Speaker 1: M what's making bad decisions my me? In the interim
Speaker 1: between the six and the seventh chapter, Sophie stole the
Speaker 1: case of Perrya that I was going to throw, so
Speaker 1: I had to upgrade to a case of Lacroix, which
Speaker 1: is roughly twice the size and mass. But before I
Speaker 1: throw this Lacroix, which will come at the end of
Speaker 1: our episode, I have a surprise thing that I'm gonna throw.
Speaker 1: I found an open Yeah, didn't go everywhere, no, God
Speaker 1: damn it. But now I've got a snack. I was
Speaker 1: so excited what it was stealed pretty tight, thank you.
Speaker 1: Sophie signaled that she had hidden the perry A underneath
Speaker 1: a pillow. So now I'm gonna throw one of these two,
Speaker 1: but I don't know which yet. But first, my coast,
Speaker 1: I didn't introduce before throwing it things Katie stolen Cody Johnson.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's who we are. We all just had
Speaker 1: a snack attack in front of it. Cody is going
Speaker 1: to be nomin sunflower seeds like Fox Molder in the
Speaker 1: first several episodes of The X Files, but not after
Speaker 1: that because they decided it was a bad thing character
Speaker 1: to do. I were good change. It's not the best
Speaker 1: thing to eat on. I guess there's there's absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: that's good to eat on a microphone. No, but the
Speaker 1: worst thing is probably sunflower seeds did the last time?
Speaker 1: I know? Yesterday? I know, and I can already hear
Speaker 1: the complaints the chapter seven the Digital Reich. Ye, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know where that's going. In the years after the
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City bombing, the white supremacist movement seemed to have
Speaker 1: spent most of its fury. Nothing like Sea Drift occurred
Speaker 1: in the late nineties. Nazi violence, when it happened, was
Speaker 1: mostly focused around racist skinheads and groups like the White
Speaker 1: Arean Resistance or the Hammerskin Nation. A group called the
Speaker 1: Arian Republican Army robbed twenty two banks in the Midwest.
Speaker 1: Several of them had ties to a Looham city, where
Speaker 1: Tim McVeigh had also tried hide out after his attack.
Speaker 1: But these and other eruptions of violence were dealt with
Speaker 1: in short order. By the time the early two thousands
Speaker 1: rolled along and the War on Terror kicked off, you
Speaker 1: could be forgiven for thinking the white supermacist movement was
Speaker 1: on its way out. Everything you Love will burn by
Speaker 1: Vegas Tenhold chronicles the movement during this period. One of
Speaker 1: the largest actions in these days was an eight man
Speaker 1: march in Toledo by the National Socialist Movement. Putting it
Speaker 1: together in march that large was the work of the
Speaker 1: entire National organization, and they were so overwhelmed by counter
Speaker 1: protesters that they never managed to take to the streets
Speaker 1: and were back in Sea Drift. Lou Being met three
Speaker 1: or four hundred kinsmen just to show up among town
Speaker 1: of Texas. A two thousand and ten, the National Socialist
Speaker 1: Movement held a gathering in Trent in New Jersey. Vegas
Speaker 1: attended to chronicle the event, and the night before the march,
Speaker 1: he was present when a group called Anti Racist Action
Speaker 1: assaulted the Nazis as they ate dinner and a rented
Speaker 1: meeting hall. The next day, the National Socialist Movement marched quote.
Speaker 1: The entire route of the march was lined with National
Speaker 1: Guard and riot police. They'd closed off every access point,
Speaker 1: and no one was around to watch the Nazis trudge
Speaker 1: along the wet streets while the rains soaked their black uniforms.
Speaker 1: They arrived at a wide square in front of the
Speaker 1: Capitol building. A few modest steps led up to the entrance,
Speaker 1: and a small podium stood at the top. Police had
Speaker 1: cordoned off the entire square in the distance the counterprotesters
Speaker 1: had gathered. The police, fearing another showdown, kept them two
Speaker 1: blocks away from the Nazis, just barely within shouting distance,
Speaker 1: so the rally was reduced to a couple dozen neo
Speaker 1: Nazis screaming obscenities at fifty or so anti racist down
Speaker 1: the street, while the anti racist screamed right back. The
Speaker 1: National Socialist Movement built itself as direct successors to George
Speaker 1: Lincoln Rockwell's Party. In five years, they'd gone from being
Speaker 1: able to make a nationwide gathering of eighty men down
Speaker 1: to less than thirty. But looking at those numbers does
Speaker 1: not give a full picture of the American fascist movement.
Speaker 1: During this period, all the ability of old guard fascist
Speaker 1: groups like the n s M and the Clan to
Speaker 1: draw numbers had declined. The movement was deep in the
Speaker 1: process of spreading to a new generation through new means.
Speaker 1: In the last chapter, I mentioned John Ronson's Them. John's
Speaker 1: book gives us a look at the movement in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen nineties from the perspective of individuals like Alex Jones. Mr.
Speaker 1: Jones first rose to prominence within the fringe right in
Speaker 1: the middle late nineteen nineties, and his career illustrates the
Speaker 1: first stages of what would grow to be known as
Speaker 1: the alt right. Now on paper, Jones was a libertarian
Speaker 1: or political independent who attacked Democrats and Republicans with equal vigor,
Speaker 1: seeing both as agents of the nWo and the globalist elite.
Speaker 1: You would not hear attacks on the Jews as an
Speaker 1: ethnic group from Jones, nor would you see him sporting
Speaker 1: a swastika. But if you dig in just a little bit,
Speaker 1: there have always been connections between Alex Jones and the
Speaker 1: fascist rite. At one point in Them, John tries to
Speaker 1: infiltrate a meeting of the Builderberg Group with a writer
Speaker 1: named Big Jim Tucker, editor of The Spotlight, Willis Carto's magazine.
