Speaker 1: Col Zone media, come with me for a moment. Back
Speaker 1: to February of twenty seventeen. It was just weeks after
Speaker 1: Donald Trump had been sworn in as president for his
Speaker 1: first term. There was a lot of uncertainty, a lot
Speaker 1: of fear. Millions of Americans marched in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: To protest his presidency in its first days. There was
Speaker 1: still some hope in those early days that maybe he
Speaker 1: hadn't meant most of what he'd said, maybe it was
Speaker 1: campaign bluster, hot air and empty words. Within a week, though,
Speaker 1: he'd signed an executive order banning travel to the United
Speaker 1: States from predominantly Muslim countries, sparking a wave of protests
Speaker 1: at airports and signaling that he intended to follow through
Speaker 1: on his xenophobic, anti immigrant campaign promises. A month into
Speaker 1: his pre tens of thousands of Americans in at least
Speaker 1: fifty cities around the country rallied for a protest on
Speaker 1: President's Day, calling it not my President's Day. But that
Speaker 1: same week, half a world away, a very different march
Speaker 1: was taking place in Zagreb's city center. A few dozen
Speaker 1: men in black uniforms stood in formation, led by Drazen Klemenek,
Speaker 1: leader of the Croatian Fascist Party HSP. They chanted the
Speaker 1: slogans of the Eustasia, the Croatian fascist movement of the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and forties. Alongside the Holocaust carried out by
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany, the Ustasia had undertaken a genocide of their own,
Speaker 1: operating their own concentration camps and slaughtering whole villages of Jews,
Speaker 1: Roma and Serbs. As those marchers assembled in the city
Speaker 1: square and the brass band finished playing, the men took
Speaker 1: an oath of allegiance to their Croatian homeland and and
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump. Most of those marchers had empty hands,
Speaker 1: some held brass instruments, but at the front of the
Speaker 1: column several marchers held flags, the Croatian flag, of course,
Speaker 1: and an American flag to show their support for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: But one man at the very front of the line
Speaker 1: was carrying the flag of the German Ultranationalist Party NPD.
Speaker 1: The march's organizer, Drazen Klemenek, was arrested that day for
Speaker 1: shouting zadom spremni, which is the Croatian equivalent of yelling
Speaker 1: Siegheil in Germany, but when he did get a chance
Speaker 1: to speak to the press, he explained the presence of
Speaker 1: the German NPD flag. The man who'd been carrying it
Speaker 1: was Alexander Nydeline, a representative from NPD, and he was
Speaker 1: there to show his party's support for HSP. But that
Speaker 1: march in February of twenty seventeen wasn't Alexander Nydline's first
Speaker 1: visit to the Balkans. In nineteen ninety three, nyde Line
Speaker 1: enlisted in the Convicts Battalion, a paramilitary unit of the
Speaker 1: Croatian Defense Council made up of prisoners and foreign mercenaries.
Speaker 1: Its leader was later convicted of crimes against humanity for
Speaker 1: his actions during the Bosnian War. Nydeline didn't stay with
Speaker 1: the unit for very long. In the years since, he's
Speaker 1: taken issue with being called a mercenary, arguing that he
Speaker 1: never actually got paid. Because just before Christmas of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three and two other German mercenaries deserted from the
Speaker 1: Convicts Battalion. They took as many guns as they could
Speaker 1: carry and disappeared into the night. A few weeks later,
Speaker 1: those German mercenaries and those stolen guns turned up seven
Speaker 1: thousand miles away in South Africa. I'm Molly conger, and
Speaker 1: this is weird little guys. This is a story about
Speaker 1: Monica Stone. I think she may be our first weird
Speaker 1: little guy who happens to be a woman. There was
Speaker 1: Dallas Humber, I guess, the voice of Taragram, but she
Speaker 1: wasn't the central character in that story, just the disembodied
Speaker 1: voice urging young men to kill. Weird little guy is
Speaker 1: a gender neutral term in my mind. I haven't been
Speaker 1: avoiding telling the stories of women in the white power movement.
Speaker 1: It's just that, for the most part, the very nature
Speaker 1: of their beliefs kind of prevents women from taking center stage,
Speaker 1: even in their own lives. But this this is a
Speaker 1: story of a woman who has dedicated her life to
Speaker 1: the cause, and in her case, the cause is apartheid.
Speaker 1: Like all my stories, this is really only kind of
Speaker 1: about one weird little guy. And this might be the
Speaker 1: widest net I've ever cast trying to understand one person's life.
Speaker 1: The story covers decades and spans continence. There are bombings
Speaker 1: and shootouts and murders. There's international gun smuggling, mercenaries and
Speaker 1: paramilitaries and war crimes, suessful assassinations and foiled terrorist plots.
