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Speaker 1: Com slash AUSSI application Whether to or Unity Application. April
Speaker 1: nine teenth, just past nine in the morning, a meeting
Speaker 1: of the Water Resources Board had just begun inside the
Speaker 1: Alfred Piemura Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. Basically, there
Speaker 1: are four elements that I have to rast receive information
Speaker 1: regarding a massive car bomb exploded outside of a large
Speaker 1: federal building in downtown Oklahoma City, shattering that building, killing children,
Speaker 1: killing federal employees, military men, and civilians. The bomb weigh
Speaker 1: nearly seven thousand pounds, nearly three quarters of the weight
Speaker 1: of the nuclear device dropped on Hiroshima. Most people were
Speaker 1: already inside at work here when the blast ripped the
Speaker 1: nine story federal office building apart, shattering floors and the
Speaker 1: offices inside. Most devastating of all the day care center
Speaker 1: on the second floor, destroying that was where most of
Speaker 1: the children who were killed had been. The first clue
Speaker 1: as to those responsible for the bombing, the worst domestic
Speaker 1: terror attack ever on American soil was an eight foot
Speaker 1: piece of twisted metal. It landed nearly six hundred feet
Speaker 1: away from the blast site. It was the axle to
Speaker 1: the writer rental truck that had carried the homemade bomb.
Speaker 1: The truck had a vehicle identification number stamped on that axle.
Speaker 1: It was thanks to the vehicle I D that FBI
Speaker 1: agents were able to track down and arrest to suspect.
Speaker 1: The U. S. Attorney General Janet Reno, reported his capture
Speaker 1: to the nation. Timothy McVeigh, aged twenty seven, was arrested
Speaker 1: by local authorities. Twenty five years ago, Timothy mcveigh's heinous
Speaker 1: act killed one hundred and sixty eight people, including nineteen children.
Speaker 1: But here's something they didn't tell you on the new
Speaker 1: or teach you in school about what happened in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 1: A Ford truck may have delivered the fateful payload that
Speaker 1: terrible April morning, but Timothy mcveigh's act was really the
Speaker 1: end of a chain of events that began long before
Speaker 1: that day, the legacy of a toxic package of lies
Speaker 1: and hate that began seventy five years earlier with another Ford,
Speaker 1: one whose name we associate with mass production, not mass murder.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Flashback, a new podcast from AZZI that aims
Speaker 1: to bring the pass back to life like never before.
Speaker 1: I'm Sean Braswell, and I'll be your visiting professor, taking
Speaker 1: you on a journey through history that will change how
Speaker 1: you look at the world today. Imagine Flashback is that
Speaker 1: history class you always wanted to take but can never
Speaker 1: find one where there are no textbooks, no exams, and
Speaker 1: no note taking, just the most compelling and surprising stories
Speaker 1: from the past, told by those who know them most
Speaker 1: about them. We're all living in the ripple effects of history,
Speaker 1: and so in the first seasonal flashback, we're going to
Speaker 1: connect the dots on some of the most incredible, unintended
Speaker 1: consequences from the past. We'll learn how the invention of
Speaker 1: air conditioning changed the landscape of American politics, how Hitler's
Speaker 1: doctor changed the course of World War Two, and much more.
Speaker 1: Today's lesson is a cautionary tale about hate, free speech,
Speaker 1: and giving a big platform to little men. Actually, I
Speaker 1: remember I was in the sixth grade. Now we're going
Speaker 1: to sating games classic school at the time. This is
Speaker 1: Latrese Sutton. She was thirteen at the time of the
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City bombing. I remember being in class and the
Speaker 1: whole class been en up and looking out the window
Speaker 1: and seeing the coming out from far away. We didn't
Speaker 1: know what it was at the time, but it shook
Speaker 1: our school building. That was free massive. That was not
Speaker 1: the only s line that something was amiss. My mom
Speaker 1: was supposed to lux with me that day and she
Speaker 1: didn't show up during a lunch period, and since she
Speaker 1: was a nursing assistant, I thought maybe she got called
Speaker 1: into the hospital to help with all the people that
Speaker 1: were injured. Um so I'm thinking thing of it. Latrese
Speaker 1: ate lunch with her friends and went to recess as usual. Well,
Speaker 1: my aunt came to pick us up from school. Um,
Speaker 1: she was crying, and I think at that point we
Speaker 1: kind of knew something was wrong. Sutton's mom, Teresa, had
Speaker 1: gone alone downtown to the Mura Federal Building to get
Speaker 1: a Social Security card for Sutton's eight month old brother
Speaker 1: when mcveigh's homemade bomb exploded. She was thirty three. Four
Speaker 1: years before Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh made his first killing.
Speaker 1: He received the Army Commendation Medal for it. Just two
Speaker 1: hours ago, Allied air forces began an attack on military
Speaker 1: targets in Iraq and Kuwait. In January, the U S
Speaker 1: went to war against Iraq and the first Persian Gulf War.
