Speaker 1: Cool zone Media.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety five, a middle aged former marine decided
Speaker 2: to go back to school. He'd been out of the
Speaker 2: service for years. He had already had an entire second
Speaker 2: career as a mining engineer, but he was having trouble
Speaker 2: finding a job. On the eve of the dot com boom,
Speaker 2: he saw an opportunity for a new direction. He enrolled
Speaker 2: at Arizona State University to study computers. That first semester,
Speaker 2: he enrolled in a class called Introduction to Macintosh. Through
Speaker 2: the university, he had unlimited access to the World Wide Web,
Speaker 2: accessible twenty four to seven at the school's on campus
Speaker 2: computer center. By day, he learned the basics of computer programming,
Speaker 2: but at night, alone in the computer lab, he browsed
Speaker 2: the web. It was there that he first discovered websites
Speaker 2: devoted to white nationalism. He devoured the writings of doctor
Speaker 2: William Luther Pierce, the leader of the neo Nazi group
Speaker 2: National Alliance. He created an account on a forum for
Speaker 2: followers of the World Church of the Creator, and within
Speaker 2: months he was invited to meet in person with the
Speaker 2: leadership of the local chapters of both organizations. Ralph Brandt
Speaker 2: enrolled in computer classes looking for a third act, and
Speaker 2: I guess he got one. I don't know how proficient
Speaker 2: he ever got at computer programming, but in the thirty
Speaker 2: years since he first stumbled upon an online forum for racists,
Speaker 2: he's found purpose. Now, at nearly seventy six years old,
Speaker 2: he's the chairman of white nationalist group angling for a Comeback.
Speaker 2: I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird, Little guys. This week,
Speaker 2: more than ever, I have felt overwhelmed by the realization
Speaker 2: that this show doesn't really have individual episodes. There are
Speaker 2: no self contained stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. This
Speaker 2: has all just been one really long story that I'm
Speaker 2: telling out of order. The last two main Feed episodes,
Speaker 2: I told you a story about Merlin Miller, a failed
Speaker 2: filmmaker who fell down a rabbit hole after nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: became obsessed with conspiracy theories, and ran for president in
Speaker 2: twenty twelve on the ticket of an openly white supremacist,
Speaker 2: fascist eugenicis political party called the American Third Position Party.
Speaker 2: And in that second episode, I hinted that the group
Speaker 2: behind his candidacy hasn't really gone away. In the aftermath
Speaker 2: of Merlin Miller's disastrous run for president, the party rebranded. Remember,
Speaker 2: the group originally formed out of the collapse of a
Speaker 2: California group called the Golden State Party, so named because
Speaker 2: it was mostly made up of members of the neo
Speaker 2: Nazi skinhead group, the Golden State Skinheads. So the Golden
Speaker 2: State Party collapsed in two thousand and nine, and they
Speaker 2: regrouped as the American Third Position Party in twenty ten,
Speaker 2: and then the group rebranded again as the American Freedom
Speaker 2: Party in December of twenty twelve. And my plan for
Speaker 2: the next episode, this one, the one you're listening to now,
Speaker 2: was just to speed run through the party's activities over
Speaker 2: the decade that followed, bringing us all the way back
Speaker 2: up to the present day, and then be done with it.
Speaker 2: But I think we're going to have to revisit some
Speaker 2: parts of this story in more depth some other time,
Speaker 2: maybe not next week. As I was scrounging around and
Speaker 2: compiling my notes and collecting filings from failed campaigns, and
Speaker 2: watching grainy old videos of speeches at White Nationalists summits
Speaker 2: held in hotel conference rooms, and listening to Nazi podcasts
Speaker 2: at double speed, just wishing that they would get to
Speaker 2: the point, I started to feel a little bit crazed.
Speaker 2: I mean that's not unusual, to be honest, that happens
Speaker 2: a lot. It's maddening work for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 2: But I kept coming across familiar names, familiar organizations, people
Speaker 2: and places and things that I didn't expect to see
Speaker 2: in this story, finding connections to past episodes and to
Speaker 2: stories I haven't written yet. There's a psychological phenomenon called apophenia.
Speaker 2: It's a tendency to see patterns where they don't exist,
Speaker 2: to find connections between unrelated things, to see meaning in
Speaker 2: random stimuli. In its most extreme, it can be a
Speaker 2: symptom of mental illnesses like schizophrenia or obsessive compulsive disorder.
Speaker 2: But you also see it on display in the writings
Speaker 2: of conspiracy theorists, and you've definitely seen it at work
Speaker 2: if you know someone with a gambling problem. But it's
Speaker 2: a cognitive bias we all experience from time to time,
Speaker 2: seeing shapes in the clouds, seeing a man in the moon,
Speaker 2: finding meaning, and coincidentally looking at your watch at eleven eleven.
Speaker 2: We all get a little apophenia now and then, and
Speaker 2: it's something I try to be really vigilant about. Am
Speaker 2: I seeing connections in my research because they're real, or
Speaker 2: am I just getting that rush of recognition because at
Speaker 2: this point I have at least a few pages of
Speaker 2: notes on almost every prominent white supremacist active in the
Speaker 2: United States for the last five decades, and everything just
Speaker 2: feels a little familiar. And theirs really is a small world.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the same guy pops up in a few seemingly
Speaker 2: unrelated places, because there's only so many places for that
Speaker 2: guy to be if he's been active in the movement
Speaker 2: over the course of many years. I try to keep
Speaker 2: that pretty front of mind so I don't drive myself
Speaker 2: completely mad, you know, But sometimes sometimes it feels like
Speaker 2: everything is connected because it is. It's not a coincidence.
Speaker 2: It's not apophenia, it's not conspiratorial thinking. It's not my
Speaker 2: mind finally buckling under the weight of the horrors. Sometimes
Speaker 2: if you dig down deep enough, it's the same guy's
Speaker 2: name on all the paperwork. Remember earlier this year when
Speaker 2: I accidentally spent three months writing about white supremacist terrorism
Speaker 2: and apartheid South Africa, if you can remember back that far.