Speaker 1: Their trials and prison breaks, and crimes left unpunished, some
Speaker 1: with extradition petitions left pending for decades with no hope
Speaker 1: of justice. There are some familiar landmarks, names of people
Speaker 1: and organizations I recognize, like David Duke and the Ku
Speaker 1: Klux Klan and the Turner Diaries. But there are people
Speaker 1: in groups in this story that were new to me,
Speaker 1: characters we haven't met yet and may see again in
Speaker 1: future episodes exploring these fascist friendships across borders. But at
Speaker 1: its core, this is a story about Monica Stone. She
Speaker 1: isn't in all the parts of the story playing out
Speaker 1: all around her, but the context matters more than ever,
Speaker 1: because this week we're going to dig into a weighty idea,
Speaker 1: the fascist international. I haven't forgotten where we started. Maybe
Speaker 1: you have. That's understandable. I left you hanging there for
Speaker 1: a week while I recovered from a stomach virus. But
Speaker 1: two weeks ago we were talking about white genocide. The
Speaker 1: story began in Sacramento in twenty twelve. A group of
Speaker 1: neo Nazi skinheads was rallying at the state capitol in
Speaker 1: California to raise awareness of the plight of the white
Speaker 1: South African farmer in that episode, I picked apart this myth,
Speaker 1: the idea that white farmers are being slaughtered every day
Speaker 1: in a post apartheid South Africa, that white South Africans
Speaker 1: are in danger of being completely wiped out by a
Speaker 1: white genocide. That idea has been quite popular among white
Speaker 1: supremacists around the world for some time. Norwegian mass murderer
Speaker 1: Anders Bravik devoted a few pages of his fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: page manifesto to it. When Dylan Rufe murdered nine people
Speaker 1: at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: his Facebook profile photo showed him at the camera in
Speaker 1: a black jacket with two patches on the breast, the
Speaker 1: flag of Rhodesia and the flag of apartheid South Africa.
Speaker 1: I come across the idea pretty often in my work.
Speaker 1: So many of my weird little guys are obsessed with
Speaker 1: the idea of a fully segregated society and the state
Speaker 1: violence against black people that comes with it. But that's
Speaker 1: where the idea lived. It lived on stormfront and on
Speaker 1: four Chan, and in manifestos and on Nazi podcasts. Those
Speaker 1: rallies in twenty twelve were pretty unique. The public display
Speaker 1: of the apartheid era South African flag at an American
Speaker 1: political rally was unusual. It was unusual enough that it
Speaker 1: was mentioned in news stories three years later when the
Speaker 1: flag appeared again on Dylan Rufe's jacket. But like so
Speaker 1: many once fringe ideas, it's part of the mainstream political discourse. Now.
Speaker 1: I won't rechread all of that. We talked about it
Speaker 1: in the last episode, but now the President of the
Speaker 1: United States is repeating the talking points from the flyers
Speaker 1: those skinheads printed out in twenty twelve, And I originally
Speaker 1: set out to just talk about those rallies as a
Speaker 1: sort of standalone story, this strange incident that seems to
Speaker 1: have happened in total isolation. As far as I've been
Speaker 1: able to find, the group behind it had never put
Speaker 1: on a public event before, and aside from a poorly
Speaker 1: attended follow up in DC later that same year, they
Speaker 1: never did again. The website has been offline for years,
Speaker 1: and there's hardly any mention of the group at all anywhere.
Speaker 1: A lot of white supremacist groups are short lived, so
Speaker 1: that's not really unusual, and this group, the South Africa Project,
Speaker 1: was pretty obviously just two people running a side project
Speaker 1: out of an Air Nations po box. But I can't
Speaker 1: let anything go, so I started to dig, and it
Speaker 1: became clear very quickly that there was a hell of
Speaker 1: a lot more going on here than I thought. Back
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, when those rallies took place, both the
Speaker 1: SPLC and the ADL had stories on their website explaining
Speaker 1: that those events had been organized by American neo Nazis.
Speaker 1: Both groups zeroed in on Morris Goulette, a longtime Arian
Speaker 1: Nations member and the man who'd given comments to the
Speaker 1: press as the organization's spokesman. Both outlets identified several local
Speaker 1: organizers of those assorted rallies. The Golden State Skinheads hosted
Speaker 1: in Sacramento. Billy Roper headlined the rally in Arkansas. Rallies
Speaker 1: in Tennessee and Pennsylvania were hosted by members of Folksfront
Speaker 1: and so on. But in one single line in a
Speaker 1: blog post that isn't even on the ADL's website anymore,
Speaker 1: the events are attributed to a woman named Monica Stone
Speaker 1: in this passing mention crediting Stone with the idea for
Speaker 1: the rallies. The post notes that she was a South
Speaker 1: African immigrant and a longtime member of the Christian Defense League.
Speaker 1: The CDL was a Christian identity group that grew out
Speaker 1: of the same milieu as the Aryan Nations in the sixties,
Speaker 1: but it never really achieved the same level of influence.
Speaker 1: But that's all there is. Monica and Louisiana. Monica from
Speaker 1: South Africa, Monica speaking at the Aryan Nations World Congress
Speaker 1: about the need for international solidarity between American neo Nazis
Speaker 1: and africanter nationalists. But Google gives you exactly nothing about
Speaker 1: this woman before or after this brief moment in time
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve. This point, I'm locked in. I have
Speaker 1: to know more about this woman. How did she end
Speaker 1: up in Mandeville, Louisiana, a town of just ten thousand
Speaker 1: people that I've only heard of because it's where David
Speaker 1: Duke lives. So I started with the information that I
Speaker 1: have a name, hopefully it's her real name, a city,
Speaker 1: and some potential known associates. If her longtime membership in
Speaker 1: the Christian Defense League is the only notable fact about her,
Speaker 1: maybe that means she was a very important member of
Speaker 1: the group, And lucky for me, it turns out she
Speaker 1: was the organization has or had, I guess, since it's defunct.
