Speaker 1: Wolz Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I'm
Speaker 2: your occasional host, Molly Conger, and today we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about something that is happening here, doxing Nazis. Specifically,
Speaker 2: I'm talking to Christmathias about his new book, To Catch
Speaker 2: a Fascist, The Fight to expose the Radical Right. Chris,
Speaker 2: thanks for coming on today.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Molly, It's such a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited to talk about this book. You sent
Speaker 2: me a copy of it recently. I don't think I
Speaker 2: remembered until I was reading it and I talked to
Speaker 2: you while you were writing it.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes you did. Yeah, yeah, you're one of
Speaker 1: the many, many people I talked to, and you are
Speaker 1: quoted in the book. In fact, I can't remember if
Speaker 1: you told it to me or if I cite it
Speaker 1: from somewhere else. But you once compared the research that
Speaker 1: goes into doxing unmasking Nazis to basically investigating your Instagram account,
Speaker 1: which I thought was an amazing comparison, because you're basically saying, like,
Speaker 1: this type of work is accessible if you've done that
Speaker 1: type of slew thing.
Speaker 2: Which is not something I'm admitting to doing. I got
Speaker 2: brazy about my exes. I'm just saying it is something
Speaker 2: many women are very good at.
Speaker 1: It, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yes, and they don't realize it's a transferable skill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: But for those who don't know, christ Rhramathias has been
Speaker 2: covering the far right for more than a decade, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're with Huffington Post for a long time, and you've
Speaker 2: been independent for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I was at huff Post for like almost
Speaker 1: fourteen years, and about ten of those I know, it's wild,
Speaker 1: and ten of those years I was covering the far right,
Speaker 1: which is how I ended up in Charlottesville in twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen for Unite the Right rally, which is something Molly
Speaker 1: and I have talked a lot about before. And yeah,
Speaker 1: after I got back from Charlottesville, my editor at the
Speaker 1: time was like, this is your beat now covering the
Speaker 1: far right. So I was kind of like among this
Speaker 1: like initial through of like digital media journalists who suddenly
Speaker 1: found themselves on the like the right wing extremism beat.
Speaker 1: And pretty quickly, you know, I realized while I was
Speaker 1: trying to unmask people in the far right, that there
Speaker 1: were already people doing that work and they were anti
Speaker 1: fascist activists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so to prepare for today, I listened to
Speaker 2: a couple of interviews you've done about the book so far.
Speaker 2: It comes out first week of February.
Speaker 1: February third. Yeah, We're we're close. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was listening to those interviews, and I was thinking about,
Speaker 2: you know, this is a different audience, Like you don't
Speaker 2: need to explain to people who listened to it could
Speaker 2: happen here what antifa is or what docing is. Yes,
Speaker 2: but I think the book very delicately and unapologetically explains
Speaker 2: those things to people who might be afraid of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean that was the entire intent of the book,
Speaker 1: and I'm so glad you picked up on that. You know,
Speaker 1: I think I kind of imagined writing this book for
Speaker 1: my parents, for like kind of you know, boomer liberals,
Speaker 1: if you will, or centrists and other people just I
Speaker 1: think that have a lot of misapprehensions about antifa, understandably,
Speaker 1: and you know, the kind of the goal of the
Speaker 1: book was to to demystify what antifa is, explain it
Speaker 1: to a wider audience, and to make kind of more
Speaker 1: radical politics that Antifa represents more palatable to a wider audience.
Speaker 1: And the way I tried to do that was to
Speaker 1: make the book a bit of a thriller so that
Speaker 1: was accessible, and make it into like a spy narrative.
Speaker 1: And I'm hoping that the very kind of average reader
Speaker 1: will be able to dive into this and come out
Speaker 1: understanding more radical leftist politics that maybe wasn't accessible to
Speaker 1: them before.
Speaker 2: That's such a hard needle to threat, because like, I
Speaker 2: could give this book to my dad, right right, but
Speaker 2: I also enjoyed reading it.
Speaker 1: Yay, good for the listener.
Speaker 2: You should go out and get this. It's not just
Speaker 2: for your dads. You will like it to the cold open, right,
Speaker 2: Like the introductory chapter starts sort of in media res
Speaker 2: with your framework of the book. Right, this Vincent Washington,
Speaker 2: this infiltrator inside Patriot Front. And the thing is I
Speaker 2: know about Vincent Washington. I read the leaks that Vincent
Speaker 2: was responsible for. I was actually the one who told
Speaker 2: Thomas Rousseau in person about the leak.
Speaker 1: What I didn't know that book?
Speaker 2: Oh yes, for the listener, Vincent Washington is not a
Speaker 2: real person. Surely is a real person, but that's not
Speaker 2: his real name, yes, right, So within Patriot Front they
Speaker 2: all get a pseudonym and then their last name is
Speaker 2: like their state. So Vincent Washington was a man whose
Speaker 2: name is not Vincent, who might be from Washington, and
Speaker 2: he infiltrated Patriot Front and he leaked all of their
Speaker 2: rocket chats. And the day that leak was published, it
Speaker 2: was January twenty first, twenty twenty two. Yes, it was
Speaker 2: the day of the March for Life. Yes, So Patriot
Speaker 2: Front was in Washington, DC, and I had a suspicion
Speaker 2: that Patriot Front would be there. They don't announce that
Speaker 2: the kind of ahead of time, but I was pretty
Speaker 2: sure they were gonna be there. So I went to Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. And we were standing outside the National Archives.
Speaker 2: Thomas Rousseau had a little bullhorn. He had like twenty
Speaker 2: or thirty guys and the little matching fits, and they
Speaker 2: were so tickled with themselves. They were so tickled. People
Speaker 2: were just falling all over themselves because these like scary
Speaker 2: Nazis were on the street. And I actually I have
Speaker 2: a video. I'll embed it in the final.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Molly, hey, guys, your rocket chat just
Speaker 1: got leads on DIA secrets.
Speaker 2: Unicorn Ryan just dropped your rocket Chat everything, all your dms,
Speaker 2: all your dms, the Matadeia.
Speaker 1: The video We're just gonna make fun of you, the
Speaker 1: videos that.
Speaker 2: You send your network leaders. Those all have Metadeia and
Speaker 2: Unicorn Ryan is posting them right now.
Speaker 1: Holy shit, Molly, how did I not ask you about
Speaker 1: this for the book? I could have put this in there.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: It was incredible because, you know, Thomas Rousseau later was like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's like not a big He looked scared.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he looks scared.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like I know about Vincent, but seeing the
Speaker 2: story from his side of things was so different. Right,
Speaker 2: Like I use these leaks all the time, but I,
Speaker 2: you know, never get to know about the leaker.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah. So again, this
Speaker 1: is kind of my goal for the book was that
Speaker 1: these kind of anti fascist spies, and I feel like
Speaker 1: most Americans don't know that Antifa had so many spies
Speaker 1: over the last ten years that were infiltrating these groups.
Speaker 1: You know, they were the hidden hand behind thousands of
Speaker 1: news stories because they collected all of this invaluable intelligence.