Speaker 2: Those episodes started with vignette about this series of rallies
Speaker 2: held in twenty twelve, organized by Monica Huggett Stone's South
Speaker 2: Africa Project. But the main rally, the big one, the
Speaker 2: one in Sacramento, Monica wasn't actually there. The actual on
Speaker 2: the ground organizers in Sacramento were the Golden State Skinheads,
Speaker 2: the same group that originally approached William Daniel Johnson to
Speaker 2: remake their Golden State Party into the American Third Position Party.
Speaker 2: And here's Mike Myers, the leader of the Golden State Skinheads,
Speaker 2: whose name is actually Michael SESAMs, taking credit for that
Speaker 2: pro apartheid rally when he gave a speech at the
Speaker 2: American Freedom Party conference a year later.
Speaker 3: We've thrown rallies, filed for in game permits, and dealt
Speaker 3: with the logistics of planning many successful protests, like the
Speaker 3: National South Africa Project last year in Sacramento, the NTI
Speaker 3: League Immigration protests in Sacramento this year. And that's a
Speaker 3: nation about happy dozen or so other activism related events.
Speaker 3: And just as pasture of the law.
Speaker 2: And when I went back and looked at the pictures
Speaker 2: of those rallies in twenty twelve, there's William Daniel Johnson
Speaker 2: in photos of the South Africa Project rally held in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles in February of twenty twelve. And it's no
Speaker 2: coincidence that William Daniel Johnson was a member of the
Speaker 2: board of directors at the Foundation for the Marketplace of Ideas,
Speaker 2: a nonprofit founded by white supremacist lawyer Kyle Bristow with
Speaker 2: the goal of being an ACLU for the alt right.
Speaker 2: The foundation raised the money for the series of lawsuits
Speaker 2: that Bristow filed against colleges and universities in twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: to force them to allow Richard Spencer to speak on campus.
Speaker 2: When that foundation fell apart, one of its other board members,
Speaker 2: a man whose name you've heard before, Augustus solen Victus,
Speaker 2: tried to start something similar, and he called it the
Speaker 2: Conservative Legal Defense Fund. That too, is now defunct, But
Speaker 2: the incorporation paperwork for that group shows that American Freedom
Speaker 2: Party board members Jamie Kelso and William Daniel Johnson were
Speaker 2: not only involved, but they were using Johnson's law office
Speaker 2: as the mailing address. And it's no coincidence that Nathan
Speaker 2: Dimigo was invited to speak at the party's conference earlier
Speaker 2: this year. He actually got his start in organized racism
Speaker 2: a decade ago as a member of the American Freedom Party.
Speaker 2: Before he founded Identity Europa in twenty sixteen, he was
Speaker 2: leading the American Freedom Party's short lived youth division, a
Speaker 2: group called National Youth Front. Identity Europa didn't publicly maintain
Speaker 2: ties to the American Freedom Party, but it does appear
Speaker 2: to have originally just been a rebranding of National Youth
Speaker 2: Front after a similarly named but not racist group threatened
Speaker 2: to sue over the use of the name. And here's
Speaker 2: Nathan Dimigo in December of twenty fifteen talking to Richard
Speaker 2: Spencer about the upcoming launch of a renamed National Youth Front.
Speaker 2: This is just three months before he re emerged as
Speaker 2: the leader of Identity Europa.
Speaker 4: We're going to be looking at relaunching in a few
Speaker 4: months from now, and it's going to be, in a
Speaker 4: way a much.
Speaker 1: More mature organization.
Speaker 4: It's going to be a European rights organization explicitly.
Speaker 2: Nathan Dimigo's reappearance at this year's American Freedom Party conference
Speaker 2: was a little bit of a surprise to me. He'd
Speaker 2: mostly stepped back from active organizing since the twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: United the Right rally. He filed for bankruptcy to try
Speaker 2: to get out from under a lawsuit filed against him
Speaker 2: and the other organizers of that deadly rally, but he
Speaker 2: lost the lawsuit in twenty twenty one, and a bankruptcy
Speaker 2: court ruled just last week that the judgment is not
Speaker 2: dischargeable in his bankruptcy case. He is currently appealing that
Speaker 2: decision with the help of movement lawyer Glen Allen. Glen Allen,
Speaker 2: you may recall from the last episode, was the Nazi
Speaker 2: lawyer who helped Merlin Miller start his American Eagle Party
Speaker 2: after he left the American Freedom Party. And Nathan Dimigo
Speaker 2: isn't the only Identity Europa member to resurface in connection
Speaker 2: with the American Freedom Party. After Identity Europa collapsed for
Speaker 2: good in twenty twenty, some former members were turned to
Speaker 2: the group that spawneded, joining the American Freedom Party. Notably,
Speaker 2: the party's current executive director is a former Identity Europa
Speaker 2: member who calls himself John Fassbender. So there are a
Speaker 2: lot of threads to pull here, and there's no way
Speaker 2: to unravel the whole ball of yarn today. So I
Speaker 2: suppose we should start with what the American Freedom Party
Speaker 2: even is, or rather what it is not.
Speaker 4: These views are not. They're not weird, they're not bad, right,
Speaker 4: and they're held by totally normal people.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're off to a bad start. That's the party's
Speaker 2: executive director, John Fasspender, very unconvincingly claiming that they're not weird.
Speaker 2: I don't buy it. But that's not the only lie
Speaker 2: he tells on podcasts. The American Freedom Party is not
Speaker 2: a duly registered national political party, and that's a very
Speaker 2: specific claim that he makes in almost every interview. It
Speaker 2: just isn't, but Fastpender is quite adamant that it is.
Speaker 2: Here he is boasting about it to Macedonian nationalist podcaster
Speaker 2: Nick Gilvie in late twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: In fact, we are currently the only registered political party
Speaker 4: that expeuses pro wide views in the United States right now.
