Speaker 1: M hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: explain that we're we've got kind of a weird week
Speaker 1: going on. As you notice, we'll be dropping three episodes
Speaker 1: this week, uh last week, two weeks ago by the
Speaker 1: time you hear this. I went to unite the Right
Speaker 1: two point oh the Nazi gathering in d C and
Speaker 1: counter protested it with a bunch of people, um, other activists,
Speaker 1: And so rather than hosting this with a guest comedian,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm hosting it with another house stuff Works host
Speaker 1: bridget Todd, who hosts afropunk solution sessions and stuff Mom
Speaker 1: Never told You, And I'm I'm there with a couple
Speaker 1: of different DC based activists who we all sort of
Speaker 1: marched and unite the Right two point oh together and
Speaker 1: yield at Nazis together. So that's who I'll be with.
Speaker 1: It'll have a different feeld from a normal episode. So
Speaker 1: we we included another normal episode this week so those
Speaker 1: of you who just want the normal thing can get
Speaker 1: the normal thing. And then we have this kind of
Speaker 1: weird two parter about the modern fascist movement in the Marorca.
Speaker 1: So hopefully you'll like all of it if you don't.
Speaker 1: There should still be something for you here. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evanson. This is Behind the Bastards, the show
Speaker 1: where we tell you everything you don't know about the
Speaker 1: very worst people in all of history. Now, normally we
Speaker 1: record this story in a comfortable little recording studio in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, but this week I am in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: For Unite the Right two point oh, which has been
Speaker 1: build a white civil rights rally by racists and a
Speaker 1: fascist march on Washington, d C. By everybody else. I'm
Speaker 1: here with a group of d C and and East
Speaker 1: Coast in general locals, and we're all gonna be marching together.
Speaker 1: Why don't you guys introduce yourselves. Hi, I'm Hanna Essenger.
Speaker 1: I live in Roanoke, Virginia, and in my podcast is
Speaker 1: The Kitchen Table Fault. And I'm here because I grew
Speaker 1: up in this world and I'd like to fight against it.
Speaker 1: My name is Nick Wood. I was a marine, and
Speaker 1: I also grew up in very conservative circles, and uh
Speaker 1: I likewise, I feel the need to fight back again
Speaker 1: my old people. Um. I'm Bridget Todd. I'm the host
Speaker 1: of two podcasts on this very network. Stuff I've never
Speaker 1: told you in Afropunk Solution sessions. I live here in
Speaker 1: d C. And DC is my home, and so when
Speaker 1: Nazis come to my home, I have to show them
Speaker 1: they're not welcome. Yeah, and I just don't like Nazis.
Speaker 1: Uh So, so I've spent because I don't like Nazis,
Speaker 1: I've spent most of the last two weeks reading everything
Speaker 1: they've said to each other on the Internet. So there's
Speaker 1: this group of journalism collective called Unicorn Riot, and over
Speaker 1: the last couple of years they have gotten dozens of
Speaker 1: leaks of like huge chunks of chat logs between all
Speaker 1: of these different far right groups, the Traditional Workers Party
Speaker 1: uh and and anti comm and like groups that are
Speaker 1: essentially Nazi groups. Um. So that's what this podcast is about.
Speaker 1: We've taken all of their conversations. I've read them, I've
Speaker 1: I've analyzed them. Uh And, so we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: today about the first post two thousand sixteen wave of
Speaker 1: American fascist activists. Uh So, Yeah, I'm just gonna get
Speaker 1: into it. Um. I'd like to give a start by
Speaker 1: giving an overthrow view of the folks were talking about. So,
Speaker 1: the Traditional Workers Party or t w P, was a
Speaker 1: far right group that was profiled in that New York
Speaker 1: Times article A Voice of Hate in America's Heartland. Um,
Speaker 1: that's the article that got widely panned for the New
Speaker 1: York Times, basically giving a Nazi a big platform to
Speaker 1: talk about being a Nazi. We've never done that before. Um.
Speaker 1: And the the t WP, like most of these groups,
Speaker 1: claims not to support racism, but they also sold swatsticka
Speaker 1: arm bands on their website, so you know, you can
Speaker 1: make that judgment for yourself. They dissolved earlier this year,
Speaker 1: not because the government rated them, but because their leader
Speaker 1: was caught having sex with his spokesman's wife and his
Speaker 1: spokesman was also his father in law. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: the spokesman deleted their website. Uh. And yeah, but some
Speaker 1: of these guys are still active. Yeah. I love that.
Speaker 1: Even though they're these like Nazis, they still have messy
Speaker 1: personal and we'll be getting into that a little later.
Speaker 1: They all got messy, messy personal stuff, um the master. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Anti comm is another one of these groups, and
Speaker 1: they're big source of a lot of the conversations I read.
Speaker 1: They were billed as a right wing counter to Antifa.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quote from their spokesman that
Speaker 1: shows sort of how they marketed themselves to the world.
Speaker 1: Quote from the beginning, We've attempted to make it clear
Speaker 1: that though we defend free speech, we do not have
Speaker 1: and will never have, an official political platform. We accepted
Speaker 1: members regardless of ethnicity or gender, provided that they agree
Speaker 1: with the cause and can satisfy the physical requirements to join,
Speaker 1: although the political and racial makeup of our members varies wildly.
Speaker 1: We have Korean libertarians, gay and archo capitalists, Latino nationalists,
Speaker 1: and even some liberals interests. Our common mission has prevented
Speaker 1: us from splitting over such political lines. That's all lies,
Speaker 1: because you can read what these people said to each
Speaker 1: other in private on discord, and it's stuff like freedom
Speaker 1: of speech is merely a tool used to be able
Speaker 1: to persuade the masses. We want to destroy anti FA
Speaker 1: because they're Marxists. In this message from a guy named
Speaker 1: King Bobo Man, I'm all for no race mixing, even
Speaker 1: if it is fascist in practice. So as we'll get
Speaker 1: into anti com was part of like an attempt to
Speaker 1: sort of rebrand the far right as an opposition to
Speaker 1: communism rather than a nationalist racist group. Racist. We have
Speaker 1: black friends, Yeah, we have we have black friends. Look
Speaker 1: at this, Look at this one guy who's not white
Speaker 1: that we brought to the rally. Like, see, we're fine. Um.
Speaker 1: And a lot of them will admit behind closed doors
Speaker 1: to being fascists, like this quote from February of two
Speaker 1: seventeen from a user named Max and the Anti comm server.
Speaker 1: I'm both and cap and a fascist. I think either
Speaker 1: can work, so I'd be okay with either. Which if
Speaker 1: you're in anarchic any kind of anarchist, you can't also
Speaker 1: be a fascist. They don't work together, guys, But they're dumb.
Speaker 1: These are all dumb. Um. Another big group of fascists
Speaker 1: in our modern world, or the Oregon Nazis, they're not
Speaker 1: one distinct group. Patriot Prayer is an Oregon based far right.
Speaker 1: I would call them fascist group. They're the people who
Speaker 1: were just active in the big Portland protest um. They
Speaker 1: had a discord server called Cascadian Coffee Company that was
Speaker 1: a general all of the fascists and Oregon uh talk
Speaker 1: on this channel, so we'll be hearing a lot from
Speaker 1: them today. Um, there are a lot of groups we
Speaker 1: could get into. Vanguard America is one the Nazi who
Speaker 1: killed Heather Hair at Charlottesville last year was a member
Speaker 1: of Van Guard America. UM. They split up recently into
Speaker 1: Patriot Front identity Europa is basically a Nazi group, couched
Speaker 1: and we're just proud to be European, but we also
Speaker 1: want all immigration to end. Um. They were at Charlottesville too.
Speaker 1: There's the League of the South, There's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different groups of racists in Europe. Yes, Richard Spencer
Speaker 1: just got stopped from going, i think, to the Netherlands
Speaker 1: to try to give a speech. Yeah. Yeah, well Europe,
Speaker 1: Europe seeing what happens if you let Nazis march. It
Speaker 1: doesn't end well. Um. So this brings us to Jason Kessler.
Speaker 1: He's the single person who best embodies the first wave
Speaker 1: of modern American fascism. He graduated from the University of
Speaker 1: Virginia in two thousand and nine with the BA and psychology.
Speaker 1: He seems to have been at one point a Democrat
Speaker 1: who voted for Barack Obama. He claims to have been
Speaker 1: at Occupy Wall Street in two thousand eleven. And in
Speaker 1: my time and pouring through archived Nazi chats, I found
Speaker 1: that a lot of fascist activists have a similar background,
Speaker 1: and one conversation from last May, a user named Yarbal's
Speaker 1: talked about his time with Occupy and said, back then,
Speaker 1: I just hated the banks in the Fiat system, not
Speaker 1: the parentheses, parenthesis parentheses, banks in the parentheses parentheses parentheses,
Speaker 1: Fiat system, which is Nazi. When they when they put
Speaker 1: three uh those marks on either side, it means they're
Speaker 1: talking about Jewish people, Like that's one of the coded
Speaker 1: phrases they have. So one of the weird things about
Speaker 1: these guys that they try to hide from the right
Speaker 1: wing activists that they're trying to like cozy up to
Speaker 1: because they're trying to pull a lot more of the
Speaker 1: American conservatives their way. But these guys are all pretty
Speaker 1: anti capitalist because they're they're actual Nazis, Like they they
Speaker 1: believe in having a strong social welfare system just for
Speaker 1: white people, like that's part of why they want to
Speaker 1: kick everybody else out. But they try to hide that
Speaker 1: because they know that the modern American right wing won't
Speaker 1: get on board with it. I don't know. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: also anti Marxist. This makes no sense. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess we'll talk about how good they are at
Speaker 1: it in a little bit. So most of these guys,
Speaker 1: if you like, if you search through like the chats,
Speaker 1: just search for the term red pilled um and it'll
Speaker 1: you'll find a bunch of conversations where various Nazi activists
Speaker 1: talk about how they first got radicalized, essentially, and almost
Speaker 1: all of their journeys start on YouTube. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the videos that I found a number of people commenting
Speaker 1: on was called the Lion of Europe or Hitler the Lion,
Speaker 1: and it gets removed a lot, but the video is essentially, uh,
Speaker 1: it's edited like a movie trailer. It's like a little
Speaker 1: four minute video and it starts with like a dramatic
Speaker 1: voiceover and like clips from the movie three hundred and
Speaker 1: clips from various World War two movies that show Nazis fighting,
Speaker 1: interspersed with like Gears of War and video game clips,
Speaker 1: and there's like this voiceover talking about Uh. It's basically
Speaker 1: it's it's it's telling like a what's the one I'm
Speaker 1: looking for here? It's a guy giving a story that's
Speaker 1: supposed to be Yeah, it's a propaganda piece, but it's
Speaker 1: framed as like an apocryphal story about like a lion
Speaker 1: fighting jackals, and obviously the jackals are supposed to be
Speaker 1: everybody that's not white people. Yeah, it's exactly. I've heard
Speaker 1: lion imagery used using conjunction with Trump too. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's like the they're not they don't veil it
Speaker 1: that much. Yeah. So it's like one of the things
Speaker 1: that's interesting to me is that this video and a
Speaker 1: couple of other little videos I found, it's a mix
Speaker 1: of like historical footage, movie footage, but also video game
Speaker 1: clips because these guys are all gamers, Like that's a
Speaker 1: huge recruiting ground for the farm. Their practice in gamer Gate,
Speaker 1: a lot of them did, if you so if you
Speaker 1: search gamer Gate and the archives, you'll find a number
Speaker 1: of people talking about having first like that was their
Speaker 1: first experience and activism was gamer Gate. Um, and it
Speaker 1: led a lot of them to the election, which the
Speaker 1: term online and like alright, circles is the great meme war. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really like they're very lame. It's frustrating to have
Speaker 1: to take the it's seriously now. Yeah. Well, and what's
Speaker 1: funny to me is that the far right activists that
Speaker 1: when they like the so the actual nazis the people
Speaker 1: who are in the groups that will be marching today
Speaker 1: Unite the Right two point. Oh. They tend to call
Speaker 1: the r alt right the alt light and they make
Speaker 1: fun of them too. Um, they don't like them, but
Speaker 1: they see them as a recruiting ground. So like the
Speaker 1: alt right hasn't been isn't like they're closer to where
Speaker 1: these people want the Nazis, Yeah, yeah it is. It's
Speaker 1: like r OTC. It's where their kids come up. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's also like, uh, where is it? Um. You'll
Speaker 1: also find like frustration expressed from far right activists about
Speaker 1: gamers and stuff, Like I found quotes from a couple
Speaker 1: of people like complaining that their discord chat had a server,
Speaker 1: had like a chat room for video games, but didn't
Speaker 1: have anything focused on exercise and weightlifting and fighting. And
Speaker 1: he was like like, we're focused, Like you guys are
Speaker 1: too big and nerds basically, and you're making us look
Speaker 1: bad because you come out to these protests and your
Speaker 1: chubby and like, you don't look good in your armor.