Speaker 1: You know, hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes of private messages
Speaker 1: that these white supremacists were sending to each other, which
Speaker 1: then were posted on a database on Unicorn Riot, which
Speaker 1: you know, wonderful researchers like yourself and other people used
Speaker 1: to mine for clues and details that they could use
Speaker 1: to identify all of these previously p sseunonymous Nazis. So
Speaker 1: for example, you know, and I wish I could have
Speaker 1: seen the look on Thomas's face. I can't wait to
Speaker 1: see that video. But yeah, I mean, like they released
Speaker 1: I believe it was like four hundred gigabytes worth of
Speaker 1: rocket Chat messages and you know, videos and photos and.
Speaker 2: Stuff with metadata still attached.
Speaker 1: To them, exactly with metadata still attached to them, which
Speaker 1: we'll get to in a second. By the way, there's
Speaker 1: a good story about the metadata. But you know, ultimately
Speaker 1: that data would contribute to do saying unmasking I think
Speaker 1: about eighty members of Patriot Front, which is just remarkable,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, part of the story I
Speaker 1: was trying to tell was that these anonymous anti fascists
Speaker 1: who are doing this work, you know, anonymously, like they're
Speaker 1: not doing it for acclaim or glory. They're doing it
Speaker 1: because they see it as a form of community self defense.
Speaker 1: And you know what they were doing, you know, I
Speaker 1: think outstripped the efforts of major media, news organizations, you know,
Speaker 1: academic institutions, civil rights organizations, oh, no doubt, law enforcement definitely,
Speaker 1: like they were doing more work to destabilize and destroy
Speaker 1: far right groups. Then I would argue really anyone else.
Speaker 2: And then this subsequent work that builds off of that
Speaker 2: by civil rights groups filing these like Large Clan Act lawsuits.
Speaker 2: Those lawsuits don't exist without these leaks. Siins v. Kessler
Speaker 2: doesn't exist without these leaks. The three lawsuits against Patriot
Speaker 2: Front don't exist without these.
Speaker 1: Leaks, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: And I've been thinking a lot about this this week,
Speaker 2: right because it was the anniversary of Richard Spencer getting
Speaker 2: punched in the face five years ago. Happy anniversary, Happy
Speaker 2: anniversary to those who celebrate. And that was a beautiful moment.
Speaker 2: And I think we can all agree that it's so
Speaker 2: funny to watch Richard Spencer get punched in the face.
Speaker 2: But every year you see people say and that's what
Speaker 2: stopped him, and he was never heard from again and
Speaker 2: he shut up forever after that.
Speaker 1: Right, that's not true. That's not true at.
Speaker 2: All, Like I love I love the guy that punched
Speaker 2: him in the face, but that didn't end.
Speaker 1: It, Yes, exactly, an infiltrator did. An infiltrator did, and
Speaker 1: I think again, you know, kind of the goal of
Speaker 1: the book is that most Antifa in the public imagination
Speaker 1: is most often associated with Nazi punching, and you know,
Speaker 1: for good reason, Like most people learned about Antifa in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen from videos like the video of Richard Spencer
Speaker 1: getting punched. It's so interesting to look back and realize
Speaker 1: that no one in America knew what the fuck Antifa
Speaker 1: was before twenty seventeen, and then by the end of
Speaker 1: that year, everyone had heard that word or knew that word.
Speaker 2: It was the boogieman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was the boogiey Man, and it was added
Speaker 1: to the Webster Dictionary. Oxford Dictionary shortlisted it for word
Speaker 1: of the Year. Like it's a remarkable climb for you know,
Speaker 1: a piece of language, a word. But the like viral
Speaker 1: videos that catapulted that word into the like lexicon kind
Speaker 1: of obscured the bulk of the work that Antifa was doing,
Speaker 1: which was espionage and intelligence gathering, and kind of like
Speaker 1: the creation of this remarkable underground in formal intelligence agency
Speaker 1: that like just completely fucked up so many fascist groups,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, at the end of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: Spencer famously said Antifa is winning, and he was referring
Speaker 1: not only to getting punched everywhere he went, but to
Speaker 1: these very efforts to identify all of his followers who
Speaker 1: knew that if their Nazism was public, they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to like operate in public life, they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to hold down a job, and so on and so.
Speaker 2: Forth, Because I guess both the Nazi punching and the
Speaker 2: Nazi docsing they are different means to a similar end,
Speaker 2: which is to enact a consequence, right, so that if
Speaker 2: you're going to be a Nazi in public, there's going
Speaker 2: to be a fucking consequence, whether that means you get
Speaker 2: decked in the jaw, or it means all of your
Speaker 2: neighbors know what you said online, your mom knows what
Speaker 2: you said online, like people know who you are.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly the way I always describe it is the
Speaker 1: digital equivalent of ripping the white hood off of a klansman.
Speaker 1: You know, back in the eighties and nineties, anti racist
Speaker 1: activists like with groups like Anti Racist Action, you know,
Speaker 1: would post flyers in neighborhoods that said meet your local Nazi, right,
Speaker 1: And what they were doing was not only warning the
Speaker 1: community that that guy down the block is liable to
Speaker 1: commit violence against people you know and love, but like
Speaker 1: you were getting at, they were creating a social cost
Speaker 1: for being a fascist. They're basically leveraging an existing societal
Speaker 1: taboo against explicit white supremacy and fascism to ensure a consequence.
Speaker 1: It basically says, it tells people, if you're going to
Speaker 1: join one of these groups, we're going to name and
Speaker 1: shame you. You're going to lose your job, your girlfriend's
Speaker 1: going to dump you, you might lose your apartment, your family,
Speaker 1: you know, might not want to talk to you anymore,
Speaker 1: like you're going to be a pariah. And I think
Speaker 1: it was really effective. I mean, you know, obviously, the
Speaker 1: animating question of my book, of course, is what happens
Speaker 1: when that taboo starts to disappear.
Speaker 2: But it's not gone yet.
Speaker 1: It's not gone.
Speaker 2: Some of the other interviews I was looking at, people
Speaker 2: are saying, well, is there value in this anymore? Because
Speaker 2: you can work for the state department and be a
Speaker 2: Nazi now, right, you can do the White House social
Speaker 2: media be a Nazi now Like, is there still any
Speaker 2: value in this? And I think the answer is obviously yes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they wouldn't wear masks if they didn't have to wear masks, yes, right,
Speaker 2: Like some of them aren't mask off quote unquote, but
Speaker 2: like not all of them. Patriot Front still marches in masks.
Speaker 2: Ice agents still abduct children in masks. They're covering their
Speaker 2: faces because they know what they're doing is wrong.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, And I think it's also as much of
Speaker 1: a mask off moment as we might be living in
Speaker 1: in some ways. You know, this act of research and
Speaker 1: identifying the threat is still so important because it's you know,
Speaker 1: preserving that societal taboo. It's still saying that that social
Speaker 1: cost is something we still want to preserve, and it
Speaker 1: is you know, I think very interesting that the anti
Speaker 1: fascist work now is kind of pivoting towards identifying ICE
Speaker 1: agents and MAGA, and the Trump and administration is horrified
Speaker 1: of this tactic of identifying ICE agents, and for good reason,
Speaker 1: because you know the story I try to tell my book, like,
Speaker 1: this tactic played a really big part in destroying fascist groups.
Speaker 1: They know that it could destroy their ethnic cleansing project.