Speaker 4: There are plenty of provide organizations, but they do not
Speaker 4: have say, valid access, the ability to run candidates and
Speaker 4: so on and so forth. So we take great pride
Speaker 4: in that it is something we work tirelessly to maintain.
Speaker 2: And when he went on Jilvi's show again in April
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty four, he made the same claim.
Speaker 4: Yes, we are a political party. We have gone through
Speaker 4: the process we have registered.
Speaker 5: We have obtained the necessary signatures to obtain valid access
Speaker 5: in various states across the country.
Speaker 2: Here's Fastbender telling Nazi podcaster Nick Gregory about it in
Speaker 2: November of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: The American Freedom Party is the only duly registered political
Speaker 4: party in the United States that is with the ability
Speaker 4: to run candidates that is to say, which represents pro
Speaker 4: white ideals, that is to say, American nationalist principles, white identitarian ideals.
Speaker 2: Back in twenty twenty two, a member of the party's
Speaker 2: board told Ryan Sanchez, a Groper aligned Nazi podcaster who
Speaker 2: calls himself the Culture War Criminal, that their status as
Speaker 2: a federal political party did come with some downsides, like
Speaker 2: an inability to accept large anonymous cryptocurrency donations, and as.
Speaker 6: A registered political party with the Feral Elections Commission.
Speaker 5: We.
Speaker 6: Have some issues with crypto as well, in terms of
Speaker 6: how much crypto we can take. So crypto is not
Speaker 6: something we're doing right now directly through the party.
Speaker 2: I know that's an important point. There are some pretty
Speaker 2: specific rules, regulations, and laws about how a political party
Speaker 2: handles money. I won't claim to know or understand all
Speaker 2: of them. You can get pretty confusing, but surely the
Speaker 2: guy running a political party would have a passing familiarity
Speaker 2: with at least the broad strokes of how that sort
Speaker 2: of thing works.
Speaker 7: Right there. One question was what does it take to
Speaker 7: register as a political party? Is the process complicated? And
Speaker 7: then another person pointed out that part of the reason
Speaker 7: of the LCD is that donations to parties are public record.
Speaker 7: Do you have any comments on that, because I know
Speaker 7: that's something that people talk about all the time. There
Speaker 7: is the op SEC issue of like if I send
Speaker 7: you the fifty dollars for the year membership, right, is
Speaker 7: that publicly known?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 5: Well, I'll say this as far as you know the
Speaker 5: accounting aspect of it, and as far as you know
Speaker 5: how information is, what information is public record and what
Speaker 5: information isn't. I couldn't give in accurate answer because it's
Speaker 5: just not my my level of understanding on that end
Speaker 5: of things in the party. Definitely, when it comes to
Speaker 5: finances and so on, I'm pretty pretty much ignorant. That
Speaker 5: being said, as far as you know sending in donations
Speaker 5: and how it is to register as a political party,
Speaker 5: first of all, it is there.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 5: It is a bit complicated, you know, it does require
Speaker 5: a lot of you.
Speaker 4: Know, basically a lot of paperwork filing.
Speaker 2: Oh dear. In May of twenty twenty three, the party's
Speaker 2: executive director had no idea if membership dues are being
Speaker 2: reported as donations to a political party. It doesn't sound
Speaker 2: like he knows what, if any reporting is being done
Speaker 2: at all, But he does know that, despite the immense
Speaker 2: complexity of the paperwork, somebody definitely filed that paperwork that
Speaker 2: makes them a real political party. And just one more,
Speaker 2: This one is both very specific and extremely recent. Fassbender
Speaker 2: was interviewed by a Canadian white nationalist and aspiring musician,
Speaker 2: Steve Hansen, just a few weeks ago. There's no wiggle
Speaker 2: room here, Fassbender clearly says, the organization is a federally
Speaker 2: recognized political party.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know this is a federal political party, correct, Correct?
Speaker 2: But like I said, no, they're not. I'll admit to
Speaker 2: you right now, I don't know how to run a
Speaker 2: political party either, but I didn't put my face on
Speaker 2: a website claiming to, so I think we can all
Speaker 2: agree to cut me some slack on the subject. To
Speaker 2: be recognized as a political party, you have to register
Speaker 2: for state and local elections that may just be at
Speaker 2: the state level, and the rules in every state are different.
Speaker 2: There are certain activities and fundraising thresholds where a state
Speaker 2: level party committee may have to register with the Federal
Speaker 2: Election Commission, but honestly I don't care enough to find
Speaker 2: out more about that. And of course, to be a
Speaker 2: political party at the national level, well, you've got a
Speaker 2: file paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and they did try.
Speaker 2: I mean, anyone can fill out a form and send
Speaker 2: in a piece of paper. That doesn't mean it worked.
Speaker 2: Someone filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission last month
Speaker 2: to form the American Fart Party, along with paperwork for
Speaker 2: a Fart Party candidate committee running for Senate in Iowa.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that the Fart Party is real. It
Speaker 2: just means technically somebody committed a federal crime, although it's
Speaker 2: extremely unlikely to be prosecuted. The Fart Party was obviously
Speaker 2: someone's idea of a joke that's actually really common. The
Speaker 2: FEC receives mountains of prank filings every year. They revised
Speaker 2: the rules in twenty sixteen just to make it a
Speaker 2: little bit easier to throw away the ones that were
Speaker 2: obviously and intentionally fictitious. They're a wreck high number of
Speaker 2: fake filings that election cycle. A teenager in Iowa who
Speaker 2: filed a statement of candidacy for D's Nuts told ABC
Speaker 2: News in twenty sixteen, one of the main reasons that
Speaker 2: I ultimately filed was because I found out they had
Speaker 2: little staff, resources or authority, and we're supposed to trust
Speaker 2: these guys with our elections. I have made it public
Speaker 2: that I've withdrawn from the race, but I do not
Speaker 2: apologize for what I did. The FEC is vastly underfunded,
Speaker 2: and while it seems like I have a burning hatred
Speaker 2: of the FEC, I actually support the FAC getting additional funding.
