaker 1: for his positive attitude and his hard work. He was

951
01:05:02,080 --> 01:05:06,240
Speaker 1: enthusiastic about joining the military because of his overwhelming patriotism

952
01:05:06,760 --> 01:05:10,520
Speaker 1: and respect for family members who had served, but he

953
01:05:10,560 --> 01:05:14,560
Speaker 1: was also ravenously consuming texts produced by the Order of

954
01:05:14,680 --> 01:05:18,640
Speaker 1: Nine Angles, the Satanic Nazi cult he would soon initiate

955
01:05:18,720 --> 01:05:23,160
Speaker 1: himself into. In an interview after Ethan's arrest, his Job

956
01:05:23,200 --> 01:05:27,960
Speaker 1: Core career counselor said.

957
01:05:27,200 --> 01:05:30,160
Speaker 2: Neo Nazis and white supremacists don't last a week here.

958
01:05:30,600 --> 01:05:33,120
Speaker 2: There is no way a kid who has those ideas

959
01:05:33,160 --> 01:05:35,560
Speaker 2: can hide their true colors when they are surrounded by

960
01:05:35,600 --> 01:05:38,400
Speaker 2: black people, and I hear everything that goes on in

961
01:05:38,440 --> 01:05:41,320
Speaker 2: the terms. Ethan showed no signs at all of being

962
01:05:41,360 --> 01:05:42,480
Speaker 2: a white supremacist.

963
01:05:45,400 --> 01:05:47,480
Speaker 1: Another job Core employee who worked with Ethan during his

964
01:05:47,520 --> 01:05:50,080
Speaker 1: time in the program said, the kids who come in

965
01:05:50,120 --> 01:05:53,920
Speaker 1: with those ideas never last long. They do come, but

966
01:05:54,200 --> 01:05:58,040
Speaker 1: they get into conflicts and they always leave. Another of

967
01:05:58,040 --> 01:06:02,480
Speaker 1: Ethan's instructors in the program said, if.

968
01:06:02,360 --> 01:06:04,760
Speaker 2: You are a white supremacist, you won't make it here.

969
01:06:05,280 --> 01:06:08,640
Speaker 2: Job Corps has a zero tolerance policy. We've had kids

970
01:06:08,680 --> 01:06:10,960
Speaker 2: like that before and they only last a few days.

971
01:06:11,360 --> 01:06:14,120
Speaker 2: We know everything that goes on in the dorms. We

972
01:06:14,160 --> 01:06:16,800
Speaker 2: have had racist and anti American kids here and they

973
01:06:16,880 --> 01:06:20,320
Speaker 2: never make it. They can't hide it. We always find out.

974
01:06:23,440 --> 01:06:28,000
Speaker 1: They can always tell. They always root those kids out.

975
01:06:29,200 --> 01:06:32,600
Speaker 1: Ethan was a model student. He showed no signs of

976
01:06:32,680 --> 01:06:37,600
Speaker 1: racism or anti Semitism. He was friendly and helpful, and

977
01:06:37,640 --> 01:06:40,400
Speaker 1: he got top marks on his evaluations in the category

978
01:06:40,480 --> 01:06:45,880
Speaker 1: of multicultural awareness. He was patriotic and looking forward to

979
01:06:45,880 --> 01:06:52,160
Speaker 1: serving his country. They can always tell, except he was

980
01:06:52,280 --> 01:06:56,960
Speaker 1: lying to everyone. It was during his time in the

981
01:06:57,000 --> 01:06:59,400
Speaker 1: job Corp program that he fell down the rabbit hole.

982
01:07:00,280 --> 01:07:03,600
Speaker 1: He started researching the Order of Nine Angles. He liked

983
01:07:03,640 --> 01:07:06,840
Speaker 1: what he saw. He downloaded the literature he would need

984
01:07:06,880 --> 01:07:10,400
Speaker 1: to self initiate. He was in contact with other members.

985
01:07:11,360 --> 01:07:13,400
Speaker 1: He was on his way to starting his own necsion

986
01:07:13,520 --> 01:07:18,080
Speaker 1: before he finished the program. In December of twenty nineteen,

987
01:07:18,400 --> 01:07:20,720
Speaker 1: just three months into his nine months at job Corps,

988
01:07:21,240 --> 01:07:24,320
Speaker 1: he signed the paperwork to enlist in the Army. He

989
01:07:24,320 --> 01:07:26,600
Speaker 1: wouldn't head off to basic training until the following June

990
01:07:26,640 --> 01:07:29,640
Speaker 1: after completing his ged, but he knew what he wanted

991
01:07:29,640 --> 01:07:32,120
Speaker 1: to do afterwards, and he signed the documents committing to it.

992
01:07:33,600 --> 01:07:36,680
Speaker 1: In February of twenty nineteen, he created an account on Discord,

993
01:07:37,120 --> 01:07:42,960
Speaker 1: a messaging application originally favored mostly by gamers as dagger Light.

994
01:07:43,600 --> 01:07:46,560
Speaker 1: He joined a Discord server for people interested in conspiracy

995
01:07:46,600 --> 01:07:51,440
Speaker 1: theories and the occult. The court filings don't say exactly

996
01:07:51,520 --> 01:07:55,920
Speaker 1: which one, but I have a guess. The non profit

997
01:07:55,920 --> 01:07:59,800
Speaker 1: investigative journalism collective Unicorn Riot has an extensive database of

998
01:07:59,800 --> 01:08:04,479
Speaker 1: life leaked Discord chats. Most famously, they published the entire

999
01:08:04,480 --> 01:08:07,200
Speaker 1: planning chat for the Unite the Right rally. But in

1000
01:08:07,240 --> 01:08:13,560
Speaker 1: the years since, this vault of leaked servers has grown exponentially. Obviously,

1001
01:08:13,560 --> 01:08:16,679
Speaker 1: it's not every extremist discord server, so we're really only

1002
01:08:16,680 --> 01:08:19,720
Speaker 1: looking at a sliver of what's out there. But I

1003
01:08:19,760 --> 01:08:22,960
Speaker 1: did find an account I know to be Ethan Melzer's

1004
01:08:23,479 --> 01:08:25,680
Speaker 1: in a discord server where most of the discussion is

1005
01:08:25,680 --> 01:08:30,040
Speaker 1: about flatter Earth, anti vax conspiracies, nine to eleven trutherism,

1006
01:08:30,240 --> 01:08:34,679
Speaker 1: things like that the excerpted messages contained in the court

1007
01:08:34,720 --> 01:08:39,519
Speaker 1: documents aren't there in the Unicorn riot leaks. Those messages

1008
01:08:39,560 --> 01:08:42,879
Speaker 1: may have been shared in private channels or deleted sometime

1009
01:08:42,960 --> 01:08:46,919
Speaker 1: before the discord was archived and published, or maybe i'mbarking

1010
01:08:46,960 --> 01:08:50,960
Speaker 1: up the wrong tree entirely. Several of the usernames that

1011
01:08:50,960 --> 01:08:54,080
Speaker 1: are visible in the government exhibits do appear within this

1012
01:08:54,160 --> 01:08:56,920
Speaker 1: discord server, though, so even if it wasn't this one

1013
01:08:56,960 --> 01:08:59,439
Speaker 1: in particular, it was one that shared a lot of

1014
01:08:59,439 --> 01:09:04,519
Speaker 1: the same idea and the same users. Either way. Ethan

1015
01:09:04,560 --> 01:09:10,640
Speaker 1: got on discord in February of twenty nineteen and he posted, Hello,

1016
01:09:10,840 --> 01:09:13,880
Speaker 1: I have some questions about a group I found. Don't

1017
01:09:13,920 --> 01:09:17,600
Speaker 1: know if you all could help. The group he was

1018
01:09:17,640 --> 01:09:22,519
Speaker 1: asking about was Temple of Blood. Temple of Blood is

1019
01:09:23,000 --> 01:09:26,040
Speaker 1: maybe the most prominent North American nexsion of the Order

1020
01:09:26,080 --> 01:09:29,160
Speaker 1: of Nine Angles, and it is the nexion that is

1021
01:09:29,200 --> 01:09:32,960
Speaker 1: mixed up with Adam Woffin during this time period. I

1022
01:09:32,960 --> 01:09:35,600
Speaker 1: would be remiss if I did not also tell you

1023
01:09:35,720 --> 01:09:39,320
Speaker 1: that the founder of the Temple of Blood, Joshua Caleb Sutter,

1024
01:09:40,160 --> 01:09:43,439
Speaker 1: has been on the FBI payroll for more than twenty years,

1025
01:09:45,080 --> 01:09:48,920
Speaker 1: and that certainly complicates the story a little bit. Sutter

1026
01:09:49,000 --> 01:09:52,160
Speaker 1: came up in the Aryan Nations. He is a longtime

1027
01:09:52,240 --> 01:09:55,960
Speaker 1: member of the movement. His relationship with the FBI began

1028
01:09:56,040 --> 01:09:58,519
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three, when he agreed to cooperate

1029
01:09:58,520 --> 01:10:00,160
Speaker 1: with the authorities after he got caught up up on

1030
01:10:00,200 --> 01:10:04,240
Speaker 1: a gun charge. In an article for Wired earlier this year,

1031
01:10:04,320 --> 01:10:07,120
Speaker 1: Ali Winston and Jake Hanrahan spoke to Harvard law professor

1032
01:10:07,160 --> 01:10:11,120
Speaker 1: Alexandre Natopov about this kind of arrangement, which she calls

1033
01:10:11,920 --> 01:10:14,920
Speaker 1: a deal with the devil. You can't get from A

1034
01:10:15,000 --> 01:10:19,360
Speaker 1: to B without an informant, she said. Sometimes to get

1035
01:10:19,360 --> 01:10:23,840
Speaker 1: close to criminals, you have to rely on criminals. The

1036
01:10:23,920 --> 01:10:27,120
Speaker 1: FBI has refused to answer questions or even comment on

1037
01:10:27,320 --> 01:10:30,599
Speaker 1: their relationship with Sutter, but the truth finally came out

1038
01:10:30,680 --> 01:10:33,679
Speaker 1: during the trial of Caleb Cole, one of the Adamwoffin members,

1039
01:10:33,720 --> 01:10:37,800
Speaker 1: who was arrested in twenty twenty. Ali Winston's most recent

1040
01:10:37,840 --> 01:10:41,160
Speaker 1: investigation into this story indicates that Sutter may have been

1041
01:10:41,160 --> 01:10:44,600
Speaker 1: involved with the Order of Nine Angles for years before

1042
01:10:45,000 --> 01:10:49,080
Speaker 1: becoming a paid government informant, So it might be disingenuous

1043
01:10:49,080 --> 01:10:52,840
Speaker 1: to say that Temple of Blood only exists because the

1044
01:10:52,880 --> 01:10:55,920
Speaker 1: government was paying the guy who ran it. He may