Speaker 1: One of the first American soldiers to enter the enemy
Speaker 1: nation was a twenty two year old infantryman from Buffalo,
Speaker 1: New York. In the Gulf, you saw combat. This is
Speaker 1: correspondent Ed Bradley in a two thousand interview that Sixty
Speaker 1: Minutes did with McVeigh in his Death Row prison cell,
Speaker 1: and McVeigh was particularly open with his past. I did
Speaker 1: you fired a weapon at yes and killed soldiers. Yes,
Speaker 1: McVeigh was a gunner in a Bradley fighting vehicle, and
Speaker 1: he was a damn good shot. One day, his crew
Speaker 1: spotted an enemy machine gun nest in the distance. It
Speaker 1: was more than a mile away, but poised a major
Speaker 1: threat to American troops. When one of the Iraqi gunners
Speaker 1: briefly came up from his position, McVeigh popped him right
Speaker 1: in the chest. The lethal shot, taken from more than
Speaker 1: nineteen football fields away, would help force the surrender of
Speaker 1: thirty other Iraqis from that position and become the stuff
Speaker 1: of legend in the Army. MC They had been using
Speaker 1: firearms since boyhood. Tim McVeigh was raised in a rural
Speaker 1: town outside of Buffalo, New York. This is lou Michelle.
Speaker 1: He and his colleague at the Buffalo News, Dan Herbeck,
Speaker 1: spent seventy three hours interviewing McVeigh after the bombing. And
Speaker 1: at a very young age, his grandpa Ed taught him
Speaker 1: how to shoot guns rifles along the erie canal. Ed
Speaker 1: taught to him about safety. You just don't shoot a
Speaker 1: gun anywhere because you could hurt somebody. The son of
Speaker 1: a factory worker, young Tim had a typical boyhood. He
Speaker 1: loved pro football, comic books, and battles between good and evil.
Speaker 1: He even made his own Star Wars lightsabers by attaching
Speaker 1: flashlights to cardboard tubes. He was known as Noodle McVeigh
Speaker 1: because he was very slender, and he was a target
Speaker 1: for bullies, thus his hatred for bullies, and he came
Speaker 1: to realize the American government was the ultimate bully. But
Speaker 1: he didn't come to that realization right away, and in
Speaker 1: May he joined the Army. And one of the things
Speaker 1: he told Dan Herbeck and I was that the Army
Speaker 1: had all the ammunition anyone could ever want. McVeigh loved guns,
Speaker 1: and he loved the Army. At first, other soldiers might
Speaker 1: have hated the early morning wake ups, the strenuous training,
Speaker 1: the uniform inspections, and the discipline McVeigh thrived in late
Speaker 1: nineteen but they learned he was on the fast track
Speaker 1: to being in the US Special Forces, the elite of
Speaker 1: the elite. Then, just before his Special Forces tryout, McVeigh
Speaker 1: learned the Army had a different plan for him. A rock.
Speaker 1: I went over there, hyped up just like everyone else.
Speaker 1: This is McVeigh again. In that sixty minutes interview, not
Speaker 1: only is Saddam evil. All Iraqis are evil? Uh. What
Speaker 1: I experienced, though, is an entirely different ballgame. Dan Herbert
Speaker 1: co authored mcveigh's authorized biography, American Terrorist with Lou Michelle,
Speaker 1: and he looked at US involvement in the Persian Gulf
Speaker 1: War as a giant, cruel bully picking on the people
Speaker 1: of Iraq. By the time he got out of the army,
Speaker 1: he literally hated the US government, the government he had
Speaker 1: worked for. By the end of the year, McVeigh quit
Speaker 1: the army and without the discipline, paycheck, and authorized violence
Speaker 1: that it afforded him, McVeigh, the bitter anti government gun lover,
Speaker 1: was a loose cannon just waiting for a spark to
Speaker 1: light him up. Henry Ford was a lot like Timothy
Speaker 1: McVeigh in some ways. He came from a simple, working
Speaker 1: class home near Lake Erie, and he grew to hate
Speaker 1: war and those he believed to be behind it. This
Speaker 1: is Victoria Weisti, a legal historian and author of Henry
Speaker 1: Ford's War on Jews. Ford was a fierce, fierce pacifist
Speaker 1: and went on record publicly criticizing the way that World
Speaker 1: War One was being conducted. The eccentric tycoon may have
Speaker 1: made his fortune from the automobile, but in nineteen fifteen
Speaker 1: he decided to take a boat to Europe in a
Speaker 1: bold effort in the war through diplomacy. It proved to
Speaker 1: be a giant fiasco. Ford's reputation took a beating in
Speaker 1: the papers. The Chicago Tribune called him quote an ignorant,
Speaker 1: idealist and an anarchist. And Ford didn't particularly care for
Speaker 1: being called ignorant or an anarchist, so he sued for Liabel,
Speaker 1: which made matters even worse. Unable to stop the press
Speaker 1: from criticizing him, Ford tried something else, so in he
Speaker 1: purchased a newspaper in his own hometown, Dearborn, Michigan. It
Speaker 1: was about to go defunct. It was called the Dearborn Independent,
Speaker 1: and he even purchased a printing press. He brought it
Speaker 1: to the Ford Motor Company factory and he retooled it himself.
Speaker 1: Ford may not have called the national media fake news,
Speaker 1: but he was tired of the newspapers spreading what he
Speaker 1: considered lies. He wanted to have a means for reaching
Speaker 1: ordinary Americans directly and unfiltered, and it wasn't just to
Speaker 1: protect his own reputation. Or sell more cars. Ford was
Speaker 1: deeply concerned with where America was going as a nation,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to use the Dearborn Independent to reshape
Speaker 1: cultural practices, um people's leisure time activities, how immigrants were
Speaker 1: assimilated into American culture, and what kind of politics should prevail.
