WEBVTT - Do We Really Need to Talk About Kevin? 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:10.080 Cool Zone Media. Hey, I'm Molly Conger and this is 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:12.760 Weird Little Guys, the show where I tell you about 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:15.159 the weird little guys trying to unravel the fabric of 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:19.760 our society. I've spent years researching and writing about writing extremism, 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:23.120 and it's pretty scary out there. I won't lie to you, 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:26.159 but the guys trying to ruin life as we know 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:33.400 it are also kind of freaks and losers. So here's 0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:37.080 one of them. Okay, we're going to start this off 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:39.600 at the pop quiz. I'm going to read you a quote, 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:41.839 and I want you to tell me who said it. 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:44.920 I'll give you a minute to think. It's multiple choice 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:48.800 to learn who rules over you. Simply find out who 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:57.600 you are not allowed to criticize. Was that A Benjamin Franklin, B. Voltaire, C. 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:03.360 Socrates or D A neo Nazi pedophile on a white 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:07.160 nationalist radio show in nineteen ninety three. Now, if you 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:10.959 guessed B, you're in good company. Well, no, it's not 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:14.920 good company. The company is pretty terrible. I can't say 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:17.560 bad company without getting lost in a tangent about Timoth 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:20.399 mcfay's obsession with the song bad Company by the band 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:23.479 Bad Company from their album Bad Company. So I won't 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:27.240 say the company is bad, but it's a crowd. No, 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:33.280 the answer is actually d neo Nazi pedophile Kevin alfred Strom, 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:35.560 and it's a slight paraphrase of something he said in 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:39.000 an August nineteen ninety three broadcast of American Dissident Voices, 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:41.600 the weekly radio program he hosted for the neo Nazi 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:45.080 group National Alliance. Strome was living on the group's West 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:48.680 Virginia compound, three hundred acres in the mountains near Hillsboro 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.960 that they just call the Lamb, and he was serving 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:54.400 as the right hand band of the group's leader, his mentor, 0:01:54.480 --> 0:01:59.160 William Luther Pierce. The broadcast was entitled all of America 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:02.400 must know the error that is upon us, a name 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:04.720 he borrowed from a speech given in nineteen fifty nine 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:08.080 by another one of his great influences, Revilo p Oliver, 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:10.520 and the quote gets new life every now and again 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:13.800 when it's incorrectly attributed to Voltaire. In the era of 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:16.680 public discourse about whether wearing a mask was truly the 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:19.560 most vile form of tyranny, it made the rounds as 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:23.200 COVID deniers pushed back against public health guidelines, like in 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:26.440 January of twenty twenty two, when Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massey 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:31.480 posted you mustn't question Fauci for he is science, accompanied 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:33.680 by an image of the quote, and it was sort 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:36.600 of laid over an image. I guess that's just a 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:39.360 meme words on a picture. The picture was of a 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:43.120 large disembodied hand pushing down on tiny little people that 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:46.400 it was squishing. That original image is actually an anti 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:50.160 child labor political cartoon from nineteen twelve. If you look 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:54.320 at the uncropped version of the original picture, the sleeve 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:57.480 has child labor employer written on it. You know they 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:00.760 used to label everything in a political cartoon. Garrison didn't 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:04.919 invent that. Australian Senator Corey Bernardi tweeted the quote back 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:08.640 in twenty fifteen. Contemporaneous reporting doesn't give me any insight 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:12.079 into exactly who he felt he was being prevented from criticizing. 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:14.640 But there was an article in the Guardian that same 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:17.440 week about his belief that Australia should not admit any 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:21.560 Syrian refugees because they might be terrorists. So I guess 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:25.440 he felt he was being oppressed by refugees but whatever 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:28.880 it was about. He responded by not just deleting that tweet, 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:31.480 but all of his tweets, and he did not tweet 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:36.760 again for a while. Elon Musk has unsurprisingly done it 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:40.240 at least twice. In November of twenty twenty two, Musk 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:42.640 posted that he was so committed to free speech that 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:44.800 he would not ban the account that was posting information 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:48.400 about his private plane. He did actually ban the account 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:51.320 a month later, but a user with a doge meme 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:54.600 profile picture replied to that tweet, so you don't rule 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:58.520 over us, but for us much wow, accompanied by that 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:01.320 same image that Thomas Massey the big hands squishing the 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:04.640 little people with the text of the quote, and Musk 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.800 replied to the Doge meme guy, that is my goal. 