1045
01:10:55,920 --> 01:10:58,800
Speaker 1: well have started his own nexxion with or without the

1046
01:10:58,880 --> 01:11:02,479
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty thousand dollars he's been paid by

1047
01:11:02,520 --> 01:11:05,960
Speaker 1: the FBI, But maybe he wouldn't have been allowed to

1048
01:11:06,000 --> 01:11:09,560
Speaker 1: operate with such impunity. Maybe he wouldn't have had the

1049
01:11:09,640 --> 01:11:14,000
Speaker 1: resources to start and run Martinette Press, the publishing house

1050
01:11:14,000 --> 01:11:16,600
Speaker 1: that produces most of the ona materials available in the

1051
01:11:16,680 --> 01:11:20,960
Speaker 1: United States today. Maybe his influence would have been curtailed

1052
01:11:21,240 --> 01:11:25,880
Speaker 1: years and years ago before he could propagate his violent,

1053
01:11:26,200 --> 01:11:30,120
Speaker 1: pedophilic ideology, sewing it into the minds of young men

1054
01:11:30,160 --> 01:11:34,120
Speaker 1: who would kill for it. I think one thing a

1055
01:11:34,200 --> 01:11:36,799
Speaker 1: lot of people get wrong when they talk about paid

1056
01:11:36,800 --> 01:11:41,759
Speaker 1: informants like Sutter is a belief that people like Sutter

1057
01:11:42,040 --> 01:11:45,640
Speaker 1: aren't sincere in their beliefs or actions, and that they

1058
01:11:45,640 --> 01:11:48,280
Speaker 1: wouldn't be engaging in these things if not for the

1059
01:11:48,320 --> 01:11:52,400
Speaker 1: inducement of the federal government. But the movement is littered

1060
01:11:52,439 --> 01:11:55,280
Speaker 1: with true believers who make a little money on the

1061
01:11:55,360 --> 01:11:59,519
Speaker 1: side snitching on people they don't like. Plenty of them

1062
01:11:59,560 --> 01:12:03,439
Speaker 1: think they're clever enough to benefit from the enragement. They

1063
01:12:03,439 --> 01:12:05,679
Speaker 1: think they can advance their own position in the movement

1064
01:12:05,760 --> 01:12:08,840
Speaker 1: by having the state take out their rivals, or they

1065
01:12:08,840 --> 01:12:12,040
Speaker 1: think they can curry favor with the authorities by dropping

1066
01:12:12,040 --> 01:12:16,000
Speaker 1: a few tidbits of information here and there. Just because

1067
01:12:16,000 --> 01:12:19,360
Speaker 1: he's getting paid to do it doesn't mean he wouldn't

1068
01:12:19,360 --> 01:12:21,479
Speaker 1: be doing it otherwise, or that he doesn't believe it.

1069
01:12:23,000 --> 01:12:26,680
Speaker 1: Sutter's lengthy career as a government informant, the amount of

1070
01:12:26,720 --> 01:12:29,240
Speaker 1: blood in his wake, and the number of zeros on

1071
01:12:29,280 --> 01:12:33,519
Speaker 1: his checks certainly make him an outlier, though I'll admit

1072
01:12:34,680 --> 01:12:38,679
Speaker 1: so I had to tell you that that's unavoidable under

1073
01:12:38,720 --> 01:12:41,960
Speaker 1: the pseudonym Swiss discipline. Sutter was the one who was

1074
01:12:42,000 --> 01:12:44,960
Speaker 1: really pushing the Satanic ideology of the Order of nine

1075
01:12:44,960 --> 01:12:47,599
Speaker 1: Angles to the forefront of Adam Woffin in the year

1076
01:12:47,640 --> 01:12:52,400
Speaker 1: after Brandon Russell's arrest. There's no denying that did he

1077
01:12:52,479 --> 01:12:56,479
Speaker 1: do it because the government asked him to, because he's

1078
01:12:56,520 --> 01:13:02,040
Speaker 1: sincerely believed in the things he was saying. Both neither

1079
01:13:03,520 --> 01:13:07,160
Speaker 1: it's impossible to know, and neither Sutter nor the government

1080
01:13:07,200 --> 01:13:10,320
Speaker 1: are talking about it. Honestly, I think it would be

1081
01:13:10,400 --> 01:13:13,000
Speaker 1: naive to believe either of them, even if they did.

1082
01:13:14,080 --> 01:13:16,479
Speaker 1: There have been some rumblings within the movement that the

1083
01:13:16,520 --> 01:13:20,800
Speaker 1: whole idea is a government operation. Sometimes that looks like

1084
01:13:20,880 --> 01:13:24,560
Speaker 1: a sort of no true Scotsman's situation for neo nazis.

1085
01:13:24,680 --> 01:13:27,040
Speaker 1: You know, anyone in the movement who's talking like this

1086
01:13:27,280 --> 01:13:30,040
Speaker 1: is clearly a government operative trying to make us all

1087
01:13:30,080 --> 01:13:35,720
Speaker 1: look crazy. Another theory I've seen is a little intriguing,

1088
01:13:36,400 --> 01:13:40,840
Speaker 1: if convoluted and very unlikely. But there are those within

1089
01:13:40,880 --> 01:13:43,759
Speaker 1: the movement who believe that the government's interest in pushing

1090
01:13:43,800 --> 01:13:47,439
Speaker 1: Satanism on them is a strategy aimed at getting them

1091
01:13:47,439 --> 01:13:52,519
Speaker 1: to disengage. If someone is falling deeper and deeper into

1092
01:13:52,600 --> 01:13:57,679
Speaker 1: extremist ideology and suddenly they're expected to sacrifice a goat

1093
01:13:57,760 --> 01:14:01,639
Speaker 1: and drink its blood under the moonlight, they might say,

1094
01:14:02,000 --> 01:14:04,760
Speaker 1: you know what, fuck it, this is too weird, This

1095
01:14:04,800 --> 01:14:07,680
Speaker 1: is too weird. I can't do it. The idea here

1096
01:14:07,720 --> 01:14:12,040
Speaker 1: is that the goal isn't to deradicalize them, it's to

1097
01:14:12,080 --> 01:14:17,600
Speaker 1: push radicalization to its most extreme limits, making it unpalatable,

1098
01:14:18,240 --> 01:14:21,800
Speaker 1: making the movement just too damn weird to keep up with.

1099
01:14:23,439 --> 01:14:25,960
Speaker 1: Like I said, that's a little convoluted. I don't know

1100
01:14:25,960 --> 01:14:28,760
Speaker 1: that the government is playing that kind of three dimensional

1101
01:14:28,840 --> 01:14:32,760
Speaker 1: chess with Nazis, but it is a theory I've seen

1102
01:14:32,760 --> 01:14:36,960
Speaker 1: pushed around a little bit. But Joshua Caleb Sutter's story

1103
01:14:37,120 --> 01:14:40,479
Speaker 1: is a long and strange one all on its own,

1104
01:14:40,520 --> 01:14:43,080
Speaker 1: and I'm actually saving it until I get to a

1105
01:14:43,080 --> 01:14:47,800
Speaker 1: weird little guy I've been fascinated by for years. You see,

1106
01:14:48,479 --> 01:14:51,800
Speaker 1: we didn't find out that Sutter was an FBI informant

1107
01:14:51,880 --> 01:14:56,320
Speaker 1: until pretty recently, but a fellow white nationalist who'd known

1108
01:14:56,400 --> 01:14:59,840
Speaker 1: him for decades had been pointing the finger at Sutter

1109
01:15:00,320 --> 01:15:06,640
Speaker 1: for years. Bill White is almost certainly the most prolific

1110
01:15:06,960 --> 01:15:12,200
Speaker 1: jailhouse lawyer in the white supremacist movement. I've spent oh god,

1111
01:15:13,120 --> 01:15:16,320
Speaker 1: probably close to one thousand dollars paying ten cents a

1112
01:15:16,320 --> 01:15:20,000
Speaker 1: page over the last five years or so buying copies

1113
01:15:20,000 --> 01:15:25,120
Speaker 1: of his ranting and raving court filings. He's got a

1114
01:15:25,160 --> 01:15:29,479
Speaker 1: wide variety of grievances and conspiracy theories. Most of his

1115
01:15:29,560 --> 01:15:34,760
Speaker 1: recent complaints are about unfair treatment inside assorted federal prison facilities.

1116
01:15:35,240 --> 01:15:37,920
Speaker 1: The guards are mean to him. He was framed for

1117
01:15:37,960 --> 01:15:41,360
Speaker 1: a fight he claims another inmate started, he isn't getting

1118
01:15:41,360 --> 01:15:44,320
Speaker 1: adequate treatment for his mental health problems and so on.

1119
01:15:45,680 --> 01:15:49,240
Speaker 1: But he's also been saying for years that he was

1120
01:15:49,360 --> 01:15:52,080
Speaker 1: framed for one of the things that sent him to prison,

1121
01:15:53,280 --> 01:15:56,800
Speaker 1: and central to that argument is his fervent belief that

1122
01:15:56,920 --> 01:16:01,559
Speaker 1: Joshua Caleb Sutter was working for the FBI. So when

1123
01:16:01,560 --> 01:16:03,839
Speaker 1: it turned out he'd been right about Sutter all along,

1124
01:16:04,800 --> 01:16:08,320
Speaker 1: I was stunned. I'm not saying I believe Bill when

1125
01:16:08,320 --> 01:16:10,559
Speaker 1: he says he didn't send those emails threatening to kill

1126
01:16:10,560 --> 01:16:14,120
Speaker 1: a prosecutor's wife, but it's intriguing that he was right

1127
01:16:14,160 --> 01:16:17,400
Speaker 1: about anything at all. But I think it'll be a

1128
01:16:17,439 --> 01:16:20,360
Speaker 1: minute before we get to my favorite vexatious litigant in

1129
01:16:20,400 --> 01:16:24,559
Speaker 1: the federal prison system, so i'll leave it there. He's

1130
01:16:24,560 --> 01:16:27,080
Speaker 1: not getting out until twenty thirty seven, so I've got

1131
01:16:27,120 --> 01:16:45,200
Speaker 1: plenty of time the ratings of an incarcerated Nazi. Aside,

1132
01:16:45,840 --> 01:16:48,920
Speaker 1: no one knew Joshua Caleb Sutter was an FBI informant

1133
01:16:49,320 --> 01:16:53,080
Speaker 1: until twenty twenty one, so Ethan Melser certainly didn't have

1134
01:16:53,160 --> 01:16:55,719
Speaker 1: any inkling about it when he started asking about Temple

1135
01:16:55,760 --> 01:16:59,960
Speaker 1: of Blood in February of twenty nineteen. In the discoord,

1136
01:17:00,160 --> 01:17:02,400
Speaker 1: he says he encountered the group in a Reddit post