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, been run by a
Speaker 1: man named Robert K. Warner since the seventies, and when
Speaker 1: he took over, he moved its headquarters from California to
Speaker 1: Louisiana to be closer to his friend David Duke, and
Speaker 1: in addition into the Christian Defense League, Warner also ran
Speaker 1: a Christian identity church called the New Christian Crusade Church.
Speaker 1: Corporate filings for the church show Robert K. Warner as
Speaker 1: an officer of the organization, which I expected, but in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven he filed an amendment adding someone named Monica
Speaker 1: Huggett as the church's chief financial officer, and he changed
Speaker 1: the address on file to a residential address in Mandeville, Louisiana.
Speaker 1: Property records for Saint Tammany Parish show that a mortgage
Speaker 1: was taken out at that address by James Stone in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, but after he died, the property was
Speaker 1: sold by his widow, and on the documents for the sale,
Speaker 1: she's listed as Monica hugget Stone. And that's the kind
Speaker 1: of concrete paper trail I love to see. There's no
Speaker 1: doubt at all here that the Monica Stone behind those
Speaker 1: twenty twelve rallies is the Monica Huggot who married James
Speaker 1: Stone in two thousand and lived in Mandeville, Louisiana, two
Speaker 1: miles away from David Duke. So now I have a
Speaker 1: new name, Monica Huggot, and this is where I ran
Speaker 1: into trouble. Almost immediately, everything is in Afrikaans. Most of
Speaker 1: the English language material about someone named Monica Huggot is
Speaker 1: about the renowned British conductor and baroque violinist. But that
Speaker 1: is an entirely different person who I am almost one
Speaker 1: hundred percent sure has never helped an Italian terrorist build
Speaker 1: a bomb. Violinists have to be very careful with their hands,
Speaker 1: you know. But they were a handful of extremely tantalizing
Speaker 1: clues that convinced me to power through the agony of
Speaker 1: trying to translate blurry old PDFs. One of the first
Speaker 1: English Langua sources I found referring to a South African
Speaker 1: named Monica Huggett is the final report of the South
Speaker 1: African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Speaker 1: was authorized by President Nelson Mandela in nineteen ninety five
Speaker 1: and it was chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The body's
Speaker 1: goal was exactly what it says in the name, to
Speaker 1: find the truth about what happened under apartheid and try
Speaker 1: to find a way to move forward as a nation.
Speaker 1: The TRC had three central tasks to discover the causes
Speaker 1: in nature of human rights violations in South Africa between
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty and nineteen ninety four, to identify victims with
Speaker 1: a goal of paying reparations, and to allow amnesty for
Speaker 1: those who fully disclosed their involvement in politically motivated human
Speaker 1: rights violations. This wasn't a tribunal, this was a restorative
Speaker 1: justice process. They hoped to be able to provide amnesty
Speaker 1: to people who were honest. Over the course of three years,
Speaker 1: the Commission heard testimony from over twenty thousand people, both
Speaker 1: victims and perpetrators. Monica Hugget did not, as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, ever, testify before the Commission, but her
Speaker 1: name is in there. Specifically, it appears in Volume two,
Speaker 1: the seven hundred page portion of the report dealing with
Speaker 1: quote the Commission of gross violations of Human Rights, and
Speaker 1: more specifically, it's in Chapter seven Political Violence in the
Speaker 1: era of negotiations and transition. Under the subheading links with
Speaker 1: international right wing groups, the report reads, the first link
Speaker 1: between ultra right terrorism and foreign agencies came to light
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two when mister Fabio Mariello, mister Massimobulo
Speaker 1: and mister Uni Genio's office, all white foreign expatriates known
Speaker 1: as the White Commando, were convicted of the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine bombing of the offices of prominent academic doctor Jan Lombard.
Speaker 1: Originally mister KuPS Vermullen and Miss Monica Hugget, a foreign
Speaker 1: right winger, were arrested with them, but Huggitt turned state
Speaker 1: witness and Vermullin was released after a few days. Hugget's
Speaker 1: name was subsequently linked to the shootout in March nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four between the South African police and three German
Speaker 1: right wingers in the Donkerhook area. One German right winger,
Speaker 1: mister Stephen Rayes, was arrested, mister Thomas Kuons was shot dead,
Speaker 1: and a third, mister Horst Cleans, later arrested. A fourth,
Speaker 1: mister Alexander Ndline, was later charged in the Cullen and
Speaker 1: Magistrates Court for illegal possession of a firearm. And I
Speaker 1: think you can see why I was willing to invest
Speaker 1: the effort to find out more about this, because that's
Speaker 1: a hell of a thing to find under the first
Speaker 1: rock you turn over Italian terrorists bombing university offices in
Speaker 1: Pretoria nineteen seventy nine, German mercenaries getting into a deadly
Speaker 1: shootout with the police in nineteen ninety four, And there
Speaker 1: she is right at the center of two separate acts
Speaker 1: of pro apartheid terrorism fifteen years apart. Now there are
Speaker 1: some problems here. First of all, her name is spelled wrong,
Speaker 1: only a little wrong. It's missing one of the teas.