Speaker 1: Big Jim Tucker was a friend and a frequent guest
Speaker 1: on Alex Jones's Info Wars in its early days. Like Jones,
Speaker 1: Big Jim was obsessed with the Builderberg Group. He viewed
Speaker 1: it as part of the Jewish conspiracy to dominate the globe.
Speaker 1: Jones possessed the same beliefs, minus the j word. That
Speaker 1: nineteen gathering at the ruins of the Branch Davidian compound
Speaker 1: near Waco that I talked about in the last chapter
Speaker 1: when John Ronson showed up with Randy Weaver will that
Speaker 1: gag ring was a volunteer effort to rebuild the Branch
Speaker 1: Davidian Church organized by twenty five year old Alex Jones.
Speaker 1: He told the Oklahoman quote, We've had school teachers and
Speaker 1: black single mothers, and auto mechanics and doctors. There was
Speaker 1: even a Jewish rabbi out here one day helping us. Sure,
Speaker 1: we've had folks in their camo and their camo hats,
Speaker 1: and them with the malicious helping us too. One of
Speaker 1: the men who gathered in Mount Carmel that day to
Speaker 1: help Alex Jones was Colonel bow Gritz. Gritz was a
Speaker 1: legendary figure in the Patriot movement, a decorated veteran, the
Speaker 1: supposed inspiration behind the character John Rambo, and a hardcore
Speaker 1: believer in Christian identity theology. In right before the Mount
Speaker 1: Carmel meeting, he sent out this in an online bulletin
Speaker 1: to his followers. Do you see the sign, the scent
Speaker 1: of the stain and mark of the beast on America today,
Speaker 1: Are you willing to submit and join the seed line
Speaker 1: of Satan? Look to those who are openly Antichrist when
Speaker 1: the world is promoting abortion, pornography, pedophilia, godless laws, adultery,
Speaker 1: new wage, international banking, entertainment industry, and world publishing. Wherever
Speaker 1: you find perversion of God's laws, you will find the
Speaker 1: worship versa bow with their roots still in Babylonian mysticism.
Speaker 1: So that's cool now. New age international banking, the entertainment industry,
Speaker 1: and world publishing is a bit queer than just shouting Jews.
Speaker 1: But beow Grits was more direct in a bulletin he
Speaker 1: sent out a year later during the two thousand election, Jews,
Speaker 1: feminists another liberal activists may install gore over an apathetic
Speaker 1: moral majority. If so, runaway abortion, Antichrist, God and globalism
Speaker 1: are certain. The first message was too subtle, YEA. Now
Speaker 1: think about those messages as I read this quote that
Speaker 1: Alex Jones as related in John Ronson's book Them, which
Speaker 1: was said during that Mount Karmel meeting. The builder Burgers said,
Speaker 1: Alex are the Roman Senate. It's a pyramid their way
Speaker 1: up there below. Then you've got the I M. F
Speaker 1: the World Bank, the United Nations, and then you've got
Speaker 1: us down here, the cattle, the human resources, and Randy
Speaker 1: Weaver is way out over there. See he left. They
Speaker 1: hate that, so they scared the cattle back in the
Speaker 1: pin See burn them out. I'm living in a place
Speaker 1: where black helicopters a hundred and fifty miles south of
Speaker 1: me are burning buildings, terrorizing people. And I'm the extremist
Speaker 1: who says you're an extremist? I asked, that's Ronson speaking
Speaker 1: the Anti Defamation League. He yelled, the A d L
Speaker 1: or a bucket of black paint and a brush. They're
Speaker 1: worse than the clan. They get massive funding from the globalist.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if your girlfriend's Jewish, your little sister's Korean.
Speaker 1: Anybody who wants to live free as a racist, the
Speaker 1: A d L is the scum of the earth. Jones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now he did a good job what he's trying to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's really succeeded. So these are more or less the
Speaker 1: same beliefs that Alex Jones has been years broadcasting. The
Speaker 1: millions of listeners around America in the late nineties and
Speaker 1: early two thousand's viewed independently, Jones looks like a harmless
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorist, but placed next to bou Grits, we can
Speaker 1: see him for what he is, a way to ease
Speaker 1: people into Christian identity style beliefs that lead inevitably to exterminationalist,
Speaker 1: anti Semitic beliefs. Seventeen years later, I published a study
Speaker 1: with the investigative journalism collective Belling Cat on how seventy
Speaker 1: five fascist activists were initially red pilled to the cause.
Speaker 1: My research was based on leaked internal converse nations where
Speaker 1: these neo Nazis, klansmen, and other extremists discussed their ideological evolution.
Speaker 1: Six of them credited Alex Jones with their red pilling.
Speaker 1: That even had a name for it, taking the conspiracy pill.
Speaker 1: There was an explicit understanding. Yeah, yeah, we call it
Speaker 1: taking these conspiracy pill wild the things these people will
Speaker 1: brag about. Yeah, yes, one user road, I don't give
Speaker 1: a funk if you think it it being the secret
Speaker 1: rulers of the world. Are aliens are not as long
Speaker 1: as those aliens are Jewish at the end of the day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty explicit ridiculous obviously. Yeah, for those of us who
Speaker 1: grew up online in the early OT. The last five
Speaker 1: years or so have been a continuous dispiriting process of
Speaker 1: watching outright fascist beliefs bubble up on places like Reddit
Speaker 1: and four Chan. It seems at times as if the
Speaker 1: Nazis had literally eaten the Internet we all knew and
Speaker 1: loved as kids. This did not happen by accident. Alex
Speaker 1: Jones is just one prong of a concerted digital power
Speaker 1: grab that began before most of us knew the Internet existed.