1137
01:17:02,840 --> 01:17:06,519
Speaker 1: and started looking into it. He says another Reddit user

1138
01:17:06,560 --> 01:17:10,479
Speaker 1: told him it was connected to some shit called nine A,

1139
01:17:11,760 --> 01:17:15,760
Speaker 1: and in the discord he says it's just morbid curiosity

1140
01:17:15,880 --> 01:17:21,559
Speaker 1: that he's always been interested in really obscure shit. After

1141
01:17:21,560 --> 01:17:23,560
Speaker 1: a bit of back and forth with the other users,

1142
01:17:24,240 --> 01:17:30,640
Speaker 1: he finally says, so they're Nazi vampires. Okay then, and

1143
01:17:30,720 --> 01:17:32,960
Speaker 1: he asks if there are groups out there that are

1144
01:17:33,120 --> 01:17:38,280
Speaker 1: even more extreme. Another user asks him you want to

1145
01:17:38,280 --> 01:17:45,360
Speaker 1: go full throttle, and Ethan Melzer replies yes. A few

1146
01:17:45,400 --> 01:17:48,800
Speaker 1: days later, in another discord server, he's asking again about

1147
01:17:48,880 --> 01:17:52,200
Speaker 1: the Order of nine Angles. He is again told that

1148
01:17:52,240 --> 01:17:54,920
Speaker 1: they are a neo Nazi Satanic group with connections to

1149
01:17:54,920 --> 01:17:59,519
Speaker 1: Adam Waffen, and Ethan Melser posts, this is going to

1150
01:17:59,600 --> 01:18:03,200
Speaker 1: sound bad, but I want to go further down the

1151
01:18:03,280 --> 01:18:07,000
Speaker 1: rabbit hole, say someone, Or to go all the way

1152
01:18:07,040 --> 01:18:10,320
Speaker 1: trying to look for these people. How bad of an

1153
01:18:10,320 --> 01:18:15,400
Speaker 1: idea is that? Like out of ten? A few days

1154
01:18:15,439 --> 01:18:18,840
Speaker 1: after expressing his desire to go down the Satanic rabbit hole,

1155
01:18:19,720 --> 01:18:22,920
Speaker 1: Ethan Melzer is having a private conversation with a member

1156
01:18:22,920 --> 01:18:26,000
Speaker 1: of the Order of Nine Angles, and he's asking for

1157
01:18:26,080 --> 01:18:28,320
Speaker 1: the text that he'll need to read to get started.

1158
01:18:29,920 --> 01:18:33,520
Speaker 1: Within weeks, he had accumulated a large collection of PDFs

1159
01:18:33,560 --> 01:18:36,840
Speaker 1: and books about the Order of Nine Angles. He was

1160
01:18:36,840 --> 01:18:40,760
Speaker 1: communicating regularly with at least two members. He got a

1161
01:18:40,800 --> 01:18:43,920
Speaker 1: tattoo on his left forearm of an eight pointed star,

1162
01:18:44,120 --> 01:18:48,040
Speaker 1: often referred to as the symbol of chaos. He was

1163
01:18:48,120 --> 01:18:51,799
Speaker 1: already deep into his new magical practice before he finished

1164
01:18:51,840 --> 01:18:55,400
Speaker 1: the job Court program. Just a few weeks before he

1165
01:18:55,439 --> 01:18:58,479
Speaker 1: showed up for basic training, another user in the discord

1166
01:18:58,520 --> 01:19:00,280
Speaker 1: server warned him to be careful.

1167
01:19:02,880 --> 01:19:05,080
Speaker 2: Not to dissuade you, but you're kind of playing with

1168
01:19:05,200 --> 01:19:08,600
Speaker 2: fire Dagger. The Uniform Code of Military Justice has a

1169
01:19:08,600 --> 01:19:10,920
Speaker 2: few things to say about members of the Armed Forces

1170
01:19:10,960 --> 01:19:15,000
Speaker 2: holding affiliations with extremist groups, just for thought, if you're

1171
01:19:15,040 --> 01:19:17,160
Speaker 2: serious about being initiated or whatever.

1172
01:19:20,000 --> 01:19:23,400
Speaker 1: He responded by asking if the Army could search his phone.

1173
01:19:24,840 --> 01:19:29,080
Speaker 1: Upon finding out that that very likely could happen, he

1174
01:19:29,120 --> 01:19:32,840
Speaker 1: said he'd just delete everything before he got there. In

1175
01:19:32,880 --> 01:19:35,760
Speaker 1: his last few weeks before his official enlistment date, he

1176
01:19:35,840 --> 01:19:37,960
Speaker 1: was trying to convince other members of the Discord to

1177
01:19:38,000 --> 01:19:40,800
Speaker 1: form a nexsion with him, and was coming up with

1178
01:19:40,880 --> 01:19:45,400
Speaker 1: vetting procedures for members of his netsion. He suggested that

1179
01:19:45,400 --> 01:19:51,320
Speaker 1: the group's motto should be total aryan Victory. In June

1180
01:19:51,320 --> 01:19:54,920
Speaker 1: he joined another discord server, this one devoted to discussion

1181
01:19:54,960 --> 01:19:59,839
Speaker 1: of esoteric Nazism. Some discord servers allow users to assign

1182
01:20:00,120 --> 01:20:03,479
Speaker 1: little labels to their account, visible to other users, next

1183
01:20:03,479 --> 01:20:07,200
Speaker 1: to their name. In this server, Melser selected the user

1184
01:20:07,280 --> 01:20:14,040
Speaker 1: labels Satanism and fascism to describe himself. Another user asked

1185
01:20:14,040 --> 01:20:17,639
Speaker 1: if he really believed in both, and he replied quickly yes,

1186
01:20:18,600 --> 01:20:23,439
Speaker 1: and then backtracked saying not really, just fascism and claimed

1187
01:20:23,439 --> 01:20:28,280
Speaker 1: he was only joking about Satanism. In another server, someone

1188
01:20:28,320 --> 01:20:30,840
Speaker 1: asked him if he had already initiated into the Order

1189
01:20:30,880 --> 01:20:35,439
Speaker 1: of Nine Angles. He said no, but in another chat

1190
01:20:35,479 --> 01:20:38,160
Speaker 1: that same afternoon he had been discussing the fact that

1191
01:20:38,800 --> 01:20:44,280
Speaker 1: if asked, ona initiates were supposed to deny it. It

1192
01:20:44,400 --> 01:20:47,719
Speaker 1: is interesting to note that the second leaked discord server

1193
01:20:47,840 --> 01:20:50,280
Speaker 1: I found melzer In, was one mainly used to chat

1194
01:20:50,320 --> 01:20:54,559
Speaker 1: about esoteric Nazism, and it is also one in which

1195
01:20:54,680 --> 01:20:59,759
Speaker 1: Shandon Simpson appears. I couldn't find any evidence that Melzer

1196
01:20:59,800 --> 01:21:02,760
Speaker 1: and Simpson ever interacted there on this discord server, but

1197
01:21:03,680 --> 01:21:06,519
Speaker 1: it looks like their paths may have crossed here before

1198
01:21:06,520 --> 01:21:09,559
Speaker 1: Melzer made the jump from discord servers about the occult

1199
01:21:10,080 --> 01:21:13,559
Speaker 1: into telegram chats for terrorism, and they found themselves together

1200
01:21:13,640 --> 01:21:18,120
Speaker 1: once again in rape Waffen. When he reported to Fort

1201
01:21:18,120 --> 01:21:21,920
Speaker 1: Benning and Georgia on June fourth, twenty nineteen, Ethan Melzer

1202
01:21:21,960 --> 01:21:24,880
Speaker 1: signed a statement of enlistment affirming that he was not

1203
01:21:25,000 --> 01:21:29,920
Speaker 1: involved in any extremist groups or activities. He was, in fact,

1204
01:21:29,960 --> 01:21:32,840
Speaker 1: almost certainly already self initiated into the Order of Nine

1205
01:21:32,880 --> 01:21:36,840
Speaker 1: Angles and was demonstrably very interested in forming or joining

1206
01:21:36,880 --> 01:21:42,120
Speaker 1: a terrorist organization. After completing basic training and airborne school,

1207
01:21:42,560 --> 01:21:44,960
Speaker 1: Ethan Melzer deployed with the one hundred and seventy third

1208
01:21:44,960 --> 01:21:49,320
Speaker 1: Airborne Division to a base in Italy. In his discord chats,

1209
01:21:49,360 --> 01:21:51,360
Speaker 1: he complained that he needed to get some kind of

1210
01:21:51,760 --> 01:21:54,519
Speaker 1: fake book covers so that he could read his sinister

1211
01:21:54,680 --> 01:21:57,960
Speaker 1: texts in front of his commanding officer without drawing suspicion.

1212
01:21:59,400 --> 01:22:03,120
Speaker 1: He expressed longing for the day of the rope, a

1213
01:22:03,160 --> 01:22:05,800
Speaker 1: phrase from the Turner Diaries that refers to the day

1214
01:22:05,840 --> 01:22:09,200
Speaker 1: the Race War really begins when the race traders are

1215
01:22:09,280 --> 01:22:13,000
Speaker 1: murdered on masts and left hanging from lamp posts and bridges.

1216
01:22:14,880 --> 01:22:17,120
Speaker 1: When another user complained that it felt like the Race

1217
01:22:17,160 --> 01:22:20,120
Speaker 1: War would never come, he replied.

1218
01:22:22,120 --> 01:22:24,880
Speaker 2: I'm working on it. Okay, give me three years and

1219
01:22:24,960 --> 01:22:28,439
Speaker 2: I got you, motherfucker. I'm in the Army specifically for this.

1220
01:22:29,000 --> 01:22:32,000
Speaker 2: I mean, I literally did join for this exact reason.

1221
01:22:32,520 --> 01:22:35,040
Speaker 2: Can't really do anything when I'm in fucking Italy. My

1222
01:22:35,240 --> 01:22:36,519
Speaker 2: unit is stationed in Italy.

1223
01:22:40,080 --> 01:22:46,360
Speaker 1: I'm in the Army specifically for this, That's what he said.

