WEBVTT - Apartheid International 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:10.000 Col Zone media, come with me for a moment. Back 0:00:10.039 --> 0:00:14.640 to February of twenty seventeen. It was just weeks after 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:17.120 Donald Trump had been sworn in as president for his 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:21.440 first term. There was a lot of uncertainty, a lot 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:25.880 of fear. Millions of Americans marched in Washington, d C. 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:30.240 To protest his presidency in its first days. There was 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:34.000 still some hope in those early days that maybe he 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:37.559 hadn't meant most of what he'd said, maybe it was 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:43.880 campaign bluster, hot air and empty words. Within a week, though, 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:47.320 he'd signed an executive order banning travel to the United 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:51.520 States from predominantly Muslim countries, sparking a wave of protests 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:54.560 at airports and signaling that he intended to follow through 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:59.680 on his xenophobic, anti immigrant campaign promises. A month into 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:03.320 his pre tens of thousands of Americans in at least 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:06.600 fifty cities around the country rallied for a protest on 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:12.399 President's Day, calling it not my President's Day. But that 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:17.199 same week, half a world away, a very different march 0:01:17.400 --> 0:01:22.520 was taking place in Zagreb's city center. A few dozen 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:27.200 men in black uniforms stood in formation, led by Drazen Klemenek, 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:32.320 leader of the Croatian Fascist Party HSP. They chanted the 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:36.000 slogans of the Eustasia, the Croatian fascist movement of the 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:40.480 nineteen thirties and forties. Alongside the Holocaust carried out by 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:44.360 Nazi Germany, the Ustasia had undertaken a genocide of their own, 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:49.240 operating their own concentration camps and slaughtering whole villages of Jews, 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:54.000 Roma and Serbs. As those marchers assembled in the city 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:57.440 square and the brass band finished playing, the men took 0:01:57.440 --> 0:02:01.840 an oath of allegiance to their Croatian homeland and and 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:26.720 to Donald Trump. Most of those marchers had empty hands, 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.520 some held brass instruments, but at the front of the 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:37.440 column several marchers held flags, the Croatian flag, of course, 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:41.480 and an American flag to show their support for Donald Trump. 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:45.000 But one man at the very front of the line 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:48.920 was carrying the flag of the German Ultranationalist Party NPD. 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:55.320 The march's organizer, Drazen Klemenek, was arrested that day for 0:02:55.400 --> 0:03:00.520 shouting zadom spremni, which is the Croatian equivalent of yelling 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:04.800 Siegheil in Germany, but when he did get a chance 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:07.680 to speak to the press, he explained the presence of 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:11.600 the German NPD flag. The man who'd been carrying it 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:16.480 was Alexander Nydeline, a representative from NPD, and he was 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:20.400 there to show his party's support for HSP. But that 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:25.280 march in February of twenty seventeen wasn't Alexander Nydline's first 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:30.239 visit to the Balkans. In nineteen ninety three, nyde Line 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:34.240 enlisted in the Convicts Battalion, a paramilitary unit of the 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:38.480 Croatian Defense Council made up of prisoners and foreign mercenaries. 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:42.520 Its leader was later convicted of crimes against humanity for 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:46.840 his actions during the Bosnian War. Nydeline didn't stay with 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:50.280 the unit for very long. In the years since, he's 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:54.240 taken issue with being called a mercenary, arguing that he 0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:58.440 never actually got paid. Because just before Christmas of nineteen 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:02.680 ninety three and two other German mercenaries deserted from the 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:06.000 Convicts Battalion. They took as many guns as they could 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:10.960 carry and disappeared into the night. A few weeks later, 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:16.040 those German mercenaries and those stolen guns turned up seven 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:24.680 thousand miles