WEBVTT - Third Position 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:10.520 Col Zone Media. In November of twenty twelve, Barack Obama 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:14.160 was re elected as President of the United States. He 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.360 beat Republican challenger Mit Romney by a pretty good margin, 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:20.720 pully in fifty one point oh six percent of the 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:25.160 popular vote to Romney's forty seven point two. But if 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:28.440 you add those numbers together, he'll only get ninety eight 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:31.920 point two six, a number that doesn't include more than 0:00:31.960 --> 0:00:38.320 two million votes. Where did those votes go? American electoral 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:41.920 politics are dominated by the two party system. It's always 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:45.440 been that way. Before it was Republicans and Democrats and 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:48.680 red states and blue states, we had Democrats and Whigs, 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:54.120 and before that we had Federalists and Democratic Republicans. It's 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:57.000 always been nearly impossible for a third party or independent 0:00:57.040 --> 0:01:00.440 candidate to break through on the national stage, but they've 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:04.479 always tried. There are long standing third parties ones you've 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:08.520 probably seen, or a ballot Green Party, the Libertarian Party, 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:11.319 and there are third parties that have come and gone, 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:16.480 like Ross Perrot's Reform Party. In every election cycle. There 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:19.560 are tiny little groups you've never heard of putting up 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:23.160 a candidate. They know they can't win, but they have 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:27.000 a message they want to get out there, and technically 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:31.319 almost anyone can run for president with or without a party, 0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:34.480 as long as you are a natural born citizen over 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:36.760 thirty five. All you have to do is raise some 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:40.559 money and fill out some paperwork. Records from the Federal 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:43.800 Election Commission show that in twenty twelve, two hundred and 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:47.319 eighty people build out that paperwork announcing their intention to 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:50.760 run for president of the United States. One of those 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:57.120 candidates was an aspiring filmmaker with no political experience and 0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:00.200 a lot of thoughts about who really did know. Nine 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:23.800 to eleven, I'm Molly Conger. This it's weirdly advised. I 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:26.239 landed on this story in a roundabout kind of way. 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.200 I guess they always do. If you listen to the 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:33.400 last two episodes, I do have a confession to make. 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:38.440 I left something out of that story. It just didn't 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:41.160 fit neatly into the episodes, and it would have been 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:46.320 a confusing digression. Those episodes were about Devon Arthur's, the 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:48.720 co founder of Adam Woffin who murdered two members of 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:53.200 the group in twenty seventeen, and in those episodes, I 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:56.040 told you that the earliest mentions of Adam Waffen online 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:00.400 were in posts on a forum called Iron March, and 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:03.560 that's still true as far as I know. I didn't 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:07.560 lie to you, but you might have assumed, based on 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:10.960 what I said in those episodes that the group's co founders, 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:15.760 Devin Arthurs and Brandon Russell must have met on Iron 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:20.360 March two. That's a reasonable assumption. And like I said, 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:23.600 I left some things out of the story because that's 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:27.000 not where the pair first met. They met on a 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:31.959 platform called tiny chat. Launched in two thousand and nine, 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:35.800 tiny chat was a video chat room. As many as 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:38.480 twelve users at a time could appear on video, and 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:41.320 more users could watch and participate in a text chat 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:44.880 down below. When they were interviewed by police on the 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:48.360 night of the murders in twenty seventeen, both Brandon Russell 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:52.640 and Devon Arthur's specifically mentioned that they'd originally met on 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:57.120 tiny Chat. I dug up old four chan posts from 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:01.400 twenty fourteen that show some screenshots of one particular tiny 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:05.480 chat room. In what looks like a college dorm room, 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:10.240 a user calling himself Odin is staring into his webcam. 