1224
01:22:47,880 --> 01:22:53,200
Speaker 1: Ethan Melzer joined the Army as an insight role. The

1225
01:22:53,240 --> 01:22:55,960
Speaker 1: insight role is a core tenet of the Order of

1226
01:22:56,040 --> 01:22:58,920
Speaker 1: nine Angles. You can think of it as a sort

1227
01:22:58,960 --> 01:23:04,680
Speaker 1: of evil, magical undercover assignment. A member should take on

1228
01:23:04,760 --> 01:23:07,920
Speaker 1: this role for six to eighteen months, depending on the

1229
01:23:07,960 --> 01:23:11,080
Speaker 1: text you're looking at, and the nature and purpose of

1230
01:23:11,120 --> 01:23:13,960
Speaker 1: the insight role has shifted a little bit over time

1231
01:23:14,080 --> 01:23:18,480
Speaker 1: and depending on the source text. And it's most innocuous,

1232
01:23:18,920 --> 01:23:22,360
Speaker 1: it's just that same left hand path magical notion of

1233
01:23:22,400 --> 01:23:26,760
Speaker 1: doing something transgressive. Right, you should do something antithetical to

1234
01:23:26,880 --> 01:23:31,120
Speaker 1: yourself to deepen your practice of magic. To truly test

1235
01:23:31,160 --> 01:23:34,040
Speaker 1: your sinister resolve, you should pick a lifestyle a role

1236
01:23:34,520 --> 01:23:37,200
Speaker 1: that is as close to the polar opposite of your

1237
01:23:37,280 --> 01:23:42,479
Speaker 1: own life, your own true nature as possible. You should

1238
01:23:42,520 --> 01:23:47,439
Speaker 1: be the opposite of yourself for a year. But the

1239
01:23:47,479 --> 01:23:51,320
Speaker 1: insight role is widely understood to be something a bit

1240
01:23:51,560 --> 01:23:57,120
Speaker 1: darker than a little en Toonomian role playing game. Your

1241
01:23:57,160 --> 01:24:00,840
Speaker 1: insight role should allow you to infiltrate and ultimately subvert

1242
01:24:01,360 --> 01:24:06,519
Speaker 1: some kind of institution. Religious orders, police departments, and the

1243
01:24:06,560 --> 01:24:11,680
Speaker 1: military are commonly suggested for this purpose, particularly when it

1244
01:24:11,720 --> 01:24:15,640
Speaker 1: comes to insight roles in policing or the military. This

1245
01:24:15,760 --> 01:24:20,720
Speaker 1: also provides an opportunity to gain training and access to weapons.

1246
01:24:21,200 --> 01:24:24,839
Speaker 1: It can also provide a suitable environment for the practice

1247
01:24:24,880 --> 01:24:31,120
Speaker 1: of culling. That's human sacrifice. These are jobs where you

1248
01:24:31,240 --> 01:24:35,960
Speaker 1: may well have the opportunity to kill, and that's what

1249
01:24:36,080 --> 01:24:39,600
Speaker 1: he's referring to. In the months before he reported for

1250
01:24:39,680 --> 01:24:43,920
Speaker 1: active duty, Ethan Melzer rapidly became obsessed with and then

1251
01:24:44,000 --> 01:24:49,360
Speaker 1: initiated himself into the Order of Nine Angles. He may

1252
01:24:49,360 --> 01:24:52,360
Speaker 1: not have formed the plan before he told his career

1253
01:24:52,439 --> 01:24:55,679
Speaker 1: counselor that he wanted to enlist, but by the time

1254
01:24:55,680 --> 01:24:59,000
Speaker 1: he put on the uniform for the first time, he

1255
01:24:59,120 --> 01:25:02,479
Speaker 1: was only pretending to to be a soldier. This was

1256
01:25:02,520 --> 01:25:07,679
Speaker 1: an insight role. By April of twenty twenty, when Ethan

1257
01:25:07,720 --> 01:25:11,120
Speaker 1: Melzer was joining Rapewaffen, he'd been studying the Order of

1258
01:25:11,200 --> 01:25:14,800
Speaker 1: Nine Angles for more than a year. In one early

1259
01:25:14,840 --> 01:25:18,080
Speaker 1: discussion with another rape Waffen member, he said he needed

1260
01:25:18,120 --> 01:25:20,680
Speaker 1: to be careful because he didn't want to end up

1261
01:25:20,800 --> 01:25:24,200
Speaker 1: like another guy in their circle who got caught while

1262
01:25:24,240 --> 01:25:28,240
Speaker 1: he was in the military. There are so many guys

1263
01:25:28,439 --> 01:25:31,240
Speaker 1: that that could refer to that I can't actually pin

1264
01:25:31,360 --> 01:25:35,080
Speaker 1: down who he might have meant, just looking at guys

1265
01:25:35,120 --> 01:25:38,320
Speaker 1: who have some sort of crossover, you know, Adam Waffen

1266
01:25:38,520 --> 01:25:41,960
Speaker 1: Order of Nine Angles, were in the military got in

1267
01:25:42,080 --> 01:25:47,280
Speaker 1: trouble in twenty nineteen or so. That's actually a surprisingly

1268
01:25:47,320 --> 01:25:51,160
Speaker 1: long list of guys. He may have been referring to

1269
01:25:51,360 --> 01:25:55,240
Speaker 1: Army private Corwin Storm Carver, who was investigated in twenty

1270
01:25:55,320 --> 01:25:58,160
Speaker 1: nineteen over allegations that he was the current leader of

1271
01:25:58,240 --> 01:26:02,440
Speaker 1: Adam Woffen and was involved in the Order of Nine Angles.

1272
01:26:02,560 --> 01:26:06,200
Speaker 1: Or maybe he meant Jarrett Smith, the Adam Woffin member,

1273
01:26:06,360 --> 01:26:10,280
Speaker 1: Satanist and infantry soldier arrested in twenty nineteen for distributing

1274
01:26:10,280 --> 01:26:14,719
Speaker 1: information about bomb making. Maybe he was talking about Kyle Benton,

1275
01:26:15,200 --> 01:26:17,960
Speaker 1: the US Army specialist who was discharged in twenty nineteen

1276
01:26:18,000 --> 01:26:21,280
Speaker 1: after he was arrested for domestic violence and the subsequent

1277
01:26:21,400 --> 01:26:25,080
Speaker 1: Army investigation revealed that he too was involved with the

1278
01:26:25,200 --> 01:26:28,800
Speaker 1: Order of Nine Angles. Or maybe he was talking about

1279
01:26:28,840 --> 01:26:32,080
Speaker 1: Vasilios Pistols, the Marine lance corporal who was court martialed

1280
01:26:32,120 --> 01:26:36,120
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen over his ties to Adam Waffin. There

1281
01:26:36,160 --> 01:26:39,800
Speaker 1: are plenty of possibilities here, and they all point to

1282
01:26:39,840 --> 01:26:45,559
Speaker 1: the same grim reality. As Corwin Carver said, soldiers make

1283
01:26:45,600 --> 01:26:51,200
Speaker 1: the best Nazis. It's just a fact, and that's a fact.

1284
01:26:51,320 --> 01:26:54,960
Speaker 1: Ethan Melzer was well aware of the same week he's

1285
01:26:54,960 --> 01:26:58,280
Speaker 1: having this conversation about not wanting to be another guy

1286
01:26:58,320 --> 01:27:02,120
Speaker 1: in the military caught doing what he's doing, he advised

1287
01:27:02,120 --> 01:27:05,040
Speaker 1: another member of Rapewaffen who was considering joining the military

1288
01:27:05,120 --> 01:27:09,759
Speaker 1: to do it for the training, saying the ridiculous forced

1289
01:27:09,840 --> 01:27:13,719
Speaker 1: patriotism bullshit can go fuck itself. Just play the game

1290
01:27:13,760 --> 01:27:17,880
Speaker 1: for four years and get the fuck out, but stronger, smarter,

1291
01:27:18,680 --> 01:27:22,839
Speaker 1: and more dangerous. Of course, he gave the same advice

1292
01:27:22,880 --> 01:27:25,000
Speaker 1: a few days later to a rape Waffen member who

1293
01:27:25,040 --> 01:27:28,959
Speaker 1: called himself Frei Corps and was considering joining the Marines.

1294
01:27:30,600 --> 01:27:33,960
Speaker 1: Those early months of twenty twenty were a lifetime ago,

1295
01:27:34,240 --> 01:27:38,280
Speaker 1: so maybe you don't remember the specifics, but the COVID

1296
01:27:38,360 --> 01:27:41,760
Speaker 1: nineteen pandemic hit Italy pretty hard. I mean it was

1297
01:27:41,800 --> 01:27:45,320
Speaker 1: a pandemic. It hit us all pretty hard. But Italy

1298
01:27:45,400 --> 01:27:50,200
Speaker 1: had actual lockdowns, and so did the US military. And

1299
01:27:50,240 --> 01:27:53,479
Speaker 1: so in those early months of the pandemic. Stationed in Italy,

1300
01:27:53,920 --> 01:27:56,759
Speaker 1: Ethan Melzer was more or less confined to his barracks,

1301
01:27:57,960 --> 01:28:00,439
Speaker 1: and he used that time to really commit to reading

1302
01:28:00,479 --> 01:28:03,760
Speaker 1: his sinister texts and to work his way deeper into

1303
01:28:03,800 --> 01:28:08,800
Speaker 1: the online subculture surrounding it. Photos recovered from his cell

1304
01:28:08,840 --> 01:28:11,760
Speaker 1: phone include one of Melzer wearing a ski mask and

1305
01:28:11,880 --> 01:28:15,120
Speaker 1: holding up a copy of a book. He has cut

1306
01:28:15,160 --> 01:28:18,040
Speaker 1: himself and smeared his own blood over a sigil on

1307
01:28:18,080 --> 01:28:21,800
Speaker 1: the page the book is opened to. If I had

1308
01:28:21,840 --> 01:28:24,880
Speaker 1: to guess based on the picture, I think that's a

1309
01:28:24,920 --> 01:28:28,519
Speaker 1: copy of Keleethi, the second of three parts of an

1310
01:28:28,520 --> 01:28:32,719
Speaker 1: Ona text called the Black Book of Satan. It looks

1311
01:28:32,760 --> 01:28:35,679
Speaker 1: like the copy he has as the fully illustrated version

1312
01:28:35,760 --> 01:28:40,320
Speaker 1: with drawings by Christos Beast, an English musician named Richard

1313
01:28:40,400 --> 01:28:43,719
Speaker 1: Molt who was allegedly a member of Ona's Old Guard.

1314
01:28:43,800 --> 01:28:49,240
Speaker 1: With David Mayant and alone in his barracks, Melzer consumed

1315
01:28:49,280 --> 01:28:52,680
Speaker 1: the violent gore videos that were shared so gleefully in

1316
01:28:52,680 --> 01:28:57,559
Speaker 1: those telegram channels. Found in his digital possession were things

1317
01:28:57,640 --> 01:29:00,679
Speaker 1: like a video that appears to show a black woman

1318
01:29:00,800 --> 01:29:04,000
Speaker 1: being lynched by white men in front of a Confederate flag,

1319
01:29:05,000 --> 01:29:07,280
Speaker 1: and a photo of a woman who is bound and

1320
01:29:07,360 --> 01:29:10,360
Speaker 1: hooded being held at gunpoint by a man standing in

1321
01:29:10,360 --> 01:29:12,439
Speaker 1: front of a flag with the insignia for the Order

1322
01:29:12,479 --> 01:29:17,919
Speaker 1: of nine Angles. The court record specifically notes several videos

1323
01:29:17,960 --> 01:29:23,439
Speaker 1: he'd watched depicting jihadist attacks on US military forces, which

1324
01:29:23,479 --> 01:29:28,280
Speaker 1: may be where he got his next big idea. Immediately

1325
01:29:28,320 --> 01:29:30,439
Speaker 1: after walking out of the briefing room for his upcoming

1326
01:29:30,520 --> 01:29:34,280
Speaker 1: mission to Turkey, Melzer shared the information with rapewaff and Chat.