Speaker 1: You don't look scary, you don't look like the master
Speaker 1: race like the Nazi. Yeah, even Nazis don't like Nazis.
Speaker 1: You end up looking like a third string Ninja Turtle.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. So um. Back to Jason Kesler a little bit.
Speaker 1: He's the guy who organized Unite the Right, the original
Speaker 1: Unite the Right rally um, which was the second rally
Speaker 1: that Nazis had carried out in Charlottesville. There was a
Speaker 1: few weeks before Unite the Right, like a torchlent march
Speaker 1: um that was sort of the precursor to, uh, the
Speaker 1: first bloody Charlottesville battle. And he's the guy who organized
Speaker 1: this most recent thing. He also used to write for
Speaker 1: a website called The Daily Caller, which is owned by
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson and it's the home of Ben Shapiro on
Speaker 1: the Internet. I've heard of these Oh good have you been?
Speaker 1: Have you? Have you personally attacked by benchfu? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know you're a so and so and DC like left
Speaker 1: you advising when they did he afree your money to
Speaker 1: debate him. I wish. I mean, you know, he is
Speaker 1: the kind of person that has to pay money to
Speaker 1: get a woman to talk to him. And so Jason
Speaker 1: Kessler used to write for yeah, the Daily collar the
Speaker 1: same site he did, and he got to write about
Speaker 1: the first Charlotte skill rally for them, which now and
Speaker 1: and and in all fairness, the Daily Callers editor at
Speaker 1: the time, Paul Connor, said that the story he wrote
Speaker 1: was factually accurate and plainly stated what happened. And when
Speaker 1: I say he plainly or when Paul Connor says he
Speaker 1: plainly stated what happened, what he means is that Kessler
Speaker 1: said that the torch lit march was visually striking and
Speaker 1: then conspicuously quoted a black person who praised the marchers
Speaker 1: as being good people. Um, so that's that's that's a
Speaker 1: factually accurate and plainly stated version of the events of
Speaker 1: that march. Um. But they didn't note the fact that
Speaker 1: he had organized the rally, which you should do as
Speaker 1: a journalist. If you organize a rally and then report
Speaker 1: on it could be considered one you're certainly supposed to
Speaker 1: let people know. Seems like it might be one ethics man. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you're if you're a fascist organizer, you should
Speaker 1: probably let people know that too before you report on
Speaker 1: a fascist gathering, and don't mention any of the fascism um,
Speaker 1: which he did not. Uh Now. Also, in fairness to
Speaker 1: the Daily collar they pulled Kessler's articles and ended their
Speaker 1: relationship with him. Once it became very clear to the
Speaker 1: entire world that Jason Kessler was a Nazi fascist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he was an open Nazi instead of just a
Speaker 1: wink wink nod nod Nazi. And that's we'll be getting
Speaker 1: into the wink wink not not part a couple of
Speaker 1: points in this, But that is an important thing is
Speaker 1: that like these guys, their whole goal is to get
Speaker 1: the rest of the right on board with them and
Speaker 1: essentially pull moderate conservatives further to the right. And there's
Speaker 1: a substantial amount of evidence that that's worked. I mean,
Speaker 1: Laura Ingram just got on Fox News and made comments
Speaker 1: about how like an immigration is changing the nature nature
Speaker 1: of the country and we're losing our culture and stuff,
Speaker 1: was like and we didn't vote for this, yes, which
Speaker 1: actually did so. Um a little bit back to some history.
Speaker 1: Right after that march that Jason Kessler covered in The
Speaker 1: Daily Caller UH next month, in June of two seventeen,
Speaker 1: Kessler started a Facebook group to try to plan the
Speaker 1: Unite the Right rally UM and he started going around
Speaker 1: online and in person to a variety of different fascist
Speaker 1: activist groups. He made contact with Richard Spencer, Matthew Heinbach
Speaker 1: of the Traditional Workers Party the League of the South.
Speaker 1: He also became a member of the Proud Boys, which
Speaker 1: is a group funded and founded by vice co founder
Speaker 1: Gavin McGinnis. Uh Now, Jason Kessler's goal seemed to have
Speaker 1: been to make himself a bridge between the disparate rings
Speaker 1: of wings of the alt right. He basically wanted to
Speaker 1: be like the central spoke in the Nazi wheel. That's
Speaker 1: kind of how he was trying to set himself up
Speaker 1: as and that was the goal of the Unite the
Speaker 1: Right rally. It was a heady time to be a fascist, hm.
Speaker 1: It was a heady time to be a fascist activist
Speaker 1: because Donald Trump had just gotten elected, the alt right
Speaker 1: was in the news, and these guys kind of figured, well,
Speaker 1: now is the time for us to tip our hands
Speaker 1: and to get into politics and just see where the
Speaker 1: waters are. So they were hoping that Unite the Right
Speaker 1: would be like a coming out party for the political
Speaker 1: far far far fascist right of the Nazis. Exactly. It
Speaker 1: was the Nazi Debutante Ball, and of course it was
Speaker 1: an incredibly bloody ship show. Um. Yeah, that's what nazis.
Speaker 1: That's the only thing Nazis do. Um. And at the
Speaker 1: time it was widely seen as a disaster for the
Speaker 1: white national movement, or that that was that's debatable. It
Speaker 1: was definitely a disaster, a disaster for Kessler who got
Speaker 1: dropped from the Daily Wire and disavowed as a proud
Speaker 1: boy when he became, you know, famous for being a racist. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was a court case levied against him, which is
Speaker 1: still in process. Signs versus Kessler. Uh. It's basically alleges
Speaker 1: that Kessler and other organizers including Richard Spencer and Matthew
Speaker 1: Hinbach had been part of quote, a direct conspiracy to
Speaker 1: commit violence. Um. Now, they obviously claim this was a
Speaker 1: peaceful rally was just for political purposes, but the things
Speaker 1: that they set online and discord and on Twitter, um,
Speaker 1: even in the open, sort of bellayed that The anti
Speaker 1: com official Twitter, like right before Charlottesville tweeted a picture
Speaker 1: of Hitler and several leading Nazis in an open topped
Speaker 1: car and the text on the image read, get in, loser,
Speaker 1: We're invading Charlottesville. Yeah. It seems like a pretty clear
Speaker 1: Yeah Hitler in a in a truck, Yeah, with a
Speaker 1: bunch of Nazis around him, Like he's not He's definitely
Speaker 1: not going anywhere for like, they're not going shopping, yeah, refling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Hitler didn't go places to not be violent. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: one of the saving graces of the modern fascist movement,
Speaker 1: at least from the perspective of the rest of us
Speaker 1: and were fascists, is that they kind of lack in
Speaker 1: self control. Um, they're obsessed with violence and racism, and
Speaker 1: they have trouble hiding it. Well, that doesn't stop them
Speaker 1: from trying. Um, they have a focus on what they
Speaker 1: call entryism, which is basically trying to find ways to
Speaker 1: get normal right wingers on board with their extreme ideas.
Speaker 1: So that yeah, red pilling is another term you'll here
Speaker 1: used for it. Um. And there's the like, there's a
Speaker 1: one of the discord channels leaked to unicorn Riot was
Speaker 1: a hashtag belt tag Beltway Bigots, which is a chat
Speaker 1: room for d C and Virginia based bigots. Uh. Here's
Speaker 1: a quote from Unicorn Riots sort of summing up those conversations.
Speaker 1: Local Charlottesville Unite the Right organizer Jaslyn Kesler Jason Kesler
Speaker 1: repeatedly post and Beltway Bigots about his intention at various
Speaker 1: events to try and provoke anti fascists into a violent
Speaker 1: confrontation that could be spun as an attack against regular conservatives.
Speaker 1: So that's their goal with these marches. Um, and here's
Speaker 1: a direct quote from Kessler himself. We're going to be
Speaker 1: triggering anti fat to protest and force the Alt Light's
Speaker 1: hand just where your Maga hats and blend in his
Speaker 1: proud boys. It'll be fun. So their stated goal is
Speaker 1: to blend in as more moderate conservatives so that if
Speaker 1: there are fights with anti Fat it looks to mainstream
Speaker 1: conservatives like basically radical communists are ganging up on normal conservatives.