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:15.520 It's Brandon Russell, a year before he announced the formation 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:19.159 of his neo Nazi terrorist organization, and years before he 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:22.440 went to federal prison. The first and then second times, 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:26.400 he was nineteen years old sitting in his dorm room 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:30.200 in Florida in an online chat room called Third Position. 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:35.719 I don't have any particular interest in writing a third 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:39.200 part of that story. This isn't actually a continuation of 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:43.600 those two episodes. This isn't about Brandon Russell or Adam Waffen. 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:46.600 If you didn't listen to those episodes and you don't 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:50.520 know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. But 0:04:50.560 --> 0:04:53.640 I was stuck on this idea of that third position 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:58.040 tiny chat. How did a fourteen year old Devon Arthur 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:00.359 send up in a video chat room run by grown 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:05.400 men talking about the political ideology of third positionism. I'm 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:08.640 not going to answer those questions today. We're not really 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:11.240 going to talk about that chat room at all. I'm 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:14.120 just telling you how I ended up reading an unproduced 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:17.400 screenplay about a brave and handsome patriot who uncovers the 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:21.200 truth about nine to eleven. I promise these things are related. 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:26.400 This story is about the man who wrote that awful screenplay, 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:31.360 a man named Merlin Miller. In twenty twelve, he was 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:34.719 put forward as a presidential candidate by the American Third 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:38.320 Position Party, the same group that was video chatting with 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:43.440 teenage Nazis in twenty fourteen. One surviving promotional video for 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:47.000 the chat room actually repurposes Miller's twenty twelve campaign announcement 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:50.760 video to advertise an upcoming chat featuring the party's chairman, 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:55.320 an attorney named William Johnson. There are a lot of 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:59.120 characters here who we will definitely see again in future episodes, 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:01.760 so I won't dwell on them for too long now. 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:07.480 But let's get a little backstory. The American Third Position 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:11.479 Party was an actual political party registered with the Federal 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:17.240 Election Commission, and it still exists today kind of. The 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:20.400 group rebranded as the American Freedom Party and they still 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:24.279 have a website, although they terminated their federal electoral committee 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:28.719 in twenty twenty. As we so often see with extremist groups, 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:34.080 there is this constant cycle of collapsing, rebranding, and splintering, 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:38.760 and that's how American Third Position was born. In two 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:42.359 thousand and nine, a Nazi skinhead group in California found 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:47.799 themselves in turmoil. Some Nazi skinheads, calling themselves Freedom fourteen, 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:52.600 tried to organize a political party called the Golden State Party, 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:55.520 but it all fell apart when the Orange County Register 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:58.280 published a story revealing that the party spokesman had been 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:01.120 using a pseudonym I hide the fact that he had 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:06.839 some violent felony convictions in his past. It's not totally 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:09.840 clear to me why the Nazis skinheads found that to 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:14.160 be a problem. That's kind of their whole thing, but 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:17.160 I guess it just won't do for your political party spokesman. 