Speaker 1: And when you look at the polls like since Reine Good,
Speaker 1: the favorability for ICE is just plummeted, and the support
Speaker 1: for slogans like abolish ICE have skyrocketed. So like, that
Speaker 1: societal taboo against kind of white SUPREMACISMSM right, that's being
Speaker 1: displayed by ICE is definitely still there.
Speaker 2: And you ground this sort of in the history too
Speaker 2: in the book, in the chapter about sort of the
Speaker 2: history of unmasking, whether that's with digital docsing or you know,
Speaker 2: identifying members of the Klan, there was still a social
Speaker 2: cost of being identified as a Klansman in the nineteen twenties. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like there was there was no social taboo against being
Speaker 2: racist in the twenties, but there was a social cost
Speaker 2: being identified as a Klansman. And I think we're we
Speaker 2: find ourselves in the same unfortunate place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, I mean, and honestly, that was one of
Speaker 1: my favorite parts about researching the book was diving into
Speaker 1: the efforts to unmask the clans. Obviously there were efforts
Speaker 1: to unmask the first Klan, but you know, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite stories about unmasking the Second Clan took place
Speaker 1: in Buffalo, New York. And there was actually a very
Speaker 1: large clan chapter in Buffalo. And you know, the Second
Speaker 1: Clan wasn't confined to the South. It was everywhere. It
Speaker 1: was in the northeast and the midwest, right, and it
Speaker 1: was animated not only by anti black racism and anti Semitism,
Speaker 1: but also by anti Catholicism. They were really angry at
Speaker 1: this new wave of immigrants from Eastern and southern Europe.
Speaker 2: They didn't allow Catholics in until the seventies. They had
Speaker 2: to have a big summit about it. Yes, yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: when they decided that Catholics are white, Yes exactly.
Speaker 1: And this is I mean, it's just it's so much
Speaker 1: to unpack because like obviously, like my family's Catholic, and
Speaker 1: I enjoy all of the privilege of being white. But
Speaker 1: like you know, back then, like you know, Catholics were
Speaker 1: you know this other.
Speaker 2: You had a dual loyalty to this mysterious king.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. So at any rate, the Klan in Buffalo
Speaker 1: is really big. And you know, in one night they
Speaker 1: even have this elaborate cross burning ceremony where eight hundred
Speaker 1: people take the oath for the Klan. The mayor of Buffalo, though,
Speaker 1: is Catholic and forms a coalition with you know, Black
Speaker 1: Buffalonians and Jewish Buffalonians, and the mayor ends up enlisting
Speaker 1: a spy to go undercover into the clan. One night,
Speaker 1: the clan's secret headquarters in Buffalo are ransacked, broken into,
Speaker 1: and ransacked, and suddenly this list of the clan's membership
Speaker 1: ends up in the hands of the mayor. The mayor
Speaker 1: has makes some like deft denials of any involvement, but
Speaker 1: says that he's going to post the lists downtown. The
Speaker 1: list is posted downtown, so many people show up to
Speaker 1: look at the list to see who among their neighbors
Speaker 1: is in the clan that they end up having to
Speaker 1: move the list I believe, to a warehouse to fit
Speaker 1: all the people so that they could form a line.
Speaker 1: And then in the ensuing weeks and months, clan owned
Speaker 1: businesses are boycotted and vandalized. Clansmen turn up to their
Speaker 1: jobs only to learn that they've been fired, and before
Speaker 1: long the klan just completely falls apart. And interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: clan headquarters down in Georgia heard about what was happening
Speaker 1: in Buffalo and was really alarmed by it, so they
Speaker 1: send an investigator to Buffalo to figure out who the
Speaker 1: spy is. They figure out who the spy is, and
Speaker 1: they get in a shootout and they both die. Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: which like underscores you know, the stakes of this work sometime.
Speaker 2: Right, which is why you know the Richard Spencer puncher
Speaker 2: and the infiltrators they do their best to stay in honan,
Speaker 2: miss because the steaks are lethal, yeah, right, like they
Speaker 2: will kill you back. Yes, these organizations can't survive sunshine
Speaker 2: and they're so aware of that that. Yeah, people have
Speaker 2: been killed for this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. You and I have both faced our share
Speaker 1: of harassment and stuff. But there's older tales of you know,
Speaker 1: anti racist action. Back in the nineties, two of its members,
Speaker 1: you know, anti racist skinheads, were in Nevada, lured out
Speaker 1: to the desert by Nazis under false pretenses, and executed
Speaker 1: in the desert.
Speaker 2: It was fourth of July weekend, right, Yes, we still
Speaker 2: honor them on the fourth of July exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Their names are escaping me right.
Speaker 2: Now, Spitting Newborn and Daniel Shrsey.
Speaker 1: Yes, And there is a fantastic Orlando Weekly feature article
Speaker 1: about I Believe Spit that I think is one of
Speaker 1: the best pieces I've read in a long time that
Speaker 1: maybe we can put in the notes. I think people
Speaker 1: would really enjoy.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And you.
Speaker 1: Know, and then there's more recent examples of that too.
Speaker 1: You know, over the last five years, there was three
Speaker 1: members of the Base, which is like a neo Nazi organization. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I love that your listeners know all this.
Speaker 2: By the way, what they could use the recap.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but know who these groups are at least,
Speaker 1: but they were arrested for conspiring to kidnap and murder
Speaker 1: to anti fascist activists in Georgia.
Speaker 2: It was a couple living in a kind of remote
Speaker 2: area and they had a very detailed plan to burn
Speaker 2: down their home and like kill them in their beds
Speaker 2: and kill their pets. And I mean it was Yeah,
Speaker 2: if not for the FBI agent who was their friend,
Speaker 2: that couple would have been killed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, it's it's really wild to consider.
Speaker 2: The FBI agent was friends with the Nazis. I should
Speaker 2: clarify there is almost always an FBI agent who is
Speaker 2: friends with the Nazi. Yes, and that's that's the important thing, right,
Speaker 2: you know, the these anti fascists are infiltrating these groups,
Speaker 2: and so is the FBI right, Like a lot of
Speaker 2: these hate groups, somebody is either a paid informant, freelance informant,
Speaker 2: or an actual undercover agent. And that's great, I guess,
Speaker 2: but a lot of times they will prioritize keeping their
Speaker 2: agent undercover, yes, over using the information to protect anyone.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: And when we do it, when anti fascists do that,
Speaker 2: we are invested in protecting our communities, not building a case.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: You don't need to take this to a grand jury.
Speaker 2: You don't need to keep a guy in there for
Speaker 2: twenty years waiting for the big fish. You're protecting a community, yes.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's an example of that in the book.
Speaker 2: There was a kind of this white whale in anti
Speaker 2: fascist circles that people were trying to identify, and he
Speaker 2: was a leader in the Ball Patrol, which of course
Speaker 2: is this community of Nazis that praises his mass shooters
Speaker 2: and tries to encourage other Nazis to commit mass shootings.
Speaker 2: And he was eventually identified as this guy named Andrew
Speaker 2: Cassat in Sacramento, California. I remember Vic yeah, and his
Speaker 2: student his pseudonym was Vic Mackie Yeah, and anti fascist
Speaker 2: identified him.