Speaker 1: Ford used every means at his disposal to bolster his
Speaker 1: newspapers readership. Free copies were sent to schools, libraries, and
Speaker 1: universities across the country. Ford dealers were even required to
Speaker 1: fill quotas for newspaper subscriptions, just like they did for
Speaker 1: their car sales. And because they never took subscriptions and
Speaker 1: they never sold ads, it was a complete loss leader
Speaker 1: for Ford, but he didn't care even if it did
Speaker 1: not make him money. Ford realized the power that having
Speaker 1: his own print media pedestal gave him. He had entered
Speaker 1: the newspaper business to counter the lies he believed were
Speaker 1: being spread about him, and it didn't take long for
Speaker 1: Henry Ford to start spreading his own. Do you have
Speaker 1: an interesting tale about unintended consequences from history or your
Speaker 1: own life, Please share it with us by emailing flashback
Speaker 1: at Aussie dot com. That's flashback at o z y
Speaker 1: dot Com. Henry Ford learned to lean on his newspaper
Speaker 1: to help make sense of the world and then spread
Speaker 1: his own opinions. Timothy McVeigh leaned on his favorite book,
Speaker 1: So McVeigh found out about The Turner Diaries through a
Speaker 1: net and Soldier of Fortune magazine J. M. Burger is
Speaker 1: the author of the book Extremism and an expert on
Speaker 1: white supremacist groups in America. And it was, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of nominally a magazine for mercenaries, so they published
Speaker 1: a lot of conspiracy theories. They were very supportive of
Speaker 1: the militia movements in the United States. McVeigh ordered the
Speaker 1: book advertised and Soldier of Fortune. The Turner Diaries is
Speaker 1: a dystopian novel by a white supremacist named William Luther Pierce.
Speaker 1: Pierce describes the journey of a man named Earl Turner
Speaker 1: who is involved in white supremacists organizations that were initially
Speaker 1: kind of covert terrorist organizations, and eventually it becomes an
Speaker 1: organized insurgency. Afraid that the liberal US government wants to
Speaker 1: take guns away from honest citizens. Earl Turner and the
Speaker 1: right wing insurgency fight back. In the course of this insurgency,
Speaker 1: there nuclear exchanges on US soil, millions of people die,
Speaker 1: and eventually the white supremacists when over most of the
Speaker 1: country and they institute something that is called the Day
Speaker 1: of the Rope, which is a day of revenge on
Speaker 1: minorities and on people white people who are considered to
Speaker 1: be race traders. The Turner Diaries is an epic racist
Speaker 1: fantasy like porn for white nationalists, and Timothy McVeigh was hooked.
Speaker 1: So he was a huge fan of this book, a
Speaker 1: big evangelist for it. He would he would give it
Speaker 1: to everybody he knew. Uh. He gave it to his
Speaker 1: his army buddies. He passed around to his friends and family.
Speaker 1: A lot of people were like, oh my god, what
Speaker 1: are what are you doing? Get this away from me.
Speaker 1: And after McVeigh left the Army, the Turner Diaries provided
Speaker 1: a roadmap for what he had to do next. Timothy
Speaker 1: McVeigh struggled to get his bearings after leaving military life.
Speaker 1: He worked the graveyard shift at the Buffalo a Zoo.
Speaker 1: He started gambling on football. He wrote long, handwritten letters
Speaker 1: to local newspapers and Congress members that ranted about everything
Speaker 1: from affirmative action to gun control, and then something occurred
Speaker 1: that confirmed all of his worst fears about his own government.
Speaker 1: Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us. A
Speaker 1: fanatical scripture quoting religious leader who moved to Waco to
Speaker 1: await the end of the world instead maybe to blame
Speaker 1: tonight for the deaths of several federal agents. In February,
Speaker 1: federal agents rated a compound near Waco, Texas that was
Speaker 1: home to a religious cult known as the Brains Davidians.
Speaker 1: The resulting shootout, caught on live television, resulted in the
Speaker 1: deaths of four agents and six cult members. Timothy McVeigh
Speaker 1: packed up his car and drove to Texas to join
Speaker 1: those watching the events unfold. He left after a couple
Speaker 1: of days and went to visit his army buddy Terry
Speaker 1: Nichols and his brother James on their Michigan farm. The
Speaker 1: Waco standoff continued. Loue Michelle again. McVeigh had been preparing
Speaker 1: actually to make a second trip to Waco, and was
Speaker 1: out in front of the Nichols brother's farmhouse in Decora, Michigan,
Speaker 1: underneath the car working on the exhaust system, and Terry
Speaker 1: Nichols came to the door and started shouting, Tim, Tim,
Speaker 1: get in here. McVeigh ran inside and couldn't believe what
Speaker 1: he was seeing on the old color television in the
Speaker 1: living room. Armored federal tanks ran the walls of the
Speaker 1: compound and Waco in an effort to drive out the
Speaker 1: cult members. Then flames began to engulf the building. I
Speaker 1: must tell you this is this is a horrible site.
Speaker 1: From two miles away, this is really a horrible site.
Speaker 1: Nearly everyone inside the compound was killed, including twenty children,
Speaker 1: and that's what really drove McVeigh off the deep bend.
Speaker 1: He stood in Terry nichols living room with tears in
Speaker 1: his eyes as he watched on live TV the burning
Speaker 1: of Waco. McVeigh resolved to do something about it. Dan Herbeck.