away in South Africa. I'm Molly conger, and 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:44.720 this is weird little guys. This is a story about 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:48.960 Monica Stone. I think she may be our first weird 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:52.839 little guy who happens to be a woman. There was 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:57.680 Dallas Humber, I guess, the voice of Taragram, but she 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:01.520 wasn't the central character in that story, just the disembodied 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:06.240 voice urging young men to kill. Weird little guy is 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:10.200 a gender neutral term in my mind. I haven't been 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:13.080 avoiding telling the stories of women in the white power movement. 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:16.360 It's just that, for the most part, the very nature 0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:20.600 of their beliefs kind of prevents women from taking center stage, 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:26.240 even in their own lives. But this this is a 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:29.080 story of a woman who has dedicated her life to 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:33.320 the cause, and in her case, the cause is apartheid. 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:37.680 Like all my stories, this is really only kind of 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:41.919 about one weird little guy. And this might be the 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:47.920 widest net I've ever cast trying to understand one person's life. 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:52.720 The story covers decades and spans continence. There are bombings 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:57.839 and shootouts and murders. There's international gun smuggling, mercenaries and 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:02.640 paramilitaries and war crimes, suessful assassinations and foiled terrorist plots. 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:08.080 Their trials and prison breaks, and crimes left unpunished, some 0:06:08.160 --> 0:06:12.560 with extradition petitions left pending for decades with no hope 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:18.440 of justice. There are some familiar landmarks, names of people 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.880 and organizations I recognize, like David Duke and the Ku 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.640 Klux Klan and the Turner Diaries. But there are people 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:27.440 in groups in this story that were new to me, 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:31.359 characters we haven't met yet and may see again in 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:37.800 future episodes exploring these fascist friendships across borders. But at 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:42.719 its core, this is a story about Monica Stone. She 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:44.840 isn't in all the parts of the story playing out 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:48.040 all around her, but the context matters more than ever, 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:52.440 because this week we're going to dig into a weighty idea, 0:06:53.600 --> 0:07:00.160 the fascist international. I haven't forgotten where we started. Maybe 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:03.680 you have. That's understandable. I left you hanging there for 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:05.960 a week while I recovered from a stomach virus. But 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:10.800 two weeks ago we were talking about white genocide. The 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:14.560 story began in Sacramento in twenty twelve. A group of 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:17.200 neo Nazi skinheads was rallying at the state capitol in 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:19.960 California to raise awareness of the plight of the white 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:25.440 South African farmer in that episode, I picked apart this myth, 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:28.840 the idea that white farmers are being slaughtered every day 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.720 in a post apartheid South Africa, that white South Africans 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:35.400 are in danger of being completely wiped out by a 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:41.240 white genocide. That idea has been quite popular among white 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:45.680 supremacists around the world for some time. Norwegian mass murderer 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:48.600 Anders Bravik devoted a few pages of his fifteen hundred 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:52.640 page manifesto to it. When Dylan Rufe murdered nine people 0:07:52.680 --> 0:07:55.520 at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina in twenty fifteen, 0:07:56.840 --> 0:08:01.600 his Facebook profile photo showed him at the camera in 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:05.240 a black jacket with two patches on the breast, the 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:09.640 flag of Rhodesia and the flag of apartheid South Africa. 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:14.520 I come across the idea pretty often in my work. 