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:21.640 Either way, the Golden State Party was dead in the water, 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:25.000 and some of those skinheads weren't ready to give up 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:29.120 on the idea of having a political party, so they 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:32.160 got together to choose a new leader and a new name, 0:07:33.480 --> 0:07:37.080 and they settled on the American Third Position Party, and 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:39.240 the group would be chaired by a corporate lawyer in 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:44.920 Los Angeles named William Johnson. Johnson has been on my 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:49.400 list of Weird Little Guys from the beginning. I never 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:52.400 actually managed to pull from my list of episode ideas 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:55.840 because I always get distracted by some stray thought from 0:07:55.840 --> 0:07:59.200 the prior week's research. But I have to imagine we'll 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:03.840 get to him eventually. He's a lawyer and he's in 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:09.400 the movement, but he's not really a movement lawyer. That's 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:14.640 not the focus of his practice. He pitches in occasionally. Sure, 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:17.320 his name shows up as the attorney of record on 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:21.000 a trademark application for the Council of Conservative Citizens. And 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:24.400 there's a Nazi in Pennsylvania who seems fond of seeing 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:28.000 Johnson when he emails county employees to make public records requests, 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:31.880 as though he thinks Johnson is his personal attorney. But 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:36.440 he's not licensed to practice in Pennsylvania. But usually when 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:38.840 I'm talking about a guy who is both an attorney 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:43.120 and a career white nationalist, he's not really keeping those 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:46.120 parts of his life separate. So I think he's a 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:51.600 little unique in that respect. As an attorney, Johnson primarily 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:56.720 represents Japanese companies doing business in the United States. He 0:08:56.800 --> 0:08:59.440 has a terribly common name, making it a little hard 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:02.079 to look him up on pacer. But it doesn't look 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:05.280 like he's taken very many cases to court, at least 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:08.760 not in federal court. But in corporate law, there's a 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:12.640 lot of law to be practiced outside the courtroom. He 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:15.040 does have an active case in the Court of International 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:18.440 Trade right now, but I couldn't possibly pretend to be 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:21.280 interested in the court's opinion about whether his client's imported 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:26.800 goods were properly classified under the tariff schedule. Apparently, the 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:30.360 difference between raw dried seaweed and seaweed that has been 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:34.800 prepared for human consumption by drying it is not just 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:37.240 in the eye of the beholder, it is a six 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:42.000 percent jump in teriff right. Just how dry this seaweed 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:46.400 really is isn't interesting, But his choice of co counsel 0:09:46.559 --> 0:09:51.760 is The seaweed importer is almost certainly Johnson's client. This 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:55.720 is the kind of client he represents. But the documents 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:58.559 are actually being filed with the court by a movement 0:09:58.640 --> 0:10:03.320 lawyer who recently represented members of Patriot Front. Small World, 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:06.600 I guess. But we'll get to Glenn Allen's role in 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:10.600 this story next week, not the seaweed part, the Nazi part. 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:16.320 The website for Johnson's La based law firm is almost 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:19.760 entirely in Japanese, a language he appears to conduct most 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:23.960 of his business in proficiently. He majored in Japanese at 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.040 Brigham Young University and spent some time in Japan as 0:10:27.040 --> 0:10:32.440 a Mormon missionary. I don't speak any Japanese, so I 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:35.280 can't really be the judge of such things, But in 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:37.640 some of the videos on his website, at least to 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:41.560 my ear, he has the sort of stilted cadence of 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:46.880 a speaker who isn't terribly confident in his skills. I am, however, 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:50.560 much better equipped to pass judgment on his other career 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:56.280 that of a professional racist. He's been splitting his time 0:10:56.360 --> 0:11:00.400 between the two for more than forty years. He was 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:03.200 admitted to the bar in nineteen eighty one, and soon 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:06.880 after that he starts writing under the pseudonym James O. Pace. 