Speaker 1: On the day of that incident, he had decided he
Speaker 1: was going to take some drastic action of bombing a
Speaker 1: federal building of some kind. He scouted probably six or
Speaker 1: seven different cities and looked at federal office buildings as
Speaker 1: possible targets. Why did McVeigh pick Oklahoma City, Well, for
Speaker 1: one thing, it contains several of the U. S. Government
Speaker 1: agencies like the FBI that he hated the most. But
Speaker 1: there was another reason. McVeigh told us that when he
Speaker 1: looked at the building in Oklahoma City, the Federal Office Building,
Speaker 1: because of the way it was separated from other buildings,
Speaker 1: he believed that it would make a very striking visual
Speaker 1: in after it was bombed. It's disturbing to think that
Speaker 1: a terrorist was thinking in terms of photo ops, but
Speaker 1: that's one of the main reasons why he chose Oklahoma City.
Speaker 1: So why did McVeigh choose to bomb a federal office
Speaker 1: building to get back at the government. Well, that goes
Speaker 1: back to his favorite book, The Turner Diaries, J and Burger. Again,
Speaker 1: there's one key event in the book where Earl Turner
Speaker 1: and his band of colleagues, who operate under the name
Speaker 1: the Order, bomb the FBI headquarters in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And when they do this, they use a truck bomb
Speaker 1: that is a very similar construction to the one that
Speaker 1: McVeigh used. And it wasn't just the idea for building
Speaker 1: a bomb that McVeigh got from the book. The process
Speaker 1: of making this bomb is described in some detail in
Speaker 1: the book. Um the book has a very much a
Speaker 1: how to kind of quality. It's a it's a guide
Speaker 1: to revolution. McVeigh and Terry Nichols started to buy thousands
Speaker 1: of hounds of ammonian nitrate to build their bomb, which
Speaker 1: McVeigh planned to deliver by truck to the Mura Federal Building.
Speaker 1: Just like our old Turner and the Turner Diaries, McVeigh
Speaker 1: considered himself a martyr acting in the name of liberty.
Speaker 1: He hoped someday he would be regarded as a hero.
Speaker 1: Back in Henry, Ford had his own favorite book. It
Speaker 1: was called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Ford
Speaker 1: historian Victoria Westi again a Russian mystic named Sergei Nihilis,
Speaker 1: published an addition in nineteen o five that starts to
Speaker 1: gain traction. People circulated it, they reprinted it um, and
Speaker 1: Nihilis had thoughtfully supplied an introductory essay to his addition
Speaker 1: that connected a lot of dots for conspiratorially minded anti semits.
Speaker 1: The Protocols is written in the second person. There's an
Speaker 1: omniscient narrator that speaks to an audience of Jewish elders,
Speaker 1: the Elders of Zion, who are conspiring to take over
Speaker 1: the world, but he also speaks directly to the reader,
Speaker 1: who was drawn in as kind of a co conspirator,
Speaker 1: And that was part of the great psychological brilliance of
Speaker 1: the document is that it assumes that you're interested in
Speaker 1: this conspiracy that explains everything that's wrong with the world.
Speaker 1: Black or white, rich or poor, Protestant or Catholic. Most
Speaker 1: Americans regarded Jews as alien and inferior, and the Protocols,
Speaker 1: the fictional fabricated story, played to that mindset. For the
Speaker 1: anti Semitic mind of the early twentieth century, and for
Speaker 1: someone like Ford who thought who saw World War One
Speaker 1: as entirely the product of Jewish war mongering and profiteering.
Speaker 1: This was the explanatory document. This document meant laid it
Speaker 1: all out. Henry Ford fell hook line and sinker for
Speaker 1: the forgery. For Ford, this was confirmation of everything he believed.
Speaker 1: So everything that Ford despised about nine twenties culture, everything
Speaker 1: that undermined you know, wholesome values and you know, good
Speaker 1: religious church going people on Sundays, Ford believed was attributable
Speaker 1: to Jews, and the Protocols proved it. But of course
Speaker 1: Henry Ford was not just your average anti Semitic reader.
Speaker 1: He was a publisher. So beginning on May and running
Speaker 1: for the better part of two years, The Deerbone Independent
Speaker 1: published a weekly essay that was entitled The International Jew.
Speaker 1: Over more than ninety installments, Ford's newspaper published the Protocols
Speaker 1: of the Elders of Zion, adapting the anti Semitic propaganda
Speaker 1: for an American audience. People wonder why someone can get
Speaker 1: away with something like this, you know, why would anyone
Speaker 1: let forward? And the answer is that when you acquire
Speaker 1: the kind of wealth and attain the status of American
Speaker 1: industrial royalty. You know, Ford was king. Ford was the
Speaker 1: most wealthy American ever. And nobody says no to that person. Nobody.