Speaker 1: In four Louis Biam used money he'd received from Robert
Speaker 1: Matthews's order to beate liberty Net yeah, an international network
Speaker 1: of code word access message boards. The goal of liberty
Speaker 1: Net was to link the white power movement together. It
Speaker 1: was used to spread recruitment materials, and its establishment allowed
Speaker 1: the movement to switch tactics quickly, as was seen after St.
Speaker 1: S Park. It also included personnel ads and pen pal programs,
Speaker 1: which could be as innocuous as connecting races for social purposes.
Speaker 1: Was also useful in planning crimes. The ternet allowed Beam
Speaker 1: to send racist propaganda into places where it was illegal,
Speaker 1: like Canada in Germany. After setting up liberty Net, Beam
Speaker 1: wrote finally we're all going to be linked together at
Speaker 1: one point in time. Imagine, if you will, all the
Speaker 1: great minds of the patriotic Christian movement linked together and
Speaker 1: joined the one computer. Imagine any patriot in the country
Speaker 1: being able to call up and access these mines. You
Speaker 1: are online with the Arian nation's brain trust. It is
Speaker 1: here to serve the folk. It has been said that
Speaker 1: knowledge is power, which it most assuredly is. The computer
Speaker 1: offers to those who become proficient in its use, power
Speaker 1: undreamed of by the rulers of the past. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: like the beginning of the yeah yeah, f wors go
Speaker 1: back further than most people would mean, starts the wars.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Computers were not cheap in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Beams work required the modern equivalent of tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars and seed money. A single Apple computer costs
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars at the time. Without the order, none
Speaker 1: of this would have been possible. And while law enforcement
Speaker 1: was diligent about trying to track down all the rocket
Speaker 1: launchers and machine guns and explosive spot with the orders
Speaker 1: all gotten games, they barely seemed to notice the computer
Speaker 1: equipment that Louis Bean had bought Yeah, weird about that
Speaker 1: classic underestimation. After all, why would the nineteen FBI care
Speaker 1: if some Apple two's wound up gifted to Nazis around
Speaker 1: the country. How could that cause a problem? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. By slightly over a decade later, Nazi efforts
Speaker 1: online had crystallized into a cohesive and effective digital Reich.
Speaker 1: Fascists were some of the first people to effectively harness
Speaker 1: the power of the Internet in an organized way. The
Speaker 1: book Nation and Race, edited by Jeffrey Kaplan and Torbjorgo,
Speaker 1: includes a chat after that delves into the state of
Speaker 1: the online white power movement at this time. They cite
Speaker 1: Walter Benjamin, a scholar who wrote an essay about how
Speaker 1: new technology like photography was harnessed by Nazism. Mass movements
Speaker 1: are usually discerned more clearly by a camera than by
Speaker 1: the naked eye. A bird's eye view best captures gatherings
Speaker 1: of hundreds of thousands, and even though such of you
Speaker 1: may be accessible to the human eyes, it is to
Speaker 1: the camera. The image received by the eye cannot be
Speaker 1: enlarged the way a negative is enlarged. While photographs and
Speaker 1: film best captured the character of the original Nazi movement,
Speaker 1: it's modern descendant is best captured online and countless conversations
Speaker 1: and debates across message boards, image boards, YouTube's comments sections,
Speaker 1: and the like. In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing,
Speaker 1: and in response to the effectiveness with which anti racist
Speaker 1: street movements like Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice shut down fascist
Speaker 1: street gatherings, the Internet became increasingly central to the development
Speaker 1: of American fascism. You know what's not central to the
Speaker 1: development of American fascism. It's an amploy It's the products
Speaker 1: and services that support their show. Sophie's had a good
Speaker 1: ad Segway, Sophie's saying I did well. Yeah, I liked it.
Speaker 1: You guys excited about this? Candon Lacroix, I'm gonna throw
Speaker 1: increasingly nervous. Well, increasingly nervous is the right way to
Speaker 1: feel when product We're back, We're back, We're back, We're back.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen nineties, Milton John Climb Jr. Was
Speaker 1: a twenty five year old studying at St. Cloud University.
Speaker 1: His school provided him with a free use net account,
Speaker 1: and one of his professors rather accidentally gave him the
Speaker 1: listing where he came upon Alt Dot, Skinheads and the
Speaker 1: o Nazi newsgroup. Milton was one of the first young
Speaker 1: men to become radicalized into fascism through the Internet. Climb
Speaker 1: grew obsessed, spending hours a day writing thousands of newsgroup
Speaker 1: posts and emails. He'd become a coordinator for several digitally
Speaker 1: inclined fascists. Climb graduated in n and shortly thereafter had
Speaker 1: his first face to face encounter with a member of
Speaker 1: the movement, Lynn Young, William Pierce's secretary. She gave Climb
Speaker 1: a check for five hundred dollars, which he used to
Speaker 1: buy a computer to continue his work. Now that he
Speaker 1: was no longer at the university. Climb never again met
Speaker 1: another Nazi in person, but he continued his activities and
Speaker 1: later that year wrote an essay on digital strategy that
Speaker 1: he posted to the Arian Crusader Library's website. In it,
Speaker 1: he wrote that the internet quote offers enormous opportunity for
Speaker 1: the Arian resistance to disseminate our message to the unaware
Speaker 1: and the ignorant. It is the only relatively uncensored, free
Speaker 1: forum mass medium which we have available. The state cannot
Speaker 1: yet stop us from advertising our ideas and organizations now
Speaker 1: was the time to grasp the weapon, which is the net,
Speaker 1: and wield it skillfully and wisely, while you may still
Speaker 1: do so freely. He was right, never stop posting, never
Speaker 1: stop posting. Perfect forum for loan wolves. Yeah Yeah, loan
Speaker 1: wolves in the mid nineteen nineties, using at an early
Speaker 1: predecessor to modern forum culture, was where most online discussions occurred.