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:11.520 After hundreds of commenters immediately pointed out that he was 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:14.160 agreeing with a quote from a neo Nazi, he deleted 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:17.760 the reply without addressing it. Six months later, he tweeted 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:20.880 the exact same picture. It was a screenshot from a 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:22.919 meme page, so it was the exact same image bearing 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:25.400 the quote, but the text underneath it showed someone had 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.760 written we need to rise up against children with leukemia. 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:32.919 I guess the joke there is that you aren't allowed 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:36.640 to criticize kids with cancer. That one's still up. I 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:40.040 guess he thought that was funny, and maybe it does 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:42.760 kind of sound like something Voltaire could have said. You know, 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:46.080 he's not a huge fan of the Jews either. But 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:48.640 we don't exactly know where the original misattribution to the 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:52.839 French philosopher comes from. American etomologist Barry Popek wrote on 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:54.800 his blog in twenty twelve that the quote seemed to 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:57.599 appear kind of out of nowhere, with multiple Quote of 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:01.040 the Day websites featuring it in twenty twelve, all attributing 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:04.440 it to Voltaire. The oldest attribution to Voltaire that Pope 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:07.440 could find super weird it was a two thousand and 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:10.839 seven post by a user named Suzanne on a forum 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:14.560 for miniature horse breeders. But I think that has more 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:16.520 to do with sort of the rickety architecture of the 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:19.240 early Internet than it is evidence that Suzanne and the 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:21.520 mini horse ladies are anti semites. Right, that we don't 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:25.080 really have the ability to Google. A lot of that 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:29.760 sort of early Internet posting, Usenet forums and things like 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:32.320 that weren't indexing to Google, So I don't think it 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:36.240 came from the mini horse ladies, but I will admit 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:39.600 I spent half an afternoon digging through twenty year old 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:43.160 forum posts about miniature horse pedigrees trying to sniff out 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:47.040 secret Nazis and didn't find any. Mostly I just discovered 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:49.640 that some people buy the little shoes at Build a 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:53.680 Bear Workshop for their miniature horses because they fit perfectly, 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:56.919 and they're cheaper than the little sneakers they make for horses. 0:05:57.360 --> 0:05:59.000 So if you need a little extra traction, if you're 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:01.880 taking a miniature horse inside, you could put Teddy Bear 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:06.640 sneakers on him. But whoever started it, I find it 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:10.200 hard to believe that the original misattribution was innocent. It's 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:12.880 not a line you could really just come across anywhere 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:15.120 on the wider Internet if you were the first person 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:18.679 to do this, And the actual author of the quote 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:22.479 seems to agree. In twenty seventeen, Kevin Strom addressed the issue, 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:24.279 writing in a post on the website for the neo 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:28.480 Nazi organization National Alliance, whoever hijacked my quote and put 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:31.919 it over Voltaire's signature liked what I was saying. He 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:35.720 understood my point, He understood that our secret rulers brook 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.960 no criticism of themselves or their agenda without exacting punishment. 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:41.960 He wanted to use the quote, but he didn't dare 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:45.000 attribute it correctly. He didn't dare make his point with 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.440 a quote from a known racist or anti Semite. Those 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:51.440 are in scare quotes, no matter how good the quote was. 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:54.920 He didn't dare follow my thoughts with my name. If 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:58.440 he did, he'd be attacked as being racist himself. There 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:01.000 might be personal a professional comment sequences. So he took 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:03.000 my idea and put it in the mouth of Voltaire. 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:06.919 Funny thing, is Voltaire, freethinker and honest observer as he was, 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:09.360 is as much of a racist and anti semit as 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:11.840 I am. But Voltaire has been safely dead for well 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:14.280 over two hundred years, and his contribution to the artistic 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:17.280 and intellectual development of our civilization is so great that 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:19.360 it will take quite some time for his legacy to 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:22.720 be race denounced or censored, as I'm sure the enemies 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:25.840 of life are aching to do. So. It was relatively 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:31.160 safe to quote Voltaire, but unsafe to quote Kevin Alfred Strome. 