1327
01:29:35,640 --> 01:29:39,400
Speaker 1: Soon after, the channel administrator, our Canadian teenager posting as

1328
01:29:39,640 --> 01:29:43,600
Speaker 1: gulag Cult, asked him for more information about the deployment

1329
01:29:44,000 --> 01:29:49,200
Speaker 1: because another Rapewaffen member, a user called Kurt Kobani, needed

1330
01:29:49,240 --> 01:29:53,759
Speaker 1: to know. Gulag Cult told Melzer that this other user,

1331
01:29:54,080 --> 01:29:57,000
Speaker 1: we'll just call him kurt I Guess, was a member

1332
01:29:57,040 --> 01:30:01,320
Speaker 1: of the Gray Wolves, a Turkish ulternational most fascist paramilitary

1333
01:30:01,360 --> 01:30:05,560
Speaker 1: group that the European Parliament considers an international terrorist organization.

1334
01:30:07,600 --> 01:30:10,599
Speaker 1: A week before he was scheduled to deploy, Melzer posted

1335
01:30:10,640 --> 01:30:13,240
Speaker 1: in at least two telegram chats for adherents of the

1336
01:30:13,320 --> 01:30:16,040
Speaker 1: Order of Nine Ankles that he was a US Army

1337
01:30:16,080 --> 01:30:19,559
Speaker 1: soldier stationed in Italy and he was about to deploy

1338
01:30:19,640 --> 01:30:24,880
Speaker 1: to Turkey. Gulag Cult forwarded several of Melzer's messages, which

1339
01:30:24,920 --> 01:30:28,759
Speaker 1: contained sensitive details about the mission, to a chat called

1340
01:30:29,200 --> 01:30:34,559
Speaker 1: the Order of Nine Rapes. That chat had just eighteen members.

1341
01:30:35,800 --> 01:30:41,240
Speaker 1: One of those members was Ethan Melzer, one was Gulag Cult,

1342
01:30:41,479 --> 01:30:45,160
Speaker 1: our fifteen year old Canadian, and one was user who

1343
01:30:45,200 --> 01:30:50,360
Speaker 1: called herself Red hour Glass. And Red Hourglass would be

1344
01:30:50,360 --> 01:30:52,400
Speaker 1: the one to pull the plug on the whole operation

1345
01:30:52,560 --> 01:30:56,439
Speaker 1: by reporting the plot to the FBI. The FBI didn't

1346
01:30:56,479 --> 01:30:59,960
Speaker 1: arrest their own informant, and they can't arrest a Canadian ship.

1347
01:31:01,320 --> 01:31:03,120
Speaker 1: But you do have to wonder what came of the

1348
01:31:03,160 --> 01:31:07,519
Speaker 1: other fifteen members of that chat room. Not much is

1349
01:31:07,600 --> 01:31:11,519
Speaker 1: known about Red Hourglass. She may not even be a

1350
01:31:11,560 --> 01:31:16,240
Speaker 1: woman at all. Who knows, but online she was Gulag

1351
01:31:16,320 --> 01:31:21,120
Speaker 1: Colt's girlfriend. Whether she knew her internet boyfriend was really

1352
01:31:21,160 --> 01:31:25,439
Speaker 1: a child, we don't know. She's referred to in the

1353
01:31:25,439 --> 01:31:30,480
Speaker 1: government's documents as a confidential source, not an undercover employee,

1354
01:31:31,600 --> 01:31:34,240
Speaker 1: so she may be getting paid by the FBI for

1355
01:31:34,280 --> 01:31:37,920
Speaker 1: the information she provides, but she is not an FBI agent.

1356
01:31:39,479 --> 01:31:41,920
Speaker 1: One footnote indicates that she's only been a source for

1357
01:31:41,960 --> 01:31:45,599
Speaker 1: the government since May of twenty twenty, which is when

1358
01:31:45,640 --> 01:31:48,720
Speaker 1: all of this went down. They don't give a more

1359
01:31:48,720 --> 01:31:53,360
Speaker 1: specific date than that, just May of twenty twenty. So

1360
01:31:53,560 --> 01:31:56,400
Speaker 1: was she already a government informant when she entered the

1361
01:31:56,520 --> 01:31:59,360
Speaker 1: Order of Nine Rapes chat where this plan was hatched.

1362
01:32:00,439 --> 01:32:04,519
Speaker 1: Or did she only become a government informant after the

1363
01:32:04,560 --> 01:32:08,280
Speaker 1: plan took shape and maybe she felt compelled to report it.

1364
01:32:09,640 --> 01:32:14,160
Speaker 1: We can't know. But her username is interesting to me,

1365
01:32:15,680 --> 01:32:20,240
Speaker 1: red hour glass. Maybe that means something else to you,

1366
01:32:20,320 --> 01:32:23,559
Speaker 1: but to me, a red hour glass is a clear

1367
01:32:23,640 --> 01:32:26,240
Speaker 1: reference to the markings on the abdomen of a black

1368
01:32:26,280 --> 01:32:29,479
Speaker 1: widow spider. I don't want to draw the ire of

1369
01:32:29,520 --> 01:32:33,280
Speaker 1: any spider scientists out there. I understand that the commonly

1370
01:32:33,320 --> 01:32:37,840
Speaker 1: held belief that black widow spiders engage in sexual cannibalism

1371
01:32:38,040 --> 01:32:42,559
Speaker 1: isn't really supported by the science. Those instances of female

1372
01:32:42,560 --> 01:32:47,600
Speaker 1: black widows devouring their mates occur primarily in laboratory environments

1373
01:32:47,640 --> 01:32:51,720
Speaker 1: when the male spider can't get away, but it is

1374
01:32:52,000 --> 01:32:58,160
Speaker 1: nevertheless something people believe. So this red hour glass, this

1375
01:32:58,320 --> 01:33:02,760
Speaker 1: mysterious woman is tricking Gulag Cult into thinking they are

1376
01:33:03,320 --> 01:33:08,839
Speaker 1: romantically involved. She's drawing these young men into her web.

1377
01:33:10,360 --> 01:33:13,720
Speaker 1: Was she a black widow bent on consuming these men's futures?

1378
01:33:15,040 --> 01:33:21,080
Speaker 1: I don't know. Within the Order of Nine rapes Chat,

1379
01:33:21,800 --> 01:33:25,360
Speaker 1: a plan began to form. If they could get the

1380
01:33:25,360 --> 01:33:28,360
Speaker 1: information about this mission into the hands of al Qaeda,

1381
01:33:28,960 --> 01:33:34,400
Speaker 1: they could cause a mass casualty incident. One user asked

1382
01:33:34,439 --> 01:33:38,240
Speaker 1: Melzer if he understood that he too would likely die

1383
01:33:38,439 --> 01:33:42,439
Speaker 1: in the kind of attack they're talking about. Melzer replied,

1384
01:33:43,479 --> 01:33:45,479
Speaker 1: if we were to trigger this the right way, the

1385
01:33:45,520 --> 01:33:49,320
Speaker 1: amount of shit it would cause would cover it. He

1386
01:33:49,360 --> 01:33:52,960
Speaker 1: felt like his life quote would be absolutely meaningless in

1387
01:33:53,000 --> 01:33:56,200
Speaker 1: the amount of shit it would cause if the plan worked.

1388
01:33:57,280 --> 01:33:59,880
Speaker 1: If these forty soldiers were killed at a Turkish air

1389
01:34:02,160 --> 01:34:05,439
Speaker 1: A day later, Gulug Cult asked him are we really

1390
01:34:05,479 --> 01:34:12,320
Speaker 1: planning a Jihati attack? And Melzer agreed they were. Gulug

1391
01:34:12,400 --> 01:34:15,080
Speaker 1: Cult joked that if Melzer got himself shot in this

1392
01:34:15,200 --> 01:34:19,760
Speaker 1: attack would be his own fault, and Melzer again expressed

1393
01:34:19,760 --> 01:34:22,760
Speaker 1: a total willingness to die if it meant the plan

1394
01:34:22,880 --> 01:34:27,200
Speaker 1: was successful, saying, who gives a fuck? The after effects

1395
01:34:27,240 --> 01:34:29,800
Speaker 1: of a convoy getting attacked would cover it. It would be

1396
01:34:29,840 --> 01:34:34,120
Speaker 1: another war. I would have died successfully because another ten

1397
01:34:34,200 --> 01:34:36,519
Speaker 1: year war in the Middle East would definitely leave a mark.

1398
01:34:38,439 --> 01:34:42,479
Speaker 1: As the deployment date grew closer, Melzer shared every detail

1399
01:34:42,520 --> 01:34:46,400
Speaker 1: about the mission with Gulag Cult, the coordinates of the base,

1400
01:34:47,120 --> 01:34:49,519
Speaker 1: the number of US soldiers and what kind of weapons

1401
01:34:49,520 --> 01:34:53,240
Speaker 1: they were issued, the purpose and defensive capabilities of the

1402
01:34:53,360 --> 01:34:56,720
Speaker 1: US Army presence at this base, the layout of the

1403
01:34:56,720 --> 01:35:01,200
Speaker 1: installation and the surrounding terrain, and even the his convoy

1404
01:35:01,200 --> 01:35:05,160
Speaker 1: would be taking to get there. He shared information he'd

1405
01:35:05,160 --> 01:35:09,080
Speaker 1: received in briefings and trainings, things like the fact that

1406
01:35:09,080 --> 01:35:12,439
Speaker 1: the base was home to many non military employees who

1407
01:35:12,439 --> 01:35:15,080
Speaker 1: are not armed, and that the Army was limited in

1408
01:35:15,120 --> 01:35:18,040
Speaker 1: the defenses available for this convoy because they were operating

1409
01:35:18,080 --> 01:35:21,880
Speaker 1: by the rules of the host government using the training

1410
01:35:21,920 --> 01:35:26,680
Speaker 1: he'd received about avoiding ambush style attacks. He explained in

1411
01:35:26,720 --> 01:35:32,040
Speaker 1: detail how an effective attack could work. Just days before

1412
01:35:32,040 --> 01:35:35,840
Speaker 1: the scheduled deployment, a new, even smaller chat room was

1413
01:35:35,920 --> 01:35:42,040
Speaker 1: formed to finalize the details. This one, called Operation hard Rock,