Speaker 1: The dual purpose of putting the Alt Light in a
Speaker 1: situation where they're suddenly in violence and then it creates
Speaker 1: that US versus them exactly. M yeah. And it also
Speaker 1: makes it easier for the fascists to go out and
Speaker 1: march in public. Yeah yeah. Here's a quote from an
Speaker 1: user in one of these channels who said, I love
Speaker 1: LARPing as a normal Trump bro, not even kidding. It
Speaker 1: allows me to feel kind of normal rather than a revolutionary.
Speaker 1: Of course, I never deny being a white nationalist, which
Speaker 1: again they'll admit white nationalism because they think they can
Speaker 1: get away with that right now, which I guess maybe
Speaker 1: they can. Uh. Here's another quote from Kessler in the planning.
Speaker 1: Bring your Maga hats if you've got them. If Anti
Speaker 1: fall Fox with us, it'll look like average Trump supporters
Speaker 1: and Alt Light are under attack. Um So. On July eleven, seventeen,
Speaker 1: Jason Kessler went to a Charlottesville town hall to talk
Speaker 1: about Unite the Right and make it clear he was
Speaker 1: not associated with the loyal white Knights of the ku
Speaker 1: Klux Klan who just toasted a rally in Charlottesville. He said,
Speaker 1: I didn't want them here. As a note, he's going
Speaker 1: to be marching with the KKK today. Uh. He's clearly
Speaker 1: no longer disavowing them. Um But on June, in a
Speaker 1: private discord chat, eleven days after he disavowed the KKK,
Speaker 1: Jason Kessler said this, the Confederate flag is the best
Speaker 1: optics because it's beloved by legions of Southerners who are
Speaker 1: on the doorsteps of becoming just like us. If we
Speaker 1: can move them beyond heritage not hate. So again, like
Speaker 1: the they know they can't. They know marching with swastika's
Speaker 1: is a bad idea, but they figure if I march
Speaker 1: with a Confederate flag, then I can get people who
Speaker 1: maybe aren't full on Nazis, but who you know, are
Speaker 1: proud of their Confederate heritage for some reason on board
Speaker 1: with my Nazis. I think he's underestimating Southern manners. What
Speaker 1: do you mean, Ah, the heritage and I hate people
Speaker 1: don't like fighting. Well, I mean that's optimistic then I
Speaker 1: hope so like not all of them, but definitely there's
Speaker 1: a there's definitely a manners system in place that the
Speaker 1: ugly fighting offense well, and that's they do. They do
Speaker 1: talk a lot about how they should represent themselves and
Speaker 1: how they should sort of present themselves to the public.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of focus on not dressing like soldiers,
Speaker 1: which they were early on, not wearing like military body
Speaker 1: arm or not wearing camouflage. A lot of people focus
Speaker 1: on like, we're white polo shirts dressed nicely because then
Speaker 1: you will look like a nice, polite member of society.
Speaker 1: And again it's all about in treatism. It's because after
Speaker 1: after Charlottesville last year, I was campaigning with for Northam
Speaker 1: in Roanoke, and I had a lot of people who
Speaker 1: have been moderate Republicans were like, well, that was just
Speaker 1: really ugly so we're going to vote Democrat for governor
Speaker 1: this time around because we don't want this kind of
Speaker 1: thing happening again. And it was the the optics of
Speaker 1: provoking violence and bad manners, if you will, So that
Speaker 1: was that was getting them to distance themselves from it.
Speaker 1: Do you find that those glowing or not maybe not
Speaker 1: glowing those sort of New York Times trend pieces about
Speaker 1: you know, look at this nasty with this nicely tailored
Speaker 1: suit and like this trendy haircut. Do those sort of
Speaker 1: aid them in this, in this quest for better optics. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's very important to them. So there were there were
Speaker 1: In addition to all these discord chats, there was a
Speaker 1: Facebook chat, very long one that went over the course
Speaker 1: of a couple of weeks that was also leaked by
Speaker 1: Unicorn Riot and it it was the planning for this
Speaker 1: rally they were going to in and it they talk
Speaker 1: about their frustration with getting mainstream media outlets to talk
Speaker 1: to them, like a lot of these guys, and none
Speaker 1: of them mentioned having connections to Info Wars, but they're
Speaker 1: clearly interested in getting respectable news outlets to cover their
Speaker 1: beliefs um which I think it's like the NPR recently
Speaker 1: interviewed Jason Kesler uh and essentially let him talk for
Speaker 1: like three minutes about the stuff that he believes, which
Speaker 1: is exactly what he wants, and what the New York
Speaker 1: Times gave them was exactly what. Yeah, they want people
Speaker 1: who uh, they want respectable coverage. They do want to
Speaker 1: be a mainstream political party. Um. You'll hear regularly conversations
Speaker 1: where they're basically saying, the police are not on our
Speaker 1: side yet, Um, we have to be careful until we're
Speaker 1: in control, you know. Like it's it's this understanding that
Speaker 1: if they play nice enough long enough, they think they
Speaker 1: can gain functional political power. Um. So yeah, well this
Speaker 1: has been the rights conservative rights strategy for the last
Speaker 1: thirty years. I mean, if you look at the origins
Speaker 1: of the Moral Majority and the Auburn Avenue theology, people,
Speaker 1: you get when you have people who want to create
Speaker 1: a theocracy out of America. They want to take on
Speaker 1: mainstream UM avenues and like take it on step by
Speaker 1: step and get themselves legitimized and accepted into those worlds.
Speaker 1: And and honestly a lot of them are just straight
Speaker 1: up stealing from and Tonio Graham. She's theories of like
Speaker 1: seven spheres of cultural influence and like we have to
Speaker 1: uh treated like trench warfare, and we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: take over this media. We're gonna take over this, We're
Speaker 1: gonna go over the church. We're gonna take over this
Speaker 1: and like slowly gain ground. And I think what these
Speaker 1: guys are trying to do is essentially, because you're talking
Speaker 1: more like the sort of Christian right, hard right conservatives,
Speaker 1: I think these guys are trying to hijack that essentially,
Speaker 1: yeah print yeah, um. And there's a big question within
Speaker 1: these groups about how openly racist to be. That's like
Speaker 1: a real subject of debate among racists is like how
Speaker 1: clear can we make it that we're fascists? Um? Like
Speaker 1: I found a brainstorming threat in the anti com channel
Speaker 1: where they were trying to figure out like a logo
Speaker 1: for their organization, and one of them suggested a design
Speaker 1: that included little swastikas, and a person responded, people will
Speaker 1: compare us to that then enormis know like Nazis. Other
Speaker 1: users agree, One said, for sure, we ought to steer
Speaker 1: away from anything that can be interpreted as Nazi symbolism
Speaker 1: because that's going to be exactly what they are looking for.
Speaker 1: Another person said, have to hide the power level. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can't red pill normies by shoving in their face.
Speaker 1: That's a really common phrase, hide the hide the power level.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? It's a reference to dragon ball Z.
Speaker 1: Because these guys are giant fucking nerds. I say, this
Speaker 1: is a giant fucking nerd. But yeah, it's a reference
Speaker 1: to dragon ball Z containing their hidden You know this
Speaker 1: is not even my final form. Yeah right, And that's
Speaker 1: and again this is this is taking a play out
Speaker 1: of the Christian rights playbook that's been over the less
Speaker 1: thirty years. Just like the cool youth pastor who walks
Speaker 1: kids and yeah, like, hey, if you come to the
Speaker 1: if you come to youth group, we're gonna watch movies
Speaker 1: and play Halo. We're gonnam everybody, and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: like it's turn up the heat and boil the frogs
Speaker 1: in the water. And then before you know it, you're
Speaker 1: protesting out that an abortionent clic or something insane like that. Well,
Speaker 1: and when we get on the subject of especially like
Speaker 1: the nerdy language these guys use, that brings this to
Speaker 1: another topic that's really intriusting to me, which is the
Speaker 1: gamification of street violence and protest, which is really big
Speaker 1: among the far right circle. So a lot of these people,
Speaker 1: like I have some recorded chats that I found on
Speaker 1: eight Chan from like is early like two or three
Speaker 1: weeks after the election, where people were lamenting like the
Speaker 1: end of the election, and like, well, I ever feel
Speaker 1: as important as I felt when I was like making
Speaker 1: these memes that were spreading and like felt like I
Speaker 1: was taking part in this culture movement. Well yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's that those those kids and that energy is exactly
Speaker 1: what these movements are trying to co opt, and they've
Speaker 1: done it in a variety of different ways. Um. The
Speaker 1: Proud Boys are probably which is again that group found
Speaker 1: about Gavin McGinnis had probably done the best job of this.
Speaker 1: By the way, he got banned from Twitter. He sure
Speaker 1: did get banned from Twitter to bay they're the Proud Boys.
Speaker 1: Whole organizational structure UM is based in part around whether
Speaker 1: or not you've been in a violent fight. Uh So
Speaker 1: to get be a first degree Proud Boy or whatever,
Speaker 1: you have to declare online via YouTube or something that
Speaker 1: you're a proud boy and a Western chauvinist and you
Speaker 1: believe in the super to see of Western culture, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: Then you have to promise not to masturbate, which is key.
Speaker 1: You don't want you to want to get rid of
Speaker 1: your virile energy. Yes, you want to contain that can
Speaker 1: have sex, Yes they can, and they can masturbate if
Speaker 1: a woman is in the room who is consenting that
Speaker 1: you specify that, But they cannot masturbate just for their
Speaker 1: own pleasure. It is I can imagine your shitty ideology
Speaker 1: having a masturbation class. It's the right wing circles of Christianity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not even kidding. And I was like, oh no, that
Speaker 1: sounds that sounds pretty. And then after you've declared your
Speaker 1: Western chauvinism and promise not to masturbate, basically the best
Speaker 1: way to get i think fourth degree or whatever is
Speaker 1: you have to either be arrested for the cause or
Speaker 1: be involved in a serious fight. Uh. And they they
Speaker 1: pretend that like that's not what they want, like that
Speaker 1: this is a consolation for having been involved in something
Speaker 1: so horrible. Uh. You Also, the only way to progress
Speaker 1: in ranks is to be involved in street actions that
Speaker 1: get violent, and so it's it is gamifying. It's like
Speaker 1: giving you a little achievement it's like now you've been
Speaker 1: in a street fight, you move up a level, you
Speaker 1: get to yeah, giving you cookies for violence, yea and
Speaker 1: their extremist groups. I should note have been using video
Speaker 1: games and video game imagery for quite some time. There's
Speaker 1: an isis made mod for Grand Theft Auto where you
Speaker 1: like blow up American soldiers. During the start of the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian Civil War, there was this famous propaganda video I
Speaker 1: Russian Occupier that went viral and it was a mashup
Speaker 1: of a pro Russian rant and recruiting video with graphics
Speaker 1: that made it look like the opening to a Call
Speaker 1: of Duty game. Um, so this is not this is
Speaker 1: not like a new thing. And the like I said,
Speaker 1: like the Lion of Europe video that the guy mentioned
Speaker 1: is red pilling him had a shipload of video game
Speaker 1: imagery in it because they are trying to make you
Speaker 1: feel like the protagonist of one of these games. Well,
Speaker 1: and one of the problems here too is um and
Speaker 1: you see this with Muslim Radical Station um where YouTube
Speaker 1: doesn't really have any locks in terms of content, and
Speaker 1: so the suggested play next Auto feature will get people
Speaker 1: down rabbit holes. Which is why, like, if you have
Speaker 1: kids and you just let them sit on the iPad
Speaker 1: and like watch YouTube videos. They'll eventually get into like
Speaker 1: really sketchy territory because there will be like, um, like
Speaker 1: parody videos made of common kids shows that will just
Speaker 1: AutoPlay and it will eventually be like really graphic, horrific
Speaker 1: sexual content and with like Telly Tubby's sucking each other
Speaker 1: and like Pepper Pig getting yeah, and and and and
Speaker 1: it's all because it's said on AutoPlay, and just like
Speaker 1: the associative algorithm will just send you down a really
Speaker 1: dark rabbit hole really fast. Hey, we're going to continue
Speaker 1: our talk about Nazis and eventually actually go out and
Speaker 1: yell at some of them and then tell you what
Speaker 1: that was like. But first, here's some ads. Um Okay,
Speaker 1: So we were talking about sort of like how silly
Speaker 1: a lot of the imagery around these these guys are.