Speaker 1: But Alexander Nydelin's name is spelled so incorrectly that you
Speaker 1: couldn't find this by searching for his name. The report
Speaker 1: calls him Alexander Niedneloin, which as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: is not anyone's name or a real German name at all.
Speaker 1: And the bombing of Professor Lombard's offices at the University
Speaker 1: of Pretoria happened in nineteen eighty, not nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: It also describes Monica Huggett as a quote foreign right winger,
Speaker 1: which really threw me off at first. I've heard her talk.
Speaker 1: She sounds South African, and she's even said in multiple
Speaker 1: interviews that she was born and raised there. The confusion
Speaker 1: in the report maybe because she had publicly identified herself
Speaker 1: as a member of the American ku Klux Klan, and
Speaker 1: that may have been interpreted as her being American, And
Speaker 1: by the time the Commission was starting their work, she
Speaker 1: had left South Africa and was living in the United States.
Speaker 1: They never actually had a chance to speak to her.
Speaker 1: I'm willing to cut them some slack on the details here.
Speaker 1: They were close enough for government work, as my dad
Speaker 1: used to say, and they had a lot of work
Speaker 1: to do. But as my subsequent research shows, beyond a
Speaker 1: shadow of it out, Monica Huggett was born and raised
Speaker 1: South African. But keep those four Germans in the back
Speaker 1: of your mind for now. We'll see them again. Alexander Nydeline,
Speaker 1: you've already met the German NPD member swearing allegiance to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump at a Croatian Nazi rally in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: According to blurry old scans of arrest warrants from nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, Stephen Rays and Thomas Kunst were the other
Speaker 1: two German mercenaries he deserted with just before Christmas that year,
Speaker 1: and just as an aside, I am admittedly not at
Speaker 1: all an expert on the Bosnian War, so it took
Speaker 1: me a minute to parse the letterhead on the warrants.
Speaker 1: They were issued by the non existent country of the
Speaker 1: Croatian Republic of Hertzeg Bosnia, which explains why Nydelein had
Speaker 1: no problem re entering Croatia after fleeing as a fugitive
Speaker 1: all those years ago, and the fourth man forced Glens
Speaker 1: he still wanted for murder in Namibia. Early on in
Speaker 1: my search for more information about this mysterious woman at
Speaker 1: the center of these two terror plots carried out by
Speaker 1: foreign neo Nazis, I found a master's thesis submitted by
Speaker 1: Mada Visser to the University of Pretoria in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: It's in Afrikaans but translated. The title is the Ideological
Speaker 1: Foundations and Development of the White Fascist Movements in South
Speaker 1: Africa nineteen forty five to nineteen ninety five. After some
Speaker 1: truly agonizing trial and error trying to find a way
Speaker 1: to translate a three hundred page PDF without paying for something.
Speaker 1: The thesis was immensely useful, but every clue just raised
Speaker 1: more questions, and I was running into dead end after
Speaker 1: dead end trying to track down the primary sources in
Speaker 1: the footnotes. I can find a lot of things, but
Speaker 1: digitize archives of forty year old newspapers published in another
Speaker 1: language in another country that might not even still exist
Speaker 1: at all. For all I know, I came up empty,
Speaker 1: and I was on the verge of total ners was
Speaker 1: collapse at the idea that there is information out there
Speaker 1: that is just not available to me. When I had
Speaker 1: another idea and I found an unlikely ally the Central
Speaker 1: Intelligence Agency, That's right. A special shout out this week
Speaker 1: goes to the CIA, more specifically the Foreign Broadcast Information Service,
Speaker 1: which was operated by the CIA until it was renamed
Speaker 1: the Open Source Center in two thousand and five. Originally
Speaker 1: called the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, it was authorized in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one by President Roosevelt, and its original purpose
Speaker 1: was to record, translate, transcribe, and analyze propaganda radio programs
Speaker 1: produced by the Access Powers during the war. Over the years,
Speaker 1: its mission grew to include peacetime operations, and they eventually
Speaker 1: added television and print media into the mix, collecting and
Speaker 1: translating news from around the world and disseminating reports for
Speaker 1: use by intelligence agencies and diplomatic and military organizations. It's
Speaker 1: basically just an international news aggregator for government employees. And look,
Speaker 1: maybe all those old South African newspapers do exist somewhere.
Speaker 1: I found one. Not the one I was looking for,
Speaker 1: not one with real journalists and investigative reporting like I'd hoped. No,
Speaker 1: the only paper I could find a large catalog of
Speaker 1: digitized archives for was a paper called De Transfiller. It
Speaker 1: was an African or nationalist newspaper. That paper once unsuccessfully
Speaker 1: tried to sue another South African newspaper for calling them
Speaker 1: Nazi propaganda, but it was such overt Nazi propaganda that
Speaker 1: the judge dismissed the suit and ruled that the editor
Speaker 1: of the Transfaller quote did make his newspaper a tool
Speaker 1: of the Nazis in South Africa and he knew it
Speaker 1: end quote. So the Transvaaler wasn't exactly the resource I
Speaker 1: was hoping to find, But eventually I gave up trying
Speaker 1: to find old South African newspapers and something that was
Speaker 1: much easier to find were the unclassified daily reports from
Speaker 1: the Sub Saharan office of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service.