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:12.240 In nineteen eighty five, as James O. Pace, he published 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:16.680 a book called Amendment to the Constitution, Averting the Decline 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:21.040 and Fall of America. The book lays out his argument 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:25.360 for an amendment to the Constitution, this so called Pace Amendment, 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:29.680 and it would repeal the fourteenth and fifteenth Amendments to 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:35.199 the US Constitution. He also proposes restricting U S citizenship 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:39.800 to whites of European descent only. The second section of 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:43.800 the proposed amendment reads, quote, no person shall be a 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:46.240 citizen of the United States unless he is a non 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:49.720 Hispanic white of the European race in whom there is 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:53.880 no ascertainable trace of Negro blood, nor more than one 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:59.600 eighth Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:02.800 a maa An, Indian, Malay, or other non European or 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:08.600 non white blood. You might be asking why did it 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:11.880 take an entire book to explain how that would work? 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:13.959 Well? 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:16.280 For one thing, he had to devote quite a few 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:19.199 pages to explaining exactly how the government would go about 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:26.439 determining who was white. Are Armenians white? Are Iranians our Jews? 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:31.959 The answer is no. Obviously, the book is every bit 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:34.480 as bad as you're imagining, and it did not need 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:38.280 to be two hundred pages long. And after its publication 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:41.040 he spent the latter half of the nineteen eighties running 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:45.840 a group called the League of Pace Amendment Advocates, and 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:49.240 he claimed that he was the group's spokesman, and he 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:53.560 pretended that he'd met the author and just supported his ideas. 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:58.240 When The La Times connected the dots that William Daniel 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:03.319 Johnson was definitely James O. Pace, he denied it, telling 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:06.640 the paper that James Pace was a pseudonym, but it wasn't. 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:10.960 His Pace is a lawyer just like him, but Pace 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:14.920 works outside of the country. He wouldn't say what Pace's 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:18.160 real name was or what country he was allegedly living in. 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:22.280 It's giving. My girlfriend goes to a different school, you 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:25.880 wouldn't know her. He gave up on the League of 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:29.920 Pay Advocates after someone bombed the group's office in nineteen 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:33.480 eighty nine. It was only a small bomb and it 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:34.800 went off in the middle of the night when no 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:37.720 one was there. No one was injured, and as far 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:42.880 as I can tell, it was never solved. Like I said, 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:47.360 William Daniel Johnson is absolutely a weird little guy in 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:50.560 his own right, so I won't linger here. But he 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:53.960 was a well established figure in organized racism by the 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:57.200 time those skinheads approached him to chair their rebranded political 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:01.120 party in two thousand and nine. In fact, he was 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:03.840 fresh off a very public loss in a two thousand 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:06.000 and eight campaign for judge in the Superior Court of 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:11.080 Los Angeles. The embarrassing defeat only raised his profile in 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:13.760 the white nationalist community, though, and it came at a 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:16.600 time of renewed interest in the movement in the idea 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:21.280 of entering mainstream politics. His newly formed political party was 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:26.880 led by respectable professionals, obscuring its origin in skinhead street 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:31.360 fighting gangs. Johnson was an attorney with a jd from 0:14:31.440 --> 0:14:36.720 Columbia University. Tom Sunik, a Croatian born political scientist, had 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:40.480 taught at several universities, and Kevin MacDonald was a professor 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:45.200 