Speaker 1: I published a story at huff Post. It emerges later
Speaker 1: that Andrew Cassat was already on like the no.
Speaker 2: Fly lists, yes, which means the government already knew who
Speaker 2: that fucking man was when he was he was recording
Speaker 2: a podcast about shooting me in my womb through my vagina,
Speaker 2: and the government already knew who he.
Speaker 1: Was, yes, and which is just insane. And you know,
Speaker 1: and they'll claim it's like investigative secrecy, like it's some
Speaker 1: kind of some kind of pragmatism, but it's like for what,
Speaker 1: like they're posing an urgent threat.
Speaker 2: For one thing. I felt safer, And I was safer
Speaker 2: once I knew who he was, once someone did the
Speaker 2: work of identifying that man, and I could say with
Speaker 2: certainty he is in California, he is not near me.
Speaker 2: I was safer, Yes, And like anti fascist gave me
Speaker 2: that the government did not give me that the government
Speaker 2: would never have given me that.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. And I think it's also you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, a big tenet of militant anti fascism is
Speaker 1: that you don't trust law enforcement or the state in
Speaker 1: this fight. And not only for the reasons we're describing now,
Speaker 1: but there's like this historical irony in when the FBI
Speaker 1: or law enforcement in general infiltrates white supremacist groups, they
Speaker 1: end up finding a bunch of their buddies in these
Speaker 1: white supremacist groups, like they end up identifying a lot
Speaker 1: of police officers. And I think it just goes to
Speaker 1: show the ways in which obviously law enforcement and white
Speaker 1: supremacist groups often share similar goals.
Speaker 2: Very much so, and sometimes once they have a guy
Speaker 2: in there. I mean, I'm sure it happens still to
Speaker 2: this day. We don't have the records of it happening now,
Speaker 2: but we have the sort of sixties and seventies era
Speaker 2: co intel pro records now that do show that. You know,
Speaker 2: they had tons of FBI agents infiltrating the Clan, allegedly
Speaker 2: to disrupt the clan, but that's not what they were doing.
Speaker 2: They were steering the Clan into disrupting the civil rights move.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, but I mean, most famously the Greensboro massacre,
Speaker 1: where you know, the Clan and other white supremacist murdered
Speaker 1: some anti fascist communist activists, and then it emerged afterwards
Speaker 1: that an FBI agent was in the group but didn't
Speaker 1: report kind of their plans for.
Speaker 2: Violence over and over again. Yeah, and those five people
Speaker 2: died for it, Yeah, exactly, which is why I will
Speaker 2: always trust an anti fascist infiltrator over an FBI agent. Yes,
Speaker 2: I loved the historical parallels, right, you know, so you
Speaker 2: take dosing all the way back to the second Clan.
Speaker 2: You know, this outside agitator narrative is not new. It's
Speaker 2: something Martin Luther King Junior wrote about. You were seeing
Speaker 2: that now, right, Like, you know, these people protesting their
Speaker 2: outside agitators. This isn't the real community. The real community
Speaker 2: wouldn't behave like this. It's the same as it ever was, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah exactly. I mean I think you know, since
Speaker 1: Antifa kind of exploded into the American consciousness, MAGA and
Speaker 1: the rights seized on Antifa as a boogeyman, and they
Speaker 1: trusted that kind of liberals and centrists were going to
Speaker 1: throw Antifa under the bus, right, that like they were
Speaker 1: going to come to Antifa's defense necessarily or even acknowledge
Speaker 1: a lot of times that Antifa existed, And you know,
Speaker 1: that allowed them to create this boogeyman of like epic proportions.
Speaker 1: So like in twenty seventeen, after Charlottesville, a synonymous pro
Speaker 1: Trump troll called Microchip starts a petition to declare Antifa
Speaker 1: a quote, domestic terrorist organization. This petition goes viral, gets
Speaker 1: like three hundred thousand signees, and Microchip ends up giving
Speaker 1: an interview to Politico where he's very upfront and frank
Speaker 1: about why he's doing this. And it's not because the
Speaker 1: White House is actually going to declare Antifa domestic terrorist organization.
Speaker 2: Oops.
Speaker 1: Oops, there's no general domestic terrorist statute even do that
Speaker 1: Antifa is not an organization. He's very explicit to say,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this to set up Antifa as a punching
Speaker 1: bag and to deflect and distract from the far right's
Speaker 1: very real violence.
Speaker 2: Pretty wild that he said it.
Speaker 1: He he just said it.
Speaker 2: He yeah, said it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's like that he admitted it, meme, he
Speaker 1: admitted it. He admitted yeah. Yeah. And you know, over
Speaker 1: the next few months, every time there's a mass shooting,
Speaker 1: you have folks like Jack Pisobic and other kind of
Speaker 1: disinformation artists jumping in when you know there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of information yet to blame these mass shootings on Antifa.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a weird troll who still thinks I'm
Speaker 2: responsible for January.
Speaker 1: Sixth, Yes, yes, exactly, very impressive work, by the way.
Speaker 1: You know, so they're using Antifa that way to like
Speaker 1: distract and deflect. They're blaming Antifa for wildfires and trained
Speaker 1: derailments and all this crazy shit. And then you know,
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of a wall. And then in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, the George Floyd uprisings happen. And you know,
Speaker 1: the George Floyd uprisings are one of the biggest mass
Speaker 1: uprisings in American history. It's completely grassroots and organic, and
Speaker 1: it is led by black protesters in their communities inspired
Speaker 1: by uprisings again in Minneapolis.
Speaker 2: It's too soon for history to be repeating.
Speaker 1: I know, it's really crazy. But Antifa, the Antifa boogeyman,
Speaker 1: now is repurposed as kind of this outside agitator's trope
Speaker 1: on steroids. Right, So Trump and all these maggot influencers
Speaker 1: rush to blame Antifa for fomenting these mass uprisings, which
Speaker 1: is absurd. Yeah. Sure, and Antifa activists were at these uprisings,
Speaker 1: but you know, they weren't instigating them, nor would they
Speaker 1: have the organizing power to instigate such a massive uprising
Speaker 1: like that when the right is doing this, it's an
Speaker 1: effort you make these uprising seem artificial or you know,
Speaker 1: kind of astroturfed, something you can dismiss, something you can
Speaker 1: dismiss as inorganic and artificial. And it's a way of
Speaker 1: like distracting from the very real grievance at the heart
Speaker 1: of these demonstrations, which is that we want cops to
Speaker 1: stop killing black people. So throughout the summer of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: the Antifa panic reaches like absurd levels where you know,
Speaker 1: there are rumors, viral rumors of busloads of Antifa roaming
Speaker 1: the countryside looking to burn down white businesses. You know, again,
Speaker 1: Antifa's blamed for wildfires in the West. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you get these paramilitary groups, militia groups out west using
Speaker 1: these Antifa rumors as a pretext to literally occupy town's
Speaker 1: entire towns. You know, you have forty white dudes in
Speaker 1: full camo and vests carrying big guns patrolling the streets
Speaker 1: on the lookout for this Antifa menace. You know, there's
Speaker 1: like a story about in a Sandpoint, Idaho, which is
Speaker 1: this gorgeous town in the Panhandle, and these like group
Speaker 1: of like high school kids go on a Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter march across a bridge, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: they're being followed by these like middle aged white dudes
Speaker 1: carrying AR fifteen's and calling them racial slurs Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: So like, basically, the Antifa boogeyman in twenty twenty is
Speaker 1: repackaged again not only to sew division on the left
Speaker 1: and to create this outside agitator's narrative, but to create
Speaker 1: this pretext for vigilante violence. And there was a lot
Speaker 1: of vigilante violence that occurred in twenty twenty. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know, now we're in twenty twenty six, and we
Speaker 1: saw last throughout last year as well, the Antifa boogeyman
Speaker 1: again is being you know, summoned to call whoever is
Speaker 1: the Trump regimes effort to ethnically cleanse the United States,
Speaker 1: you know, domestic terrorists.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The enemy is simultaneously very weak and very strong in
Speaker 2: their minds, right, like, yeah, we're all a bunch of
Speaker 2: soy boys who live in our mom's basements, but we
Speaker 2: were also a massive, networked, armed organization with unlimited funding.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, exactly, And you know, obviously Trump claimed to
Speaker 1: formally designate Antifa a domestic terror group in September.