Speaker 1: So just this once, I guess I will give a
Speaker 1: reluctant nod to the CIA. So now I have some
Speaker 1: contemporaneous reporting that has been translated into English by someone
Speaker 1: who's presumably a professional and not a robot, and the
Speaker 1: pieces are starting to come together. I can start to
Speaker 1: see the picture here. This bombing campaign in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: is starting to come into focus. In August of nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: a newspaper editor in Pretoria received a letter on letter
Speaker 1: head bearing a symbol remarkably similar to the cross emblem
Speaker 1: used by the American Ku Klux Klan. A group calling
Speaker 1: themselves the Vitt Commando or the White Commandos claimed responsibility
Speaker 1: for the bombing of Professor Jon Lombard's office at the
Speaker 1: University of Pretoria, and the group threatened further attacks, writing
Speaker 1: that people and organizations working toward integration would be warned
Speaker 1: first and then eliminated. The Vit Commando had formed just
Speaker 1: a few months earlier in May or June of nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: Sources vary. Monica Huggett would later testify that she joined
Speaker 1: the newly formed vit Commando after meeting Massimo Bolo at
Speaker 1: a meeting in Pretoria in June of nineteen eighty, as
Speaker 1: described in the memoirs of Ray Hill, a man who
Speaker 1: ended his lengthy career as a fascist organizer by playing
Speaker 1: informant for the anti fascist magazine Searchlight. The meeting was
Speaker 1: a summit for leaders of the British fascist group National Front,
Speaker 1: the africaner nationalist group AWB, the far right South African
Speaker 1: Political Party HNP, and an Italian fascist group called Unido.
Speaker 1: So even though her involvement with vit Commando is the
Speaker 1: first time I can put her on paper involved in
Speaker 1: a terrorist organization, it was obviously not her first introduction
Speaker 1: to the idea. She had to have been deeply involved
Speaker 1: with at least one of those fascist groups to have
Speaker 1: even been in the room where Massimo Bolo invited her
Speaker 1: to join his terrorist cell, and the group got started
Speaker 1: right away. Just two months after forming the group, the
Speaker 1: bombing of Lombard's office was already their third big public display.
Speaker 1: They'd started a fire at a drive in theater and
Speaker 1: fire bombed the Johannesburg headquarters of the Institute for Race
Speaker 1: Relations in December. They claimed responsibility for the bombing of
Speaker 1: Professor F. A. Merritz's office at the University of South Africa,
Speaker 1: and they would carry out at least four more bombings
Speaker 1: before members started getting arrested. The first four arrests came
Speaker 1: in early February of nineteen eighty one a government employee
Speaker 1: in Pretoria named W. G. Van Dyck, the director of
Speaker 1: the South African National Front, Alan Fotheringham, an Italian fascist
Speaker 1: named Massimo Bolo, and as the newspaper put it at
Speaker 1: the time, mister Bolo's girlfriend, Miss m. Huggett of Kempton Park.
Speaker 1: Now that's the only source I could find alleging a
Speaker 1: romantic relationship between the pair. It never comes up again,
Speaker 1: so I don't know. And in the weeks that followed,
Speaker 1: police would arrest even more alleged members of the VIT
Speaker 1: Commando Fabio Miriello, an Italian born African citizen who'd emigrated
Speaker 1: four years earlier, kuz Vermulin, the leader of the World
Speaker 1: Apartheid Movement, and an Italian immigrant named Eugenio Zoppis and
Speaker 1: his wife Laura Zenenga. Those are all the names I
Speaker 1: could find in most of my sources. I found a
Speaker 1: few more names in an unlikely place. Documents released by
Speaker 1: the Italian government as part of their investigation into the
Speaker 1: Bologna massacre, a nineteen eighty bombing of a train station
Speaker 1: in Italy willie you to have been the work of
Speaker 1: fascist terrorists, do list several additional names of Italians who
Speaker 1: were in South Africa at the time and believed to
Speaker 1: have been involved with the VIT Commando. But there's no
Speaker 1: mention of those extra Italians in the South African or
Speaker 1: English language press, as far as I can find. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, there's no mention of almost any
Speaker 1: of those people. Ever. Again, only Mariello, Bolo and Zoppis
Speaker 1: actually faced charges. Marieloni Bolo were charged with sabotage the
Speaker 1: bombings and possession of a massive cache of weapons that
Speaker 1: had been stolen from the South African Defense Force, including
Speaker 1: fifty kilos of plastic explosives, sixty seven hand grenades, a
Speaker 1: couple of land mines, eight rifles, four pistols, a machine gun,
Speaker 1: and five thousand rounds of ammunition. When Bolo and Mariello
Speaker 1: went to trial later that year, Monica Hugget testified against them.
Speaker 1: In exchange, she wasn't charged, she admitted that she had
Speaker 1: procured the bomb making manual for Bolo books that she'd
Speaker 1: ordered from her clan contacts in the United States. I
Speaker 1: was a little surprised to see a familiar title here.
Speaker 1: One of the books she had sent to her from
Speaker 1: America was called The poor Man's James Bond, which is
Speaker 1: the same bomb making book that Dennis Mahon bought for
Speaker 1: the ATF informant that he was in love with after
Speaker 1: she expressed an interest in bomb making. What a Small World.
Speaker 1: Huggett also testified that she'd accompanied Bulow to Professor Lombard's
Speaker 1: office to scout out the best location to place the bomb.