Speaker 1: It's estimated that Ford's newspaper spread the fallacious text and
Speaker 1: nearly seven hundred thousand readers. When you go online today
Speaker 1: and you search for The International Jew, Henry Ford's name
Speaker 1: is all over it, and there is no erasing any
Speaker 1: of that. That's that toothpaste is not going back into
Speaker 1: the tube. You know, Ford is for all time associated
Speaker 1: with the most heinous piece of anti Semitic propaganda that's
Speaker 1: that's ever been written. If only it had just been
Speaker 1: toothpaste that Ford let out of the tube. By April,
Speaker 1: Timothy McVeigh had completed the Homemade truck bomb he had
Speaker 1: designed with the help of the Turner Diaries the night
Speaker 1: before the bombing, but they drove to a hotel in
Speaker 1: Kansas Loue Michelle. Again, he stopped in a gravel parking
Speaker 1: lot behind a hotel, parked his yellow Rider truck and
Speaker 1: told Dan and I that he slept like a baby
Speaker 1: that night with a seven thousand pound bomb in the
Speaker 1: cargo bay. McVeigh chose April nine for his act because
Speaker 1: it was both the second anniversary of the raid in
Speaker 1: Waco and the two twentieth anniversary of the Battle of
Speaker 1: Lexington and Concord, the first battle of the American Revolution.
Speaker 1: He wakes up, gets out of the Rider truck, checks
Speaker 1: the tires, gets back in, has his breakfast, a army
Speaker 1: meal called an m r E Meals ready to eat,
Speaker 1: and it was cold spaghetti. But they finished his breakfast
Speaker 1: and started driving toward Oklahoma, careful to stay under the
Speaker 1: speed limit. But if an observant highway patrol officer had noticed,
Speaker 1: you would have seen that the back of that truck
Speaker 1: was really sitting low the cargo bay. But nobody noticed that.
Speaker 1: So he's driving on the highway and at one point
Speaker 1: there's a patrol car behind him for the longest time,
Speaker 1: and McVeigh is starting to sweat it out. Oh no,
Speaker 1: am I gonna get caught. Finally the cop exited the highway.
Speaker 1: Then McVeigh breathed the sigh of relief. He soon arrived
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma City and he rolls up to the Murrah
Speaker 1: Building and there's a little cut out in the sidewalk
Speaker 1: and he gets calmly gets out of the truck, locks
Speaker 1: it and starts walking away. McVey parked the rider truck
Speaker 1: right below the windows of the daycare center located on
Speaker 1: the building second floor. He didn't look back, and about
Speaker 1: a minute later, mcvey's homemade bomb killed twenty more people
Speaker 1: than the one forty eight Americans killed in combat during
Speaker 1: the First Gulf War and injured hundreds more. But they
Speaker 1: killed nineteen children who were five and younger. The children's
Speaker 1: playground behind the building became a makeshift more as rescue
Speaker 1: workers carried the bodies from the rubbel President Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: addressed a shattered nation. Bombing in Oklahoma City was an
Speaker 1: attack on innocent children and defenseless citizens. It was an
Speaker 1: act of cowardice, and it was evil. But for McVeigh,
Speaker 1: the loss of human life was not an act of evil,
Speaker 1: was an exclamation point on his message for the American government.
Speaker 1: McVeigh was expecting to be caught, maybe hoping for it.
Speaker 1: Inside his getaway car, he had placed an envelope packed
Speaker 1: with items he wanted law enforcement and the media to
Speaker 1: find and publicize. Among them a quote from Earl Turner
Speaker 1: and the Turner Diaries. Turner says, quote, the real value
Speaker 1: of our attacks today lies in the psychological impact, not
Speaker 1: the immediate casualties. Today we are still living with the
Speaker 1: psychological impact of mcveigh's own attack, and in more ways
Speaker 1: than you might imagine, we all need a break from
Speaker 1: the constant cycle to learn something new, to get new perspectives.
Speaker 1: The Great Courses Plus streaming service is an excellent resource
Speaker 1: to expand our knowledge on a variety of subjects or
Speaker 1: pick up a new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great
Speaker 1: Courses Plus while researching this season of flashback lectures like Playball,
Speaker 1: the rise of Baseball is America's pastime, History of the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the
Speaker 1: dots on several stories from history. Right now, they're giving
Speaker 1: our listeners a special limited time offer the free month
Speaker 1: of unlimited access to their entire library. Sign up now
Speaker 1: through our special u r L go to the Great
Speaker 1: Courses plus dot Com slash as. That's the Great Courses
Speaker 1: plus dot Com slash o z y the Great Courses
Speaker 1: plus dot Com slash auzy In Henry Ford starts to
Speaker 1: promote the anti Semitic ideas contained in the Protocols of
Speaker 1: the Elders of Zion. Seventy five years later, Timothy McVeigh
Speaker 1: commits a horrific a crime based on another text, the
Speaker 1: Turner Diaries. But how do we get from one to
Speaker 1: the other. Well, if you look closely enough, Henry Ford's
Speaker 1: fingerprints are all over Oklahoma City. And that tale starts
Speaker 1: with the man some call the American Hitler. This is
Speaker 1: George Lincoln Rockwell. Here on behalf of the white Christian
Speaker 1: majority of Americans. George Lincoln Rockwell was tall, dark haired, handsome,
Speaker 1: and Ivy League graduate and a decorated Navy veteran. He
Speaker 1: was a gifted orator. He liked to carry a corn
Speaker 1: cob pipe. Here he isn't. An interview with the radio
Speaker 1: and television talk show host Joe Pine, who was sort
Speaker 1: of the Howard stern of his day. What he meant
Speaker 1: to say was he's a Nazi. Mr Rockwell, you are
Speaker 1: a Nazi, aren't you? I am? And there's nothing American
Speaker 1: about a Nazi. So why do you call yourself the
Speaker 1: head of the American Nazi Party. That's a contradiction in term,
Speaker 1: and Nazi is above all things are racist. A man
Speaker 1: who believes in the white race as the people who
Speaker 1: built white Western Christian civilization. There's nothing on American about that.