Speaker 2: Thank you, dse Nuts. And like I said, it is
Speaker 2: technically against the law to knowingly file paperwork with the
Speaker 2: Federal Election Commission that contains false or fictitious information, but
Speaker 2: enforcement is vanishingly rare. Investigations tend to be limited to
Speaker 2: high profile incidents involving real people, like fake paperwork filed
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty claiming to be authorized by Kanye West. So,
Speaker 2: whether it's an obvious joke like the Fart Party, or
Speaker 2: someone who just honestly doesn't know what they're doing, like
Speaker 2: the American Freedom Party. Someone at the Federal Election Commission
Speaker 2: is reading every piece of paperwork that gets filed. They're understaffed, underfunded,
Speaker 2: under resourced in every way imaginable. But they process the
Speaker 2: paperwork and when the paperwork is inadequate, they send back
Speaker 2: something called a Request for Additional Information an RFAI. It's
Speaker 2: a form letter. It's not really personalized, but there's a
Speaker 2: little bit of text in there explaining exactly what was
Speaker 2: in SIFIA about your filing. Maybe the committee treasurer forgot
Speaker 2: to sign it. Maybe the number at the bottom of
Speaker 2: a column of dollar amounts isn't the correct sum. Maybe
Speaker 2: they just don't think your name is really Jesus Christ
Speaker 2: or Forrest Gump, whatever it is. You'll get the RFAI
Speaker 2: and then you have a chance to file a corrected form.
Speaker 2: Back in twenty twelve, when Merlin Miller was running for
Speaker 2: president on the party's ticket, they did file some paperwork.
Speaker 2: In April of that year, party chairman William Daniel Johnson
Speaker 2: filled out FEC Form one, the form for a statement
Speaker 2: of organization for a committee. Now remember back then they
Speaker 2: were called the American Third Position Party, So he's filling
Speaker 2: out this form as the American third position National Committee,
Speaker 2: things started to go arrived. By page two, there are
Speaker 2: checkboxes for different types of committees. Is this a party committee,
Speaker 2: a candidate committee. If it's a candidate committee, is it
Speaker 2: the candidate's principal fundraising committee? Is it a political action committee.
Speaker 2: You have to choose, and you can only choose one.
Speaker 2: Johnson checked too many boxes. It took the FEC about
Speaker 2: two months to get back to him, but the letter
Speaker 2: offered some helpful clarification about which boxes you might check
Speaker 2: in different circumstances and explain that you can't check all
Speaker 2: of them, and it also referred him to the relevant
Speaker 2: federal regulations. Johnson then filed a corrected form indicating that yes,
Speaker 2: he was trying to form a national party committee. So
Speaker 2: that's it, right, he did it. He filled it out right,
Speaker 2: not quite. Now that the form is properly filled out,
Speaker 2: it can actually be evaluated on the merits. And it
Speaker 2: turns out you can't just get a party started by
Speaker 2: filling out a form. The fart party's paperwork was filed,
Speaker 2: but it's going to get thrown out. Filling out a
Speaker 2: form isn't a golden ticket to party recognition, and the
Speaker 2: Federal Election Commission makes the final call on whether an
Speaker 2: organization has done enough political party stuff to be considered
Speaker 2: a political party, things like do they engage in voter
Speaker 2: registration drives? Do they have a national headquarters and state
Speaker 2: party committees? Do they hold a national convention? Are they
Speaker 2: actively seeking and successfully getting ballot access in multiple states
Speaker 2: for multiple candidates for office other than just the presidency.
Speaker 2: There's no room for any of that on the form, obviously,
Speaker 2: So in order to be recognized as a national party committee,
Speaker 2: you have to formally request something called an advisory opinion
Speaker 2: from the Federal Election Commission. According to the FEC, quote,
Speaker 2: advisory opinions are official commission responses to questions about how
Speaker 2: federal campaign finance law applies to specific factual situations. From
Speaker 2: the web page about the advisory opinion process quote. Anyone
Speaker 2: may request an advisory opinion as long as the request
Speaker 2: is affected by the question he or she presents a
Speaker 2: requestor cannot ask for an advisory opinion about someone else's activities,
Speaker 2: hypothetical situations, or general questions of law. Advisory opinion requests
Speaker 2: must be in writing. The request must include a complete
Speaker 2: description of all facts relevant to the specific transaction or activity,
Speaker 2: and they're all a public record. The FEC's website has
Speaker 2: a searchable database of every advisory opinion since nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2: The Commission informed the American Free and Party in July
Speaker 2: of twenty twelve that they would need to get an
Speaker 2: advisory opinion before calling themselves a national party committee, and
Speaker 2: William Daniel Johnson wrote back in September of twenty twelve
Speaker 2: that he had requested one and he was just waiting
Speaker 2: for a decision. But there's no official record that any
Speaker 2: opinion was ever sought by anyone involved. I searched every
Speaker 2: combination of words and names. I downloaded a spreadsheet that
Speaker 2: almost crashed my computer. I looked at every request filed
Speaker 2: since twenty ten, just to be safe. It's not there.
Speaker 2: It's possible Johnson made some kind of attempt, like maybe
Speaker 2: he did write a letter saying make me a party.
Speaker 2: But again, the request must include a complete description of
Speaker 2: all facts relevant to the specific transaction or activity, and
Speaker 2: the database doesn't include requests that were insufficient for consideration.
Speaker 2: So maybe he thinks he asked for an advisory opinion,
Speaker 2: but according to the official record, no, he did not.
Speaker 2: But like I said, the FEC doesn't really have the
Speaker 2: resources to chase down every piece of non compliant paperwork.
Speaker 2: The American Freedom Party continued to file as though they
Speaker 2: were a national party committee, but they weren't actually raising
Speaker 2: any money at least not that they really reported. And
Speaker 2: they were kind of halfheartedly running candidates for president in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, but their paperwork was a mess, and they
Speaker 2: weren't doing the work to actually get those candidates on ballots.