Speaker 1: The most critical Nazi destinations head names like all dot Nationalism,
Speaker 1: dot white, all dot revolution, dot counter, alt dot skinhead,
Speaker 1: and as a prelude to eight Chans pullboard alt dot politics.
Speaker 1: This is all very much in line with the ideas
Speaker 1: that Bayham had laid out a decade earlier, but Climb
Speaker 1: wanted to see his fellow fascists move on from their
Speaker 1: digital safe spaces and become what he called cyber guerrillas. Quote.
Speaker 1: He decided they should quote take up positions on mainstream
Speaker 1: groups except on our groups. Avoid the race issue. Sidestep
Speaker 1: at as much as possible. We don't have time to
Speaker 1: defend our stance on this issue against the comments of
Speaker 1: hundreds of fools, liars, and degenerates who spouting the Jewish
Speaker 1: line will slaughter our message with half troops, slander, and
Speaker 1: the ever used sophistry that will hide that power level.
Speaker 1: Climb's writing is particularly fascinating to me for the similarity
Speaker 1: as I see between it and the things have encountered
Speaker 1: in my own explorations of modern online Nazi haven eight chan.
Speaker 1: Near the end of his essay, Climb rights, all of
Speaker 1: my comrades and I, none of whom have ever met
Speaker 1: face to face, share a unique camaraderie feeling as though
Speaker 1: we have been friends for a long time. Selfless cooperation
Speaker 1: occurs regul lily amongst my comrades for a variety of endeavors.
Speaker 1: This feeling of comradeship is irrespective of national identity or
Speaker 1: state borders. Now they love the word comrade. You do,
Speaker 1: they do? Everybody loves the word comrade. Now. What Climb
Speaker 1: expressed there is not so different from what Pawe Synagogue
Speaker 1: shooter John Ernest related in the eighth Chan post he
Speaker 1: made announcing the start of his rampage. It's been real, dudes.
Speaker 1: From the bottom of my heart, thank you for everything.
Speaker 1: Keep up the infographic red pill threats. I've only been
Speaker 1: lurking for a year and a half. What I've learned
Speaker 1: here is priceless. It's been an honor. Yeah, always keep posting,
Speaker 1: Always keep posting until we start shooting. Yeah, So climbs
Speaker 1: last line about feeling comrades ship across national barriers would
Speaker 1: prove to be an eerie premonition of the future of
Speaker 1: the international fascist movement, because during the late nineties and
Speaker 1: early two thousand's, the American fascist movement went international in
Speaker 1: a way it never had been before. Even back in
Speaker 1: the thirties and forties, Italian, German, and Spanish fascism were
Speaker 1: all very different beasts. One side effective propagate and that
Speaker 1: started emanating out of the U S. As a result
Speaker 1: of Beam's Liberty Net was that all the world sundry
Speaker 1: fascists started getting on the same page. I found a
Speaker 1: two thousand to study by Les Black published in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies. Les interviewed an Irish
Speaker 1: fascist with the Internet handle white wolf Quote. During the
Speaker 1: height of his involvement in the movement, he was spending
Speaker 1: five hours a day online. He lives in an Irish
Speaker 1: town where there are virtually no visible minorities. He was
Speaker 1: drawn to the white power movement through a fascination with Nazism.
Speaker 1: He concluded, mostly Americans are on the net, but there
Speaker 1: are British, Irish, and lots of others from different countries.
Speaker 1: The net breaks down the distance. A person who is
Speaker 1: living on a two thousand acre farm in Australia and
Speaker 1: had nobody to talk to about his views suddenly understands
Speaker 1: that he can link people who would never have met
Speaker 1: and talk with them, plan with them, learn and teach
Speaker 1: one other things, help each other. Our Ozzie friend, who
Speaker 1: may be well removed from the rest of his comrades,
Speaker 1: can nevertheless play a part in forwarding the agenda of
Speaker 1: a group. Racists love the Internet, Yeah, they do. People
Speaker 1: love the Internet. People do love the Internet. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like that's I mean, it's no matter who you are,
Speaker 1: you can find your group online. And then you have
Speaker 1: people actively trying to Yeah, he's saying all the good
Speaker 1: things on the internet, but not saying the dark thing
Speaker 1: use it to do what they do. It's like when
Speaker 1: you like when you talk about like isis recruitment and stuff.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking that this entire book about how upset
Speaker 1: I keep saying terrorist, but yeah, it's like isis recruitment? Yeah,
Speaker 1: same basic strategy, going after the same pool of people.
Speaker 1: Seventeen years later, a young man who might very well
Speaker 1: have been the Aussie friend that White Wolf was talking about.