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:18.160 So many of my weird little guys are obsessed with 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:21.880 the idea of a fully segregated society and the state 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:26.240 violence against black people that comes with it. But that's 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:30.360 where the idea lived. It lived on stormfront and on 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:35.600 four Chan, and in manifestos and on Nazi podcasts. Those 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:41.080 rallies in twenty twelve were pretty unique. The public display 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:44.320 of the apartheid era South African flag at an American 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:49.480 political rally was unusual. It was unusual enough that it 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:52.520 was mentioned in news stories three years later when the 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:57.280 flag appeared again on Dylan Rufe's jacket. But like so 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:02.120 many once fringe ideas, it's part of the mainstream political discourse. Now. 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:05.480 I won't rechread all of that. We talked about it 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:08.880 in the last episode, but now the President of the 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:12.600 United States is repeating the talking points from the flyers 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:17.240 those skinheads printed out in twenty twelve, And I originally 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:20.120 set out to just talk about those rallies as a 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:24.960 sort of standalone story, this strange incident that seems to 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:28.920 have happened in total isolation. As far as I've been 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:31.040 able to find, the group behind it had never put 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:33.520 on a public event before, and aside from a poorly 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:37.040 attended follow up in DC later that same year, they 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:41.040 never did again. The website has been offline for years, 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:45.559 and there's hardly any mention of the group at all anywhere. 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:51.320 A lot of white supremacist groups are short lived, so 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:55.640 that's not really unusual, and this group, the South Africa Project, 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:59.480 was pretty obviously just two people running a side project 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:03.200 out of an Air Nations po box. But I can't 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:08.160 let anything go, so I started to dig, and it 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:11.880 became clear very quickly that there was a hell of 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:17.240 a lot more going on here than I thought. Back 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:20.480 in twenty twelve, when those rallies took place, both the 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:24.559 SPLC and the ADL had stories on their website explaining 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:27.920 that those events had been organized by American neo Nazis. 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:33.079 Both groups zeroed in on Morris Goulette, a longtime Arian 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:35.880 Nations member and the man who'd given comments to the 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:40.920 press as the organization's spokesman. Both outlets identified several local 0:10:41.040 --> 0:10:44.840 organizers of those assorted rallies. The Golden State Skinheads hosted 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:48.840 in Sacramento. Billy Roper headlined the rally in Arkansas. Rallies 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:52.000 in Tennessee and Pennsylvania were hosted by members of Folksfront 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:58.280 and so on. But in one single line in a 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:01.320 blog post that isn't even on the ADL's website anymore, 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:06.240 the events are attributed to a woman named Monica Stone 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:11.960 in this passing mention crediting Stone with the idea for 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:15.280 the rallies. The post notes that she was a South 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:20.000 African immigrant and a longtime member of the Christian Defense League. 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:24.600 The CDL was a Christian identity group that grew out 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:27.679 of the same milieu as the Aryan Nations in the sixties, 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:30.760 but it never really achieved the same level of influence. 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:37.160 But that's all there is. Monica and Louisiana. Monica from 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:41.480 South Africa, Monica speaking at the Aryan Nations World Congress 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:46.000 about the need for international solidarity between American neo Nazis 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:52.160 and africanter nationalists. But Google gives you exactly nothing about 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:55.840 this woman before or after this brief moment in time 0:11:56.559 --> 0:12:03.280 in twenty twelve. This point, I'm locked in. I have 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:06.920 to know more about this woman. How did she end 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:10.640 up in Mandeville, Louisiana, a town of just ten thousand 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:13.160 people that I've only heard of because it's where David 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:17.280 Duke lives. So I started with the information that I 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:22.320 have a name, hopefully it's her real name, a city, 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:28.000 and some potential known associates. If her longtime membership in 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:31.480 the Christian Defense League is the only notable fact about her, 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:35.160 maybe that means she was a very important member of 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:39.680 the group, And lucky for me, it turns out she 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:45.400 was the organization has or had, I guess, since it's defunct. 