Speaker 2: I mean, forget trying to convince the voters. The party
Speaker 2: couldn't even convince their own candidates to stay in the
Speaker 2: race or the party. Their initial nominee was a man
Speaker 2: named Ken Givedden, but he dropped out in July of
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, just a few months after being nominated. The
Speaker 2: man they'd picked as his VP, Bob Whittaker, stepped up
Speaker 2: to take the presidential nomination, but he quit too in
Speaker 2: April of twenty sixteen. He was mad that the party
Speaker 2: was pouring money into a political action committee to pay
Speaker 2: for racist robocalls supporting Donald Trump. Bob Whitaker also died
Speaker 2: at age seventy six not long after this, so maybe
Speaker 2: he just didn't have the stamina. The next candidate on
Speaker 2: the list was Tom Bowie. You might actually remember him
Speaker 2: from some viral YouTube videos a few years back in
Speaker 2: which he proudly accepts the title of most racist man
Speaker 2: in America. There's no evidence that his campaign ever raised
Speaker 2: or spent any money at all, so as far as
Speaker 2: expending their limited enforcement resources, it was probably just not
Speaker 2: worthwhile for the Federal Election Commission to follow up unless
Speaker 2: and until there was any actual possibility of this party
Speaker 2: being meaningfully engaged in anything you could consider actual electoral activity,
Speaker 2: So they just kept filling out their paperwork wrong and
Speaker 2: filing it. In twenty nineteen, the party was gearing up
Speaker 2: for the twenty twenty presidential election. The candidate they chose
Speaker 2: this time around was a Christian identity pastor in Tennessee
Speaker 2: named Rick Tyler. Tyler had run for office a handful
Speaker 2: of times before, never receiving more than a few thousand votes,
Speaker 2: but hope springs eternal, I guess. He announced his candidacy
Speaker 2: in May of twenty nineteen in a speech at the
Speaker 2: University of Tennessee. The university was very clear with the
Speaker 2: press at the time that no one invited Rick Tyler
Speaker 2: to speak on campus. He had simply rented out the
Speaker 2: alumni hall, which is something any member of the public
Speaker 2: can do, and the university had no legal avenue to
Speaker 2: refuse to rent it to him. Shortly before Rick Tyler's
Speaker 2: poorly attended and heavily protested announcement in Tennessee, William Daniel
Speaker 2: Johnson wrote a letter to the Federal Election Commission kind of.
Speaker 2: He filed an amended statement of organization for the party
Speaker 2: that FEC Form one, but stapled to the front of
Speaker 2: the form, he attached a letter. I don't think that's
Speaker 2: an accepted form of communication with the Federal Election Commission.
Speaker 2: I don't think they'll reply to your letter if you
Speaker 2: just staple it to a form, But he tried, and
Speaker 2: the letter reads as follows. Gentlemen, the requests of this
Speaker 2: correspondence are made in conformity with the Freedom of Information
Speaker 2: Act USC Paragraph five to five to two, in accordance
Speaker 2: with which obligation of response is twenty days. The American
Speaker 2: Freedom Party will be applying for FEC certification as a
Speaker 2: political party for the United States of America. In order
Speaker 2: for the party to meet FEC legal requirements for certification,
Speaker 2: we require the FEC to forward to US post haste
Speaker 2: within the twenty days as allocated by statute the exact
Speaker 2: requirements necessary to comply for FEC full certification for the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty election cycle. We request that the provided FEC
Speaker 2: requirements as provided by the FEC be irrevocable and be
Speaker 2: used and applied to all applying or already approved political
Speaker 2: parties equally for the twenty twenty presidential election cycle. That's
Speaker 2: definitely not how it works. The Federal Election Commission doesn't
Speaker 2: do that. You can't just write to them and ask
Speaker 2: them open ended questions about how you should be doing
Speaker 2: election stuff. Besides, why didn't he just google it or
Speaker 2: hire a political consultant and didn't he already know the answer? Remember,
Speaker 2: back in twenty twelve, seven years before this, they sent
Speaker 2: him a letter about the requirements he needs to get
Speaker 2: an advisory opinion, and he claimed he was working on it.
Speaker 2: The rules had not changed in those seven years. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure the FEC replied to his letter, though they did,
Speaker 2: however a few months later send another request for Additional
Speaker 2: information letter, again informing the organization that what they need
Speaker 2: to do is get an advisory opinion before they can
Speaker 2: be considered a national party committee and Johnson again used
Speaker 2: the Federal Election Commission electronic filing system to send them
Speaker 2: a letter, so his letter is preserved in the committee's filings,
Speaker 2: and he wrote, I don't understand what you request. We
Speaker 2: only take in under ten thousand dollars per year. Do
Speaker 2: we need to petition the Commission for an advisory opinion?
Speaker 2: Should we check a different box on our forms or
Speaker 2: use different forms we file Form three X. Your letter
Speaker 2: threatens enforcement action if our response is not adequate. I
Speaker 2: don't want that, but I don't understand what the issue is.
Speaker 2: And then shortly after he filed that letter, they just
Speaker 2: stopped filing entirely, probably in part because they were feeling
Speaker 2: discouraged by their paperwork problems and they weren't actually raising
Speaker 2: any money to report. But also their candidate got arrested
Speaker 2: for tax evasion, so maybe their hearts just weren't in
Speaker 2: it anymore. But I just can't wrap my head around
Speaker 2: Johnson's confusion here. The guidance available on the FEC's website
Speaker 2: is clear enough. He had been personally and directly notified
Speaker 2: about the need to request an advisory opinion back in
Speaker 2: twenty twelve. He even claimed to have done it so
Speaker 2: obviously he knew he needed to do it. But the
Speaker 2: most galling thing about this feigned ignorance is he knows
Speaker 2: someone who knows how to do this. This isn't foreign territory.