Speaker 1: She explained that Bulow's residence had become unsuitable as a
Speaker 1: workspace after too many of his friends moved in, so
Speaker 1: she rented a property under her own name that he
Speaker 1: could use to work on his bombs. On the stand,
Speaker 1: Huggitt explained that she's a political activist. She's a member
Speaker 1: of the American ku Klux Klan and the Vit Commando.
Speaker 1: Never intended to endanger any human lives now, for what
Speaker 1: it's worth not to give this woman the benefit of
Speaker 1: the doubt. But despite the repeated threats to follow up
Speaker 1: with more violence, to take up arms, to commit actual
Speaker 1: acts of violence against human beings. No one was ever
Speaker 1: actually injured by a vit commando bomb. They went off
Speaker 1: in empty offices. I think she may have been telling
Speaker 1: the truth. They were warnings. Huggett told the court that
Speaker 1: their goal was to wake people up to the dangers
Speaker 1: of integration, to send a warning that more violence was
Speaker 1: inevitable if this creeping, incremental progressive reform that people were
Speaker 1: talking about were to actually happen. She swore the group
Speaker 1: had no intention of actually hurting anyone or trying to
Speaker 1: overthrow the government. By the end of nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: Mussimobolo had been sentenced to fifty two years, though forty
Speaker 1: two of those years would run concurrent with other portions
Speaker 1: of the sentence, leaving him with just ten years to
Speaker 1: actually serve, and Fabio Miriello was given nineteen years, but
Speaker 1: same deal. It was effectively just five, but Bolo didn't
Speaker 1: even serve those ten. He was released without any explanation
Speaker 1: that I can find, after just four years in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five, and immediately deported back to Italy. I'm not
Speaker 1: entirely sure what became of Muriello, but Myightivisser's thesis says
Speaker 1: he was known to have reconnected with Monica Huggett after
Speaker 1: his release, and the pair both got involved with the
Speaker 1: South African branch of the American Neo Nazi religion, the
Speaker 1: Church of the Creator. As for Eugenio Zuppis, the young
Speaker 1: Italian immigrant was charged only with the theft of the weapons.
Speaker 1: He'd been the one to actually steal them from the
Speaker 1: South African Defense Force, and he was also sentenced to
Speaker 1: five years, and he appealed that sentence to the court.
Speaker 1: So the following year, his lawyer was urging a judge
Speaker 1: to consider the mitigating factors. He's so young. He's just
Speaker 1: twenty three years old, and he was a brand new
Speaker 1: immigrant at the time, and he didn't speak any English.
Speaker 1: He'd been manipulated by the much older Fabio Muriello. His
Speaker 1: lawyer went as far as to say that Eugenio Zuppas
Speaker 1: had joined the VIT Commando entirely by accident, and he
Speaker 1: had no idea of the true nature of the organization
Speaker 1: until after he was arrested. The article about the dismissal
Speaker 1: of his appeal only lays out what his attorney said,
Speaker 1: it's not clear from the reporting I can find if
Speaker 1: anyone contradicted those statements in court, because you might have guessed,
Speaker 1: but it's not true. I mentioned earlier that the most
Speaker 1: complete list of names of those Italian fascists who were
Speaker 1: arrested in South Africa in connection to the vict Commando
Speaker 1: bombings was buried somewhere in two thousand pages of documents
Speaker 1: released by the Italian government related to the Bologna massacre.
Speaker 1: In August of nineteen eighty, the same month that the
Speaker 1: Vit Commando bombing started in South Africa, eighty five people
Speaker 1: were killed when a bomb went off inside the Bologna
Speaker 1: Central train station in Italy. It is, to some extent
Speaker 1: kind of a mystery still. There were a number of
Speaker 1: trials spanning over a decade, and several members of an
Speaker 1: Italian and fascist group were convicted, but the group itself
Speaker 1: never accepted responsibility for the bombing. It is perhaps in
Speaker 1: some ways akin to the Oklahoma City bombing. Legally we
Speaker 1: found the guy who did it, but there are a
Speaker 1: lot of questions we're never going to get answers to,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of weird paths you could
Speaker 1: let your mind go down trying to find them, so
Speaker 1: without losing my sanity or dragging you into the incomprehensible depths.