1414
01:35:42,640 --> 01:35:48,719
Speaker 1: was just four members Melzer, our Canadian teenager, Gulag Cult

1415
01:35:49,640 --> 01:35:53,960
Speaker 1: our government informant Read Hourglass, and a fourth user the

1416
01:35:54,000 --> 01:35:58,120
Speaker 1: government calls co Conspirator III, someone posting under the name

1417
01:35:58,280 --> 01:36:03,800
Speaker 1: Jaw with two ws. In this chat, Melser promised to

1418
01:36:03,800 --> 01:36:06,960
Speaker 1: provide the group with the frequency and channels for the

1419
01:36:07,040 --> 01:36:10,320
Speaker 1: US Army radio communications so that they would be able

1420
01:36:10,360 --> 01:36:13,479
Speaker 1: to hear their victims deaths in real time. When the

1421
01:36:13,520 --> 01:36:27,920
Speaker 1: attack was carried out on May twenty fifth, the day

1422
01:36:27,960 --> 01:36:31,759
Speaker 1: before his twenty second birthday, Ethan Melzer may have gotten

1423
01:36:31,800 --> 01:36:35,960
Speaker 1: cold feet. He suggested to the chat that maybe they

1424
01:36:36,000 --> 01:36:39,720
Speaker 1: shouldn't attack his convoy at all. He still loved the

1425
01:36:39,800 --> 01:36:42,960
Speaker 1: idea of murdering a whole convoy of US soldiers. He

1426
01:36:43,080 --> 01:36:46,160
Speaker 1: just thought maybe it would be better for him to

1427
01:36:46,200 --> 01:36:49,680
Speaker 1: go on this deployment, spend a few months there researching

1428
01:36:49,680 --> 01:36:53,320
Speaker 1: the vulnerabilities of the place, you know, sending back more intel,

1429
01:36:53,960 --> 01:36:56,519
Speaker 1: and then they could carry out this attack on the

1430
01:36:56,640 --> 01:36:59,920
Speaker 1: unit sent to replace his a few months from now.

1431
01:37:01,320 --> 01:37:03,479
Speaker 1: He promised that he was packing a burner phone so

1432
01:37:03,520 --> 01:37:05,479
Speaker 1: he'd be able to provide them with photographs of the

1433
01:37:05,520 --> 01:37:08,880
Speaker 1: whole base once he got there, and then he didn't

1434
01:37:08,920 --> 01:37:13,519
Speaker 1: post for a few days. Red Hourglass informed the FBI

1435
01:37:13,560 --> 01:37:17,919
Speaker 1: of the plot the next day, May twenty sixth, twenty twenty.

1436
01:37:18,200 --> 01:37:21,559
Speaker 1: That was Ethan Melzer's twenty second birthday and two days

1437
01:37:21,600 --> 01:37:26,240
Speaker 1: before the scheduled deployment date. The authorities were quickly able

1438
01:37:26,280 --> 01:37:29,439
Speaker 1: to identify the platoon in question, and the deployment date

1439
01:37:29,479 --> 01:37:35,080
Speaker 1: was pushed back to May thirtieth. The soldiers weren't told why.

1440
01:37:35,400 --> 01:37:38,320
Speaker 1: Ethan Melzer had no idea His plans weren't a secret anymore.

1441
01:37:38,360 --> 01:37:40,479
Speaker 1: When he posted in the Operation hard Rock chat on

1442
01:37:40,520 --> 01:37:43,720
Speaker 1: May twenty ninth, the eve of the new scheduled departure date,

1443
01:37:45,040 --> 01:37:48,320
Speaker 1: he said he was still committed to the plan. He

1444
01:37:48,360 --> 01:37:51,360
Speaker 1: asked if it was possible to pull exact coordinates from

1445
01:37:51,400 --> 01:37:54,280
Speaker 1: the metadata on photos that were taken with a cell phone.

1446
01:37:55,360 --> 01:37:57,040
Speaker 1: He was hoping that if he was able to sneak

1447
01:37:57,080 --> 01:38:00,559
Speaker 1: his burner phone out on patrol and snap pictures, his

1448
01:38:00,680 --> 01:38:03,200
Speaker 1: co conspirators would be able to use the metadata to

1449
01:38:03,280 --> 01:38:07,040
Speaker 1: pinpoint the exact locations of the areas of vulnerability in

1450
01:38:07,040 --> 01:38:12,160
Speaker 1: the photos. Now, whether Red hour Glass was working for

1451
01:38:12,200 --> 01:38:16,519
Speaker 1: the government all along or not, we don't know, But

1452
01:38:16,600 --> 01:38:19,760
Speaker 1: on the evening of May twenty ninth, she may or

1453
01:38:19,800 --> 01:38:22,000
Speaker 1: may not have even been the one using her phone

1454
01:38:23,240 --> 01:38:26,479
Speaker 1: once she spilled the beans to the FBI. It may

1455
01:38:26,520 --> 01:38:29,719
Speaker 1: have been an actual FBI agent chatting with Ethan Melzer

1456
01:38:29,760 --> 01:38:33,880
Speaker 1: as Red Hourglass as he reaffirmed his commitment to the

1457
01:38:33,920 --> 01:38:38,360
Speaker 1: plan that night, Red Hourglass asked him, what makes you

1458
01:38:38,400 --> 01:38:41,320
Speaker 1: think you can actually get away with fucking with the U. S. Military,

1459
01:38:42,720 --> 01:38:46,240
Speaker 1: and Melser replied, because I fly under the raidar already

1460
01:38:46,439 --> 01:38:49,280
Speaker 1: act completely normal around other people outside and don't talk

1461
01:38:49,320 --> 01:38:53,360
Speaker 1: about my personal life or beliefs with any one. But

1462
01:38:53,400 --> 01:38:56,479
Speaker 1: he was starting to get nervous about the mission. He

1463
01:38:56,560 --> 01:39:00,439
Speaker 1: deleted most of his old posts. If the plan now

1464
01:39:00,560 --> 01:39:03,800
Speaker 1: was to attack the replacement convoy two months down the road,

1465
01:39:04,800 --> 01:39:07,719
Speaker 1: he was going to be alive when the investigation started,

1466
01:39:08,479 --> 01:39:13,679
Speaker 1: and he didn't want to get caught. Red Hourglass needled him, saying,

1467
01:39:14,000 --> 01:39:19,240
Speaker 1: you deleted them because that's treason, duh, And he replied, kek,

1468
01:39:20,080 --> 01:39:25,880
Speaker 1: that's k e K. It's a substitute for LOL. The

1469
01:39:25,960 --> 01:39:30,599
Speaker 1: lore here is complicated and irrelevant, but the short version

1470
01:39:30,680 --> 01:39:34,519
Speaker 1: is that keck originated with Korean online gamers as a

1471
01:39:34,640 --> 01:39:38,320
Speaker 1: typed indication that the user is laughing, and it eventually

1472
01:39:38,360 --> 01:39:42,479
Speaker 1: migrated into the American altright lexicon of the twenty sixteen era.

1473
01:39:42,920 --> 01:39:47,559
Speaker 1: It's not important. The point is he was laughing off

1474
01:39:47,600 --> 01:39:51,599
Speaker 1: what he knew to be true. This was treasonous behavior.

1475
01:39:54,439 --> 01:39:56,960
Speaker 1: And that gets us back up to where we started today.

1476
01:39:58,040 --> 01:40:02,040
Speaker 1: Ethan Melzer standing out at Camp Utterly with his platoon

1477
01:40:02,320 --> 01:40:07,639
Speaker 1: on May thirtieth, twenty twenty. His bags were packed. Orty

1478
01:40:07,760 --> 01:40:10,120
Speaker 1: soldiers were waiting for the bus that would take them

1479
01:40:10,160 --> 01:40:15,559
Speaker 1: to the airstrip. Inside Ethan Melzer's bag, they found two

1480
01:40:15,600 --> 01:40:18,640
Speaker 1: cell phones. He really had packed the burner phone that

1481
01:40:18,680 --> 01:40:21,280
Speaker 1: he'd promised to use to take photographs of the military base.

1482
01:40:22,640 --> 01:40:27,479
Speaker 1: They also found two books, The Sinister Tradition, a seminal

1483
01:40:27,560 --> 01:40:30,000
Speaker 1: text for adherents of the Order of Nine Angles written

1484
01:40:30,000 --> 01:40:35,439
Speaker 1: by ONA Grandmaster Anton Long himself, and a copy of

1485
01:40:35,560 --> 01:40:39,800
Speaker 1: Kodux Aristarchus, one of the ONA texts authored by the

1486
01:40:39,840 --> 01:40:44,559
Speaker 1: English Nazi pedophile Ryan Fleming. I did give it a

1487
01:40:44,560 --> 01:40:47,400
Speaker 1: little skim this week like I promised you last week,

1488
01:40:47,760 --> 01:40:52,080
Speaker 1: and it turns out he's just talking about psychic vampirism. Sorry,

1489
01:40:52,240 --> 01:40:57,920
Speaker 1: so I don't think vampires are real. Immediately after being

1490
01:40:57,960 --> 01:41:00,960
Speaker 1: taken into custody, Ethan melzer Is admitted that he had

1491
01:41:01,000 --> 01:41:04,600
Speaker 1: disclosed information about his deployment to members of the rape Waffenchat.

1492
01:41:05,479 --> 01:41:07,640
Speaker 1: He admitted that he had done so in order to

1493
01:41:07,680 --> 01:41:11,880
Speaker 1: facilitate an attack on his fellow soldiers. He admitted that

1494
01:41:11,960 --> 01:41:16,000
Speaker 1: the messages had been typed and sent by him. He

1495
01:41:16,080 --> 01:41:21,519
Speaker 1: agreed that his actions were tantamount to treason, but as

1496
01:41:21,560 --> 01:41:24,040
Speaker 1: required by the rules of the Order of Nine Angles,

1497
01:41:24,560 --> 01:41:28,439
Speaker 1: he repeatedly denied that he was a member of the

1498
01:41:28,560 --> 01:41:33,839
Speaker 1: Order of Nine Angles. As the case progressed, his lawyers

1499
01:41:33,920 --> 01:41:38,320
Speaker 1: argued that he was just messing around online. He was

1500
01:41:38,600 --> 01:41:42,599
Speaker 1: addicted to posting. They wanted to have a psychologist testify

1501
01:41:42,640 --> 01:41:46,519
Speaker 1: about Internet addiction and the phenomenon of people lying online

1502
01:41:46,560 --> 01:41:51,599
Speaker 1: for attention, inhabiting elaborate fake identities online because they're high

1503
01:41:51,640 --> 01:41:55,880
Speaker 1: on likes and comments. They argued that there was no

1504
01:41:56,080 --> 01:42:00,559
Speaker 1: actual chance of any real attack ever taking place, leaning

1505
01:42:00,560 --> 01:42:03,439
Speaker 1: heavily on the fact that the primary co conspirator was

1506
01:42:03,479 --> 01:42:06,600
Speaker 1: a child who had recently been released from a psychiatric

1507
01:42:06,640 --> 01:42:09,519
Speaker 1: facility and who was only pretending to be an adult

1508
01:42:09,600 --> 01:42:15,559
Speaker 1: with military training. The Defense sentencing memo doesn't mention that

1509
01:42:15,640 --> 01:42:20,000
Speaker 1: the government believes that co conspirators two and three were

1510
01:42:20,040 --> 01:42:23,800
Speaker 1: not lying. One of them really was based in Kurdistan,

1511
01:42:24,400 --> 01:42:27,439
Speaker 1: and the other does appear to have actual connections to

1512
01:42:27,520 --> 01:42:32,360
Speaker 1: some kind of jihadist organization. In his post arrest interviews,

1513
01:42:32,760 --> 01:42:36,439
Speaker 1: Melzer told investigators that he hadn't been serious about any

1514
01:42:36,479 --> 01:42:40,080
Speaker 1: of it, but that he'd felt pressured to provide information

1515
01:42:40,160 --> 01:42:44,760
Speaker 1: about the deployment, so he made something up, and that

1516
01:42:44,840 --> 01:42:49,639
Speaker 1: kind of falls apart considering the information he provided was real.