Speaker 1: Did you you'll see that picture of the green Keck
Speaker 1: Warrior from the Portland protests. That was what I was
Speaker 1: referring to. Yeah, third third rate in Ninja Turtle, Yeah,
Speaker 1: third rate in Ninja Turtle. But this is part of
Speaker 1: the reason that they dress like this is because they
Speaker 1: think it's it's less threatening and it's less overtly like
Speaker 1: violent than wearing again body armor that makes you look
Speaker 1: like a militia man. He looks like your your local
Speaker 1: LARPing suburban dad. Yeah, and he is. In fact, if
Speaker 1: you look at his pants, I guarantee you he got
Speaker 1: those from his LARPing days or whatever, like those are
Speaker 1: those are fantasy LARPing pants that he got them run. Yeah,
Speaker 1: guarantee you. I guarantee you. He has recently had a
Speaker 1: conversation in which he explained just how many pounds of
Speaker 1: pressure it takes to break a human neck. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: only ten, right, Yeah, it's like ten pounds. It's like,
Speaker 1: that's not how it works then, So I don't want
Speaker 1: to get too deep in the wood some weird internet culture,
Speaker 1: but his you can see the words keck written on
Speaker 1: his shield in a stylized form, which is obviously that
Speaker 1: entered the Internet because it was how like gamers in
Speaker 1: Korea would type out l O L and it sort
Speaker 1: of became a part of Internet culture, and then four
Speaker 1: Chan turned it into doing it from doing it to
Speaker 1: the lolls to doing it for the kex or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then this morphed into the idea of Kekistan, a
Speaker 1: fake country that was mostly a joke, but also not quite. Uh, Kakistan,
Speaker 1: You and not everybody who talks about Kakistan or whatever
Speaker 1: is a far right nationalist. But Kakistan has a flag.
Speaker 1: You will see these flags at protests regularly. Maybe not today,
Speaker 1: but you saw it in Portland, you saw it in Berkeley. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that flag looks like this, right, we'll have the
Speaker 1: pictures up on our website behind the bastards dot com.
Speaker 1: That is a green version of the Nazi naval flag.
Speaker 1: So this is well known around the iconomists in the
Speaker 1: center Keck. It's like it's like done to look like
Speaker 1: a palindrome. Yeah, it's the The flag of Kakistan, so
Speaker 1: to speak, is exactly the same with just the colors
Speaker 1: inverted as the naval battle flag for the Third Reich. Um.
Speaker 1: So this gets into what I was saying about how
Speaker 1: a lot of the outright fascist activists are frustrated with
Speaker 1: some of the people on the alt right or the
Speaker 1: alt light as they call them. Um. I found one
Speaker 1: chat in a discord channel where someone said the Kakistan
Speaker 1: meme has gotten too dumb to be useful. It doesn't
Speaker 1: trigger anyone. Now you'd be surprised at how many people
Speaker 1: flying the flags don't even know it's a variation on
Speaker 1: the Kriegsmrine flag. And then there's a lot of debate
Speaker 1: because some people will say, well, know, the fact that
Speaker 1: like the that flag is out there is good and
Speaker 1: like on the whole, I think that this this thing
Speaker 1: is like positive optics for us. So they're they're very
Speaker 1: much undecided about this. But it's interesting how I think
Speaker 1: most of the people that you would see carrying that
Speaker 1: flag would tell you they're not Nazis. I'm not a fascist,
Speaker 1: but they are carrying a flag that's a rip off
Speaker 1: of a Nazi flag. Understand that, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of them do. I think some of them don't, because
Speaker 1: it's gotten obscure enough and it's spread enough around the
Speaker 1: internet that some people who would never consider themselves Nazis
Speaker 1: still use that flag. But that is where it started.
Speaker 1: I was curious, do you think that that's what they want?
Speaker 1: They want this to become as a popular symbol where
Speaker 1: mainstream not Nazis, you know, have like fly it without
Speaker 1: really knowing what it means. So I think what they
Speaker 1: want is it makes it easier for them to convert
Speaker 1: these kids later if these people are already used to
Speaker 1: being out in the street, they're already hanging out when
Speaker 1: they're at protest around Nazis and they're flying this flag,
Speaker 1: it's like you're one step closer. They want to normalize
Speaker 1: it so that it can become a dog whistle when
Speaker 1: they want to activate it. Yes, Kistan recruiting ground exactly,
Speaker 1: and it's it's all about like they recognize and they
Speaker 1: don't like how small they are. There's somewhere between two
Speaker 1: and four hundred Nazi activists, maybe less than two hundred
Speaker 1: expected today, but that's just because these people are out racists.
Speaker 1: UM groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer who
Speaker 1: were again at the Portland and Berkeley protests, they are
Speaker 1: better at hiding their fascism and better at hide their racism,
Speaker 1: and I think as a result, they're a lot more
Speaker 1: dangerous UM. But they're like the Quekistan stuff is part
Speaker 1: of like it's it's a recruiting tool. And there are
Speaker 1: a lot of conversations in the discord about like trying
Speaker 1: to harden up these kids, trying to like give them
Speaker 1: classes on how to deal with the police and train
Speaker 1: them to fight. The Proud Boys initiation is you have
Speaker 1: to get punched by a bunch of other proud boys
Speaker 1: until you can name five breakfast cereals. And the stated
Speaker 1: goal is too Yeah, it's really dumb. If you find
Speaker 1: videos on it, it's the saddest thing in the world
Speaker 1: because none of these kids, they don't they don't know
Speaker 1: how to punch. Really, look it up if you want
Speaker 1: to laugh. But their stated goal for it is they
Speaker 1: want to train these kids how to focus while they're
Speaker 1: stressed out and in pain. M Marine Corps three months.
Speaker 1: I don't think getting punched in a circle name and
Speaker 1: breakfast cereal will Actually I don't think so either. But
Speaker 1: I also think that they're on the path to figuring
Speaker 1: out how to get better at this. And they're not
Speaker 1: just punching each other in a circle. They are showing
Speaker 1: up to protest where these kids are getting into fights
Speaker 1: and where they are game experience and functioning that way. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: in terms of like actual talk about terrorism, um, it's
Speaker 1: fairly mild on the discord channels. They know that there's
Speaker 1: chances of being caught. But I have noticed that over
Speaker 1: the last couple of months that they were talking in
Speaker 1: the time after Charlottesville, they got more open about talking
Speaker 1: about things like explosives. So I found one conversation in
Speaker 1: August two where some guy was talking about legal explosives
Speaker 1: and people immediately shut it down and told him that
Speaker 1: he was just like making them a magnet for the Feds.
Speaker 1: But then a few weeks later, after Charlottesville, in the
Speaker 1: same server, another user offered access to a library of
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty seven PDFs on how to manufacture
Speaker 1: explosives and received no pushback. Uh. Now this did make
Speaker 1: the news once the chats got leaked and it got
Speaker 1: the anti com server taken down. Um, but it's interesting
Speaker 1: to me that in the weeks and months after Charlottesville,
Speaker 1: people got more and more comfortable among the fascist right
Speaker 1: with talking about explosives and terrors. Are they do they
Speaker 1: use the word terrorism? Do they? Are they weird that
Speaker 1: that's what they're doing? I think so, because in December nineteen,
Speaker 1: two seventeen, several members of the Traditional Workers Party Discord
Speaker 1: got into a conversation about how they would have carried
Speaker 1: out a Dylan Roof style mass shooting at a black
Speaker 1: church without being caught. And yeah, I've got the whole
Speaker 1: conversation here. One guy said, I would have parked a
Speaker 1: mile away. Another guy said same, uh, and ride a
Speaker 1: bike to the location. Another guy says, I would have
Speaker 1: mapped out all the CCTV cameras first on a recon
Speaker 1: op then planned parking Accordingly, another guy said that too.
Speaker 1: I follow the same m O when I go to
Speaker 1: a rally. The other guy said, me too. Man, So
Speaker 1: they were basically talking about what they would have done
Speaker 1: to have carried out that massacre and then gotten away
Speaker 1: with it. We were talking about this last night. Do
Speaker 1: you think that a lot of these people are former veterans?
Speaker 1: Do you think they actually have any combat experience some
Speaker 1: of them. I'm not completely sure whether there are a
Speaker 1: significant number of veterans involved, and I'm sure there are some,
Speaker 1: or if the people using a lot of this jargon
Speaker 1: and stuff because they use a lot of of military
Speaker 1: style tactics. They talk about X fill points or X filtration,
Speaker 1: how to get out um, they talk about high value targets,
Speaker 1: they refer to them as h vt s, And the
Speaker 1: thing is that's very jargoning, and I'm not completely clear
Speaker 1: if there's actually veteran in their writing their orders, because
Speaker 1: it's not quite structured the right way. But it's also
Speaker 1: the use of jargon that you find among people who
Speaker 1: are like military adjacent and want to feel really tough,
Speaker 1: like their dad was a marine or a cop or something,
Speaker 1: and they're like they'll be talking about like h vt
Speaker 1: s because it makes them feel like they're badass girling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really not sure. It could be just a veteran,
Speaker 1: but like a veteran who had a job like mine
Speaker 1: where they worked a six to six death job and
Speaker 1: want to feel like they were a badass, or they
Speaker 1: you know, they could just be one of these like
Speaker 1: military fan fanboy knots. They're like larbers. They are Nazis,
Speaker 1: but like they're LARPing military doing tactics and stuff. They
Speaker 1: don't think they could actually hack it in the military,
Speaker 1: but they want the all of the prestige and fund
Speaker 1: or they think they can. They think they could hack
Speaker 1: it in the military, or if they were in the
Speaker 1: military and in a job like mind where they didn't
Speaker 1: see action, they think they could hack it as a grunt,
Speaker 1: but they've never they've never been tested. There are, however,
Speaker 1: some of them who have been uh, some of them
Speaker 1: who are combat veterans, although that's not the norm. Um
Speaker 1: and In fact, it's more common around groups like the
Speaker 1: oath keepers and the three percenters, those militias which they hate. Um.