Speaker 2: When I was looking through the database of advisory opinions,
Speaker 2: I looked specifically for any opinion on this particular subject,
Speaker 2: some kind of third party group trying to get recognition
Speaker 2: as a national political party. I wanted to see what
Speaker 2: those requests look like, how often this is happening, and
Speaker 2: how the federal allow commissions evaluating them. The Green Party's
Speaker 2: request was initially denied in nineteen ninety six, but when
Speaker 2: they reapplied in two thousand and one, they were granted
Speaker 2: national party status. The Reform Party went through the process
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety eight. The Constitution Party, which was originally
Speaker 2: called the US Taxpayers Party, was denied in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 2: but tried again in nineteen ninety five and gained party status.
Speaker 2: So I'm flipping through these opinions and these applications, and
Speaker 2: it's clear that the American Freedom Party wouldn't qualify even
Speaker 2: if they had tried, But they could have at least
Speaker 2: looked to these past applications to see how they were
Speaker 2: supposed to structure this and what kinds of party activities
Speaker 2: they should be aiming for if they wanted to qualify.
Speaker 2: But maybe William Daniel Johnson didn't think to search the
Speaker 2: database for inspiration. But why didn't he just ask the
Speaker 2: party's executive director, Not John Fasspender. He's still thinking high
Speaker 2: school at this point. But from twenty ten to twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: the American Freedom Party's executive director was a man named
Speaker 2: Don Wassell, and from nineteen eighty seven until nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: Don Wassell was the executive director of another party, the
Speaker 2: Populist Party. When the Populist Party ran David Duke for
Speaker 2: president in nineteen eighty eight, Don Wassell submitted the party's
Speaker 2: request for an advisory opinion. So in twenty twelve when
Speaker 2: the party got that letter, why was it a shock?
Speaker 2: I mean, the Populist Party didn't get national party status.
Speaker 2: So I'm not saying Wassall would have been good at it,
Speaker 2: or that he would have succeeded, but it does at
Speaker 2: least appear as though he successfully stated the party's case
Speaker 2: to the degree that was possible. In nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 2: and that's something Johnson doesn't seem to have even tried
Speaker 2: to do. By the end of the summer of twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: the American Freedom Party had voluntarily terminated their committee with
Speaker 2: the Federal Election Commission, and they've never refiled. There is
Speaker 2: no currently active committee associated with that name, nor any
Speaker 2: committee I can find associated with the names of any
Speaker 2: current or former member of their Board of directors. They
Speaker 2: never successfully gained federal recognition as a national party, but
Speaker 2: at least until twenty twenty, they could point to those
Speaker 2: forms and pretend now they're not even trying. I guess
Speaker 2: it is possible that Fassbender is telling the truth about
Speaker 2: gaining ballot access or party recognition in individual states, although
Speaker 2: I can find no evidence of it, and he never
Speaker 2: says which states. Every state has its own rules, and
Speaker 2: they don't all have good websites. But I dug around
Speaker 2: on the Board of Election site for a dozen or
Speaker 2: so states that I believe they have some connection to,
Speaker 2: and I couldn't find anything recent. In California, the only
Speaker 2: state that has easily searchable records of all requests file
Speaker 2: with the state for party status, they only ever tried
Speaker 2: once in twenty fifteen, in California, a party attempting to
Speaker 2: qualify for recognition has to submit signed affidavits from zero
Speaker 2: point thirty three percent of the total number of registered
Speaker 2: voters in the state. So in twenty sixteen that would
Speaker 2: have meant around fifty seven thousand signatures. They submitted five,
Speaker 2: not five thousand, not five hundred. Literally one two three
Speaker 2: four five they got five signatures. So even though I
Speaker 2: don't have numbers that detailed from other states, there's no
Speaker 2: state whose rules would reward that level of effort. Every
Speaker 2: state requires at least some thousands of signatures, even the Dakotas.
Speaker 2: The American Freedom Party doesn't even have a corporate entity
Speaker 2: behind it anymore. The party incorporated in North Dakota in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, but board member Jamie Kelso stopped filing the
Speaker 2: paperwork in twenty nineteen, and the state dissolved the corporation
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one. The California brand that Johnson incorporated
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen was forfeited in twenty twenty for a
Speaker 2: failure to file reports. They very recently updated their membership
Speaker 2: application page, removing any clear reference to how much it
Speaker 2: costs or how you can make that payment, but until
Speaker 2: June of twenty twenty five, the website instructed applicants to
Speaker 2: mail a check for fifty do to a UPS store
Speaker 2: mailbox in New York City. They don't sell shirts or
Speaker 2: stickers or hats. You can't pay online, you can't make
Speaker 2: a donation. They aren't even asking for money, which seems
Speaker 2: hard to believe. But I looked everywhere. Aside from that
Speaker 2: recently removed page on the website with instructions to make
Speaker 2: checks out to the American Freedom Party, there's no publicly
Speaker 2: visible information about how you could give them money, even
Speaker 2: if you wanted to, And that seems like it would
Speaker 2: be a pretty big problem. How can you expect to
Speaker 2: recruit younger members if the only way to get involved
Speaker 2: is to mail a paper check. That's a real barrier
Speaker 2: to entry in the twenty first century. But maybe the
Speaker 2: logistics aren't a big deal because there aren't very many
Speaker 2: members even trying to pay those dues. They don't hold
Speaker 2: public events, so there's there's no way to even guess
Speaker 2: how many members they might have. The group's channel on
Speaker 2: the messaging app Telegram has about three thousand members, but
Speaker 2: that has almost no correlation to actual group membership. Patriot Front,
Speaker 2: for example, has seventeen thousand followers on Telegram and probably
Speaker 2: just a few hundred members nationwide. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: John Fassbender claimed that membership was growing at quote an
Speaker 2: alarming rate, but he wouldn't give a number. Charles Lincoln II,
Speaker 2: a disbarred attorney who's occasionally listed on the party's FEC
Speaker 2: filings as their treasurer, said in a live stream last
Speaker 2: year that he'd been involved with the party since its founding,
Speaker 2: and he'd actually just come from a board meeting earlier
Speaker 2: that day, but he had no idea how many members
Speaker 2: the group might have.