Speaker 2: Doesn't mean anything. He did say it.
Speaker 1: He did say it, and then he held a Antifa
Speaker 1: round table at the White House with a lot of
Speaker 1: our friends, Andy No Jack Pisovic. But you know, as
Speaker 1: farcical as it all is, it's also deeply dangerous and alarming.
Speaker 1: In September, Trump designates Antifa domestic terror group. And then
Speaker 1: last month they murder Renee Good in cold blood and
Speaker 1: what do they do They call her domestic terrorists after
Speaker 1: the fact.
Speaker 2: Exactly, it's pretext.
Speaker 1: It's all pretext, because if you.
Speaker 2: Create this sort of shadowy network of unidentified agitators who
Speaker 2: are responsible for unspecified but very bad crimes, you can
Speaker 2: kill anyone.
Speaker 1: Say it with them, Yeah, exactly. I wrote a piece
Speaker 1: for The Nation recently about how there's a tendency in
Speaker 1: response to like this escalating mega hysteria about Antifa. There's
Speaker 1: a tendency among liberals and centrists to dismiss Antifa as
Speaker 1: not existing, to altimately say that it's not even a thing,
Speaker 1: or to say, well, antifa just means anti fascists, so
Speaker 1: we're all antifa, but like, to me that entirely and
Speaker 1: this is the point, like a like antifa is real
Speaker 1: and it refers to like a very real subculture and
Speaker 1: a very real tradition, militant tradition of anti fascist organizing.
Speaker 1: And if liberals and centrists can't acknowledge that antifa is
Speaker 1: real and come to their defense, then you know, the
Speaker 1: people doing this work might be in some dang and
Speaker 1: I think it's important to show them some solidarity. Right now.
Speaker 2: It's such a complicated reality, right because it's not a group, yeah,
Speaker 2: but it is. It's also it's a thousand different groups
Speaker 2: of two or three or ten. It's not like a
Speaker 2: nationwide membership organization. You know, it is just an idea,
Speaker 2: but it's also a history, a set of tactics. Yes,
Speaker 2: it's all of those things, and it's none of those things.
Speaker 2: And it's different depending on who you ask and why
Speaker 2: you're asking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And like anyone can do it, you know,
Speaker 1: like right, like anyone can take up the mantle of
Speaker 1: like militant anti fascist work.
Speaker 2: A lot of people are doing it on their own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think like that's what's been so kind
Speaker 1: of inspiring to me about Minneapolis and the uprisings, right is,
Speaker 1: you know, everything that community is doing right now is
Speaker 1: a grassroots, organic response, and they're doing it because no
Speaker 1: one else is going to do it for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this axiom that we talk about a lot in
Speaker 1: anti fascist spaces and anarchist spaces and black liberation movements.
Speaker 1: You know, this axiom of we protect us, And you
Speaker 1: know that is on very big display right now in Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: where you have people doing what anti fascist activists we're
Speaker 1: doing to Nazis in twenty seventeen, which is monitoring them,
Speaker 1: following them, disrupting them. They are figuring out where they
Speaker 1: are staying, where they're eating, and pressuring those businesses and
Speaker 1: those hotels not to serve them. They are showing up
Speaker 1: outside their hotels doing noise demos, they are identifying them. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think, you know, we protect us is
Speaker 2: such a you know, it's such a short, pithy phrase,
Speaker 2: but you don't know what it means until you feel it. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: Like I think in Minneapolis people are feeling it. They're
Speaker 2: protecting each other, right. You know, here in Charlottesville after
Speaker 2: Unite the Right, you know, when local authority figures were
Speaker 2: saying things about Antifa, you would have you know, white
Speaker 2: grandma's get up there and say, don't you say that
Speaker 2: about antifa, right, don't you say that about antique? You
Speaker 2: know it is a word I didn't know a month ago,
Speaker 2: but they saved my life. Yes, right that Once you
Speaker 2: have experienced that kind of community solidarity, that that we
Speaker 2: protect us ethos, once you've seen it, you know what
Speaker 2: it means, yes, exactly, and nobody's going to tell you different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like you know, it's also it's just so
Speaker 1: clear in Minneapolis that like the Democratic Party and you know,
Speaker 1: law enforcement, the local police are not doing anything, you know,
Speaker 1: like they're they're not They're the.
Speaker 2: People that are supposed to protect you, aren't going to
Speaker 2: aren't going to The police will watch you get beaten
Speaker 2: in the street.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, exactly, and your.
Speaker 2: Center, your senator will say nothing when the president calls
Speaker 2: you a terrorist.
Speaker 1: Yes, And so you know, I think it just kind
Speaker 1: of goes to show that this kind of militant anti
Speaker 1: fascist tradition is it's an organic response to conditions. It
Speaker 1: is like an insurgent form of community self defense. As
Speaker 1: horrifying the footage coming out of Minneapolis is, especially that
Speaker 1: photo this week of the five year old god being detained,
Speaker 1: which I can't get out of my head, and which
Speaker 1: makes my blood boil thinking of it.
Speaker 2: I can't cry on the recording.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it makes me want to cry too.
Speaker 2: Something that really struck me reading the book. You know,
Speaker 2: I was saying, like, you know, I read Vincent Washington's leaks,
Speaker 2: but he didn't know anything about Vincent. You said that
Speaker 2: he told you he was moved to start taking this
Speaker 2: kind of militant action by the Portland Max train stabbing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean that stopped me in my tracks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, And I think one of the more
Speaker 1: moving parts of researching this book was realizing that all
Speaker 1: of the anti fascists doing this work had brushes with
Speaker 1: fascist violence in their communities, and that's what inspired them
Speaker 1: to do it. You know, Vincent was in Portland in
Speaker 1: twenty what year was that was seventeen May twenty seventeen, right,
Speaker 1: and he gets on a train at Hollywood Station in Portland,
Speaker 1: goes through a friend's place, has a good time, and
Speaker 1: then later reads the news and realizes that had he
Speaker 1: taken one train before his that left about a minute before,
Speaker 1: he could have been in this car where this white
Speaker 1: supremacist named Jeremy Christian started harassing to black Muslim girls.