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:34.600 Fair enough, I think Kevin's onto something there, you know. 0:07:34.600 --> 0:07:37.160 I hate to agree with him. But it isn't just 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:40.400 racism and anti Semitism that makes Strome an unsavory source 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:44.880 to quote, he is also a pedophile. Now, I know 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:48.280 you might be saying, and I know the legal department 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:51.200 is saying, that's kind of a strong word. Are you 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:55.240 sure you can say that? Well, yeah, I can. I'm 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:58.080 very sure because despite the entire section of his website 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:01.440 devoted to debunking the accusation, one of the exhibits filed 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:03.080 in the case that led to his stint in federal 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.560 prison for a possession of child pornography is a copy 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:09.440 of a contract he signed in the presence of a notary. 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:12.600 In September two thousand and six, at the request of 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:16.200 his second wife, Kevin Strom signed a document stating that 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.960 he would attend counseling sessions quote until such time that 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:23.240 such a qualified counselor will be able to indicate, too redacted, 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:26.040 that I am free from being sexually drawn to children, 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:29.080 or drawn to sexually explicit material of any kind concerning children, 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:33.960 or any other characteristics of being a pedophile. There's just 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:35.960 a lot going on there. I mean, first of all, 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:38.080 I don't know if you've had anything notarized, right you 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:41.040 sign a document in the presence of someone who is 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:44.000 certified by the state to say they saw you sign it, 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:47.320 so it's you know, there's no argument later about whether 0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:49.160 that's really you who signed it, because you show them 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:51.080 your idea and they put the little stamp on it. 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:54.720 I usually get stuff notarized at the library. It's free. 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:56.560 Your town probably has it too. You make a little 0:08:56.559 --> 0:08:59.160 appointment and the librarian can do it for you. It's great. 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:02.160 I love public library. I don't know where Kevin got 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:07.280 his pedophile contract notarized. I just can't imagine, like normally 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:10.320 you're looking at I don't know, mortgage documents and wills 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:13.600 or I had to send a document to a court 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:17.000 clerk to get online access to court records. Did she 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:21.400 read this? What a bad day at work. There's nothing 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:23.480 I can tell you that will make any sense of 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:27.319 a man's sexual attraction to his stepdaughter's nine year old classmate. 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:31.960 That's I can't do that. But I think there's some 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:34.280 sense in telling you a little bit about Kevin's life 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:37.320 up to that point. If you don't have the kind 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:40.760 of familiarity with white supremacist movements that ends conversations at 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:43.440 parties you've probably never heard of him, but he spent 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:45.839 most of his adult life as the indispensable right hand 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:47.920 of the man who wrote the novel that still serves 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:50.600 as a blueprint and a bible for white supremacists terror. 0:09:51.160 --> 0:09:53.040 By his own telling, it was his high school history 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:54.960 teacher who set Kevin's Strome on the path through right 0:09:54.960 --> 0:09:58.880 wing extremism, introducing him to the ultra conservative anti communist 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:01.560 group the John Birch s Society in the early seventies. 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:04.120 And it's probably no coincidence that the two men who 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:05.760 would have the biggest impact on his views as an 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:09.840 adult also came up through the JBS. Strome would later 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:12.560 serve as the personal archivist of Vilo p Oliver, a 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:15.400 founding member of the John Birch Society, although he was 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:18.040 later forced to leave the group he helped found in 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:22.000 nineteen sixty six after saying all the world's problems could 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:26.360 be solved if every Jew were vaporized. So it's not 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:29.760 that the John Birch Society wasn't anti Semitic. They just 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:32.360 didn't want him to say out loud exactly how anti 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:34.880 semitic they all were. It was just very embarrassing for 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:38.640 everyone and William Luther Pierce, the man whose Nazi compound 0:10:38.640 --> 0:10:41.480 Strome lived and worked on for years, joined the American 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:44.840 Nazi Party after deciding that John Birch Society just wasn't 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:48.240 racist enough for him. It was a place for people 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:51.560 who hated communism to share ideas, and a lot of 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:54.439 those ideas were