Speaker 1: Brendan Tarrant drove to a mosque in christ Church, New
Speaker 1: Zealand and gunned down more than fifty people. Like white Wolf,
Speaker 1: Brinton was a loner, spending hours a day online building
Speaker 1: a sense of rapport with his far from digital comrades
Speaker 1: and fascism before finally deciding to take action. Now, the
Speaker 1: thing that really shocked me when I started digging into
Speaker 1: this research was how damned groundbreaking the fascists were in
Speaker 1: their understanding of what online culture would become and how
Speaker 1: to manipulate it. I'm going to quote from that book
Speaker 1: that I quoted from earlier Nation and Race quote. This
Speaker 1: arena has spawned its own language, im combines previous forms
Speaker 1: of right wing organizing with new political strategies. C and
Speaker 1: G various really referred to as the cyber Nationalist Group,
Speaker 1: cyber Nazi Group, or Computer Nationalist Group, is the brainchild
Speaker 1: of activist Jeff Foss. In his article entitled the C
Speaker 1: and G an Idea for Online organization, A Complete division
Speaker 1: of Labors outlined that assigns operatives particular roles within an
Speaker 1: overall strategy Voss makes a distinction between idea men and
Speaker 1: men of action. The former provide background information for the
Speaker 1: latter to post within usenet. This manifesto outlines four different
Speaker 1: types of foreground operative d I s S. A subtle
Speaker 1: disseminator of information, places it on FTP sites and makes
Speaker 1: subtle references to endorsements of such info on news, usually
Speaker 1: pretending to be a disinterested observer. A pirate, a person
Speaker 1: who will pirate an account for a one shot high
Speaker 1: saturation dissemination of propaganda. An impersonator who impersonates the enemy,
Speaker 1: posting embarrassing the left, infuriating the enemy. And an infiltrator
Speaker 1: who infiltrates the enemy camp shipped out their hands over there,
Speaker 1: ye man. Fascists were some of the first folks to
Speaker 1: develop a cohesive strategy around what they called flaming. As
Speaker 1: early as the researchers into online extremism her to realize
Speaker 1: that quote a common endpoint used by right wing activists
Speaker 1: is the stylized disclaimer I am not a Nazi. Those
Speaker 1: same researchers also noted the use of mail bombs or
Speaker 1: software that allowed fascists to deluse your recipient and hundreds
Speaker 1: upon hundreds of pieces of spam email in order to
Speaker 1: make an opponent's account functionally unusable. Twenty one years later,
Speaker 1: when I wrote my first article critical of eight chan
Speaker 1: and the lead up to the two thousand and sixteen election,
Speaker 1: my work count was deluged in a massive flow of
Speaker 1: spam emails, which why I still get emails from homeschooling
Speaker 1: dot com every day now. Wyatt Caldenberg was an internet
Speaker 1: activist affiliated with Tom Metzger's White Arian Resistance or WAR.
Speaker 1: We haven't talked much about them in this audio book
Speaker 1: because I had to limit my focus somewhere. But Tom
Speaker 1: was a major part of the skin head movement as
Speaker 1: well as an associative the Order. Back in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: he worked with David Duke to help organize the clan
Speaker 1: border Watch. Why It helped spread War's message online and
Speaker 1: gained infamy as one of the first proponents for what
Speaker 1: would come to be known as brigading, disrupting other online
Speaker 1: communities in an organized way. Why It wrote this ought
Speaker 1: to bey our new tactic. Instead of hanging out around
Speaker 1: the four racist news groups, we can hit news groups
Speaker 1: as a mob. We cannot win when we are out
Speaker 1: numbered by Jews. But if we go in as a group,
Speaker 1: we can win with the average Joe six pack post
Speaker 1: fact about black crime. Give them your update numbers, web addresses,
Speaker 1: push books, newspapers, Yeah, what Yer's up. Fascist groups like
Speaker 1: the Carolinian lords of the CAUCUSUS started going into news
Speaker 1: groups dedicated to loneliness and people who had just ended relationships.
Speaker 1: They went into news groups for popular musicians, and even
Speaker 1: the news group for Denny's, which might as well just
Speaker 1: be a support group for lonely people. Raids like this
Speaker 1: were often just for the purpose of harassment, but over
Speaker 1: the years fascists got better and better at spreading their
Speaker 1: ideology in this way. They quickly hit upon the tactic
Speaker 1: of hiding their beliefs is humor, retreating behind the shield
Speaker 1: of we're just joke when people responded badly to their
Speaker 1: rants about Jewish people or black on black crime, like
Speaker 1: Hitler did earlier did earlier, Yeah it all ties together.
Speaker 1: Christian identity theology also spread online in this period. I
Speaker 1: found an article in the Journal of Black Studies written
Speaker 1: by Tiny Sharp in two thousand. She noted the Internet
Speaker 1: has become a primary means for disseminating information for these groups. Currently,
Speaker 1: there are twenty five websites and thirteen news groups devoted
Speaker 1: specifically to identity Christianity on the Worldwide Web, as well
Speaker 1: as a hundred thirty other websites that are devoted to
Speaker 1: similar and related topics. Individuals can tap into these websites
Speaker 1: and find procedures for making bombs, obtain hate propaganda tracks,
Speaker 1: and request catalogs that market White supermancist books and paraphernalia.
Speaker 1: So that's cool. It's very cool, very cool. You know
Speaker 1: what's even cooler than spreading Christian identity theology online in
Speaker 1: the year two thousand tons of stuff? Man, Yes, lots,
Speaker 1: including the products and services that support our show. Could
Speaker 1: I could I get some of those those nuts some seeds? Yes,
Speaker 1: places nuts? Oh wait no, almost that was really effective.
Speaker 1: I just want I'll have something, all right, SOPHI and
Speaker 1: are going to do the exchange of the lacroix A.
Speaker 1: You throw me the idle and all through you the whip.
Speaker 1: I have the perry at every time we do this,
Speaker 1: zeck or audio man looks back at me with this
Speaker 1: bailful look. Just what are you doing to the recording?
Speaker 1: Great idea, you're like lording over We're back, and I'm
Speaker 1: a villain stroking a case of Perry as if it's
Speaker 1: a cat, And what are you about to do to
Speaker 1: that Perry? I'm going to throw it and it will
Speaker 1: be the last time I can throw something, because we've
Speaker 1: done it way too much in this this episode series.