1517
01:42:50,080 --> 01:42:54,360
Speaker 1: He did provide actual, correct information about this military base

1518
01:42:54,400 --> 01:42:58,679
Speaker 1: in Turkey and his deployment to it, and he really

1519
01:42:58,680 --> 01:43:03,280
Speaker 1: did pack a burner fund for his deployment. But he

1520
01:43:03,320 --> 01:43:05,360
Speaker 1: said it had never even crossed his mind that the

1521
01:43:05,400 --> 01:43:09,120
Speaker 1: people he was talking to were serious, and he certainly

1522
01:43:09,160 --> 01:43:12,519
Speaker 1: wasn't serious. He said that he was only curious about

1523
01:43:12,520 --> 01:43:15,200
Speaker 1: the Order of nine Angles because it was so weird,

1524
01:43:16,000 --> 01:43:17,920
Speaker 1: and he claimed that the beliefs of the group were

1525
01:43:18,000 --> 01:43:24,719
Speaker 1: quote pretty much the polar opposite of his own, which

1526
01:43:24,760 --> 01:43:28,600
Speaker 1: is interesting because that's sort of the same language in

1527
01:43:28,680 --> 01:43:30,799
Speaker 1: a lot of ona texts about the kind of insight

1528
01:43:30,880 --> 01:43:33,000
Speaker 1: role you should choose. You should choose something that is

1529
01:43:33,000 --> 01:43:39,280
Speaker 1: the polar opposite of your own beliefs. He later claimed

1530
01:43:39,280 --> 01:43:41,680
Speaker 1: that he'd only provided some information to the group in

1531
01:43:41,760 --> 01:43:44,400
Speaker 1: order to gain their trust so he could learn more

1532
01:43:44,439 --> 01:43:48,040
Speaker 1: about them, which is kind of what Shandon Simpson, that

1533
01:43:48,200 --> 01:43:51,639
Speaker 1: Ohio National guardsmen we were talking about last week, has

1534
01:43:51,680 --> 01:43:54,800
Speaker 1: been claiming all along about why he was in the

1535
01:43:54,880 --> 01:43:58,839
Speaker 1: rapewop and chat rooms. So there's a lot of guys

1536
01:43:58,840 --> 01:44:02,519
Speaker 1: in the terrorism place chat that are claiming after the

1537
01:44:02,560 --> 01:44:06,320
Speaker 1: fact that they were only pretending to support terrorism in

1538
01:44:06,439 --> 01:44:10,120
Speaker 1: order to uncover how bad everybody else in there really is.

1539
01:44:12,120 --> 01:44:15,800
Speaker 1: And Melser's attorneys maintained all the way through sentencing that

1540
01:44:15,880 --> 01:44:19,479
Speaker 1: there was never any real possibility that anyone was going

1541
01:44:19,560 --> 01:44:22,519
Speaker 1: to get hurt. Right, they're saying that this plan is

1542
01:44:23,200 --> 01:44:26,639
Speaker 1: half baked at best, and it never would have actually worked.

1543
01:44:27,360 --> 01:44:30,240
Speaker 1: It was just posts online and the guy he was

1544
01:44:30,280 --> 01:44:34,120
Speaker 1: talking to turned out to be a kid anyway. But

1545
01:44:34,240 --> 01:44:38,720
Speaker 1: maybe terrorism is kind of like magic. Right. We were

1546
01:44:38,720 --> 01:44:41,800
Speaker 1: talking a little bit last week about how much does

1547
01:44:41,840 --> 01:44:49,200
Speaker 1: it matter what's real, what you really believe. Does it

1548
01:44:49,320 --> 01:44:52,600
Speaker 1: matter if you're actually communing with demonic entities and the

1549
01:44:52,640 --> 01:44:55,640
Speaker 1: a causal realm, if the end result is still a specific,

1550
01:44:55,720 --> 01:44:59,800
Speaker 1: concrete action in the real world. Does it matter if

1551
01:44:59,840 --> 01:45:02,799
Speaker 1: you didn't know the person you were sharing classified military

1552
01:45:02,840 --> 01:45:07,320
Speaker 1: intelligence with was a child, if that information still found

1553
01:45:07,320 --> 01:45:10,800
Speaker 1: its way onto the broader internet, resulting in a very

1554
01:45:10,920 --> 01:45:14,920
Speaker 1: real need to overhaul security protocols at a military base.

1555
01:45:16,520 --> 01:45:19,960
Speaker 1: And sometimes the law really is kind of like ritual

1556
01:45:20,000 --> 01:45:23,519
Speaker 1: magic in that way. You can catch the same charge

1557
01:45:23,520 --> 01:45:26,760
Speaker 1: for something like armed robbery whether the gun you were

1558
01:45:26,760 --> 01:45:30,120
Speaker 1: holding was real or not, because it doesn't matter if

1559
01:45:30,160 --> 01:45:33,400
Speaker 1: it's a real gun that shoots real bullets if the

1560
01:45:33,400 --> 01:45:39,639
Speaker 1: people you're pointing it at think it is. Ethan Melzer

1561
01:45:39,720 --> 01:45:42,800
Speaker 1: entered into a plea agreement in June of twenty twenty two,

1562
01:45:42,920 --> 01:45:45,040
Speaker 1: just two weeks before he was scheduled to stand trial.

1563
01:45:46,360 --> 01:45:49,280
Speaker 1: The agreement dropped most of the charges on the indictment,

1564
01:45:49,320 --> 01:45:52,360
Speaker 1: which is a pretty standard practice in a federal criminal case,

1565
01:45:52,920 --> 01:45:55,360
Speaker 1: so he was convicted only on the charges of attempted

1566
01:45:55,439 --> 01:45:59,280
Speaker 1: murder of US service members, provision and attempted provision of

1567
01:45:59,320 --> 01:46:03,840
Speaker 1: material support to terrorists, and illegal transmission of National Defense

1568
01:46:03,920 --> 01:46:08,200
Speaker 1: Information pursue it to that plea agreement, he was sentenced

1569
01:46:08,200 --> 01:46:12,080
Speaker 1: to five hundred and forty months. That's forty five years

1570
01:46:12,360 --> 01:46:16,759
Speaker 1: in prison, assuming he maintains good behavior and doesn't commit

1571
01:46:16,800 --> 01:46:20,240
Speaker 1: any new offenses while incarcerated. The eighty five percent of

1572
01:46:20,280 --> 01:46:22,360
Speaker 1: that sentence that he'll end up serving is a little

1573
01:46:22,400 --> 01:46:26,280
Speaker 1: over thirty eight years. His scheduled release date is in

1574
01:46:26,360 --> 01:46:31,400
Speaker 1: November of twenty fifty eight. He'll be sixty years old.

1575
01:46:33,400 --> 01:46:36,479
Speaker 1: When entering his plea, he was asked and said that

1576
01:46:36,520 --> 01:46:39,920
Speaker 1: he understood that the terms of this agreement included a

1577
01:46:39,960 --> 01:46:43,200
Speaker 1: waiver of his right to appeal any sentence of five

1578
01:46:43,280 --> 01:46:46,680
Speaker 1: hundred and forty months or less, and he got five

1579
01:46:46,760 --> 01:46:50,439
Speaker 1: hundred and forty months. But in March of last year,

1580
01:46:50,560 --> 01:46:53,519
Speaker 1: just a few days after his sentencing, his attorneys filed

1581
01:46:53,520 --> 01:46:56,080
Speaker 1: an appeal asking for the case to be re sentenced,

1582
01:46:56,600 --> 01:46:59,240
Speaker 1: citing a particular comment the judge made in his remarks

1583
01:46:59,240 --> 01:47:03,439
Speaker 1: after pronouncing the sentence. The transcript of that hearing shows

1584
01:47:03,439 --> 01:47:08,080
Speaker 1: the judges' remarks were fairly lengthy, covering nearly twenty pages.

1585
01:47:08,120 --> 01:47:13,120
Speaker 1: In the transcript, judges usually offer some explanation of how

1586
01:47:13,120 --> 01:47:16,920
Speaker 1: they arrived at their decision at a sentencing hearing. Some

1587
01:47:17,000 --> 01:47:21,000
Speaker 1: are more succinct. Others enjoy waxing poetic about the nature

1588
01:47:21,040 --> 01:47:25,880
Speaker 1: of justice or their feelings about a defendant's actions. There's

1589
01:47:25,920 --> 01:47:28,840
Speaker 1: no jury in the room anymore, so judges can get

1590
01:47:28,840 --> 01:47:31,519
Speaker 1: a little wild with it at this stage. It can

1591
01:47:31,560 --> 01:47:34,400
Speaker 1: be kind of jarring to hear them drop the act

1592
01:47:34,560 --> 01:47:39,200
Speaker 1: and actually have a deeply personal opinion. And Judge Gregory

1593
01:47:39,200 --> 01:47:43,439
Speaker 1: Woods spoke at length. He explained, as judges often do,

1594
01:47:43,800 --> 01:47:47,280
Speaker 1: the legal framework for calculating a sentence and the factors

1595
01:47:47,280 --> 01:47:50,519
Speaker 1: that must be weighed. We summarized the facts of the

1596
01:47:50,560 --> 01:47:54,919
Speaker 1: case and its procedural history. He highlighted pieces of evidence

1597
01:47:54,960 --> 01:47:59,080
Speaker 1: that contributed to his decision. We referenced the mitigating factors

1598
01:47:59,120 --> 01:48:02,200
Speaker 1: presented by the defense. Explained why he didn't agree with

1599
01:48:02,240 --> 01:48:06,640
Speaker 1: the defense's position that they warranted a downward departure. And

1600
01:48:06,720 --> 01:48:11,040
Speaker 1: none of this is unusual or even remarkable. But the

1601
01:48:11,080 --> 01:48:14,840
Speaker 1: appeal hinges on the judge's use of the phrase Judeo

1602
01:48:15,240 --> 01:48:17,040
Speaker 1: Christian values.