of psychology at California State University. This was the era 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:50.720 of the sutent Thai racist the Dapper Nazi. Richard Spencer 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:54.840 had just started his alternative right dot com website. Matthew 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:58.360 Heinbach was still a college student at Tawson University and 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:00.520 he was leading a chapter of the White Supreme Group 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:04.800 Youth for Western Civilization. Both men would go on to 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:08.280 figure prominently in the twenty seventeen era alt right and 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:11.560 the street violence that accompanied it, and in the early 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:15.400 twenty tens, both of these men were frequent collaborators with 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:19.920 members of the American Third Position Party. The party may 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:23.880 have been a rebranding of a California skinhead group, but 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:27.640 it couldn't have existed without the neo Nazi networking that 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:32.920 was happening at Ron Paul campaign events. The Ron Paul 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:38.040 Revolution never really took off, but his campaign provided fertile 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:42.520 recruiting grounds for white nationalists in two thousand and seven, 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:46.280 William Johnson was hosting pricey fundraising dinners for Paul's campaign. 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:49.120 When he ran for judge in two thousand and eight. 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:54.520 His campaign manager was also the Paul campaign's California statewide coordinator. 0:15:55.640 --> 0:15:59.240 Virginia Abernethy, a Vanderbilt professor and member of the Council 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:01.280 of Conservative City who would go on to be a 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:04.320 member of the party's board, was one of several high 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:07.920 profile racists whose donations to the Paul campaign made headlines 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:12.440 when he declined to refuse money from white nationalists. And 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:16.280 it was through Ron Paul campaign events that Merlin Miller 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:20.880 first met members of the American Third Position Party. Don't 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:22.120 just take my word for it, though. 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:28.080 Most of the founders, of course of the American Third Position, 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:32.040 which have evolved into the American Freedom Party now grew 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:34.440 out of the Ron Paul movement. But I think one 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:38.320 of the major shortcomings of the Ron Paul platform was 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:41.960 he really did not build very strongly on immigration. And 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:46.000 it's probably the most destructive thing going on today to America, 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:49.680 and as you suggested, it's altering the national character of 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:52.920 our country. 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:58.080 That's a conversation between Merlin Miller and American Third Position 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:03.120 Party director Jamie Kelso back in twenty thirteen, he's saying 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:05.520 something a lot of white nationalists, We're saying back then, 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:11.159 they love Ron Paul, they love Ron Paul's platform, but 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:17.879 he's just not going far enough in its first few years. 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:21.240 And I guess now that I'm saying out loud every 0:17:21.320 --> 0:17:26.240 year since then as well, the party had trouble fielding candidates. 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:31.879 It's a tricky thing to do, even mainstream politics. Running 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:35.480 for office is hard. Convincing someone else to run for 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:41.200 office is also very hard. It takes a lot of time, effort, 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:45.880 and money. You have to put yourself out there. It's 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:51.080 exhausting and potentially humiliating. And the kind of guy who's 0:17:51.240 --> 0:17:54.880 enthusiastic about running for office as an open white nationalist, 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:59.880 well that kind of guy tends to be an absolute 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:06.280 fucking weirdo who alienates everyone with an earshot. When party 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:09.520 member Ryan Murdaw announced his candidacy for state representative in 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:14.480 New Hampshire, people were disgusted. One letter to the editor 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:18.679 from a Grafton resident called his candidacy a festering boil. 