Speaker 1: Rockwell may have fought the Germans in the Second World War,
Speaker 1: but he was a proud racist and anti Semite. And
Speaker 1: in nineteen one he read two books that lit a
Speaker 1: fire under him. One was Adolph Hitler's Mind comp the
Speaker 1: other the one that Henry Ford had helped spread all
Speaker 1: across America. Rockwell took the Jewish conspiracies found in the Protocols,
Speaker 1: mixed them with some generic quite supremacy, and added in
Speaker 1: the big fear of his age Communists. Here he is
Speaker 1: telling Joe Pine about how he would treat any treasonous
Speaker 1: Americans with Communist sympathies. What you'll be expected to do
Speaker 1: is shoot on juries and hear the evidence against the traders.
Speaker 1: I think are running rifle all over this country and
Speaker 1: convict them. And if they're convicted, we'll take care of
Speaker 1: How are you going to take care of these people? Well,
Speaker 1: I think they'll be so money we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: gather him. Rockwell had a gift for the dramatic, for theatrics.
Speaker 1: He was a racist showman. But here's the thing. Rockwell's
Speaker 1: bombastic style didn't really work. It earned attention, but not
Speaker 1: many converts. That all changed when Rockwell met an aspiring
Speaker 1: white nationalist witer named William Luther Pierce jam Burger again.
Speaker 1: So William Pierce was a uh grew up as a
Speaker 1: kind of nerdy kid, reading a lot of sci fi
Speaker 1: pulp magazines. Probably was exposed to kind of dystopian ideas
Speaker 1: at a very early age, and he was very good
Speaker 1: at math. He became a physicist working for the government.
Speaker 1: Pierce was not just any old physicist. He worked at
Speaker 1: the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the home of the Manhattan Project,
Speaker 1: which developed the bombs dropped on Japan during the Second
Speaker 1: World War. After the war ended, Pierce found he had
Speaker 1: a new enemy. He was offended by the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: He was pro segregation, and over time his his feelings
Speaker 1: about this moved in a more radical direction. He was
Speaker 1: exposed to the writings and speeches of George Lincoln Rockwell.
Speaker 1: Pierce first saw Rockwell on television. He was giving a
Speaker 1: speech that was surrounded by protesters. Pierce was transfixed, and
Speaker 1: he took up a correspondence with Rockwell and became active
Speaker 1: in the American Nazi Party. Soon Pierce was driving from
Speaker 1: his home in Connecticut down to the Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: Area on weekends to meet with Rockwell. Then tragedy struck.
Speaker 1: In August nineteen seven, Rockwell was shot dead outside of
Speaker 1: laundromat in Arlington, Virginia, by one of his own followers.
Speaker 1: And Rockwell's death left a big vacuum in the white
Speaker 1: supremacist movement of the day, and Pierce was somebody who
Speaker 1: was able to sort of rise up and fill that vacuum,
Speaker 1: first within the American Nazi Party and then later by
Speaker 1: forming his own group called the National Alliance. Pierce steered
Speaker 1: the American Nazi Party in a less ostentatious direction. Pierce
Speaker 1: was dismayed by the American Nazi parties tendency to march
Speaker 1: around goose Stepping with swastika flags, he thought this was
Speaker 1: bad press for for the white power movement. Then Pierce,
Speaker 1: the wanna be sci fi novelist, took a shot at
Speaker 1: improving American Nazi propaganda. He began writing a serialized novel
Speaker 1: which was called The Turner Diaries, and he would write
Speaker 1: one chapter in each installment of the newsletter, and it
Speaker 1: played out over about a year and a half, and
Speaker 1: it turned out to be extremely popular. This is Pierce
Speaker 1: himself in rare footage uncovered by PBS. If one asked
Speaker 1: what what was the purpose of the turn of Diaries,
Speaker 1: it was to provide a fictional medium for certain ideas
Speaker 1: that I think are very important. Fiction had always played
Speaker 1: a part in white supremacy movements, but Pierce took it
Speaker 1: to a new level. Jam Burger Pierce's approach was different
Speaker 1: in some important ways. The first is that it was
Speaker 1: it was much more focused on action. He understood that
Speaker 1: you need to have a story to hook the reader along.
Speaker 1: And I think the second one was that he really
Speaker 1: was very light on ideology. So by taking that element out,
Speaker 1: by making this a very generic white power movement, he
Speaker 1: was able to have reached a much larger audience in
Speaker 1: the white nationalists Pierce would lead the American Nazis until
Speaker 1: his death in two thousand two, producing thousands of pages
Speaker 1: of white nationalist publications over the course of decades and
Speaker 1: influencing countless followers, followers like Timothy McVeigh. So this is
Speaker 1: how we get from the industrialist Henry Ford to the
Speaker 1: domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh, and a few short steps in.
Speaker 1: Ford takes a discredited anti Semitic forgery called The Protocols
Speaker 1: of the Elders of Zion and elevates it. He publishes
Speaker 1: its poisonous lies in both his newspaper and as a
Speaker 1: book Victoria Westie. So, with Ford's name on the book
Speaker 1: and Ford's endorsement of the theories of the Protocols, American
Speaker 1: anti Semitism sort of came out of the closet during
Speaker 1: the twenties. From then on, you know, it's been next
Speaker 1: to impossible to eradicate those assumptions from the entirety of
Speaker 1: American society. George Lincoln Rockwell was one man who had
Speaker 1: his eyes opened by the Protocols that Henry Ford helped spread.