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:47.960 As far as I can tell, been run by a 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:52.040 man named Robert K. Warner since the seventies, and when 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:55.200 he took over, he moved its headquarters from California to 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:59.520 Louisiana to be closer to his friend David Duke, and 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.480 in addition into the Christian Defense League, Warner also ran 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:06.600 a Christian identity church called the New Christian Crusade Church. 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.319 Corporate filings for the church show Robert K. Warner as 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:15.560 an officer of the organization, which I expected, but in 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:20.120 twenty eleven he filed an amendment adding someone named Monica 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:25.800 Huggett as the church's chief financial officer, and he changed 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:30.200 the address on file to a residential address in Mandeville, Louisiana. 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.880 Property records for Saint Tammany Parish show that a mortgage 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:38.599 was taken out at that address by James Stone in 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:42.360 nineteen ninety two, but after he died, the property was 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:46.080 sold by his widow, and on the documents for the sale, 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:51.760 she's listed as Monica hugget Stone. And that's the kind 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:55.120 of concrete paper trail I love to see. There's no 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:58.320 doubt at all here that the Monica Stone behind those 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:02.520 twenty twelve rallies is the Monica Huggot who married James 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:07.560 Stone in two thousand and lived in Mandeville, Louisiana, two 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:13.000 miles away from David Duke. So now I have a 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:19.520 new name, Monica Huggot, and this is where I ran 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:25.960 into trouble. Almost immediately, everything is in Afrikaans. Most of 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:30.440 the English language material about someone named Monica Huggot is 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:35.240 about the renowned British conductor and baroque violinist. But that 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:39.000 is an entirely different person who I am almost one 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:42.520 hundred percent sure has never helped an Italian terrorist build 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:46.200 a bomb. Violinists have to be very careful with their hands, 0:14:46.240 --> 0:14:51.239 you know. But they were a handful of extremely tantalizing 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:54.480 clues that convinced me to power through the agony of 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:59.280 trying to translate blurry old PDFs. One of the first 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:02.960 English Langua sources I found referring to a South African 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:07.800 named Monica Huggett is the final report of the South 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:13.880 African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:17.240 was authorized by President Nelson Mandela in nineteen ninety five 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:22.080 and it was chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The body's 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:25.200 goal was exactly what it says in the name, to 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:29.280 find the truth about what happened under apartheid and try 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:31.360 to find a way to move forward as a nation. 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:38.000 The TRC had three central tasks to discover the causes 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:40.920 in nature of human rights violations in South Africa between 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:45.400 nineteen sixty and nineteen ninety four, to identify victims with 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:50.680 a goal of paying reparations, and to allow amnesty for 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:55.040 those who fully disclosed their involvement in politically motivated human 0:15:55.120 --> 0:16:01.320 rights violations. This wasn't a tribunal, this was a restorative 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:04.760 justice process. They hoped to be able to provide amnesty 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:09.440 to people who were honest. Over the course of three years, 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:14.200 the Commission