Speaker 1: Suffice it to say, Eugenio'suppus was not an innocent, confused
Speaker 1: young man when he stole a small arsenal of weapons
Speaker 1: for the vit Commando in nineteen eighty. In nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: he was one of fifteen members of an Italian fascist
Speaker 1: group who armed with clubs and chains, beat a young
Speaker 1: communist organizer to death in a small town outside of Rome. And,
Speaker 1: contrary to his lawyer's claims that he had by pure coincidence,
Speaker 1: met and befriended a fellow Italian right after he moved
Speaker 1: to South Africa, only to be manipulated by this new
Speaker 1: friend into committee crimes. There is actually evidence that Zoppas
Speaker 1: had been sent to South Africa specifically to meet with
Speaker 1: Fabio Mariello. In the months before Zappas arrived in South Africa,
Speaker 1: a member of Italy's Black Order wrote Mariello that he
Speaker 1: was sending six members down very soon, with more to follow.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty four, the newspaper of the Italian Communist
Speaker 1: Party listed Zappas among the names of seventy six fascist
Speaker 1: fugitives believed to have fled the country. Diplomatic records show
Speaker 1: the Italian government was requesting his extradition from Paraguay by
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, and I don't know what happened to
Speaker 1: him after that. In what is becoming a constant refrain,
Speaker 1: I do want to stress that I'm not an expert
Speaker 1: in South African history. I'm not a scholar of the
Speaker 1: apartheid era. I'm not a historian. Every week I have
Speaker 1: to gain some new specialized knowledge to try to give
Speaker 1: context to the story I'm trying to tell. And there's
Speaker 1: only so much one person can sort out in a
Speaker 1: couple of days. So bear with me, because I do
Speaker 1: want to try to give some context here. This bit
Speaker 1: commando bombing campaign in nineteen eighty didn't come out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: When Monica Hugget testified against the men she'd helped carry
Speaker 1: out those attacks, she said their goal had been to
Speaker 1: demonstrate that many white South Africans were opposed to the
Speaker 1: path of gradual concessions being made by the National Party,
Speaker 1: and I was confused by that. It will be another
Speaker 1: fifteen years before apartheid ended, and the National Party loved apartheid.
Speaker 1: What is she talking about? Apartheid is inherently violent. It
Speaker 1: is a form of violence in and of itself. There
Speaker 1: is no peaceful or kind way to run an apartheid state.
Speaker 1: There is no nonviolent ethno state, and that's obvious. But
Speaker 1: the kinds of violence and the visibility of that violence
Speaker 1: change from year to year. I don't mean to say
Speaker 1: that things like the forced removal of Black Africans from
Speaker 1: their homes and their lands are not violence. It is
Speaker 1: every action carried out in service of implementing and maintaining
Speaker 1: apartheid was an act of violence. But some years were
Speaker 1: bloodier than others. And while the political movement to end
Speaker 1: apartheid ebbed and flowed, two people have always and will
Speaker 1: always resist injustice. But in nineteen when those bombs went off,
Speaker 1: there was a growing awareness on all sides of the
Speaker 1: issue that something was going to have to change. Whether
Speaker 1: they liked it or not, The country was about to
Speaker 1: experience some of the most violent years of apartheid. For
Speaker 1: those committed to maintaining the status quo and holding on
Speaker 1: to political power, that would mean making some targeted compromises
Speaker 1: and more importantly, doubling down on state repression. The Soweto
Speaker 1: uprising had made apartheid a PR problem. I think for
Speaker 1: most people, dead school children is more than a PR problem,
Speaker 1: but for the National Party, that's what it was. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, thousands of students walked out of class
Speaker 1: in protest of a nineteen seventy four law requiring the
Speaker 1: use of Afrikaans in school. Students sang and held sign
Speaker 1: as they marched, and they planned to rally at a
Speaker 1: nearby stadium. Words spread to other nearby schools and students
Speaker 1: poured out into the streets to join the march, and
Speaker 1: when they heard the police had blocked their intended route,
Speaker 1: one of the march organizers urged calm, telling the crowd,
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters, I appeal to you, keep calm and cool.
Speaker 1: We have just received a report that the police are coming.
Speaker 1: Don't taunt them, don't do anything to them. Be cool
Speaker 1: and calm. We are not fighting. And when they encountered
Speaker 1: the police for the first time, for a moment it
Speaker 1: seemed cooler heads had prevailed on all sides, but the
Speaker 1: police weren't actually retreating. They were waiting for reinforcements, and
Speaker 1: just half an hour later, the first tear gas canister
Speaker 1: was fired into the crowd of children, and some of
Speaker 1: them ran, but most of them stayed facing the police, unmoving.
Speaker 1: According to several accounts, I found the children were singing
Speaker 1: when the first shot was fired. The police opened fire
Speaker 1: with live rounds on the crowd of children. One of
Speaker 1: the first children to die that day was a twelve
Speaker 1: year old boy named Hector Peterson. The photo of his tiny,
Speaker 1: limp body in the arms of an older boy, with
Speaker 1: Hector's sister running beside him, was seen around the world.
Speaker 1: Black South African photojournalist sam and Zeema had captured the
Speaker 1: true face of apartheid, and people were horrified. The violence
Speaker 1: spread like wildfire, and the worst of it lasted for
Speaker 1: three days. There was an explosion of internal resistance. White
Speaker 1: university students marched against the killings, Black workers went on strike.
Speaker 1: Riots broke out in black townships all over the country.
Speaker 1: Buildings burned, and when the dust had settled, hundreds were dead.
Speaker 1: The small reforms introduced in the late seventies had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the National Party softening its stance on apartheid,
Speaker 1: but the apartheid regime saw some advantage to reducing international
Speaker 1: criticism and disrupting black resistance. Amidst these tepid reforms, divisions grew.
Speaker 1: Some white South Africans, who had seen those pictures of
Speaker 1: children's corpses, now saw apartheid as what it was, a
Speaker 1: true evil. Others were repulsed by the violence, but seemed
Speaker 1: satisfied with the gestures toward reform. People like Monica Huggett,
Speaker 1: were worried that these promised reforms, things like repealing the
Speaker 1: ban on interracial relationships, would set the country on a
Speaker 1: road to hell. In her testimony the trial for Mariello
Speaker 1: and Bolo, she laid the blame on her Italian accomplices,
Speaker 1: but made no apologies for her own motivation, saying, on
Speaker 1: the stand, I was opposed to integration. I still am.