Speaker 1: AFP. I don't know how to introduce the AFP except
Speaker 1: it's a very small It's basically the board and a
Speaker 1: few members Beside the board. I don't know what our
Speaker 1: membership is.
Speaker 2: Not only can he not even begin to guess how
Speaker 2: many members there might be, He's never met one. They
Speaker 2: might not exist.
Speaker 1: Again. I can speak mostly for the board rather than
Speaker 1: the membership. I don't really know any members who are
Speaker 1: not members of the board.
Speaker 2: This was in February of twenty twenty four. Lincoln claims
Speaker 2: to have been involved with the organization for fourteen years,
Speaker 2: he's attending board meetings, he was responsible for the party's
Speaker 2: campaign finance reports when they were trying to run a
Speaker 2: candidate for president, and he's never actually met a member
Speaker 2: of the party aside from the board of directors. In
Speaker 2: another one of Lincoln's streams that same month, he had
Speaker 2: party chairman William Daniel Johnson on and he characterized the
Speaker 2: number of members only as quote, not a whole lot.
Speaker 2: So they're not really running candidates, they're not really registered
Speaker 2: as a political party. They don't want your money. And
Speaker 2: their own chairman said last year that there aren't very
Speaker 2: many members, So what are they doing. I listened to
Speaker 2: every crumb of audio I could find from the last
Speaker 2: four years. There's not a ton, but it's still more
Speaker 2: than I would have preferred to listen to. The party
Speaker 2: went sort of dormant in twenty twenty after they terminated
Speaker 2: their committee with the FEC, their presidential candidate got arrested,
Speaker 2: and their corporate entity was involuntarily dissolved. They didn't do
Speaker 2: much for a while. In the fall of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: they were ready to announce to the world that they
Speaker 2: were back from their hiatus.
Speaker 4: The reason being is We've been on a hiatus for
Speaker 4: a long time now, while we completely overhauled and relaunched
Speaker 4: the party, it is completely unrecognizable from what it was
Speaker 4: a year ago.
Speaker 2: Well maybe not the world, but a conference room full
Speaker 2: of racists attending the American Renaissance anual conference. Anyway, the
Speaker 2: group had a new website, a couple new board members
Speaker 2: under forty and they were ready to try again. I
Speaker 2: felt like I was missing something. I kept triple checking
Speaker 2: the dates on these videos because it just didn't make
Speaker 2: any sense. From the fall of twenty twenty one through
Speaker 2: interviews recorded this year in twenty twenty five, they seem
Speaker 2: to be just constantly announcing that they're it's happening any
Speaker 2: day now. We're just about to announce something new and exciting.
Speaker 2: We're back from our hiatus. You haven't seen us in years,
Speaker 2: and we're back now, and it never happens. In two
Speaker 2: interviews given over a year apart, Fastbender boasts that the
Speaker 2: party is just about to launch a nationwide campus organization,
Speaker 2: a wing of the party for college students. The plan
Speaker 2: was so close to being implemented three years ago. The
Speaker 2: website hasn't had a new article at almost a year
Speaker 2: They sometimes have a Twitter account, but it keeps getting
Speaker 2: banned for hate speech. They hid information about their national
Speaker 2: convention behind a password on the website and never publicly
Speaker 2: posted any information about how an interested prospective member might
Speaker 2: inquire about attending. That's not how political parties behave, but
Speaker 2: it isn't out of step with the standard mo of
Speaker 2: a group whose members don't want to be publicly associated
Speaker 2: with it. Their executive director isn't even using his real name.
Speaker 2: Jonathan Magnano started using the name Johann Fassbender in twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen in private chats for Identity Europa members. And aside
Speaker 2: from that smattering of candidates in the twenty tens, you
Speaker 2: know Merlin Miller in twenty twelve, Harry Bertram for some
Speaker 2: state level offices in West Virginia twenty eleven, twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: that disastrous revolving door of candidates for president in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: The party doesn't really run candidates. Most of the campaigns
Speaker 2: publicly associated with the party aren't even on the ballot
Speaker 2: as American Freedom Party candidates, if they got on the
Speaker 2: ballot at all. Current party chairman Ralph Brandt tried to
Speaker 2: run for city Council in Mesa, Arizona, and twenty tive twelve,
Speaker 2: but he failed to collect the two hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: three signatures required to get his name on the ballot.
Speaker 2: When Harry Bertram ran for office in West Virginia, he
Speaker 2: was usually just listed on the ballot as an independent
Speaker 2: candidate and instead of receiving funds labeled as being from
Speaker 2: his party. One significant cash and fusion related to Bertram's
Speaker 2: twenty eleven campaign came in as an independent expenditure from
Speaker 2: the party's chairman in his personal capacity, which, again, I
Speaker 2: don't know a lot about elections, but that doesn't seem
Speaker 2: entirely in line with my understanding of campaign finance law.
Speaker 2: I can't actually find anyone publicly claiming to be running
Speaker 2: as a member of the American Freedom Party at any
Speaker 2: time in any place in the last five years since
Speaker 2: their big relaunch and recommitment, but Fastpender is constantly claiming
Speaker 2: it's happening. He just can't tell you who the candidates are,
Speaker 2: or where they live, or what they're running for. So
Speaker 2: the party is fielding candidates, but only secretly. When he
Speaker 2: was asked last month how many candidates the party ran
Speaker 2: in the most recent election cycle, he finally gave a number.
Speaker 4: Three, so we had three. Typically, the AFP holds our
Speaker 4: candidates identities and their ties to the party relatively close
Speaker 4: for obvious reasons, because.
Speaker 3: No, we don't.
Speaker 4: That's not to say that we don't run some candidates
Speaker 4: very openly as AFP, though we do. There's stratton, there's
Speaker 4: validity in both. But as far as we're concerned, it's
Speaker 4: about winning first and foremost. If you need to run
Speaker 4: as a Democrat in an area, run as a Democrat.