Speaker 1: But the idea is that only three percent of Americans
Speaker 1: would be ready to like defend their country and defend
Speaker 1: the constitution. And it's supposedly a group of veterans who
Speaker 1: stand ready to defend free speech and whatnot. Though they
Speaker 1: do have some of the same problems the Proud Boys
Speaker 1: do of having people in their organization who are like,
Speaker 1: I would have joined the military, but pt was hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they also get infiltrated by fascists and stuff. But
Speaker 1: in general they're treated with contempt by the fascists because
Speaker 1: they call them oath cuts um. Because they will do
Speaker 1: stuff like stand around Anti five protests and try to
Speaker 1: build a wall between them and the police, and they
Speaker 1: probably masturbate it, so that that that means they're right
Speaker 1: out in terms of protecting Western culture. How much like
Speaker 1: messy kind of petty in fighting and drama is there
Speaker 1: in this huge amount of a lot of patty high
Speaker 1: schoolers in a lot of ways. And they one of
Speaker 1: the things that is again makes them easier to fight
Speaker 1: is that they have no sense of in group loyalty whatsoever.
Speaker 1: When Unite the Right was a disaster and someone died
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of blood, they abandoned Jason
Speaker 1: Kessler like that, like he has become very marginalized and
Speaker 1: insulted and mocked. And the same thing happened with Matthew
Speaker 1: Heinbach when he got arrested for beating up his father
Speaker 1: in law after having an affair with his father in
Speaker 1: law's wife. Uh, he was made fun of and mocked
Speaker 1: and pretty much dropped by the community. Loyalty, no loyalty
Speaker 1: for their heroes. And I should note that conversation we're
Speaker 1: going through with these guys were talking about how to
Speaker 1: carry out a Dylan Roof style shooting on a a
Speaker 1: black church. One of the two members in that goes
Speaker 1: in discord by the name a Hopstorm foer Pepe Hopstorm
Speaker 1: Fear was a Nazi like an S. S. Rank It
Speaker 1: means essentially like Stormtroop leader Um Hopstrom fuer Peppe was
Speaker 1: also the guy who started Anti com that group that
Speaker 1: was supposedly nonpartisan and non political and contained people of
Speaker 1: all political persuasions. He was the guy talking about how
Speaker 1: to carry out and get away with an attack on
Speaker 1: a black Church. Uh, and here's a picture of him.
Speaker 1: He's a baby. He's a baby. Oh my god. We
Speaker 1: will not be posting the picture of him because I
Speaker 1: don't want to docks this guy because I'm not acent
Speaker 1: share it's him. But there is a Trump stamp on
Speaker 1: the side of his computer tower, and he looks like
Speaker 1: the guy. These are these are the these are the
Speaker 1: guys that you could really use just because their egos
Speaker 1: are so fragile to be like, well, you could be
Speaker 1: the great leader and then cause a lot of discord
Speaker 1: and like keep things disorganized because they're all fighting each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also like it's hard to say, it's probably like
Speaker 1: the conversation they're saying Karen talking about how they'd get
Speaker 1: away with an attack. I'm going to guess this guy
Speaker 1: is never going to do anything. But like, this kid
Speaker 1: looks like he's maybe eighteen. He's got no hair on
Speaker 1: his face, he looks like a little baby. He looks
Speaker 1: like all the mass murders I've ever seen. That's what's scary,
Speaker 1: because there is this guy does look like exactly the
Speaker 1: kind of person in age group, and there's nothing stopping
Speaker 1: him from getting an a R fifteen like the what's
Speaker 1: the ven diagram overlap with in cells and these guys
Speaker 1: they do not Like none of these guys identify as
Speaker 1: in cells that I have found, um, And there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of talk about them here because the in
Speaker 1: cells are for one thing. Um, A lot of in
Speaker 1: cells are not white. They are like like Elliott Roger
Speaker 1: wasn't a white kid. Um. He was obsessed with wanting
Speaker 1: to be and look white because he thought that those
Speaker 1: were the guys who get all the girls. And you'll
Speaker 1: run into that along the in cell community. But I
Speaker 1: think these guys would generally view those people as degenerates. Um,
Speaker 1: although they do share some of the same goals. I
Speaker 1: think in sales also masturbate a lot, so they couldn't
Speaker 1: be proud boys. Yeah. So anti com the leader of
Speaker 1: this baby faced Nazis was a member of that claimed
Speaker 1: not to be a political group that included yet he
Speaker 1: looks like a half baked puppy. These guys got kicked
Speaker 1: off of Discord after Charlottesville in September in part because
Speaker 1: of like the bomb stuff that was being shared on
Speaker 1: their discord chat um. But from February to September seventeen,
Speaker 1: their members posted more than nine messages, and they were
Speaker 1: a prominent part of the first Unite the Right rally.
Speaker 1: Their Twitter account is still active. They don't seem to
Speaker 1: be doing a lot right now. Um, but I do
Speaker 1: think the basic ideas behind this group have sort of
Speaker 1: been funneled into the activism of the Proud Boys and
Speaker 1: groups like Patriot Prayer. Um, they've just done a better
Speaker 1: job of hiding the racism. But it's important to know that, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of movement between all these groups. So
Speaker 1: when Anti Com got shut down, all of the Anti
Speaker 1: com guys started talking in the traditional Workers Party discord.
Speaker 1: And you know, while Patriot Prayer and like Gavin McInnis
Speaker 1: of the Boys said don't attend the first Unite the
Speaker 1: Right rally, ordered is people not to posted a big
Speaker 1: article saying we're not part of the alt right, we
Speaker 1: don't associate with the alt right. A ton of Proud
Speaker 1: Boys showed up at Charlotteessville the last time. They might
Speaker 1: be there this time. The guy who's the leader of
Speaker 1: their quote Militant Order and the Proud Boys the Fraternal
Speaker 1: Order of All Knights, which Kevin McInnis says has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the alt right. A lot of them
Speaker 1: were there at Charlottesville. So it's again they say, we
Speaker 1: have no affiliation with these groups, and the leaders will
Speaker 1: disavow them, but you look at what their people do,
Speaker 1: and the bad guys just not be the lamest version
Speaker 1: of themselves for twenty seconds, like we were in the
Speaker 1: dumbest timeline. We're in the dumbest timeline. And what sucks
Speaker 1: is that like being the lamest version of the bad
Speaker 1: guys might work. Yeah, that's that's why this is the
Speaker 1: dumbest time. The third would never have these guys because
Speaker 1: they have no dignity. And then that and the fact
Speaker 1: that that makes them more dangerous is really stupid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but because it makes the police are more likely to
Speaker 1: be sympathetic with them, um, and because moderates are more
Speaker 1: likely to be sympathetic with them because they look yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they look like kicked little puppies rather than like fucking
Speaker 1: ryanhard Hydrick marching down the street or whatever. And it's
Speaker 1: I think that you could make a I mean it
Speaker 1: would probably a whole other, big pile of research and
Speaker 1: a whole up or maybe even like a whole other podcast,
Speaker 1: but you could talk about how you said a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys identified as former Democrats who voted whoever
Speaker 1: and then and they were a lot of these guys
Speaker 1: were probably pretty centrist as it were, like because they
Speaker 1: just they were centrist and they hated like a lot
Speaker 1: of them will talk about how they didn't like banks
Speaker 1: and they didn't like uh, capitalism or whatever. But it's
Speaker 1: because they think the Jews are behind it. And so
Speaker 1: they started out being more moderate and then they realized
Speaker 1: that there was this whole ideology Taylor built to people
Speaker 1: who were paranoid about all that ship. Um, So they
Speaker 1: just found their people. Basically, they found their people. It
Speaker 1: took them a little while, um, but the election really
Speaker 1: gave them an opportunity to get out in public with
Speaker 1: this ship. The first Unite the Right rally, as they said,
Speaker 1: was meant to be like a political coming out party
Speaker 1: for the fascist right. Uh. It seems to have been
Speaker 1: their high water marks so far. But there's disturbing trends
Speaker 1: that they're winning, both in terms of like the further
Speaker 1: right tilt that you've seen among a lot of conservative
Speaker 1: commentators and stuff like the MPR talking to Jason Kessler
Speaker 1: because they let him talk about his theories on like
Speaker 1: you know, the data says this about these are all
Speaker 1: the most intelligent races. And one of the things Kessler
Speaker 1: did that they'll usually do. They'll never say white people
Speaker 1: are the most intelligent race, because they say they're not
Speaker 1: white supremacist. Let's say Ashkenazi Jews are the smartest, and
Speaker 1: then it's Asians, and then it's white people and then
Speaker 1: everybody else comes on. But that that gives them again
Speaker 1: they can couch it in science. They can say I'm
Speaker 1: not a white supremacist. I'm yeah, well, well it's never
Speaker 1: any good science. It's like phrenology. But like they'll be like,
Speaker 1: facts don't have feelings. Well they're not acts. But because
Speaker 1: you said the phrase facts and not feelings, now we're
Speaker 1: debating on your terms. Yeah, And they'll talk about like
Speaker 1: i Q tests and stuff and ignore the fact that like, well, no, actually,
Speaker 1: you can give someone a twenty minute coaching session that
Speaker 1: raises their i Q score by twenty points, which proves
Speaker 1: that the i Q is not a measure of intelligence,
Speaker 1: but as a measure of your ability to Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: been like debunked, like twenty years ago, constantly debunked. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like it's one of intelligence. Yeah, the past.
Speaker 1: It was like how polygraph is still used in stuff,
Speaker 1: but like our average person is like, oh, yeah, the
Speaker 1: polygraphs are not that accurate. The government still polygraphs people.
Speaker 1: You can. Yeah, it's frustrating, bad science, but it gives
Speaker 1: them camouflage. And it's all about camouflage. And that's part
Speaker 1: of why the Nazis were going to be seeing today.