Speaker 1: He is haranguing them, telling them to get out of America.
Speaker 1: When three men intervene, Jeremy Christian slashes the throats of
Speaker 1: the three men and two of them die. Right, God,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get emotional on this, but like one of
Speaker 1: the last.
Speaker 2: Times, this one really really gets to me. I've sort
Speaker 2: of brushed up against the story and a couple of
Speaker 2: things I've written, and I mean, it's it's one of
Speaker 2: the most moving encounters of you know, of all of
Speaker 2: these sort of moving pieces, right, A Nazi committing violence
Speaker 2: against a Somali immigrant. Right, that's so relevant today, ordinary
Speaker 2: people intervening. Only one of them was sort of an
Speaker 2: active anti fascist in his community, the young man that survived,
Speaker 2: Micah Fletcher. The other two were just every day dudes,
Speaker 2: everyday dudes. They didn't have anti fascist politics. But they
Speaker 2: saw a Nazi threatening a little girl.
Speaker 1: Is they saw Nazi threatening a little girl and they
Speaker 1: lost their lives. And as one of them, and I'm
Speaker 1: blanking on his name right now, it's a Talisian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: was lying bleeding out. He said, tell everyone on this train,
Speaker 1: I love them. So I actually flew to Portland's a
Speaker 1: few days later, and ended up interviewing his girlfriend. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, you kept a journal of their relationship and
Speaker 1: read me passages from it, and like, you know, how
Speaker 1: beautiful their relationship was. They had just moved in together,
Speaker 1: they were growing a garden together, and before he left
Speaker 1: that morning to get on that train, he said something
Speaker 1: really wonderful just about how much he loved her. So
Speaker 1: you know, basically his day started and ended with these
Speaker 1: expressions of.
Speaker 2: Love that would always really rex me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, me too.
Speaker 2: But seeing that that was sort of you know, as
Speaker 2: someone who got into this work after seeing what happened
Speaker 2: where I live, Yes, exactly, it was. It was very
Speaker 2: striking to me that you know, it was the same
Speaker 2: for Vincent. It was something that he was not involved in.
Speaker 2: He didn't witness this stabbing, but he was so close
Speaker 2: to it. It felt so intimate to him, and he
Speaker 2: felt like, we'll have to do something.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. And there were so many other examples that
Speaker 1: I name in the book of these really horrendous hate
Speaker 1: crimes taking place in Portland and Seattle and across the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest, which you know, historically has been a hub
Speaker 1: for white supremacist organizing. So you know, for Vincent if
Speaker 1: the threat felt very real to people he knew and loved,
Speaker 1: which is why he decided to go undercover into Patriot
Speaker 1: Front and to fuck up Patriot Front. He had done
Speaker 1: some other anti fascist work before that, like kind of
Speaker 1: monitoring the Proud Boys, but then, you know, I think
Speaker 1: when the Proud Boys were on a bit of a
Speaker 1: decline after January sixth, he started to look at groups
Speaker 1: that operated more in the dark and were more secretive,
Speaker 1: and he decided to focus on Patriot Front.
Speaker 2: And how prescient at that time. I mean, Patriot Front
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen didn't exist in early twenty seventeen, but
Speaker 2: sort of as they rebranded into twenty eighteen from Vanguard America.
Speaker 2: I mean, how prescient of him to know that that
Speaker 2: would be the place to go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, totally like that. That's where I think the
Speaker 1: energy was and like kind of the anonymous organizing was going,
Speaker 1: and you know, and what he did was really remarkable.
Speaker 1: I think a lot a lot of anti fascist infiltrations
Speaker 1: and spy work is done online. You know, people just
Speaker 1: creating a username in an avatar and they can manage
Speaker 1: to do most of the spa from behind a computer screen.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the more significant acts of espionage
Speaker 1: during this era is a guy that goes undercover into
Speaker 1: Identity Europa and again manages to get reams and reams
Speaker 1: of their private messages which end up on Unicorn.
Speaker 2: Riot and that destroyed them too.
Speaker 1: Destroyed them and you know those messages, the panic and
Speaker 1: the discord like database ends up identifying one hundred Nazis
Speaker 1: in Identity Europa, which is just remarkable. The anti fascist
Speaker 1: spy that did this I talked to and he just
Speaker 1: had to do an interview with an Identity Europa leader
Speaker 1: to get into the group and I got to listen
Speaker 1: to that recording and it's remarkable. But you know, after that,
Speaker 1: he didn't have to do that much in person, you know,
Speaker 1: method acting to pretend to be a Nazi vincent. However,
Speaker 1: did he you know, for five months he was going hiking.
Speaker 1: He was going hiking, man like, because Patriotfront requires you
Speaker 1: to go on missions and hikes and you know kind
Speaker 1: of group activities. He had to do shit in per
Speaker 1: so like this dude was acting like deserves an oscar,
Speaker 1: you know. So he climbed Mount Raynier for two nights
Speaker 1: with thirteen other Nazis, Oh my god. And by the way,
Speaker 1: at this point had earned the trust of his local
Speaker 1: chapters so much that he was named the official photographer
Speaker 1: and videographer for the chapter, which is just delicious.
Speaker 2: They're so smart, smart, so smart. I mean, it's like
Speaker 2: it's like that Simpsons bit, right, Like, videotaping this crime
Speaker 2: spree was the best idea we ever heard. Take video
Speaker 2: of everything they do. Yes, and then because of these
Speaker 2: leaks we see that in several lawsuits against Patriot Front, right,
Speaker 2: like they are recording video as they you know, vandalize
Speaker 2: civil rights monuments and things like that. And then they
Speaker 2: got sued in three places.
Speaker 1: Yes, and it's it's basically the stringer bell like, are
Speaker 1: you taking notes on a criminal conspiracy? You know me?
Speaker 1: They are, and they are, so you know, eventually all
Speaker 1: this data that Vincent collects. And by the way, so
Speaker 1: he's in the group for about five months, He's scheduled
Speaker 1: to go to their big march in DC, but at
Speaker 1: the last minute claims he can't because the FBI knocks
Speaker 1: on his door. That's a lie. He's just doing that
Speaker 1: to scare Patriot Front. When Patriotfront gets to DC and
Speaker 1: goes on their march. So anti fascists in DC know
Speaker 1: their plans and they know where they are parking their
Speaker 1: vehicles for this march. They know where patriofront is going
Speaker 1: to march. And let's just say, some Nazi cars get redecorated.
Speaker 2: Some tires did not make it out of DC that night.
Speaker 1: Tires did not make it out of DC, some windshields
Speaker 1: did not survive. There is some graffiti. Patriotfront gets back
Speaker 1: to their U hauls first off that they used to
Speaker 1: get transported into d C from suburban Maryland. Their U
Speaker 1: hauls are fucked up. They get back to Maryland finally
Speaker 1: and to see all their cars fucked up, so you know,
Speaker 1: there is an act of sabotage. They realize they have
Speaker 1: an infiltrator. Before long they realize that it's the man
Speaker 1: they know is and I think they think that that's it,
Speaker 1: like there'll be a few doses, but you know, that's it.