Speaker 1: It's fun in the room. I know it's going to
Speaker 1: wear on people in the recording, but you can't. You
Speaker 1: can't edit audio, you can't cut this stuff out. It
Speaker 1: turns out you can. Nope. I'm undecided. Bit by bit
Speaker 1: and almost entirely in a decentralized manner, the digital right
Speaker 1: came together in the early two thousand's. Law enforcement was
Speaker 1: not just helpless to do anything. It's debatable whether or
Speaker 1: not they even realized what was happening. Most of their
Speaker 1: online efforts were spent keeping track of known quantities with
Speaker 1: long standing online ties like Don Black and its popular
Speaker 1: fascist website Stormfront. Now Stormfront is important. Nearly a hundred
Speaker 1: hate crime murders have been traced to the site, but
Speaker 1: the FBI wasn't even particularly good at monitoring them, which
Speaker 1: is why nearly a hundred murders were traced to site.
Speaker 1: In July two nineteen in response to a foire request,
Speaker 1: the Beer admitted that they had somehow lost almost all
Speaker 1: of their files on Stormfront. Internal files on like white
Speaker 1: supremacist movement be lost, not worth Yeah, I can't think
Speaker 1: of a theory, right, Cody. It sounds like you're about
Speaker 1: to accuse the FBI, the bureau of whom a member
Speaker 1: heroically was present during the Greensboro massacre and didn't do
Speaker 1: anything to stop it. That you're going to accuse that
Speaker 1: FBI of acting to defend the storm Front. I don't
Speaker 1: know what I was thinking. I took the conspiracy pill,
Speaker 1: you know what. I think the FBI is good and
Speaker 1: Bob Mueller is going to save us. I yeah, man,
Speaker 1: you're it's gonna be all. Everything's gonna be real good.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be great. And go away in handcuffs that guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the FBI only did a quarter ass job of
Speaker 1: monitoring the most obvious Nazis online, and if that's the case,
Speaker 1: it's probably not surprising that they completely failed to notice
Speaker 1: when fascists started infiltrating communities on websites like four chain
Speaker 1: and Reddit. It happened slowly, camouflaged an irony and humor.
Speaker 1: As a young man I was only vaguely aware of
Speaker 1: the change is taking place in the digital spaces I've
Speaker 1: grown up around. Holocaust jokes became more common, so did
Speaker 1: racist humor. More than just growing more frequent, these jokes
Speaker 1: grew more specific, evolving from jibes about Jewish people being
Speaker 1: stingy with money clearly inspired by South Park, uh two
Speaker 1: memes about how Hitler did nothing wrong, and image macros
Speaker 1: that repeated bad science about race and i Q. In
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, I found an article on The Observer
Speaker 1: by holocaust scholar Timothy Snyder, and it he comments on
Speaker 1: the use of irony and humor by fascist mainstream Their
Speaker 1: views quote what the twenty one century culture is introduced
Speaker 1: is that nothing is really serious. And that is an
Speaker 1: interestingly dangerous idea, because if nothing is serious, you can
Speaker 1: have this ambiguity where you can actually be doing something
Speaker 1: very serious but you're pretending not to and you can
Speaker 1: always fall back and say, well, that was just a joke,
Speaker 1: because everything is just a joke. But of course you
Speaker 1: don't really believe that everything is just a joke, or
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be promoting fascism or white supremacy or whatever
Speaker 1: it may be. Yeah, that's well said. Yeah, Tim designer
Speaker 1: knows his fucking ships art quote. That's that too. I
Speaker 1: should have brought it up, because I can't. I don't
Speaker 1: remember it, but it describes that sort of like you
Speaker 1: say it and then when it's a little too far,
Speaker 1: like yeah, stoke challenge and then they sort of walk away. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Whether or not you laugh determines whether or not at
Speaker 1: a side, I was joking, Yeah, Mr prank bro, just
Speaker 1: a prank bro. Don't you have a sense of humor? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Four things on the internet rather suddenly boiled over into
Speaker 1: the cultural phenomenon known as gamer Gate. On its surface,
Speaker 1: gamer gate was a reaction to corruption to video games journalism.
Speaker 1: In reality, it was an eruption of white and male
Speaker 1: supremacist hatred, an attack on modernity and liberalism by an
Speaker 1: army of young men who believed they've been wrong by society.
Speaker 1: There has not yet been a great deal of research
Speaker 1: into whether or not there was an organized attempt by
Speaker 1: the white power movement to co opt gamer Gate, but
Speaker 1: there is ample evidence that the ideas of that movement
Speaker 1: quickly made it into popular memes spread by gamer gators.
Speaker 1: During my research, I came across the threat on the
Speaker 1: website cetera, filled with other confused digital natives trying to
Speaker 1: figure out just what the get happened with gamer Gate.
Speaker 1: One user posted a series of memes he'd saved during
Speaker 1: that time. In retrospect, they seem to show a progressive
Speaker 1: descent into white nationalism. The first is a propaganda poster
Speaker 1: featuring a cartoon mascot of four chance pollboard Polina, advising
Speaker 1: the annons of poll on how to effectively aid the movement.
Speaker 1: Polina is blonde haired and blued eyed. At the top
Speaker 1: of the poster are the words who is that girl?
Speaker 1: Blonde haired, blue eyes, fair skin? Why it must be Polina.
Speaker 1: Another meme from further on on the collection is significantly Nazi.