Speaker 1: I don't think are the most dangerous ones because they're
Speaker 1: just not disciplined enough to camouflage. Well, Gavin McGinnis has
Speaker 1: done a better job of camouflaging, although he still got
Speaker 1: banned from Twitter. The Patriot prayer guy is Joey Gibson
Speaker 1: or better do it is? It's I mean, it's really
Speaker 1: hard and for a white guy. Ye. Speaking of Bason
Speaker 1: Kessler and speaking of Twitter, here's what he said less
Speaker 1: than a week after the first Unite the Right rally
Speaker 1: on Twitter. He essentially said that Heather Hayer was a horrible,
Speaker 1: disgusting communist quote communists if killed ninety four million, looks
Speaker 1: like it was payback time now. His tweet ignited a
Speaker 1: firestorm of condemnation. And this is the ship that I
Speaker 1: think NPR should have brought up. They shouldn't have said.
Speaker 1: What do you believe they should have said? After Charlottesville?
Speaker 1: You said this, what is your plan for the current rally?
Speaker 1: I'm frustrated at the bad journalism of just letting this
Speaker 1: guy talk about his ship, because this is not the
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Even other fascists weren't willing to stand
Speaker 1: up for him. Richard Spencer, after this tweet, came out
Speaker 1: disavowed him and said I will no longer associate with
Speaker 1: Jason Kessler, and no one should. Hayer's death was deeply saddening.
Speaker 1: Payback is a morally reprehensible idea because she was a
Speaker 1: white woman, but also because these guys are scared. They
Speaker 1: don't want to be seen as culpable to a death.
Speaker 1: Because Spencer's part of the lawsuit against the organizers of
Speaker 1: Unite the Right, so he's scared too. Yeah. Um, they're
Speaker 1: all scared. Take much more bad press after getting punched
Speaker 1: in the face on television, Yes, and we will be.
Speaker 1: We'll get into the Nazi punching debate, and a little
Speaker 1: bit here I want to read a quote from Matt
Speaker 1: Novak of Gismoto, who discuss described sort of the general
Speaker 1: fallout from Jason Kessler tweeting the Heather Higher deserve to
Speaker 1: die because communism quote. Some so called alright activists said
Speaker 1: that Kesler is a secret Barack Obama supporter and even
Speaker 1: wanted Hillary Clinton to win. Basically the worst things you
Speaker 1: can say in the white supper Mrs community about other
Speaker 1: neo Nazis. Others said that Heather Hair herself was some
Speaker 1: kind of government agent. Um, so that's again like these
Speaker 1: it's this is one of the saving graces that we
Speaker 1: have is that these guys have not gotten good at
Speaker 1: keeping one unified line, which the original Nazis were fucking
Speaker 1: great at. Everybody stuck to Hitler, and everybody stuck to
Speaker 1: the same story. For his part, Kessler posted a tweet
Speaker 1: the next day saying I was hacked last night. I
Speaker 1: apologized for the tweets sent out from my account last night. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: at least I didn't blame Ambion. Well he did, so
Speaker 1: he makes everyone racist. It's a little He deleted that
Speaker 1: tweet very shortly after, and then put up another one
Speaker 1: saying at two part tweet saying I repudiate the heinous
Speaker 1: tweet that was sent from my account last night. I've
Speaker 1: been under a crushing amount of stress and death threats.
Speaker 1: I'm taking Ambien zan X and I had been drinking
Speaker 1: last night. Sometimes I wake up having done strange things
Speaker 1: I don't remember. So you called it to him? No, no,
Speaker 1: not just Roseanne, but there were there were even jokes
Speaker 1: among the Nazis about his comment in Roseanne's comment and
Speaker 1: about like maybe we should all just say we're on ambient.
Speaker 1: Ha wow, pre advertising for Ambien though, yeah, Ambien donal
Speaker 1: in turns racism cover. I guess whatever the competitor of
Speaker 1: Ambient is should really at least our drug doesn't make
Speaker 1: you a Nazi. Whiskey helps you sleep and doesn't make
Speaker 1: you a Nazi having trouble sleeping. Try Alcoholism doesn't leave
Speaker 1: to Nazism. They are sometimes correlated. The Nazism came first,
Speaker 1: so again after Unite the Right one point oh, a
Speaker 1: lot of the groups that were involved in planning and collapsed.
Speaker 1: The Traditional Workers Party fell apart back in March when
Speaker 1: Heimbach was arrested for assaulted David Parrott, the husband of
Speaker 1: his mistress and spokesperson for the TPP and also his
Speaker 1: father in law. This is yeah, this is his stepmom
Speaker 1: messy ship Like this is like Shakespeare level of yeah,
Speaker 1: and just like, come on, guys, don't plan to your
Speaker 1: own stereotypes of being like incestuous and weird. And they
Speaker 1: this was that doesn't lead to weird ship at all,
Speaker 1: doesn't Yeah, And there was a lot of the Nazis
Speaker 1: sort of recognized this at the time. I found one
Speaker 1: user who summed up a lot of people's opinions when
Speaker 1: he said, seems like if we had higher standards, the
Speaker 1: whole ship show with Heinbach wouldn't have happened. What did
Speaker 1: I say earlier about dignity, Maybe if you hadn't been Nazis,
Speaker 1: that would have been part of it. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of these groups have fallen apart. Vanguard America
Speaker 1: went to the ground and split up into new groups
Speaker 1: and including Patriot Front, the t WB collapse, Anti com collapse,
Speaker 1: But all of the people are still there. It's not
Speaker 1: worthwhile to focus too much on the names of most
Speaker 1: of these groups. Like right now, Patriot Prayer and the
Speaker 1: Proud Boys are kind of the most ascendant in like
Speaker 1: the far right, the fascist right, street violence groups, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure they will collapse, but the people will still
Speaker 1: be there. And one yeah, yeah, they move very freely
Speaker 1: within these groups. It's frustrating um, which gets me into
Speaker 1: the matter of how their tactics have evolved, because this
Speaker 1: is what does concern me, because as ridiculous as these
Speaker 1: people are, they have hit upon some good tactics for
Speaker 1: getting away with the ship that they do. UM. At
Speaker 1: that Portland protest, I want to read you a quote
Speaker 1: from a Frontline PBS correspondent who described Patriot Front and
Speaker 1: how they presented themselves at Portland. I would say that
Speaker 1: it was perhaps a fascist rally in Portland, but not
Speaker 1: a white supremacist rally, and that's sort of a new
Speaker 1: wrinkle in the fire right movement. So the groups that
Speaker 1: were in Portland, they wanted you to know, hey, look,
Speaker 1: we're not racist, and many of them have had leaders
Speaker 1: who were people of color. But they also said, hey,
Speaker 1: we're really into fascist characters like Pinochet. The first guy
Speaker 1: I met had a huge shirt on that said Pinochet
Speaker 1: did nothing wrong, and other people had shirts on that
Speaker 1: would say things like right wing death squad. And so
Speaker 1: these people are what it would call multicultural, multi ethnic
Speaker 1: fascist groups that laud characters like Pinochet, and that just
Speaker 1: happened to be like nineties seven point eight percent white. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just happened to be the vast majority of white
Speaker 1: and they happened to have been caught online send which
Speaker 1: a racist ship. Yeah, almost all dudes. I have a
Speaker 1: question about one of these gripts is prayer in their name? Yeah?
Speaker 1: They do. They purport to be Christians, Yes, and they
Speaker 1: were saying that they were praying like they were having
Speaker 1: a prayer rally in Portland. So do they're have their
Speaker 1: churches like just barred them, given like withdrawn their membership,
Speaker 1: or given them any kind of church discipline. They're not evangelical,
Speaker 1: come out and just about Trump during all his mania. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of it. I wouldn't expect it. I'm
Speaker 1: just curious that there's been any any internal rejection of
Speaker 1: them from Christian community. I am sure there have been
Speaker 1: churches that have rejected them, particularly in Portland, but these
Speaker 1: guys are not affiliated with a particular church. They just
Speaker 1: claimed to be a group of patriotic anti communist activists.
Speaker 1: So that's again, that's the new camouflage the far right
Speaker 1: has and the people were going to be seeing today
Speaker 1: are people who will say they're white nationalists. Most of
Speaker 1: the movement has moved away from that and say white
Speaker 1: nationalism isn't a selling point, let's call ourselves anti communists.
Speaker 1: Well that yeah, So we're going to get more into
Speaker 1: the strategies with police that these people have evolved, and
Speaker 1: the wisdom of whether or not it's a good idea
Speaker 1: to punch and nazi. But first, ads, so, I want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit more about again how connected
Speaker 1: these groups are, because one of the things that they
Speaker 1: are doing to try and protect themselves and save their
Speaker 1: movement is to claim, like Patriot prayerbal claim, we have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Jason Kessler, we have nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the Traditional Workers Party, we have nothing to
Speaker 1: do with Charlottesville or any of those people, even though
Speaker 1: Joey Gibson, the founder of Patriot Prayer, has been photographed
Speaker 1: and found talking with a shipload of people who were
Speaker 1: at the first Unite the Right rally. UM. It's also
Speaker 1: worth noting that like Pinochet was the dictator of Chile
Speaker 1: and one of the things he did he had a
Speaker 1: lot of communists and quote unquote communists executed and including
Speaker 1: a lot of people thrown from helicopters. UM. Now, among
Speaker 1: the Patriot Prayer people, you saw a number of shirts
Speaker 1: with like flaming people from helicopters on them and with
Speaker 1: like pinocheted nothing wrong on them and right wing death
Speaker 1: squads and stuff. Because Pinochet had right wing death squads
Speaker 1: to kill communists, so they are willing to hearken back
Speaker 1: to that. And even a year or so before these
Speaker 1: guys were very active, the Pinochet of session was obvious
Speaker 1: on the far right, like in the In the chats
Speaker 1: from these various groups, I found more than a dozen
Speaker 1: references to throw in communists out of helicopters, mostly on
Speaker 1: anti comm which I think is kind of an intellectual
Speaker 1: precursor in a lot of ways to how Patriot Prayer
Speaker 1: is marketing themselves right now. Um. And there were also
Speaker 1: numerous references to right wing death squads uh and to Pinochet.
Speaker 1: So again, these groups will all try to say we're
Speaker 1: different from the fascists who marched in Charlottesville. We're different,
Speaker 1: but they're not different. They talk about the same things.