about how black and Jewish people were 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:57.360 actually to blame, and it was said at John Birch 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:00.720 Society meeting sometime in the late seventies when first encountered 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:04.760 members of the newly formed National Alliance. William Luther Pierce 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:08.960 founded National Alliance in nineteen seventy four after American Nazi 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:11.600 Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell was shot in a laundromat 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:14.880 parking lot by a former follower. In sixty seven, Pierce 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:17.240 had a brief stint in the National Socialist White People's 0:11:17.240 --> 0:11:19.760 Party That's kind of a mouthful, that's just a different 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:22.719 Nazi Party before joining up with Willis Cardo to lead 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:26.560 the National Youth Alliance. And National Youth Alliance was formed 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:30.560 by Cardo to focus on recruiting and radicalizing right wing 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:33.880 college students to sort of counter the influence of groups 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:37.080 like Students for a Democratic society, right, So it's it 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:41.719 was the TPUSA of the George Wallace campaign years in 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:45.880 the name of the greatest sigure that I've ever taught differ. 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:50.080 I've read a line in the dusk and passed the 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:54.160 garment before the theater at Turner and I say segregation. 0:11:54.480 --> 0:12:01.839 Now segregation, the MA and segregation however, and it was 0:12:01.880 --> 0:12:05.040 originally spun off of Cardo's Youth for Wallace organization. But 0:12:05.360 --> 0:12:08.679 obviously George Wallace did not become president in nineteen sixty eight, 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:12.680 and they didn't bring back segregation. And in what is 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:15.000 going to become a theme in this story, Cardow and 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:18.760 Pierce pretty quickly stopped getting along and eventually split entirely. 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:22.160 The faction that left with Pierce became National Alliance in 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:26.160 nineteen seventy four, and in seventy five Pierce started writing 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:32.040 the novel that is, unfortunately, his enduring legacy, The Turner Diaries. 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:35.439 We don't have to get super deep into it today. 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:38.440 I'm sure it will come up in most episodes of 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:41.360 this show. Unfortunately, you know, over the last fifty years, 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:45.240 this book has inspired a lot of race warriors. It 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:49.480 is a fictional novel, but it's the handbook for the 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:51.600 race war. It is a race war handbook in a 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:56.080 fictional trench coat. And it's not very good. And I 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:58.600 don't I mean, obviously it's not good, right. It is 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:04.040 a terrorism. It is sort of describing how to instigate 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:06.320 the race war and you know, kill the race traders 0:13:06.360 --> 0:13:08.720 and kill the journalists and kill black people and Jewish people. 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:13.120 It's it is not good ideologically, obviously, but it's also 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:17.160 just really bad. It's messy. It was originally written in 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:20.840 a serialized format and then collected into one book, and 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:24.680 it's just it's disjointed. He's not a great writer. He's 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:28.520 not a great thinker. And Kevin Strom's first wife, Kirsten, 0:13:28.559 --> 0:13:31.040 told an interviewer years later that when she first met 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:33.959 Pierce in nineteen eighty seven, she told him she had 0:13:33.960 --> 0:13:37.120 just finished reading the Turner Diaries. You know, she's at 0:13:37.120 --> 0:13:39.600 dinner with her husband and doctor Pierce. And this is 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:41.760 I'm sure a very big deal for her husband, who 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:45.079 is a National Alliance member, and I'm sure he hoped 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:47.720 that his wife would just behave you know, keep sweet, 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:50.880 just be the wife. And she tells doctor Piers, oh, 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:53.000 he just finished reading your book. And I didn't think 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:56.000 he was very good. She told him it was poorly written, 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:00.000 and I mean point for Kirsten, She's right. I just 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:03.240 can't imagine saying that to him. And it was through 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:06.679 Pierce that Strom first met Kirsten. She was married at 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.280 the time to a National Alliance member named Joseph McLaughlin. 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:12.280 In nineteen eighty seven, the day that Rudolph hes died, 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:17.120 Jo suggested that she call Pierce. So I wish I 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:19.240 could be a fly on the wall on this afternoon, 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:21.720 you know, he says to his young wife, Oh, I've 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.680 just heard that the Deputy Furr died. We should call 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:28.120 the leader of the Nazi cult that I'm in and 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:33.920 offer our condolences, I guess. But that's what they did, 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:37.320 and Pierce was very happy to hear from them. And 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:40.320 as they're talking, he's thinking, you know, I think Kevin 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:44.720 would really like this girl. Again, she's married, she's on 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:47.160 the phone with her husband. Her husband is the one 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:50.000 that prompted her to make this phone call. But he hears 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:53.880 her and thinks, I've got something better for her, because 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:55.840 I think it's hard to meet women when you're living 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:58.080 in an off the grid Nazi compound in the Mountains 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:01.480 of West Virginia. Pierce himself was known for selecting his 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:05.080 brides from catalogs of Eastern European women, but I guess 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:06.720 he thought he could pick one out for his boy, 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:09.120 Kevin over in Arlington, you know, a little closer to home. 