Speaker 1: It didn't seem like he hacked their server. But then,
Speaker 1: of course a month later, all of their messages end up,
Speaker 1: everything end up on Unicorn. Riot You tell Thomas Rousseau
Speaker 1: the news of this.
Speaker 2: Oh that was such a treat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't. I can't believe we've never talked about this.
Speaker 1: And over the course of the next few months years,
Speaker 1: so many Patriot Front members are identified, and there's also
Speaker 1: some other delicious details, like Vincent, after his infiltration is over,
Speaker 1: he has all this Patriot Front propaganda material that he
Speaker 1: kind of took along the way, banners, pamphlets, shields. So
Speaker 1: what he does on New Year's is he makes a pire,
Speaker 1: towering pire of this material and lights it on fire,
Speaker 1: makes a really beautiful video set to old lang Syne,
Speaker 1: and post it online Patriot Front to see, and I
Speaker 1: think kind of warning them that, like, you know, there
Speaker 1: might be some more coming, some more docs is coming,
Speaker 1: some more stuff coming. And the thing is is, like
Speaker 1: Vincent's story is just one story, one kind of remarkable
Speaker 1: story of anti fascist spywork over the last ten years.
Speaker 1: There are so many other stories that I heard about that,
Speaker 1: for various reasons, I couldn't put in the book, or
Speaker 1: there wasn't room for in the book. But it's just, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel very privileged that I got to tell this
Speaker 1: story that not many people know.
Speaker 2: It was such a great framework for the book because
Speaker 2: it's not just about that particular infiltration, but it sort
Speaker 2: of provides this, this running framework, this sort of introduction
Speaker 2: to the concept. I thought it was very nicely done.
Speaker 2: I was excited to learn about Vincent because I have only,
Speaker 2: like I said, read his leaks, and then the lawsuits
Speaker 2: that it inspired, and then the lawsuit against him, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: which was dismissed last week. Yes, it was congratulations Vincent,
Speaker 2: Yes it was.
Speaker 1: Yes. The book gets into this a little bit, but
Speaker 1: Patriot Front does end up ascertaining what it believes is
Speaker 1: Vincent's real identity, and they file a lawsuit in federal
Speaker 1: court in Washington, and it had been ongoing for the
Speaker 1: last year or two, but was finally dismissed in court
Speaker 1: this week. Yeah, or last week.
Speaker 2: So congratulations to the person who may or may not
Speaker 2: have been Vincent. I'll never know. It didn't make it,
Speaker 2: didn't make it to a how they get ever made
Speaker 2: it to a hearing?
Speaker 1: No? Yeah, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: I said I wouldn't take up a ton of your time,
Speaker 2: but I can't let you go without talking about red Beard.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this is.
Speaker 2: The first concrete, confirmed published docs of red Beard.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, I can't believe it's taken us
Speaker 1: this long to talk about it. Thank you for reminding me.
Speaker 2: So for the listener. You know, we talked about how
Speaker 2: this is this is worth that is accessible to everyone,
Speaker 2: but it is not for everyone. In Red Beard to
Speaker 2: someone I have read so many incorrect doxes of And
Speaker 2: that's why it is so important. It's so important to
Speaker 2: be sure of what you're writing, because I have read
Speaker 2: one hundred failed oxes of this man.
Speaker 1: Yeah this, yeah, So Redbeard to those who don't know, again,
Speaker 1: was kind of this white whale in anti fascist circles,
Speaker 1: white supremacist will basically insomuch as he was one of
Speaker 1: the men filmed in Charlottesville in twenty seventeen beating DeAndre Harris.
Speaker 1: For those that don't remember, DeAndre Harris was a black
Speaker 1: counterprotester resident of the Charlottesville area. He was a nineteen
Speaker 1: year old teacher for special ed students and he ends
Speaker 1: up in a scuffle with Nazis that are leaving Charlottesville,
Speaker 1: leaving the rally, and they end up in a parking
Speaker 1: garage where five of them beat him while he's on
Speaker 1: the pavement with metal poles and other weapons, and it's
Speaker 1: captured on camera. I think it's, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the more distressing things to watch from Charlottesville. I actually
Speaker 1: happened to be in the garage at the time. Was
Speaker 1: running towards DeAndre when one of the Nazis pulled a
Speaker 1: gun and started waving it around, so I ducked behind
Speaker 1: a car. By the time I got up, DeAndre was
Speaker 1: stumbling away. There was a pool of blood on the pavement.
Speaker 2: We I have to go back to the footage. Who
Speaker 2: was it that pulled the gun.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it is.
Speaker 2: Oh, were you over on the police station side of
Speaker 2: the divider.
Speaker 1: I think I was running.
Speaker 2: I had to go back and find you in the footage. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think the guy who pointed a gun at you
Speaker 2: was Teddy von Nucomb.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Well, if we could make that idea,
Speaker 1: that be.
Speaker 2: Because he pulled because he pulled the gun he did.
Speaker 2: I mean, somebody else may have pulled the gun, but
Speaker 2: Teddy pulled a gun.
Speaker 1: Okay, I need to look at a photo of Teddy
Speaker 1: van Nucam it all happened so fad Oh, oh it's
Speaker 1: that guy. Yeah, Oh my god, Oh my god. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, let's talk about this way.
Speaker 2: Molly here recording. After the interview was over, I went
Speaker 2: back and reviewed that footage and my memory did fail
Speaker 2: me a little bit here. I was thinking about the
Speaker 2: right moment right after the victim and that beating has
Speaker 2: sort of broken away from the main portion of the assault,
Speaker 2: and he's running away. The video taken by Unicorn Riot
Speaker 2: hands over to follow him, and as the camera sweeps
Speaker 2: across the area on the other side of the parking garage,
Speaker 2: you can see a Nazi named Teddy von Nucom that's
Speaker 2: his real name, he changed it. He takes a swing
Speaker 2: at the victim with what looks like a baton, and
Speaker 2: at the same moment somebody does pull a handgun, but
Speaker 2: it's an unidentified man standing right behind Teddy von Nukum.
Speaker 2: I had the image mixed up in my recollection. Sorry
Speaker 2: about that. Teddy von Nucum, as I said in the interview,
Speaker 2: is dead. He shot himself in the chest in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, the morning he was supposed to go on
Speaker 2: trial for fentanyl trafficking. I wish I could tell you
Speaker 2: who the little Nazi with the gun is, but it
Speaker 2: looks like there's no idea on him, not yet anyway.
Speaker 2: Sorry for the listener. This is something I think Chris
Speaker 2: and I have both spent probably one hundred hours looking
Speaker 2: at frame by frame video from seventeen angles of this
Speaker 2: particular assault for a variety of reasons. Right, right, So
Speaker 2: it was this brutal gang assault on this young black man,
Speaker 2: and four people went to prison for it, yes, and
Speaker 2: some people didn't.
Speaker 1: Some people didn't. And one of them was a you know,
Speaker 1: kind of a bigger white dude with a big red
Speaker 1: beard wearing a baseball cap, who from then on earned
Speaker 1: the nickname red Beard. There are all these like you mentioned, kind.