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:25.720 Party member Harry Bertram made several spectacularly unsuccessful runs for 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:29.600 office in West Virginia, including the twenty eleven special election 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:33.520 for governor. I didn't do a whole lot of digging 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:37.119 on Harry Bertram, but I did read the entirety of 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:40.520 his twenty three year posting history on Stormfront, and I 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:44.440 have to say he doesn't strike me as a strong communicator, 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:48.480 and he appears to be at least a little bit 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:53.679 involved with the clan. But more importantly, his message just 0:18:53.760 --> 0:19:00.280 didn't resonate with West Virginians. Was coarse and overt that 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:04.120 fearmongered about white replacement, but he didn't have much else 0:19:04.160 --> 0:19:08.639 to offer outside of those racist conspiracy theories. One local 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:11.520 news article from the time quoted a West Virginia voter 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:15.840 who said illegal immigration just wasn't a top issue for her. 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:21.000 In twenty ten, West Virginia was ninety four percent white. 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:25.320 The state is to this day dead last when it 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:27.680 comes to the percentage of residents who are foreign born 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:30.520 and the percentage of residents who speak a language other 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:34.040 than English at home, about one and a half percent 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:38.119 and two and a half percent, respectively. So even if 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:43.240 those voters don't like immigrants in theory, there's a decent 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:47.200 chance they've never even seen one. It was a single 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:50.520 issue candidate, and that just wasn't the issue people cared 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:57.560 most about. The party needed someone who looked normal, someone 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:00.080 who could put on a suit and put together a 0:19:59.840 --> 0:20:05.080 s sentence and pretend to address a real issue, preferably 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:08.800 someone who wasn't publicly associated with another active hate group, 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:14.479 someone with a clean record and a good education. I mean, 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:16.440 it doesn't matter who they pick, they're not going to win. 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:23.240 But it isn't necessarily about winning, is it. 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:26.680 It's harder for our enemies to characterize us as complete 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:30.800 outsiders and fringe coops if we're on the ballot in 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:33.879 a state election or a federal election. 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:41.359 That was Party director Jamie Kelso chatting with Richard Spencer 0:20:41.400 --> 0:20:45.640 back in twenty thirteen. And here's one of America's leading 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:49.840 pseudo intellectual racist, Jared Taylor, in a promotional video begging 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:52.400 people to run for office. As a member of the party. 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:56.720 Running for office is one of the best ways to 0:20:56.760 --> 0:21:01.000 publicize our ideas and to reach who may have never 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:04.000 heard a sensible, dissenting view about race. 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:12.680 It's not about winning elections. It's about trojanhorsing white nationalist 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:16.520 rhetoric into the conversation at every level, from county school 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:21.440 board to President of the United States. After running Harry 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:24.119 bertram A couple times for state and local office in 0:21:24.119 --> 0:21:29.160 West Virginia, American Third Position wanted to break into national politics, 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:34.040 and in the twenty twelve presidential election, they decided that 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:51.639 Merlin Miller was the man for the job. By his 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:55.040 own telling, Merlin Miller wasn't very interested in politics for 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:57.960 most of his life. He grew up in a working 0:21:57.960 --> 0:22:00.439 class family in Iowa and became the first member of 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:04.120 his family to graduate from college. He graduated from West 0:22:04.160 --> 0:22:07.200 Point in the class of nineteen seventy four, and he 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:12.440 had some pretty famous classmates. Astronaut Michael Clifford, former Chairman 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:15.560 of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, former Deputy 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:19.919 Assistant Secretary General of NATO, Matthew Cleimo, former NSA director 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:25.600 Keith Alexander, and four star General Walter Sharp, and of course, 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:30.359 former CIA Director David Petreus. I had to look up 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:32.680 the graduating class of nineteen seventy four to get most 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:38.400 of those names, but not that one. In almost every 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:43.399 speech and interview, I could find spanning a decade. Merlin 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:46.160 Miller mentions that he went to school with David Petraeus. 