Speaker 1: The week Mariello and Bulo were convicted, American newspapers carried
Speaker 1: a four sentence wire story about the trial, noting that
Speaker 1: it was South Africa's first ever prosecution of white terrorists.
Speaker 1: How South Africa was entering its bloodiest decade of political violence.
Speaker 1: Someone had finally gone to jail for pro apartheid terror.
Speaker 1: But it's significant that they were only willing to prosecute
Speaker 1: those Italian men. There's hardly any mention at all South
Speaker 1: African woman who served as the point of contact for
Speaker 1: these foreign terrorists. Many of the stories in South African
Speaker 1: outlets stress heavily that the group was foreign in origin,
Speaker 1: that its members were foreigners, that they didn't even speak Afrikaans,
Speaker 1: that they had no connection to any South African political organizations.
Speaker 1: But that assertion is complicated a little bit by an
Speaker 1: anecdote from ray Hill's memoirs. On the first day of
Speaker 1: the trial, as Below and Miriello entered the courtroom, a
Speaker 1: man in the gallery stood and applauded for them. Natman
Speaker 1: Pete Rudolph was a former police officer, and at the
Speaker 1: time of the trial in nineteen eighty one, he was
Speaker 1: a sitting member of the Pretorias City Council and a
Speaker 1: member of the far right party HNP. He would eventually
Speaker 1: leave party politics behind and form a white supremacist group
Speaker 1: called the Order Bora Folk or the Order of the
Speaker 1: Boer People. He borrowed the name from the plot of
Speaker 1: the Turner Diaries. After Miriello and Bolo were convicted, the
Speaker 1: VIC Commando ceased to exist. It was just one of
Speaker 1: countless short lived right wing organizations in a shifting political landscape.
Speaker 1: Groups formed and splintered and disappeared all the time. Sometimes
Speaker 1: there was even doubt about the actual existence of some
Speaker 1: group claiming credit for one attack or another, and a
Speaker 1: lot of groups had significantly overlapping membership. But the end
Speaker 1: of the vict Commendo was not the end of Monica
Speaker 1: Huggett's involvement in pro apartheid violence, not by a long shot. Now,
Speaker 1: in my timeline of events, I lose track of Monica
Speaker 1: after nineteen eighty one. I can't say what she was
Speaker 1: up to for most of the eighties, but by the
Speaker 1: time I find her again in the record, she's a
Speaker 1: high ranking member of the africaner nationalist neo Nazi organization
Speaker 1: called the Africaner Veristanspavaging the Africaner Resistance Movement in English,
Speaker 1: or just AWB for short. It was founded in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three by Eugene terre Blanche, and the AWB wasn't
Speaker 1: happy with apartheid. No, it wouldn't do at all. Apartheid
Speaker 1: was too left wing, it was too liberal, and there
Speaker 1: was too much risk to bore identity for them to
Speaker 1: be living in proximity to black Africans, even under apartheid conditions.
Speaker 1: They're secessionists, and they believe the only solution to the
Speaker 1: problem is a pure white ethno state, a folkstot or
Speaker 1: the white South African. It's a little bit baffling that
Speaker 1: she was able to resume her activities retaining a fairly
Speaker 1: high level of prestige and responsibility, particularly when it came
Speaker 1: to her international contact after she, you know, turned state's
Speaker 1: witness against Maryellow and Bolo. Surely everyone knew she'd sold
Speaker 1: them out to save herself, but maybe her colleagues didn't
Speaker 1: see it that way. Maybe she was important enough that
Speaker 1: they were willing to make that sacrifice to keep her
Speaker 1: on the outside doing whatever it was she was doing.
Speaker 1: I had hope to get through the end of the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties in this episode, but I think we have
Speaker 1: to leave it here. In the mid eighties, our Italian
Speaker 1: mercenaries were in the wind after serving just a handful
Speaker 1: of years buying bars. I can't find Monica no matter
Speaker 1: how hard I squint at old TV news b roll
Speaker 1: of South African Nazi rallies. But I think she's there somewhere.
Speaker 1: And next week, before we rejoined Monica in her own story,
Speaker 1: we'll pick up in nineteen eighty nine with one of
Speaker 1: our German mercenaries. Five years before shooting out with the
Speaker 1: cops just days before the nineteen ninety four South African election,
Speaker 1: Horst Glen's was trying to prevent a different African nation
Speaker 1: from holding its first democratic, multi racial elections. He failed
Speaker 1: both times, but in nineteen eighty nine Klen's in his
Speaker 1: South African Nazi terror Celle, took two lives in a
Speaker 1: failed attempt to prevent Namibian independence. Weird Little Guys is
Speaker 1: a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. Its research
Speaker 1: written and recorded by me Molly Conker. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The show is edited
Speaker 1: by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was
Speaker 1: composed by Brad dickerd. You can email me at Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely
Speaker 1: and I almost certainly won't answer it. It's nothing personal.
Speaker 1: You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other
Speaker 1: listeners on the Weird Little Guys subredd end. Just don't
Speaker 1: post anything that's going to make you one of my
Speaker 1: room guys.