Speaker 1: They have a lot of the same members in common. Well,
Speaker 1: this is this is like the conservative Christian thing because
Speaker 1: they're all decentralized and they have so many splinter groups,
Speaker 1: but they all believe the same stuff that they're able
Speaker 1: to disavow each other and still promote the same ideas. Yes,
Speaker 1: and they are again. One of the things that's really
Speaker 1: frustrating is that a lot of the journalists covering these
Speaker 1: people do not do their due diligence. So they'll talk
Speaker 1: to Gavin Mechanics about the Proud Boys and he will say,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not a violent group. We don't start fights,
Speaker 1: but we will finish them. The violence you see in
Speaker 1: the media is us defending ourselves from lunatics who want
Speaker 1: us dead for no discernible reason. But if you actually
Speaker 1: do a little bit of digging, you can find other
Speaker 1: quotes from Gavin again Us, including this one from a
Speaker 1: right wing Canadian website called The Rebel quote. We're the
Speaker 1: only ones fighting these guys, and it's fun when they
Speaker 1: go low, go lower, Mason back, throw bricks at their heads.
Speaker 1: Let's destroy them. We've been doing it for a while now,
Speaker 1: and I gotta say it's really invigorating. Well, my question
Speaker 1: is what role do you think the media should be playing, Like, like,
Speaker 1: how can you report on these people correctly? I I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: so there's no way to say this without sounding like
Speaker 1: a little bit narcissistic, but I Like, what I am
Speaker 1: trying to do in my reporting on them is I'm
Speaker 1: i am not trying to report on their beliefs. I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to read out quotes about here's what they
Speaker 1: believe about the world. I'm gonna read you like a
Speaker 1: page of statistics about what they think about i q
Speaker 1: s and races, because that would bring the debate to
Speaker 1: their terms. Yes, what is important to talk about is
Speaker 1: what these people believe, what they say, and what they
Speaker 1: do in the streets, because you can't just ignore them
Speaker 1: because they are out there. They all marching and they
Speaker 1: are hurting people. If you're going to cover them, you
Speaker 1: have to do your legwork. You can't just say, Gavin mcginnison,
Speaker 1: the Proud Boys deny any involvement with a violent group
Speaker 1: and say that they're not you know, they're a multi
Speaker 1: racial group or whatnot. You have to look at the
Speaker 1: quotes from these guys where they say incredibly racist shit. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like there's a you can even find it on their website.
Speaker 1: So in that article Gavin wrote called we are not
Speaker 1: all Right, he had a quote where he said there
Speaker 1: are no racial requirements to be in the Proud Boys.
Speaker 1: There are no special rules for black proud boys. But
Speaker 1: then he said this overrides anything previously published about black
Speaker 1: proud boys, which means that at some point he had
Speaker 1: special rules if you were going to be black and
Speaker 1: a proud boy. It takes very cursory research to find
Speaker 1: out all of the back chatter sort of and all
Speaker 1: of the times where these guys contradict each other and
Speaker 1: where they are clearly racist. But you have to do
Speaker 1: that research otherwise you're just letting them present themselves. So
Speaker 1: you have to zoom out a little bit further than
Speaker 1: you would do for a specific event based reporting and
Speaker 1: look at the like the context of the entire worldview
Speaker 1: and the conversation that's come beforehand. And you need to
Speaker 1: pay journalists more so that they have time to do
Speaker 1: that research. Yes, you need a journalist who will go
Speaker 1: at them kind of in the style referred to as
Speaker 1: kind of like bulldogging, like, um, just keep hitting them
Speaker 1: with things like on this day, on at this time,
Speaker 1: on this website, you said this, what do you have
Speaker 1: to say for yourself? And then like as they're trying
Speaker 1: to spin it away when they try to pivot, go
Speaker 1: for another one. Well, on this day, on this session,
Speaker 1: like have your ammunition high school debate side have have
Speaker 1: the receipts, make them answer you. Well, it is basic
Speaker 1: debate tactics. If you make them answer you, they're losing. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: Like That's that's what you have to do. You don't
Speaker 1: come to them and say, well, like NPR did, tell
Speaker 1: me what you believe, you come and say you tweeted
Speaker 1: this about Heather Hair. Are you still saying it was
Speaker 1: ambient like you said? Because again, we have thousands of
Speaker 1: things that Jason Kessler posted in these quotes, including an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of really racist ship, which I'm not going
Speaker 1: to read out here, but just type in racial layers
Speaker 1: into the search database that unicorn Right has provided for
Speaker 1: these guys quotes, and you will find them talking about
Speaker 1: racist ship. It is not hard. It's very easy to
Speaker 1: as in specific racist. You type in any slur, you'll
Speaker 1: find a bunch of conversations um or you just type
Speaker 1: in his name he was mad dimension on the form.
Speaker 1: So if you type that into the search thing that
Speaker 1: unicorn right provides, you can find everything he said, and
Speaker 1: you can find plenty of evidence that Jason Kessler is
Speaker 1: as racist as someone helped me with a with a
Speaker 1: the day is long. Oh there we go. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: we we are in the South. So as NBR done
Speaker 1: a counter counterbalancing interview too. If they gave him three
Speaker 1: minutes a fare time, did they give someone else three
Speaker 1: minutes a fair time? That should have that No, but
Speaker 1: they did during the same day kind of equate Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter as like the opposite of these guys in
Speaker 1: a way that basically implied that the Black Lives Matter
Speaker 1: is as extreme as these guys and just being like, hey,
Speaker 1: we'd like to stop being shot. That'd be fantastic. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter is nowhere near as radical as Malcolm
Speaker 1: X's followers or anything. They're very very well. Even Malcolm
Speaker 1: X wasn't that radical, Like it shouldn't be radical to
Speaker 1: just say we don't want to be shot anymore. It's
Speaker 1: not that complicated, but it is. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of false equivocation happening. And that's exactly the point of
Speaker 1: a group like anti comm and I what I think
Speaker 1: is their mental descendants Patriot Prayer, because their goal their
Speaker 1: and their goal is to say Anti fall is not
Speaker 1: an organization. There's no national Antifa. There are different cities
Speaker 1: and whatnot. But everyone should be anti fascist. It's not
Speaker 1: like and if you I started interviewing anti fascist activists before,
Speaker 1: like right before the election and a little bit after,
Speaker 1: and this was back before anti fall was a word
Speaker 1: most people knew. And there were a few dozen of
Speaker 1: these people really who were active around the world outside
Speaker 1: of a place like the UK where it was common,
Speaker 1: it was not. It's it's not an organization that exists
Speaker 1: to further in ideology. It is grassroots organizations that have
Speaker 1: started because there's Nazis marching, and what the Nazis are
Speaker 1: trying to do is say no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: These people are communist activists and so we're not fascist
Speaker 1: activists were anti communists. They're essentially trying to turn around.
Speaker 1: They're trying to make themselves look reactionary against a group
Speaker 1: that doesn't have a coherent ideology. And is it self reactionary, yes,
Speaker 1: And they're doing that in order to gain the sympathy
Speaker 1: of the police and moderate conservatives um, because that is
Speaker 1: what worked in Germany in the nineteen thirties. That's why
Speaker 1: Hitler came to power in large degree, because the German
Speaker 1: Centrists and German conservatives and we go over this on
Speaker 1: our episode about the non Nazi bastards behind Hitler. So
Speaker 1: I won't labor the point too long, but I will
Speaker 1: say everybody should read True Believer because it gets into
Speaker 1: all of this and it's a real short book and
Speaker 1: the death of democracy. Um, but these guys. One of
Speaker 1: the points that these guys are not ignorant about the
Speaker 1: history of the Nazi Party. They have also done their
Speaker 1: reading on how Hitler rose to power, and they know
Speaker 1: what works. They have the pook, they have the playbook,
Speaker 1: and it's worked once before. So I think actually at
Speaker 1: this point, I do want to kind of go around
Speaker 1: the table and get sort of your expectations of everybody
Speaker 1: for how this protest is going to go today, because
Speaker 1: probably in about an hour or so from now, will
Speaker 1: be face to face with the members of the fascist
Speaker 1: parties in the United States who are willing to call
Speaker 1: themselves white nationalists or fascists. So what do you expect,
Speaker 1: And let's start with Nick. I expect that they want
Speaker 1: us to start ship. I expect that they will be
Speaker 1: as inflammatory as possible. They're gonna say things, They're gonna
Speaker 1: try to like make eye contact, They're gonna try to
Speaker 1: like draw us in. I will be interested to see
Speaker 1: what they chant because, like one of the things that
Speaker 1: made the march in Charlotte's feel so startling to people
Speaker 1: with some of the like legitimately scary things they were chanting.
Speaker 1: Like just hearing the audio of those people chanting like
Speaker 1: blood and soiled blood and so like that scared people. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: and I mean that one sounds lamer so, but like
Speaker 1: I think that they're going to try to do stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Second one, like the Jews will not replace
Speaker 1: or whatever. They're gonna try to be like as specifically
Speaker 1: insulting as possible to try to get someone to snap.
Speaker 1: And you when we lad a phone conversation prior to
Speaker 1: coming out here, you talked to me about something that
Speaker 1: those chances made you remember from your time in the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps, right, they So I will refer to the
Speaker 1: to the boot camp process in the Marine Corps brainwashing,
Speaker 1: which not everybody likes because it's an ugly word, but
Speaker 1: it is what it is. It's real, it's exactly, it
Speaker 1: is exactly what it is in the Marine Corps. What
Speaker 1: one of the things that's intended in boot camp is
Speaker 1: just basically what they want is the military has no
Speaker 1: use for just a regular human personality with all of
Speaker 1: its chaos and disorder. So what they do is they
Speaker 1: strip out your personality through a lot of psychological crap,
Speaker 1: and then they build a new personality that values order
Speaker 1: and authoritarianism, and then your old personality, depending on how
Speaker 1: strong you your personality was to begin with, it grows back. Um,
Speaker 1: some people it doesn't grow back. And those are the
Speaker 1: guys that like have a high end tight for the
Speaker 1: next forty years and like treat their kids like their
Speaker 1: kids are at boot camp and you know, like I
Speaker 1: had a gun any like that way, there was like
Speaker 1: a a platoon like a dinner or something, and his
Speaker 1: kids were standing at attention by the wall like that
Speaker 1: kind of creepy ship. Those guys, their personality never grew back.
Speaker 1: The rest of us, our personalities grew back, and after
Speaker 1: a few years the brainwashing starts to wear off, but
Speaker 1: you still have the basic frame of a very orderly,
Speaker 1: authoritarian marine. Um, if you put a bunch of veterans
Speaker 1: in the room and give them basic constructions on how
Speaker 1: to do a task none of them have ever done before,
Speaker 1: you will find a lot of times they still complete
Speaker 1: the task faster and more efficiently than a group of
Speaker 1: civilians who have gone through it once before and so
Speaker 1: connect to the chance the chanting um. One of the
Speaker 1: ways that you get people to sync up together is
Speaker 1: if you can make them say the same thing at
Speaker 1: the same time over and over again. It makes people
Speaker 1: feel like a group. We are heard creatures. If you
Speaker 1: make us all chant one to three four, I Love
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps over and over again, you begin to
Speaker 1: believe the things you're saying and be feel like a
Speaker 1: big piece of biological evidence for that. With like parasynthetic responses.