Speaker 1: Here it's based around an old labor movement political cartoon
Speaker 1: pyramid of a modern capitalist system, showing laborers on the
Speaker 1: very bottom being exploited by the classes above them. In
Speaker 1: the gamer Gate adaptation, gamers are the bottom of the pyramid,
Speaker 1: with games journalists above them, critical theorist social justice warriors
Speaker 1: like Anita Sarkeesian above them, cultural Marxist academia above them,
Speaker 1: and then fasts alone's a top represented by an Illuminati
Speaker 1: eye symbol. We don't see explicit anti Semitism in this cartoon,
Speaker 1: but it is there subtly in the caricature drawings of
Speaker 1: Jewish video game critics. It's clear at this point that
Speaker 1: some white power talking points had started to mutate to
Speaker 1: better appeal to modern and extremely online youths. Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: more effective because it's like that dork fantasy ship gamers. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: we're just joking. We're just joking, same like source of
Speaker 1: resentment to that and yeah, something gravitate towards it's the
Speaker 1: KKK do Loser stuff. Yeah, I know exactly, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's especially frustrating because it's so it is clear
Speaker 1: that that's there is a connection there. Um, but because
Speaker 1: it's a lot of image boards like four Chan, it
Speaker 1: disappears really quickly. Um, so there's less record of that
Speaker 1: time of the sort of the proto what's going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll have all these up on our website behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards dot com and of course the War on Everyone
Speaker 1: dot Com, which I have not plugged enough in this series.
Speaker 1: We're just we're just eventually the harassment of video game
Speaker 1: journe Listen critics, most of whom were women grew severe
Speaker 1: and illegal enough that four chan exiled its gamer gators.
Speaker 1: Many of them migrated to eight chan, and over the
Speaker 1: next several years they grew more radical and more explicitly fascist,
Speaker 1: until eventually they were openly planning for how to cause
Speaker 1: a new Holocaust. It's impossible to know how much of
Speaker 1: the ironic fascist hip postings started off innocently and how
Speaker 1: much of it was seated by white power activists, but
Speaker 1: we know they were engaging in that behavior purposefully for
Speaker 1: more than twenty years, and in the years after gamer Gate,
Speaker 1: this work has paid dividends. The true danger of the
Speaker 1: digital Reich was best expressed by Alex Curtis, the publisher
Speaker 1: of an extremist neo Nazi magazine and self proclaimed lone
Speaker 1: wolf of hate. In the early two thousands, he wrote
Speaker 1: of his hope that quote some well placed arians will
Speaker 1: one day cause some serious wreckage A thousand Timothy mcveigh's
Speaker 1: would end any semblance of stability in this racially corrupt society.
Speaker 1: There's got to find enough of lone wolves yep, connected
Speaker 1: by some magic computer thing, some historical echo that won't
Speaker 1: go away. Yah um continue. No, we have not yet
Speaker 1: reached a thousands of Mathew mcphase thankfully. But we have
Speaker 1: seen a market increase in the amount of right wing
Speaker 1: domestic terror over the last several years. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it certainly seems to be driven largely by online radicalization.
Speaker 1: Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life synagogue shooter, was radicalized
Speaker 1: in part on gab, social network for Nazis. He announced
Speaker 1: the start of his rampage there. Six months later, the
Speaker 1: Paways Synagogue shooter announced the start of his rampage on
Speaker 1: a Chan, as had the christ shooters six weeks prior.
Speaker 1: There are other names in the roll call of Internet
Speaker 1: inspired fascist violence. The Adam Often terrorist group, responsible for
Speaker 1: three murders so far, started off with extremely online Nazis
Speaker 1: working to form a terror cell. In imitation of the
Speaker 1: book Siege, written by James Mason, we talked briefly about
Speaker 1: Mason and Siege at the start of this book. He
Speaker 1: was a student of William Pierce, and Siege might thus
Speaker 1: be understood as a more academic accompanying text to the
Speaker 1: Turner Diaries, where the Diaries proposes fiction, Siege outlines and
Speaker 1: strategic depth. Mason advocates for leaderless resistance and lone wolf
Speaker 1: style attacks. The lone wolf cannot be detected, can not
Speaker 1: be prevented, and seldom can be traced. If I were
Speaker 1: asked by any one of my opinion on what to
Speaker 1: look for or hope for next, I would tell them
Speaker 1: a wave of killings or assassinations of system bureaucrats by
Speaker 1: roving gunmen who have their strategy well mapped out in advance,
Speaker 1: and while not impossible to stop. Early in two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: Coast Guard Lieutenant Christopher Hasson was caught planning this exact
Speaker 1: sort of attack. He had a cash of weapons and
Speaker 1: AMMO and a kill list of journalists and Democratic politicians.
Speaker 1: Hassan was obsessed with the manifesto of Anders Brevick, a
Speaker 1: right wing shooter who murdered dozens of students in Newtoy
Speaker 1: and Norway. We don't know when where he first came
Speaker 1: into contact with that manifesto, but spreading it has been
Speaker 1: a priority of online fascists for years. In the wake
Speaker 1: of the christ Choot shooting, fascists have started spreading Brentan
Speaker 1: Terrence manifesto as well. The Paways Synagogue shooters cited both
Speaker 1: manifestos as inspirations for his attack. In his own rampage
Speaker 1: thought on h CHAN the Poway shooters stated his desire
Speaker 1: to beat Terrence high score. In this we see echoes
Speaker 1: of Eric Harris, the Columbine shooter, who was obsessed with
Speaker 1: beating Timothy mcphay's high score. Right now as I read this,
Speaker 1: violent armed men and h ND's pole board in numerous
Speaker 1: Discord chat rooms are plotting for WATTE that they might
Speaker 1: beat their heroes and win a high score of their own.
Speaker 1: On telegram. The Bowl Patrol, a group of young fascists
Speaker 1: dedicated to Charleston Church shooter Dylan Rufe, celebrates sat Rufe
Speaker 1: and fantasize about neuva acts of violence in his name.