Speaker 4: If you need to run as a Republican, run as
Speaker 4: a Republican. If the viability is they are to run
Speaker 4: as the American Freedom Party openly, run as the American
Speaker 4: Freedom Party.
Speaker 2: So what does it mean to be a political party
Speaker 2: If you can't accept or spend money. The board members
Speaker 2: don't even know if there are members of the party,
Speaker 2: and it's so toxic to be associated with the brand
Speaker 2: that you can't even say the names of your own candidates,
Speaker 2: In what way is that a political party? Honestly, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I'm trying so hard to figure out some
Speaker 2: kind of plausible theory of what's going on here to
Speaker 2: offer you, because usually the answer is grift, plain and simple.
Speaker 2: But they aren't asking for money. I don't get it.
Speaker 2: The party does seem to be making another attempt to
Speaker 2: move forward a national convention in March of this year,
Speaker 2: again because they can't convince their own members to publicly
Speaker 2: associate with the party. Even the very limited number of
Speaker 2: carefully curated photos of the event have all of the
Speaker 2: attendee's faces blurret out. On social media. They posted videos
Speaker 2: of just four speakers, and none of those speakers are
Speaker 2: in the party leadership, at least not publicly. There's no
Speaker 2: indication that they're current chairman Ralph Brandt even attended. It's
Speaker 2: not who was missing that really intrigued me, though, it's
Speaker 2: who was there. The keynote speaker at the party's convention
Speaker 2: wasn't a member of the board of directors. It wasn't
Speaker 2: a past or current candidate for office on the party's ticket.
Speaker 2: It was Thomas Rousseau, the leader of Patriot Front. I
Speaker 2: couldn't tell you how many members of the American Free
Speaker 2: Edom Party attended the convention, but photos show a contingent
Speaker 2: of about a dozen members of Patriot Front. In December
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty four, just a few months before that convention,
Speaker 2: in March, the American Freedom Party issued an official statement
Speaker 2: endorsing Patriot Front, declaring their values to be in seamless
Speaker 2: harmony and pledging to stand shoulder to shoulder united by
Speaker 2: their shared vision. This is perhaps a return to their roots.
Speaker 2: The party originally grew out of a group of skinheads
Speaker 2: trying to find a way to look legitimate. The white
Speaker 2: power movement has always had suits and boots. That is
Speaker 2: your respectable intellectual types, your Richard Spencer, dapper Nazi kind
Speaker 2: of guys, your hotel conference rooms full of middle aged
Speaker 2: men watching a PowerPoint about the genetic superiority of the
Speaker 2: Aryan race. Then it has their counterparts, the street fighters,
Speaker 2: the black shirts, the men who hide their faces and
Speaker 2: wrap their knuckles. The two groups often find themselves at odds,
Speaker 2: disagreeing about tactics and optics, but they need each other
Speaker 2: and they know it all the way Back in twenty
Speaker 2: thirteen at the American Freedom Party conference, board member Tom
Speaker 2: Sunich stood up to say something after the leader of
Speaker 2: the Golden State Skinheads finished his remarks.
Speaker 8: I would like to thank this young gentleman. This is
Speaker 8: what I keep saying. It is a very good people.
Speaker 8: I can do my job with my pen, with my cravat,
Speaker 8: with my suit, and he can do his job. But
Speaker 8: I know first hand there's a frontman, there's a good people,
Speaker 8: and certainly you can come in in just as we
Speaker 8: can be coming in so folks to religious service, thank
Speaker 8: you very much.
Speaker 2: I can do my job with my pen, with my suit,
Speaker 2: and he can do his job. Everyone in the room
Speaker 2: knows what that job is. The job of the Nazi
Speaker 2: skinhead is violence. Patriot Fronts aesthetic is obviously very different
Speaker 2: from the classic neo Nazi skinhead. They aren't bald and tattooed,
Speaker 2: they've abandoned the Doc Martins. Culturally, they're very different from
Speaker 2: skinheads in their clean cut khaki pants and matching jackets.
Speaker 2: But politically, I think the symbiosis proposed here is similar.
Speaker 2: We'll do the paperwork and give speeches, and you will
Speaker 2: march in the streets. The American Freedom Party has never
Speaker 2: once succeeded in any of its endeavors, and it's unclear
Speaker 2: what their future plans are at this point, but it
Speaker 2: does look a little bit like there are some groups
Speaker 2: out there trying to once again unite the right. Hopefully
Speaker 2: this isn't a story we have to come back to,
Speaker 2: at least not with a new ending. I do hope
Speaker 2: to circle back on some of those intriguing loosens in
Speaker 2: the middle eventually. For now, though, I'll leave you with
Speaker 2: this inspiring statement made by one of the speakers at
Speaker 2: that convention in March. Sam Dixon has long since retired
Speaker 2: from his career as a lawyer for the Klan. These days,
Speaker 2: he makes the rounds speaking at white nationalist events all
Speaker 2: over the country, and he runs a lucrative real estate business,
Speaker 2: purchasing property tax debt and forcing old people out of
Speaker 2: their homes for pennies on the dollar. He gave a
Speaker 2: rambling thirty minute speech, managing to impart absolutely no wisdom
Speaker 2: gleaned from his sixty years in the movement, but he
Speaker 2: had one very important message for the white nationalists attending
Speaker 2: that Ethno State Party conference at a mysterious castle in
Speaker 2: West Virginia.
Speaker 4: We are not weird of us.
Speaker 5: We are normal.
Speaker 2: Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media
Speaker 2: and iHeartRadio. It's research, written and recorded by me Lollie Conger.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophie Leutman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 2: show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gigan. The
Speaker 2: theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email
Speaker 2: me at Weirdly Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I
Speaker 2: will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it.
Speaker 2: It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
Speaker 2: show with other listeners on the weird Little Guys subredd.
Speaker 2: It just don't post anything that's gonna make you one
Speaker 2: of my word Little Guys