Speaker 1: In terms of meditating with a group and chanting together,
Speaker 1: your body does get into the same kind of rhythm
Speaker 1: and breathing pattern. It's call and response and um. The
Speaker 1: chanting blood and soil, Blood and soil isn't really that
Speaker 1: different from you know, going on a run and then
Speaker 1: the person calling Cadence sings something that everyone knows how
Speaker 1: to respond, and they all respond and it makes you
Speaker 1: I mean, people make fun of calling Cadence and stuff
Speaker 1: in the Marine Corps, but there's no doubt that it
Speaker 1: makes you feel like part of the team, and it's
Speaker 1: a part of you see it in the military, you
Speaker 1: see it in pep rallies in school where everybody's chanting
Speaker 1: there whatever their team slogans are, and it works, It
Speaker 1: really works. It's a psychological tool. So they will probably
Speaker 1: try to do things like that, and one of the
Speaker 1: ways to defeat that is either to make it hard
Speaker 1: for them to focus, and frankly, white people aren't great
Speaker 1: at rhythm, so another thing to do is to chant
Speaker 1: over them and chant things that do the opposite what
Speaker 1: they're trying to do, scare them. Like a chance that
Speaker 1: I would like to hear out there. I don't know
Speaker 1: if anybody could get it going with a chance I
Speaker 1: would like to hear out there is we are many,
Speaker 1: they are a few, because one of the things they're
Speaker 1: very afraid of is that being outnumbered and having a
Speaker 1: thousand black people being like, there's a lot more of
Speaker 1: us in there our view here, we'll break that feeling
Speaker 1: of like well, a lot of the old the old
Speaker 1: resistance chants from like the sixties have that kind of
Speaker 1: mindset like that we will overcome song like that. That's
Speaker 1: the same kind of you know, because we both come
Speaker 1: from that like church conservative background, singing together in church,
Speaker 1: exact same thing. I don't know, you want to talk
Speaker 1: about your expectations for today. I'm not really sure what
Speaker 1: to expect. It depends on the numbers. But I do
Speaker 1: agree with Nick here that they really want to be
Speaker 1: seen as the victims, and so they will try to
Speaker 1: provoke things that will make it look like they're the
Speaker 1: victim and sent um. It's just schoolyard bullying tactics. That's
Speaker 1: kind of what I'm anticipating, and the point is to
Speaker 1: not let them get a rise out of us. I'm
Speaker 1: not expecting that much. Like I think it's going to
Speaker 1: be a hundred of the guys the first wave fashion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be like very sunburned white
Speaker 1: people who like don't look scary at all. Like, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's going to be as intimidating. Is maybe
Speaker 1: they are hoping to because they're not open carrying this time, correct? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think Yeah. I think a city like DC, it's
Speaker 1: a very black city. It's a city where you know,
Speaker 1: you don't fuck the people from d C. I think
Speaker 1: that all of the nonsense that you see in other places, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think any of that ship is going to
Speaker 1: fly here. Yeah. I was really happy to hear it
Speaker 1: was going to be in DC because d C is
Speaker 1: used to protests and mass movements, and the police here
Speaker 1: are equipped to de escalate things definitely. Like during Occupy
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I want to occupy New York
Speaker 1: are a couple you know out on the West coast.
Speaker 1: DC was by far the most well managed in terms
Speaker 1: of police interactions. Because this is DC. There's a protest
Speaker 1: of some kind every weekend. The police. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: the big champion of the police, but the police when
Speaker 1: it comes to you know, big rallies and stuff, like,
Speaker 1: they know what they're doing. And so I think that
Speaker 1: if it was any other city, I would be worried.
Speaker 1: I will be concerned. I will be maybe even scared.
Speaker 1: I just think in d C, like this is my home.
Speaker 1: Like I just know that we we don't put up
Speaker 1: with that ship. And I would, you know, I would.
Speaker 1: I would love to see some of these guys like
Speaker 1: on the Metro with your average DC Metro ridership. I
Speaker 1: thought that was really cute that they wanted their own
Speaker 1: private metro cars and they thought that that that that
Speaker 1: would fly here. Yeah. I don't know what, you know
Speaker 1: what it was unions? Yeah, no, yeah, the the union,
Speaker 1: the Metro Union was like, hell no, let's go back
Speaker 1: a little and explain that, because there was rumors about
Speaker 1: a week or so ago. I think that the DC
Speaker 1: Metro would essentially be giving three train cars to the
Speaker 1: to the protesters, to clansmen essentially and and Nazi activists
Speaker 1: to sort of privately take them in and out of
Speaker 1: where they were going to march. And then the the
Speaker 1: Metro Union was like, we will go on strike the
Speaker 1: whole weekend, which like, they never go on straight. They'll
Speaker 1: put up with anything. So if that's their limit, pretty good.
Speaker 1: And again, the first target of the Nazis in Germany
Speaker 1: was the trade unions, the first target before the Jews,
Speaker 1: before anybody. Uh yeah, so wait, what are you expecting.
Speaker 1: I'm expecting about a hundred and fifty to two hundred
Speaker 1: Nazis and activists and uh my worst case scenario expectation
Speaker 1: is that the police will be jumpy, which again I
Speaker 1: agree with Bridget that's not as likely in d C
Speaker 1: as it was in Portland. The worst case scenarios, you know,
Speaker 1: the police start firing tear gas and rubber bullets into
Speaker 1: the crowd. Um, I expect if there's violence it will
Speaker 1: either be so I've read all the planning chats for
Speaker 1: these guys, and Kessler like one of the things he
Speaker 1: says over and over and is that if this gets violent,
Speaker 1: we're done as a movement. So Jason Kessler does not
Speaker 1: want today to be violent, but other members of his
Speaker 1: group talked regularly about hoping to get in fights with
Speaker 1: anti flaw and hoping they have an excuse to be
Speaker 1: violent at this rally. They want to get there. They
Speaker 1: move up a degree. Although these guys aren't Proud Boys,
Speaker 1: although some of them might be, but they they're not.
Speaker 1: The Proud Boys are not openly allowed to attend this
Speaker 1: event um, but they still put a lot of cash
Speaker 1: a and being involved in fights. Um. So if there's violence,
Speaker 1: it's possible it'll start with the anti fascist activists just
Speaker 1: getting too hot under the collar. There's also a bunch
Speaker 1: of wild cards among these guys, um. Which does bring
Speaker 1: me to someone I want to bring up in terms
Speaker 1: of what scares me potentially about this rally. Does anybody
Speaker 1: know about Vassilios Pistoles. He is a guy who showed
Speaker 1: up to unite the right one and I think he
Speaker 1: marched with the traditional workers party that don't off the
Speaker 1: top of my head. But he was a member of
Speaker 1: a group called adam Waffen, which is the German word
Speaker 1: for atomic weapons. And adam Waffen is a fairly small group,
Speaker 1: but one of the more they like. There's multiple murders
Speaker 1: associated with Adam. Often they've killed a number of people
Speaker 1: and attempted, yeah in the US and attempted to carry
Speaker 1: out terrorist attacks. Uh. Now, Vassilos Pistoles was one of
Speaker 1: the most violent people at the first Unite the Right rally.
Speaker 1: There's at least three videos of him very clearly committing
Speaker 1: assault um like beating people with sticks. I think one
Speaker 1: person went up in the hospital because of the violence
Speaker 1: he did. Uh. He was found at the time through
Speaker 1: the work of an activist who I'm not going to
Speaker 1: name on this it doesn't hide her involvement, but I
Speaker 1: don't want to add any harassment. But but an activist
Speaker 1: who was at Charlottesville and attacked at Charlottesville exposed this guy.
Speaker 1: He was an active duty United States Marine and it
Speaker 1: took a surprising length of time for the core to
Speaker 1: separate this guy. And he's not the only member of
Speaker 1: the United States Armed Forces. One study that I found
Speaker 1: suggests that about one quarter of all active duty U
Speaker 1: S soldiers have met a white nationalist while on duty.
Speaker 1: Like in the military, I actually met a like literally
Speaker 1: car carrying member of the KKK when I was in
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps. Um a guy was in my office
Speaker 1: and he was like part of one of the other platoons,
Speaker 1: and he tried to tell me that it was just
Speaker 1: a local community organization, it wasn't about racism anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: So I told him that racism is a primitive caveman idea,
Speaker 1: and then he was an idiot for being one because
Speaker 1: I was trying to get him to fight me in
Speaker 1: my office. Since if there's a thing that I could
Speaker 1: have gotten away with when I was in the Marine
Speaker 1: Corps would have been beating the ship out of a
Speaker 1: KKK member as a black guy in my office, Like
Speaker 1: I could have been like, sir, it was a Nazi.
Speaker 1: What the fund did you want me? Like? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: all we're gonna have for today. We're about to go.
Speaker 1: As we've record this, we're probably about the thirty or
Speaker 1: forty five minutes at from from reaching the protest location.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna go do that. And then the next yeah,
Speaker 1: we gotta grab some Dorito's, protest Doritos and protest water,
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna go March. And so the next
Speaker 1: episode that drops on Thursday will will be us talking
Speaker 1: about that um and we'll we'll also talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the history of punching Nazis and how well
Speaker 1: it tends to work historically. Not that any of us
Speaker 1: are planning to punch Nazis, but it is a subject
Speaker 1: of debate to punch. All of us know how to punch.
Speaker 1: And this is the city where Richard Spencer was punched
Speaker 1: during the inauguration. So if everybody, basically every guy at
Speaker 1: every radical house party I went to after that was like, hey, baby,
Speaker 1: that was me. I've got a hundred of guys who
Speaker 1: conclaimed with the puncher. Okay, Well, for a look into
Speaker 1: the history of punching Nazis and whether or not that's
Speaker 1: a good idea, because it's very much debatable, and for
Speaker 1: our after rally experiences. You will have to check it
Speaker 1: on Thursday when we were recording all of that, or
Speaker 1: when we will be daring all of that. We're already
Speaker 1: recording it. Time is a flat circle. It's a relative concept.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. This has been behind the Bastards. You
Speaker 1: can find us online at www dot behind the bastards
Speaker 1: dot com. You can find us on Twitter at Instagram
Speaker 1: at Bastards pod, and you can find me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at I Right. Okay, see you guys soon. H h
Speaker 1: h h