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:51.760 I guess he thinks it makes him sound important. He 0:22:51.880 --> 0:22:54.119 knows a very important guy whose name has been on 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:58.000 the news a lot, so that must mean something. And 0:22:58.160 --> 0:23:00.760 particularly back during the twenty twelve Camps in Pain cycle, 0:23:01.240 --> 0:23:05.600 David Petraeus was on the news quite a bit, so 0:23:05.760 --> 0:23:09.159 saying the name gives him some proximity to power, some 0:23:09.280 --> 0:23:14.840 proximity to legitimacy. Sometimes it feels like he wants the 0:23:14.920 --> 0:23:17.600 listener to assume that the pair have maintained some kind 0:23:17.600 --> 0:23:20.920 of relationship since graduation. But I don't think he ever 0:23:20.960 --> 0:23:25.280 outright says that. In one interview, he says that in 0:23:25.320 --> 0:23:29.440 two thousand and nine he sent Betrayus Quote, a treatise 0:23:29.520 --> 0:23:33.960 that connected military, political, and media intrigues challenging many of 0:23:34.000 --> 0:23:39.359 the orthodoxies. Based on the context of the conversation and 0:23:39.400 --> 0:23:41.359 the fact that the interview was published on an anti 0:23:41.440 --> 0:23:44.960 Semitic conspiracy theory website, you can probably guess that he 0:23:45.040 --> 0:23:48.600 sent the general some weird essay about Jewish control of 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:53.000 the media based on his use of the word treatise, 0:23:53.080 --> 0:23:56.520 though I'm pretty sure What he sent David Petraeus was 0:23:56.560 --> 0:24:00.440 a copy of his unpublished one hundred page manuscript called 0:24:00.760 --> 0:24:04.680 The American Dream. It's a document that he only ever 0:24:04.720 --> 0:24:07.440 refers to as a treatise, and that's the only place 0:24:07.480 --> 0:24:10.960 I can find him ever using that word. So I 0:24:11.000 --> 0:24:14.680 think that's what it was and has got everything you 0:24:14.760 --> 0:24:18.960 might expect. Communism is a Jewish conspiracy. Some parts of 0:24:18.960 --> 0:24:22.080 the Holocaust probably kind of happened, but maybe it wasn't 0:24:22.080 --> 0:24:25.800 actually that serious. The Federal Reserve and the IRS, or 0:24:26.080 --> 0:24:29.639 illegal scams perpetrated on the American people nine to eleven 0:24:29.720 --> 0:24:32.800 was a false flag orchestrated by Masad and the CIA. 0:24:33.280 --> 0:24:36.520 Illegal immigration is replacing white Americans, and the Jews are 0:24:36.560 --> 0:24:40.440 behind that too. We have to crush the New World Order, etc. 0:24:41.680 --> 0:24:46.000 You know, honestly, I wonder if he was a big 0:24:46.040 --> 0:24:49.360 Info warse listener in the mid auts because this sounds 0:24:49.440 --> 0:24:54.520 like vintage Alex Jones. I guess there was this thriving 0:24:54.680 --> 0:24:58.040 blogosphere back then with all the same talking points, so 0:24:58.680 --> 0:25:00.960 he could have gotten it anywhere. Let's not give Alex 0:25:01.000 --> 0:25:05.320 Jones too much credit. I don't think David Betraeus ever 0:25:05.400 --> 0:25:11.320 wrote back after graduating from West Point nineteen seventy four, 0:25:11.800 --> 0:25:14.879 Miller served six years in the Army. He spent a 0:25:14.880 --> 0:25:18.160 few years working for Michel Entire Company, but in nineteen 0:25:18.200 --> 0:25:22.280 eighty three he had the opportunity to pursue his true passion, 0:25:22.920 --> 0:25:29.560 his childhood dream, filmmaking. He was accepted into an MFA 0:25:29.640 --> 0:25:32.800 program at the University of Southern California, and he was 0:25:32.840 --> 0:25:35.800 one of just twenty students admitted into that year's Peter 0:25:35.960 --> 0:25:40.639 Stark Producing Program, a specialized graduate degree program within the 0:25:40.640 --> 0:25:45.719 film school that focused on film and television production. And 0:25:45.800 --> 0:25:50.520 here too he had some very famous classmates. Stacey Cher 0:25:50.680 --> 0:25:54.919 produced movies like Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained, and Aaron Brockovich. 0:25:56.000 --> 0:25:58.359 Neil Morritz would go on to produce movies like I 0:25:58.400 --> 0:26:01.800 Know What You Did Last Summer, Cruel Intentions, and all 0:26:01.840 --> 0:26:05.399 of the Fast and Furious movies. Liz Glotzer is the 0:26:05.400 --> 0:26:09.640 president of a production company that makes television dramas for CBS. 0:26:10.560 --> 0:26:16.480 The program seems to produce a lot of producers and 0:26:16.600 --> 0:26:19.560 Merlin Miller really did try to break into the industry. 0:26:20.960 --> 0:26:24.359 While he was at USC, he interned at Paramount and 0:26:24.440 --> 0:26:28.280 after graduation he had some minor production roles in a 0:26:28.320 --> 0:26:31.359 couple of schlocky, low budget movies in the late eighties 0:26:31.359 --> 0:26:34.960 and early nineties, but he had a family to feed. 0:26:36.119 --> 0:26:38.320 He and his wife had four daughters by that time, 0:26:38.359 --> 0:26:41.840 and living in la is expensive. You can't support a 0:26:41.840 --> 0:26:44.719 family of six working as a line producer on b movies. 0:26:46.160 --> 0:26:49.080 The family relocated to Springfield, Missouri, and he took a 0:26:49.160 --> 0:26:53.639 job at Ozark's Technical Community College. But he didn't give 0:26:53.720 --> 0:26:57.680 up on his dreams. He started his own film production company, 0:26:57.840 --> 0:27:04.960 Ozark Pictures, and he made a movie. He made a 0:27:04.960 --> 0:27:07.480 real movie with a budget of close to a million dollars, 0:27:07.560 --> 0:27:12.080 all secured through private investors. His first film, A Place 0:27:12.119 --> 0:27:15.119 to Grow, premiered at a theater in Springfield, Missouri, in 0:27:15.160 --> 0:27:19.120 March of nineteen ninety five. One of the film's big stars, 0:27:19.640 --> 0:27:25.040 Chris Christofferson's daughter Tracy, attended the premiere in Springfield, but 0:27:25.560 --> 0:27:28.840