heard testimony from over twenty thousand people, both 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:19.360 victims and perpetrators. Monica Hugget did not, as far as 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:23.240 I can tell, ever, testify before the Commission, but her 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:27.360 name is in there. Specifically, it appears in Volume two, 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:30.680 the seven hundred page portion of the report dealing with 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:35.440 quote the Commission of gross violations of Human Rights, and 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:39.400 more specifically, it's in Chapter seven Political Violence in the 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:45.000 era of negotiations and transition. Under the subheading links with 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:51.440 international right wing groups, the report reads, the first link 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:54.720 between ultra right terrorism and foreign agencies came to light 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:59.200 in nineteen eighty two when mister Fabio Mariello, mister Massimobulo 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.800 and mister Uni Genio's office, all white foreign expatriates known 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:05.919 as the White Commando, were convicted of the nineteen seventy 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:10.480 nine bombing of the offices of prominent academic doctor Jan Lombard. 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:14.520 Originally mister KuPS Vermullen and Miss Monica Hugget, a foreign 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:17.920 right winger, were arrested with them, but Huggitt turned state 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:21.720 witness and Vermullin was released after a few days. Hugget's 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:24.200 name was subsequently linked to the shootout in March nineteen 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:27.439 ninety four between the South African police and three German 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:31.320 right wingers in the Donkerhook area. One German right winger, 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:35.200 mister Stephen Rayes, was arrested, mister Thomas Kuons was shot dead, 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:39.639 and a third, mister Horst Cleans, later arrested. A fourth, 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:43.040 mister Alexander Ndline, was later charged in the Cullen and 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:48.080 Magistrates Court for illegal possession of a firearm. And I 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:50.440 think you can see why I was willing to invest 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:54.320 the effort to find out more about this, because that's 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:56.520 a hell of a thing to find under the first 0:17:56.600 --> 0:18:01.600 rock you turn over Italian terrorists bombing university offices in 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:05.760 Pretoria nineteen seventy nine, German mercenaries getting into a deadly 0:18:05.800 --> 0:18:09.400 shootout with the police in nineteen ninety four, And there 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:13.200 she is right at the center of two separate acts 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:20.199 of pro apartheid terrorism fifteen years apart. Now there are 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:24.040 some problems here. First of all, her name is spelled wrong, 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:27.240 only a little wrong. It's missing one of the teas. 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:32.040 But Alexander Nydelin's name is spelled so incorrectly that you 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.119 couldn't find this by searching for his name. The report 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:40.000 calls him Alexander Niedneloin, which as far as I can tell, 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:43.040 is not anyone's name or a real German name at all. 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:47.760 And the bombing of Professor Lombard's offices at the University 0:18:47.800 --> 0:18:52.200 of Pretoria happened in nineteen eighty, not nineteen seventy nine. 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:57.720 It also describes Monica Huggett as a quote foreign right winger, 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:02.040 which really threw me off at first. I've heard her talk. 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:05.800 She sounds South African, and she's even said in multiple 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:09.920 interviews that she was born and raised there. The confusion 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:14.600 in the report maybe because she had publicly identified herself 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:17.840 as a member of the American ku Klux Klan, and 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:22.760 that may have been interpreted as her being American, And 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:24.840 by the time the Commission was starting their work, she 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:28.280 had left South Africa and was living in the United States. 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:31.600 They never actually had a chance to speak to her. 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:34.920 I'm willing to cut them some slack on the details here. 