Speaker 1: He would found the American Nazi Party, and his disciple,
Speaker 1: William Luther Pierce would strike white nationalist Gold with his
Speaker 1: dystopian novel The Turner Diaries. That book would give Timothy
Speaker 1: McVeigh both the motive and a means for executing the
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City bombing, and McVeigh followed Pierce's violent blueprint almost
Speaker 1: to the letter. It could be that our story stops
Speaker 1: there in Oklahoma City, but it doesn't. The Turner Diaries,
Speaker 1: the Protocols, and Timothy McVeigh are all enjoying a deadly
Speaker 1: resurgence today. Latrese Sutton, whose mother Teresa was killed in
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City, can still remember life before the bombing. I
Speaker 1: think the Steban when we lived there. Um my mom
Speaker 1: worked two jobs. She um only ever got any sleep,
Speaker 1: but she was always there, like she was across Scott Leader.
Speaker 1: She was at all my sports avances that I can remember.
Speaker 1: She never really missed any of those. Now a mother herself,
Speaker 1: Sutton can reflect even more on losing her own mom.
Speaker 1: I think that's the most tragic part of losing my
Speaker 1: mom is that now that I'm in adulthood and I
Speaker 1: see all my friends have their moms who are now grandparents.
Speaker 1: My mom would be an awesome grandmother, you know, And
Speaker 1: she didn't. I didn't get to see her in that role,
Speaker 1: and I think that's one of the hardest things for
Speaker 1: me now. Sutton recently took her children to the Oklahoma
Speaker 1: City National Memorial, which stands where the Murror Federal Building
Speaker 1: used to stand. The memorial includes a field with one
Speaker 1: d and sixty eight empty chairs made from glass, bronze,
Speaker 1: and stone bearing the names of each of the bombing's victims.
Speaker 1: When we went and took standy photos at her chair
Speaker 1: one year, I am kind of explained it to him
Speaker 1: what had happened, and the little one still don't really
Speaker 1: don't think fully understand, but my older girls are starting
Speaker 1: to understand it now. Certain has come to better understand
Speaker 1: it herself over the years too, including her feelings for
Speaker 1: the man who killed her mother, Timothy McVeigh. I don't
Speaker 1: have ill will towards him. I guess I have the
Speaker 1: firm belief that everything happened for a reason. You know.
Speaker 1: It's sad that I lost my mom at an early age,
Speaker 1: but it still shaped me for who I am, so
Speaker 1: I couldn't do myself hating someone for this crime, even
Speaker 1: though it's very tragic and very sad. The death toll
Speaker 1: notched by the White nationalist movement did not end with
Speaker 1: Timothy McVeigh, who was executed by lethal injection in two
Speaker 1: thousand one, Jay and Burger again. For a long time,
Speaker 1: McVeigh was not very highly regarded in the annals of
Speaker 1: white nationalism, or at least not openly. Um. What we
Speaker 1: have seen in recent years is that there are people
Speaker 1: who see him now more as an inspiration. Um. So
Speaker 1: he's he's become a larger figure really, I think in
Speaker 1: the last ten years, and the movement has also expanded
Speaker 1: over that period. We're entering a much more heated cycle now. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, white supremacy is becoming much more active in
Speaker 1: the United States and internationally. Now, what we're seeing now
Speaker 1: is that pseudo intellectual phase of of white nationalism is
Speaker 1: kind of coming to a close, and we're they're entering
Speaker 1: a much more violent phase. A shooting at a Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: synagogue in October that killed eleven worshippers was the deadliest
Speaker 1: attack on the Jewish community in the United States. Police
Speaker 1: say the gunman told a SWAT officer that he wanted
Speaker 1: all Jews to die and that they were committing genocide
Speaker 1: against his people, and the hate helping to fuel such
Speaker 1: Times has a familiar source. The Protocols and the International
Speaker 1: jew are the twin you know, canonical texts of today's
Speaker 1: resurgent anti Semitic movement worldwide. The copy of the Protocols
Speaker 1: has been found in the possession or on the computers
Speaker 1: of the men who have shot up synagogues, both in
Speaker 1: the United States and also in New Zealand. But what's
Speaker 1: even more scary is how much more easily such ideas
Speaker 1: can now spread with the Internet and social media. Every
Speaker 1: outspoken racist is a potential Henry Ford. The example of
Speaker 1: Henry Ford is something that we're seeing play out today
Speaker 1: Jay and Burger again. Specific kinds of bigotry, ideological racism. UH,
Speaker 1: ideologies in general have to be communicated in order to spread.
Speaker 1: They are a social disease in many ways. UH, someone
Speaker 1: has to tell you about it. They have to give
Speaker 1: you something to read, they have to post at you online.
Speaker 1: There has to be some kind of human interaction to
Speaker 1: spread these specific kinds of ideas. And now these ideas
Speaker 1: are being transmitted its speeds previously unthinkable. Henry Ford had
Speaker 1: to spend a lot of his fortune to publish this stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, it was an expensive venture for him, and
Speaker 1: even at the point that William Pierce was writing The
Speaker 1: Turner Diaries, it was difficult to get this kind of
Speaker 1: message out. One reason he wrote the Turner Diaries is
Speaker 1: that it was hard to get people to subscribe to
Speaker 1: a neo Nazi newsletter. Propagandists like Ford and Pierce had
Speaker 1: to pay printing costs and postage. It was not cheap.