Speaker 2: Of a million, just like every fat guy with a
Speaker 2: red beard on the East Post has been identified as
Speaker 2: red Beard.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. And it was like all these like kind
Speaker 1: of amateur online sleuths. I think Sean King was in
Speaker 1: the mix for this back in the day, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to idea this guy. No one can find him.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are fossily identified. The Charlottesville Police
Speaker 1: Department can't find him. A detective puts out like a
Speaker 1: call for help, but nothing comes in eventually. And where
Speaker 1: my book kicks off in this story is there's a
Speaker 1: group of anti fascist researchers called Ignite the Right that
Speaker 1: is dedicated to identifying every Nazi that turned up in
Speaker 1: Charlottesville in twenty seventeen, and they create a database of
Speaker 1: all these photos and videos and a list of all
Speaker 1: the people that have been identified, and the list of
Speaker 1: names that they are identifying keeps on growing and growing,
Speaker 1: and they're identifying some like really crazy names. Like one
Speaker 1: of the stories I ended up doing was about a
Speaker 1: police officer who was working as Richard Spencer's personal John
Speaker 1: Donnelly security guard in Charlottesville. So they're doing a lot
Speaker 1: of really significant docs is like that, but they still
Speaker 1: can't find Red Beard. Eventually, they decide to use facial recognition,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. You know, obviously I think anti fascists
Speaker 1: out of principle are opposed to facial recognition software. But
Speaker 1: I think, you know, you kind of can't show up
Speaker 1: to a gunfight with a knife kind of situation.
Speaker 2: What that's still I think is not enough in this case, right,
Speaker 2: because the commercially available facial recognition software that you know,
Speaker 2: the average non law enforcement person would have access to
Speaker 2: really struggles with round faces like his and big beards.
Speaker 2: So he's got a big beard and a hat and
Speaker 2: his face is very round, and so it's going to
Speaker 2: pull a lot of just sort of round faced redheads.
Speaker 1: Yes exactly, and so like either you know, there's a
Speaker 1: it's a very important and anti fascist work. A facial
Speaker 1: recognition hit is never one hundred percent. You have to
Speaker 1: corroborate it.
Speaker 2: It's not enough.
Speaker 1: So they finally use facial recognition for Red Beard and
Speaker 1: they get a hit. And the hit is a baby faced,
Speaker 1: beardless like nineteen year old white dude in a army
Speaker 1: uniform at a at a base in Georgia and he's
Speaker 1: about to shake the hand of President George W. Bush.
Speaker 1: And the reason he's photographed for this is because Bush
Speaker 1: is making a visit to this military base. I believe
Speaker 1: it's Fort Benning to announce his troop surge in Iraq,
Speaker 1: so a lot of these people are about to be
Speaker 1: sent off to his war.
Speaker 2: And then he brought the war home.
Speaker 1: And then he brought the war. Oh man, Yeah, brought
Speaker 1: the war home. And then so the anti fascist zoom
Speaker 1: in on this photo, but the name tag is Blori,
Speaker 1: so they can't figure out who Red Beard is yet.
Speaker 1: To make a long story short, I end up filing
Speaker 1: a public information request to the George W. Bush Library
Speaker 1: in Texas, right.
Speaker 2: Because they would have had to vet everyone who was there, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 2: and if the president's yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, my angle on it is that I
Speaker 1: ask for higher resolution photos, we get the higher resolution
Speaker 1: photos and zoom in and sure enough there is his
Speaker 1: last name, Hilman. Now all we have is the last name.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot more work to do. These anti
Speaker 1: fascists go through military yearbooks, they don't find anything. They
Speaker 1: go through so many social media accounts until eventually, one
Speaker 1: day they see a Facebook account that belongs to a
Speaker 1: man named Jay Heilman.
Speaker 2: It's crazy he still had Facebook all these years later.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's it's wild. And there are photos of him
Speaker 1: in the military being sent overseas somewhere. And then they
Speaker 1: take notice of this one particular detail, which is that
Speaker 1: there is this meme he posts of fucking Tom Hardy
Speaker 1: from The Dark Knight and he's saying the fire rises, right,
Speaker 1: it's that meme of him saying the fire rises, which,
Speaker 1: of course, in like The Dark Knight is supposed to
Speaker 1: mean like all this, like death and destruction is about
Speaker 1: to commence. Like it's a phrase you hear in fascist
Speaker 1: circle sometimes kind of as like a half joke. But
Speaker 1: what was interesting about the meme wasn't so much the
Speaker 1: meme itself, but where and when Facebook said it was posted.
Speaker 2: He left the location Deptha on it.
Speaker 1: He left the location on it, which was Charlottesville, Virginia,
Speaker 1: August twelfth, twenty seventeen. So that is how they unlock
Speaker 1: the identity of Red Beard. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: more to the story in the book, and I think
Speaker 1: I will be identifying Red Beard in a news story
Speaker 1: somewhere soon, so we'll look out for that.
Speaker 2: I love to hear it make Joe Platania answer for
Speaker 2: his refusal to process.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yea.
Speaker 2: And it's not enough to say the victim doesn't want
Speaker 2: to cooperate, because you don't need victim cooperation to prosecute
Speaker 2: malicious wounding in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Sorry, Joe, you
Speaker 2: heard it.
Speaker 1: Hear first.
Speaker 2: I was hooting and hollering when I got to that part.
Speaker 1: Of the book.
Speaker 2: I can't believe it because I had heard he had
Speaker 2: heard through the grape vine that the prosecutor was aware
Speaker 2: of his identity and had chosen not to prosecute. But
Speaker 2: I didn't know his identity. So what a thrill?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, it was a real journey. My ex at
Speaker 1: the time joked that there was a third person in
Speaker 1: our relationship, and that person was red Beard, because I
Speaker 1: was so obsessed with trying to find him.
Speaker 2: I mean, truly, truly a white whale. Yeah, in I
Speaker 2: guess several senses of the word.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: But like I said, I promised I wouldn't take up
Speaker 2: a ton of your time. I'm just so excited about
Speaker 2: this book, about this story. It's not just for your
Speaker 2: dad who doesn't know what antiva is. Yes, I thought
Speaker 2: it was thrilling. I learned a lot about some guys
Speaker 2: I've been thinking about for years.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, that means the world to me, MOLLI thank you.
Speaker 1: And you also have been such an important voice in
Speaker 1: these spaces in helping me out over the year, so
Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: I'm so thrilled. Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2: People can pre order the book To Catch a Fascist
Speaker 2: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right by Christopher Matthias.
Speaker 2: You can pre order it now from Simon and Schuster
Speaker 2: and it comes out February third, wherever you buy your books.
Speaker 2: Don't buy it at Amazon. I'm going to make sure
Speaker 2: my local anarchist bookstore has put it in order for it.
Speaker 2: You should all do the same. What else do you
Speaker 2: want to plug? Where can people find you online?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So I'm freelancing these days for different places. Guardian
Speaker 1: MS now the Nation Slate, so look out for me there,
Speaker 1: but you can mostly just find me on Let's Go
Speaker 1: Matthias on Blue Sky, and I'm still on the Nazi
Speaker 1: site but don't really post there anymore at Let's Go
Speaker 1: Matthias as well.
Speaker 2: Wonderful And like I said, sure you pre order that book.
Speaker 2: It is a fun read. Buy a copy for your
Speaker 2: dad who's scared of Antifa.
Speaker 1: Yes, please, thank thank you so much, Molly, thank you.
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