Speaker 1: The early Harvest and Blood These Young Men Will reap
Speaker 1: was sewn by Louie Beam, William Pearce, and Bob Matthews. Now,
Speaker 1: though there is no need for an organization to buy
Speaker 1: up arms and plan terror attacks, the order proved to
Speaker 1: be less resilient than the completely decentralized radicalization and killing
Speaker 1: machine made possible by the advent of the Internet. The
Speaker 1: Internet has given the White Power movement a steady supply
Speaker 1: of armed and ready young killers, living cruise missiles who
Speaker 1: strike unpredictably. It targets around the country bit by bit.
Speaker 1: Their attacks chisel away at our sense of security, our
Speaker 1: national stability, and our trust in each other. It took decades,
Speaker 1: but Louis Beam and his comrades did bring the war
Speaker 1: home to all of us and against all of us. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Cool chapter. Yeah, it's just it's just the game of
Speaker 1: thing is so interesting. Yeah, and and and apparent it's
Speaker 1: like gamers, but like there's that element that it that
Speaker 1: it's drawn to. And like with the Donny Field shooting
Speaker 1: live streaming it like that's you're you're broadcasting a video game. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: You're trying to make it look like Call of Duty
Speaker 1: and then you get the high score talk and then
Speaker 1: it accelerates it even more horrifying to see it all
Speaker 1: laid out so linear like this. The single biggest surprise
Speaker 1: to me and researching this was when I came upon
Speaker 1: the fact that um Eric Harris had specifically stated his
Speaker 1: desire to beat Timothy mcveigh's kill count, like realizing like, oh,
Speaker 1: that part it's the same thing, like it really all
Speaker 1: of it, like the like that's the probably look at
Speaker 1: this so much is like separated and like even as
Speaker 1: far back as like the fact that like the Nazis
Speaker 1: trying to recruit kids on the Internet, Like one of
Speaker 1: the guys doing that had his computer bought for him
Speaker 1: by William Pierce's National Alliance, the guy who wrote The
Speaker 1: Turner Diaries, the book which inspired Timothy McVeigh, which inspired
Speaker 1: Eric Harris, which inspired seventy nine other mass shooters. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a whole it's a whole web. It's really hard
Speaker 1: to it's really hard to describe to lay out because
Speaker 1: there's so much I had to leave out, Like I
Speaker 1: could I could have done this whole thing about I
Speaker 1: could have done a whole seven part episode on like
Speaker 1: Alex Jones's ties to explicit terrorists. Like that's the one
Speaker 1: of the most frustrating things because it's like once you
Speaker 1: once you see it, it's not you see it everywhere.
Speaker 1: Once you see it, you see it where it is,
Speaker 1: you realize how big it is. Yeah yeah, um, and
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's so upsetting. It is upsetting. What's even
Speaker 1: more upsetting is that it's time for me to throw
Speaker 1: the peria or yeah, yeah, you better move away from
Speaker 1: that point because that's where I'm gonna check it at
Speaker 1: no it's okay, it's okay, al right, guys, Cody, I
Speaker 1: need you to get close to your microphone and describe
Speaker 1: this as I do it. No one seems thrilled about it.
Speaker 1: Sophie's hiding it's not really hot, and she just sort
Speaker 1: of like sleeping. Oh I'm looking through the chair. I'm
Speaker 1: really not doing a great job. Robert stood up, two
Speaker 1: hands on the perry a winding up, taking a few breaths,
Speaker 1: throwing it. Three hands fell out. Hay shouted. That was
Speaker 1: so anti climactic. Well, it popped. It's just a new
Speaker 1: way to open up a box, a little of perry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it worked. Now we have one for everybody. I dare
Speaker 1: you to open it all if you're worried. Was for nothing?
Speaker 1: Did you film it? There's one for each of us.
Speaker 1: Here we go. I don't want one, Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: prefer throwing it. Oh yeah, pretty, you should open it now, though,
Speaker 1: I mean to see nothing complete disappointing about this has
Speaker 1: been disappointing except for you, Robert, refreshing and your work. Well,
Speaker 1: can I have some good you know what? Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the moment, I'm going to close it real quick. Get
Speaker 1: Cody closes things really meticulously and well, so I'm not
Speaker 1: surprised that it didn't open when you threw it against
Speaker 1: the wall. You're gonna make sure it's closed. What I'm
Speaker 1: surprised about is what good audio content our choices in
Speaker 1: this eight part seven parts, Cody dropped a bunch out
Speaker 1: of the bag. I got them. It's fine. Well, guys,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to. I just want everybody to read.
Speaker 1: I guess you already listened to the book. People to
Speaker 1: read the book. It's a topic that everybody aware of.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm really glad we did this. I'm
Speaker 1: glad we did this too. I wish we hated myself
Speaker 1: during it. Yeah, yeah, I didn't smoke earlier. But I
Speaker 1: wish we didn't smoke earlier too. But you know, we
Speaker 1: all learned things. We take these just like I apologize,
Speaker 1: let's not say just like nope, just like Louis Speed. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's I guess what we learned. So some more news.
Speaker 1: Name is Cody, and my name's behind the Bastards dot com,
Speaker 1: the website where you can find the sources for this podcast.
Speaker 1: You can also find it on the War on Everyone
Speaker 1: dot com. You can buy shirts on to public dot
Speaker 1: com by looking for behind the Bastards. We have a
Speaker 1: Twitter at at bastards pod and an Instagram at the
Speaker 1: same name, disgusted. So you're proud. Oh yeah, because I
Speaker 1: remember too. Finally either at all. Well, guys, time to
Speaker 1: go online. Yeah. I just threw some seeds at coding.
Speaker 1: The episode is done.