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:38.560 They were close enough for government work, as my dad 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:40.560 used to say, and they had a lot of work 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:44.200 to do. But as my subsequent research shows, beyond a 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:48.080 shadow of it out, Monica Huggett was born and raised 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:53.240 South African. But keep those four Germans in the back 0:19:53.280 --> 0:19:58.360 of your mind for now. We'll see them again. Alexander Nydeline, 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:02.399 you've already met the German NPD member swearing allegiance to 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:05.400 Donald Trump at a Croatian Nazi rally in twenty seventeen. 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:09.680 According to blurry old scans of arrest warrants from nineteen 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:12.919 ninety three, Stephen Rays and Thomas Kunst were the other 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:16.640 two German mercenaries he deserted with just before Christmas that year, 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:21.719 and just as an aside, I am admittedly not at 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:25.080 all an expert on the Bosnian War, so it took 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:28.040 me a minute to parse the letterhead on the warrants. 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:31.400 They were issued by the non existent country of the 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:36.480 Croatian Republic of Hertzeg Bosnia, which explains why Nydelein had 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:39.720 no problem re entering Croatia after fleeing as a fugitive 0:20:39.760 --> 0:20:44.840 all those years ago, and the fourth man forced Glens 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:52.399 he still wanted for murder in Namibia. Early on in 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:55.840 my search for more information about this mysterious woman at 0:20:55.840 --> 0:20:58.280 the center of these two terror plots carried out by 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:02.360 foreign neo Nazis, I found a master's thesis submitted by 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:06.880 Mada Visser to the University of Pretoria in nineteen ninety nine. 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:12.400 It's in Afrikaans but translated. The title is the Ideological 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:15.520 Foundations and Development of the White Fascist Movements in South 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:20.359 Africa nineteen forty five to nineteen ninety five. After some 0:21:21.000 --> 0:21:23.680 truly agonizing trial and error trying to find a way 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:27.439 to translate a three hundred page PDF without paying for something. 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:34.480 The thesis was immensely useful, but every clue just raised 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:37.000 more questions, and I was running into dead end after 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:39.520 dead end trying to track down the primary sources in 0:21:39.560 --> 0:21:45.359 the footnotes. I can find a lot of things, but 0:21:45.480 --> 0:21:49.080 digitize archives of forty year old newspapers published in another 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:53.359 language in another country that might not even still exist 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:56.919 at all. For all I know, I came up empty, 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:00.240 and I was on the verge of total ners was 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:03.359 collapse at the idea that there is information out there 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:07.439 that is just not available to me. When I had 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:14.280 another idea and I found an unlikely ally the Central 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:19.960 Intelligence Agency, That's right. A special shout out this week 0:22:20.080 --> 0:22:26.720 goes to the CIA, more specifically the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 0:22:26.960 --> 0:22:29.800 which was operated by the CIA until it was renamed 0:22:29.840 --> 0:22:34.600 the Open Source Center in two thousand and five. Originally 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:38.159 called the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, it was authorized in 0:22:38.200 --> 0:22:42.040 nineteen forty one by President Roosevelt, and its original purpose 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:47.200 was to record, translate, transcribe, and analyze propaganda radio programs 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:51.359 produced by the Access Powers during the war. Over the years, 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:55.200 its mission grew to include peacetime operations, and they eventually 0:22:55.280 --> 0:22:58.879 added television and print media into the mix, collecting and 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:02.399 translating news from around the world and disseminating reports for 0:23:02.520 --> 0:23:08.360 use by intelligence agencies and diplomatic and military organizations. It's 0:23:08.400 --> 0:23:15.080 basically just an international news aggregator for government employees. And look, 0:23:15.920 --> 0:23:20.480 maybe all those old South African newspapers do exist somewhere. 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:24.400 I found one. Not the one I was looking for, 0:23:24.560 --> 0:23:28.560 not one with real journalists and investigative reporting like I'd hoped. No, 0:23:29.080 --> 0:23:32.320 the only paper I could find a large catalog of 0:23:32.560 --> 0:23:36.800 digitized archives for was a paper called De Transfiller. It 0:23:36.880 --> 0:23:42.080 was an African or nationalist newspaper. That paper once unsuccessfully 0:23:42.200 --> 0:23:45.439 tried to sue another South African newspaper for calling them 0:23:45.480 --> 0:23:51.240 Nazi propaganda, but it was such overt Nazi propaganda that 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:54.160 the judge dismissed the suit and ruled that the editor 0:23:54.160 --> 0:23:58.280 of the Transfaller quote did make his newspaper a tool 0:23:58.280 --> 0:24:01.280 of the Nazis in South Africa and he knew it 0:24:02.280 --> 0:24:07.399 end quote. So the Transvaaler wasn't exactly the resource I 0:24:07.520 --> 0:24:24.800 was hoping to find, But eventually I gave up trying 0:24:24.840 --> 0:24:28.720 to find old South African newspapers and something that was 0:24:28.840 --> 0:24:33.159 much easier to find were the unclassified daily reports from 0:24:33.200 --> 0:24:36.800 the Sub Saharan office of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service. 