Speaker 1: And what we have now is really almost frictionless environment
Speaker 1: for this kind of propaganda. It is you do not
Speaker 1: have to spend money to spread a text of any kind.
Speaker 1: You can just post it on the line and any
Speaker 1: number of online repositories for free. It took seventy five
Speaker 1: years for Henry Ford's hate to result in something like
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City. Today's Internet, hate speech and propaganda can explode
Speaker 1: far more quickly to violent marches, synagogue bombings, school shootings
Speaker 1: and more. What happens when those lies come knocking at
Speaker 1: your children's door like they did in Oklahoma City. It's
Speaker 1: a scary thought. Latrese Sutton again. Kids, all the time,
Speaker 1: before you walk into school house, you need to say Lord,
Speaker 1: protect me as I'm in here, or anything that saying
Speaker 1: has come my way, protect me. Did you never know.
Speaker 1: It's just crazy out there, so really, I don't think
Speaker 1: we can change it at this point. I think at
Speaker 1: this point it should pray in his way for the
Speaker 1: times to pass and the Lord comes back. That's my
Speaker 1: thought on it. Today's Flashback lesson was really about the
Speaker 1: power of ideas, especially those that play on our prejudices
Speaker 1: and fears, and we learned that hate and harm can
Speaker 1: come from some unexpected directions, whether it's a millionaire tycoon
Speaker 1: who has some fixed ideas about who is to blame
Speaker 1: for society's problems, or an army hero who comes to
Speaker 1: hate the very institution in which he once served. All
Speaker 1: we can do some times is to be vigilant and
Speaker 1: learn from the mistakes of the past. As Henry Ford
Speaker 1: himself once said and one of his more enlightened moments,
Speaker 1: the only real mistake is the one from which we
Speaker 1: learned nothing. Flashback is written and hosted by me Sean Braswell,
Speaker 1: senior writer and executive producer at Azzy. It was produced
Speaker 1: by Robert Coulos, Tracy Moran, Theorio di Gizua, and Shannon Williamson.
Speaker 1: Chris Hoff engineered our show special thanks to the crew
Speaker 1: at I Heart Radio Podcast networks, especially Sophie Lichterman and
Speaker 1: Jack O'Brien. Make sure to subscribe to Flashback on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Flashback is the latest podcast from Azzi, a modern media
Speaker 1: company producing original TV series, festivals, news and podcasts for
Speaker 1: curious people. Azzi's unique storytelling focuses on the new and
Speaker 1: the next, whether that's forward looking news and features bold
Speaker 1: new perspectives on TV or ran new ways of looking
Speaker 1: at history. For today's lecture notes a remarkable footnote from
Speaker 1: History Loue Michelle. Again, well, I would just like to
Speaker 1: mention that McVeigh also spoke to us many times about
Speaker 1: a book called Unintended Consequences, which he read around the
Speaker 1: same time as he read the Turner Diaries. That's right,
Speaker 1: a book called Unintended Consequences. Like the Turner Diaries, it's
Speaker 1: an anti government fantasy, and this one that heroes a
Speaker 1: hunter who becomes a terrorist sniper after witnessing his government
Speaker 1: cracked down on American gun culture. He later told us
Speaker 1: that Unintended Consequences was actually the book he should have
Speaker 1: followed in his protests against the US government. He told
Speaker 1: us that he he wished that instead of a bomb,
Speaker 1: he would have become a sniper and picked off individual
Speaker 1: people in the government that he despised. McVeigh considered the
Speaker 1: Turner Diaries his Bible and Unintended Consequences his new testament.
Speaker 1: It just happened by chance that he came across the
Speaker 1: Turner Diaries first. As McVeigh told Michelle and his colleague
Speaker 1: Dan Herbeck, quote, I think Unintended Consequences is a better book.
Speaker 1: It might have changed my whole plan of operation. If
Speaker 1: I read that one first, then it might have changed
Speaker 1: a great deal more than that. To dive deeper, head
Speaker 1: to ausie dot com slash flashback. That's oz y dot
Speaker 1: com slash flashback. There you can find more of my
Speaker 1: lecture notes from today's episode, featuring extended interviews, links to
Speaker 1: further reading and more information on Henry Ford and Timothy McVeigh,
Speaker 1: as well as links to other hidden stories from history
Speaker 1: uncovered by me and other reporters at Ausie. We all
Speaker 1: need a break from the constant cycle to learn something new,
Speaker 1: to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses Plus streaming service
Speaker 1: is an excellent resource to expand our knowledge on a
Speaker 1: variety of subjects or pick up a new hobby. I've
Speaker 1: been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while researching this season
Speaker 1: of flashback lectures like Playball, The Rise of Baseball is
Speaker 1: America's Pastime, History of the Supreme Court, and Battlefield Europe
Speaker 1: have helped me connect the dots on several stories from history.
Speaker 1: Right now, they're giving our listeners a special, limited time
Speaker 1: offer a free month of unlimited access to their entire library.
Speaker 1: Sign up now through our special U r L go
Speaker 1: to the Great Courses Plus dot Com Slash Aussie. That's
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