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:12.000 A few months after that dinner where she told Pierce 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:15.920 she didn't care for his novel, Kirsten left her second husband, Joe, 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:19.240 and moved in with Kevin, and the couple was married 0:15:19.280 --> 0:15:23.040 on Chinkite Island in nineteen ninety in a ceremony officiated 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:26.680 by William Luther Pearce. She wrote later in her memoir, 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:30.760 I guess you know she wasn't fully sort of removed 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:33.120 from society at this point. She was still existing in 0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:35.400 the world when she married Kevin, and so her family 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:38.240 was at the wedding, and she describes feeling a little 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:41.640 bit embarrassed at the way doctor Pierce talked about race 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:57.480 in front of her family. Strange vows, and the marriage 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:00.680 was not a happy one. That's probably not a surprise 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:03.720 to you. Soon after the marriage, they moved out to 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:06.720 the land again. That's the big compound in West Virginia, 0:16:06.800 --> 0:16:10.160 and she didn't love it there. She wasn't allowed to 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:12.680 watch TV, or read newspapers or consume any of what 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:18.160 her husband considered Jewish controlled media. They stocked wild food 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:20.800 and weapons, and she mainly tended to her home and 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:22.920 her children, but she says that she also helped out 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:25.840 around the compound by stuffing envelopes to mail out copies 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:29.000 of the group's propaganda, help fulfill orders for books. They 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:32.760 sold Pierce's book obviously, the Turner Diaries, and a number 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:36.960 of other sort of white nationalists publications and books. And 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:39.520 another task that she would pitch in with was they 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:44.240 made these sort of special waterproof PVC tubes that they 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:47.360 would sell to members, and the purpose of the tube 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:50.840 is to bury your guns underground so the federal government 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:55.200 can't get them. Right. So she's raising her children, she's 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:59.520 a housewife, she's making gun tubes for preppers and mailing 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:02.600 out copies of the terrorism Manual, you know, just young 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:06.880 mother stuff. And the paranoia on the compound was always there. 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:09.120 Why else are you living on a compound if you're 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:11.800 not a little bit paranoid. But after Ruby Ridge in 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:15.879 ninety two and Waco in ninety three, it became unbearable. 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:18.600 As she describes that you know, Kevin telling her things 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:20.320 like and you keep the children away from the windows. 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:22.199 They're going to shoot the children through the windows. Just 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:26.480 not prompted by anything, right, just the sort of constant 0:17:26.520 --> 0:17:28.399 tension that the Feds are going to show up on 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:30.600 any day now and they're going to shoot you. You're 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:32.600 not going to shoot you like Ruby Ridge. It's just 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:36.720 not a great environment for a family. And on April nineteenth, 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:41.399 nineteen ninety five, Kevin came home early from work, and 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:43.359 she said he never did that. He was never around. 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:46.040 He would go off to his little workroom to make 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:49.080 his little Nazi radio show for you know, dawn to 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:51.040 dusk every day. He never came home early, but on 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:55.159 April nineteenth, nineteen ninety five, he did. I don't know 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:58.520 if that date means anything to normal people. It was 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:01.480 the day of the Oklahoma City bombing. And when he 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:04.119 came home from work that day on April nineteenth, he 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:08.000 didn't know yet. It hadn't hit the news yet what 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:10.880 the police found with Timothy McVeigh in the car when 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:13.399 he was arrested. He had his favorite passages from the 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:17.119 Turner Diaries on the car seat next to him, But 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:20.560 he did know that the bomber had called the National 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:24.239 Alliance Office just before detonating the bomb that killed two 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:27.600 hundred people. Kirsten writes in her memoir that Kevin came 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:30.600 home early from work again the next day, April twentieth, 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:34.439 nineteen ninety five. Came home in a hurry, and he 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:38.120 started packing up boxes and boxes of documents and tapes 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:40.639 and papers and reel to reel recordings of his pirate 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:45.240 radio broadcast Voice of Tomorrow and all of his QSL cards. 