0:24:38.520 --> 0:24:42.760 So just this once, I guess I will give a 0:24:42.800 --> 0:24:48.040 reluctant nod to the CIA. So now I have some 0:24:48.160 --> 0:24:52.760 contemporaneous reporting that has been translated into English by someone 0:24:52.800 --> 0:24:56.399 who's presumably a professional and not a robot, and the 0:24:56.440 --> 0:24:59.639 pieces are starting to come together. I can start to 0:24:59.640 --> 0:25:02.960 see the picture here. This bombing campaign in nineteen eighty 0:25:03.040 --> 0:25:08.320 is starting to come into focus. In August of nineteen eighty, 0:25:08.520 --> 0:25:12.720 a newspaper editor in Pretoria received a letter on letter 0:25:12.720 --> 0:25:16.760 head bearing a symbol remarkably similar to the cross emblem 0:25:16.840 --> 0:25:20.480 used by the American Ku Klux Klan. A group calling 0:25:20.520 --> 0:25:27.040 themselves the Vitt Commando or the White Commandos claimed responsibility 0:25:27.040 --> 0:25:29.879 for the bombing of Professor Jon Lombard's office at the 0:25:29.960 --> 0:25:34.639 University of Pretoria, and the group threatened further attacks, writing 0:25:34.640 --> 0:25:38.640 that people and organizations working toward integration would be warned 0:25:38.680 --> 0:25:44.399 first and then eliminated. The Vit Commando had formed just 0:25:44.440 --> 0:25:47.520 a few months earlier in May or June of nineteen eighty. 0:25:47.960 --> 0:25:52.359 Sources vary. Monica Huggett would later testify that she joined 0:25:52.359 --> 0:25:55.840 the newly formed vit Commando after meeting Massimo Bolo at 0:25:55.880 --> 0:26:00.240 a meeting in Pretoria in June of nineteen eighty, as 0:26:00.280 --> 0:26:03.000 described in the memoirs of Ray Hill, a man who 0:26:03.080 --> 0:26:05.760 ended his lengthy career as a fascist organizer by playing 0:26:05.840 --> 0:26:09.639 informant for the anti fascist magazine Searchlight. The meeting was 0:26:09.640 --> 0:26:13.200 a summit for leaders of the British fascist group National Front, 0:26:13.720 --> 0:26:17.760 the africaner nationalist group AWB, the far right South African 0:26:17.800 --> 0:26:22.600 Political Party HNP, and an Italian fascist group called Unido. 0:26:24.800 --> 0:26:27.520 So even though her involvement with vit Commando is the 0:26:27.560 --> 0:26:30.000 first time I can put her on paper involved in 0:26:30.040 --> 0:26:34.240 a terrorist organization, it was obviously not her first introduction 0:26:34.320 --> 0:26:38.359 to the idea. She had to have been deeply involved 0:26:38.440 --> 0:26:41.480 with at least one of those fascist groups to have 0:26:41.520 --> 0:26:44.760 even been in the room where Massimo Bolo invited her 0:26:44.800 --> 0:26:48.800 to join his terrorist cell, and the group got started 0:26:48.840 --> 0:26:52.720 right away. Just two months after forming the group, the 0:26:52.760 --> 0:26:56.480 bombing of Lombard's office was already their third big public display. 0:26:57.760 --> 0:27:00.480 They'd started a fire at a drive in theater and 0:27:00.560 --> 0:27:03.520 fire bombed the Johannesburg headquarters of the Institute for Race 0:27:03.560 --> 0:27:08.040 Relations in December. They claimed responsibility for the bombing of 0:27:08.080 --> 0:27:11.320 Professor F. A. Merritz's office at the University of South Africa, 0:27:12.000 --> 0:27:13.920 and they would carry out at least four more bombings 0:27:13.920 --> 0:27:18.720 before members started getting arrested. The first four arrests came 0:27:18.760 --> 0:27:22.520 in early February of nineteen eighty one a government employee 0:27:22.520 --> 0:27:25.960 in Pretoria named W. G. Van Dyck, the director of 0:27:26.000 --> 0:27:30.520 the South African National Front, Alan Fotheringham, an Italian fascist 0:27:30.560 --> 0:27:34.359 named Massimo Bolo, and as the newspaper put it at 0:27:34.400 --> 0:27:40.800 the time, mister Bolo's girlfriend, Miss m. Huggett of Kempton Park. 0:27:43.359 --> 0:27:45.600 Now that's the only source I could find alleging a 0:27:45.680 --> 0:27:49.320 romantic relationship between the pair. It never comes up again, 0:27:49.760 --> 0:27:53.439 so I don't know. And in the weeks that followed, 0:27:53.480 --> 0:27:56.040 police would arrest even more alleged members of the VIT 0:27:56.040 --> 0:28:01.520 Commando Fabio Miriello, an Italian born African citizen who'd emigrated 0:28:01.560 --> 0:28:05.240 four years earlier, kuz Vermulin, the leader of the World 0:28:05.280 --> 0:28:09.439 Apartheid Movement, and an Italian immigrant named Eugenio Zoppis and 0:28:09.560 --> 0:28:13.919 his wife Laura Zenenga. Those are all the names I 0:28:13.920 --> 0:28:18.680 could find in most of my sources. I found a 0:28:18.720 --> 0:28:24.080 few more names in an unlikely place. Documents released by 0:28:24.080 --> 0:28:26.639 the Italian government as part of their investigation into the 0:28:26.640 --> 0:28:29.800 Bologna massacre, a nineteen eighty bombing of a train station 0:28:29.920 --> 0:28:31.480 in Italy willie you to have been the work of 0:28:31.520 --> 0:28:36.680 fascist terrorists, do list several additional names of Italians who 0:28:36.760 --> 0:28:38.920 were in South Africa at the time and believed to 0:28:38.960 --> 0:28:42.240 have been involved with the VIT Commando. But there's no 0:28:42.320 --> 0:28:45.240 mention of those extra Italians in the South African or 0:28:45.360 --> 0:28:48.760 English language press, as far as I can find. As 0:28:48.800 --> 0:28:51.560 a matter of fact, there's no mention of almost any 0:28:51.600 --> 0:28:56.680 of those people. Ever. Again, only Mariello, Bolo and Zoppis 0:28:56.840 --> 0:29:02.360