1603
01:48:20,040 --> 01:48:23,840
Speaker 2: Mister Melzer's crimes were pugnant. He betrayed the United States

1604
01:48:23,880 --> 01:48:27,679
Speaker 2: of America, He betrayed the United States military. He targeted

1605
01:48:27,680 --> 01:48:31,880
Speaker 2: for murder his fellow soldiers he worked to aid Jahadis terrorists.

1606
01:48:32,439 --> 01:48:35,759
Speaker 2: Also he could achieve his nihilist goal of unreminding Judaeo

1607
01:48:35,840 --> 01:48:39,519
Speaker 2: Christian values and rupturing civilized society.

1608
01:48:42,040 --> 01:48:45,320
Speaker 1: Of the Order of Nine Angles. Judge Woods said, the

1609
01:48:45,520 --> 01:48:49,880
Speaker 1: organization and mister Melzer opposed those Judeo Christian values because

1610
01:48:49,920 --> 01:48:53,920
Speaker 1: they are good for civilization. His crimes were committed in

1611
01:48:54,080 --> 01:49:00,400
Speaker 1: order to destroy civilization and look, to be honest, would

1612
01:49:00,400 --> 01:49:03,200
Speaker 1: have been better if he had not said that. But

1613
01:49:03,280 --> 01:49:07,200
Speaker 1: it was a brief mention in a very lengthy monologue

1614
01:49:07,200 --> 01:49:10,639
Speaker 1: that also emphasized that the defendant was not charged or

1615
01:49:10,680 --> 01:49:14,720
Speaker 1: sentenced because of his beliefs, but for the actions motivated

1616
01:49:14,760 --> 01:49:19,720
Speaker 1: by those beliefs. That single statement wasn't the basis for

1617
01:49:19,800 --> 01:49:24,960
Speaker 1: the sentence. It was just a comment. But the appeal

1618
01:49:25,080 --> 01:49:29,160
Speaker 1: argues that those comments constitute a sufficient appearance of the

1619
01:49:29,200 --> 01:49:34,360
Speaker 1: sentence having been based on a constitutionally impermissible factor, such

1620
01:49:34,400 --> 01:49:39,479
Speaker 1: as the defendant's race or religious beliefs. The government contends

1621
01:49:39,520 --> 01:49:42,280
Speaker 1: that not only had Melser waived his right to appeal

1622
01:49:42,320 --> 01:49:45,280
Speaker 1: the sentence and his attorneys failed to object to these

1623
01:49:45,280 --> 01:49:48,320
Speaker 1: comments when they were made, but the comments in question

1624
01:49:48,840 --> 01:49:53,240
Speaker 1: don't raise an issue of constitutionality. If anything, the judge

1625
01:49:53,240 --> 01:49:57,160
Speaker 1: was referring to the bias motivation for the crime, not

1626
01:49:57,560 --> 01:50:02,519
Speaker 1: a characteristic of the defendant. There's a difference between talking

1627
01:50:02,560 --> 01:50:06,799
Speaker 1: about a defendants race or a defendant's religion and talking

1628
01:50:06,800 --> 01:50:11,960
Speaker 1: about the defendant's racial or religious motivation for a crime.

1629
01:50:14,080 --> 01:50:17,200
Speaker 1: I'm no judge, I'm not even a lawyer. I'm just

1630
01:50:17,200 --> 01:50:21,240
Speaker 1: an enthusiastic consumer of the law. But I don't think

1631
01:50:21,240 --> 01:50:24,439
Speaker 1: this appeal holds a lot of water. They're hoping to

1632
01:50:24,439 --> 01:50:26,559
Speaker 1: get the case resentenced so they can have a second

1633
01:50:26,560 --> 01:50:30,400
Speaker 1: shot at getting a sentence of fifteen years rather than

1634
01:50:30,439 --> 01:50:34,760
Speaker 1: the forty five years currently on the books. If you're

1635
01:50:34,800 --> 01:50:37,679
Speaker 1: listening to this, the day it came out oral argument

1636
01:50:37,720 --> 01:50:42,080
Speaker 1: in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals was yesterday, November six,

1637
01:50:42,240 --> 01:50:46,479
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. The Second Circuit tends to be a

1638
01:50:46,560 --> 01:50:50,479
Speaker 1: little speedier than some, but I've given up trying to

1639
01:50:50,600 --> 01:50:55,080
Speaker 1: divine a court's timeline. It never works out. A final

1640
01:50:55,120 --> 01:50:57,960
Speaker 1: opinion in Melzer's appeal could come as quickly as a

1641
01:50:57,960 --> 01:51:01,200
Speaker 1: few weeks, but it's more likely see an opinion filed

1642
01:51:01,240 --> 01:51:05,559
Speaker 1: for a couple of months. Leaving aside the comments at

1643
01:51:05,600 --> 01:51:08,479
Speaker 1: issue in the appeal, though, Judge Woods made it clear

1644
01:51:08,800 --> 01:51:12,000
Speaker 1: how he felt about Ethan Melser's crimes and his claims

1645
01:51:12,040 --> 01:51:17,280
Speaker 1: that he regretted his actions, saying, in part, mister Melser

1646
01:51:17,320 --> 01:51:20,879
Speaker 1: now expresses remorse as he is facing justice for his crimes,

1647
01:51:21,960 --> 01:51:25,400
Speaker 1: but I frankly do not believe him. Part of the

1648
01:51:25,439 --> 01:51:28,880
Speaker 1: methodology of his organization, as I understand it, is that

1649
01:51:28,920 --> 01:51:31,639
Speaker 1: one should hide one's true intentions and commitment to better

1650
01:51:31,680 --> 01:51:35,280
Speaker 1: achieve its goals, and over an extended period of time,

1651
01:51:35,360 --> 01:51:39,400
Speaker 1: mister Melser effectively did just that. So I do not

1652
01:51:39,640 --> 01:51:42,080
Speaker 1: trust his expression of remorse or that he has truly

1653
01:51:42,120 --> 01:51:47,080
Speaker 1: renounced his commitment to violence. I hope it's true, but

1654
01:51:47,160 --> 01:51:50,200
Speaker 1: I don't trust it. I think it is more likely

1655
01:51:50,240 --> 01:51:54,000
Speaker 1: that mister Melser is playing another role to obtain leniency

1656
01:51:54,040 --> 01:51:57,519
Speaker 1: from the court, as he played soldier while working in

1657
01:51:57,560 --> 01:52:03,800
Speaker 1: secret to murder servicemen. So maybe the role of contrite

1658
01:52:03,800 --> 01:52:08,080
Speaker 1: federal prisoner is just another mask. Either way, he is

1659
01:52:08,120 --> 01:52:11,000
Speaker 1: going to be behind bars for a long time and

1660
01:52:11,000 --> 01:52:13,600
Speaker 1: he probably won't come out a better man whenever that

1661
01:52:13,680 --> 01:52:20,880
Speaker 1: day comes. Sentencing is meant to balance the need for punishment, rehabilitation,

1662
01:52:21,800 --> 01:52:26,519
Speaker 1: protection of the public, and deterrence. But based on the

1663
01:52:26,520 --> 01:52:30,160
Speaker 1: comments made at sentencing and the length of the sentence,

1664
01:52:31,160 --> 01:52:35,040
Speaker 1: this seems to be almost entirely in the service of deterrence.

1665
01:52:36,439 --> 01:52:40,000
Speaker 1: This isn't about preventing Ethan Melzer from doing this again.

1666
01:52:40,840 --> 01:52:45,839
Speaker 1: He couldn't do this again. It's about sending a message

1667
01:52:45,920 --> 01:52:50,160
Speaker 1: to everyone else who is considering joining the US military

1668
01:52:50,800 --> 01:52:53,840
Speaker 1: as part of their plan to reinvent the world through bloodshed,

1669
01:52:54,720 --> 01:52:59,120
Speaker 1: with violent revolution and mass murder. But you have to

1670
01:52:59,160 --> 01:53:02,759
Speaker 1: ask yourself if there's a more effective way to address

1671
01:53:02,840 --> 01:53:06,800
Speaker 1: this underlying issue of young men enlisting in the military

1672
01:53:06,840 --> 01:53:10,920
Speaker 1: because they dream of a race war. This can't be

1673
01:53:11,000 --> 01:53:15,920
Speaker 1: the only option. Ethan Melzer is currently being held at

1674
01:53:16,080 --> 01:53:20,920
Speaker 1: FCI Marion, a medium security federal prison in Illinois that

1675
01:53:21,720 --> 01:53:24,479
Speaker 1: I most strongly associate with being the place where a

1676
01:53:24,640 --> 01:53:29,120
Speaker 1: man aptly nicknamed a crying Nazi befriended a man that

1677
01:53:29,160 --> 01:53:33,720
Speaker 1: they call the Merchant of Death. But maybe now's not

1678
01:53:33,760 --> 01:53:35,599
Speaker 1: the time to tell you about how a guy who

1679
01:53:35,720 --> 01:53:39,519
Speaker 1: used to really publicly fantasize about raping me used to

1680
01:53:39,520 --> 01:53:42,760
Speaker 1: watch Tucker Carlson every night in the prison wreck room

1681
01:53:42,800 --> 01:53:46,040
Speaker 1: with the Russian arms dealer that Vladimir Putin traded Brittany

1682
01:53:46,040 --> 01:54:04,120
Speaker 1: Griner for another time. Perhaps. Weird Little Guys is a

1683
01:54:04,120 --> 01:54:08,080
Speaker 1: production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written

1684
01:54:08,080 --> 01:54:12,080
Speaker 1: and recorded by me, Molly Coner. Our executive producers are

1685
01:54:12,160 --> 01:54:15,400
Speaker 1: Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The show is edited by

1686
01:54:15,479 --> 01:54:19,200
Speaker 1: the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed

1687
01:54:19,240 --> 01:54:22,519
Speaker 1: by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Weird Little

1688
01:54:22,520 --> 01:54:25,639
Speaker 1: Guys podcast at gmail dot com, but I probably will

1689
01:54:25,640 --> 01:54:28,880
Speaker 1: not answer it. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the

1690
01:54:28,920 --> 01:54:31,240
Speaker 1: show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit.

1691
01:54:32,160 --> 01:54:34,000
Speaker 1: Please don't post anything that will make you one of

1692
01:54:34,000 --> 01:54:36,480
Speaker 1: my Weird Little Guys