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:47.680 If you're a Ham radio guy, don't come for me. 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:50.520 I'm going to do my best here. QSL cards are 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:52.159 mostly a thing of the past now that we have 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:55.600 the Internet, but they were these sort of postcards that 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:58.199 Ham radio enthusiast and people in the pirate radio community 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:00.480 would send through the mail to exchange in from about 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:03.360 signal quality and strength. You'd write, you know, I am 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:05.720 in this location, I was listening to this broadcast on 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:08.359 this date, and this was the signal quality and in 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:11.640 the pirate radio world, these QSL cards are real collector's items, 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:15.320 but they're also a paper trail that the FCC would 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:17.320 love to have. It's sort of a record of what 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:20.760 you're listening to who you're communicating with, and he's been, 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:25.479 you know, running an illegal anti Semitic radio show for years. Anyway, 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:29.399 those are QSL cards, I think, And Kirsten said he 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:32.159 burned the boxes of QSL cards. So he's packing up 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:35.720 all these documents. He's burning the cards, and then he 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:37.919 fills the car up with these boxes of documents and 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:42.239 tapes and he drives several hours away to Stanton, Virginia, 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:46.080 and drives all over town, leaving these boxes in different 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:48.920 dumpsters in businesses. Right, so I guess you know. In 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:54.000 April of nineteen ninety five, the Big Lots dumpster received 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:58.320 potential evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing. Who knows, And 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:02.159 the worst thing really was that it ruined Hitler's birthday, 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:05.000 which was usually a very lively occasion on the compound. 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:08.120 It wasn't long after the bombing that the couple moved 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:11.919 to Rochester, Minnesota. They chose it because it was ninety 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:15.680 six percent white. Of course, it was in Rochester where 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:18.639 Kirsten gave birth to their third child, and it was 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:22.320 pretty clear that she was suffering from what was probably 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:26.320 postpartum depression. She describes an incident just weeks after giving 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:28.400 birth when she was allowed to listen to a little 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:30.719 bit of the radio to hear a weather report, and 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:32.520 she caught the tail end of a news story about 0:20:32.520 --> 0:20:34.440 a young couple that killed their baby in a hotel 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:36.480 room to cover up the fact that they'd gotten pregnant. 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:39.600 And that's upsetting for anyone to hear. But I think 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:43.399 if you're a brand new mother, that's overwhelming, right. So 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:45.680 she's a new mother, she's holding her baby. She hears 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:48.560 about a baby that died, and she starts crying. I 0:20:48.560 --> 0:20:50.560 think there's nothing more normal in the world than to 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:52.600 cry when you hear about a dead baby. But Kevin 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:55.240 yelled at her. He rebuked her for this, saying it 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:57.320 was good that the baby was dead because its mother 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:00.320 was Jewish. And it wasn't long after that that she 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:02.920 finally got up the courage to read a magazine article 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:06.320 about the Oklahoma City bombing. She obviously had very little 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:09.320 access to media and was afraid to find out more 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:12.320 about this. Anyway, she picked up a magazine and she's 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:16.240 leaping through it and she sees pictures, and she told 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:19.399 an interviewer later, I was thinking about this child being 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:22.320 held by a fireman doesn't look any different than my 0:21:22.440 --> 0:21:26.320 son and he's covered with blood, and that whole idea 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:29.200 that there really isn't any difference, that children are children 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:32.440 all came to me. It all came together on that date. 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:34.960 And it was around this time that Kirsten spent some 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:38.399 time in a psychiatric hospital. Can't really blame her. I 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:43.199 can't imagine trying to integrate that into my psyche. And 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:45.480 she'd been begging for help for years, but Kevin didn't 0:21:45.520 --> 0:21:48.440 believe in that kind of thing. She'd been prescribed antidepressants 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:50.480 after the birth of their second child, but he hadn't 0:21:50.480 --> 0:21:53.440 allowed her to take them while she was in the hospital. 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:57.760 He left her and took the children. A year's long 0:21:57.800 --> 0:22:00.560